Using your own view of the situation, factually false though it is but that’s another topic:
So what do you want to do? Give power back to the guys and the policies that put us where we were 3 years ago? If not, just what is your proposed alternative course, and why should anyone believe it will work?
Or are you simply having fun irresponsibly sniping at anything a Democrat tries to do? :dubious:
And as I pointed out in another thread, China will just step in and undercut the industry. Big surprise. What isn’t a big surprise was the fact that the company was already tanking when the loan was granted.
No, I think Obama was looking for a sound bite and it bit him in the ass.
dump Obamacare and start over. Fix the gaps in health care that hurt the near poor and people with pre-existing conditions.
Health care is not a function of business. The function of business is to generate profit from which we directly and indirectly derive both jobs and tax revenue.
The President and both houses of Congress are about to revisit the phrase “it’s the economy stupid” in the next election.
Yeah, Obama care bad. Health Insurance companies good.
What did Obama care do:
People with pre-existing conditions can not be denied coverage
You can not be dropped by an insurance company if you get sick.
Young adults can stay on parents plan until age 26
New healthcare plans are required to provide you with free preventative care , no copays or deductibles.
Women can see OB-GYN without first getting permission from insurance company
No lifetime limits on coverage
All patients guaranteed access to emergency care.
Seniors get a free annual wellness checkup without co pay or deductibles
Senior hurt by “donut hole” get a 250 dollar rebate
small businesses get a tax cut to help pay for Employee medical care.
increased funding 11 billion dollars to for Community Health care Centers
Insurance companies must allow you to appeal denial of coverage and get an independent review
Insurance companies must spend 85 percent of their revenues on medical care.
What the hell is wrong with this?
The second word in your first sentence. Covers any situation, anytime, anywhere.
Dumping Obamacare would be a great idea if there was any chance of fixing the problems we have with healthcare. It is very sad that our only choices are a bad program, or mortgaging our lives to ‘insurance’ companies. One day you’ll be screaming “keep your government hands off my Obamacare” from your Hover-Round.
The second part is right. Why do you assume the first part is in contradiction to it?
But if you mean that employers shouldn’t be responsible to cover the costs of healthcare, or receive a tax deduction for doing so, primarily for the benefit of ‘insurance’ companies, then I’m all for it.
We should be sick of hearing that from every candidate before too long.
No one is claiming that it is a failure for the industry. It is a failure for Obama and for his economic policy.
So he pointed to this company as an example of what he was going to achieve with his stimulus package. And what he achieved was pouring a half-billion down a rat hole and losing a thousand jobs.
What I think happened was that the Bush administration turned down the loan, and the Obama administration approved it. And that Obama himself talked this up as an example of what he wanted to achieve. Then it went under and lost a lot of money and a lot of jobs.
Actually, I don’t think that; it is exactly what happened.
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
Any startup is always on the brink of failure.
[/QUOTE]
So why is there no instance of Obama saying this about one of his pet projects? Since the risk was so high, and so obvious from the outset, and months before the loan was approved PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said it was likely to go under, why didn’t Obama admit how risky it was, and how likely it was to be money wasted?
That’s what we get for treating the Presidency as an entry-level position. Elect someone with no experience running anything but his mouth, and stuff like this is going to happen. Until he either learns something, or we get rid of him. The first doesn’t seem to be happening, maybe we can get the second.
Regards,
Shodan
Except that it isn’t exactly what happened. The Bush administration didn’t turn down the loan, they just didn’t finish processing it before their time in office was up.
And while I don’t think that 1000 people out of work is anything to joke about, relatively it’s not “a lot” of jobs, considering that we lose, on average, about 23,000 jobs per day in the US. So on that 1 day when Solyndra layed off their entire workforce, all those people were still just 1/23 or just over 4% of the total jobs lost that day.
As is so often the case, the things you claim are facts don’t stand up to even the most cursory scrutiny.
Wrong.
No, as is almost always the case, what I said is exactly correct - I just don’t accept the Democratic spin after their ideas go south.
Regards,
Shodan
Why didn’t you quote this part of your cite:
Seems there are two versions of events being offered up without a clear indication of which one is correct. Why did you focus only on the Republican version?
Oh, and let me offer the full quote of the Republican version, with an emphasis on the word you conveniently left out:
You do know that shelved is not the same thing as rejected, right?
Especially since it was 2 weeks before the end of the administration. Without seeing the e-mails in question, we don’t know if they were just shutting things down so they could get out of town clean, or if they had actually reached a firm conclusion on the matter.
And note that in the full quote, it says the e-mails “indicate”, which is a bit different than “proved”.
There’s no confusion. It did move along and was considered, and rejected.
While I hate to name-drop McArdle again, she’s looked into this and sees no way this company was going to turn itself around. Basically, it couldn’t manage the testbed manufacturing. Ultimately, the only way this company was not going down the tubes was if the new facility massively (and I mean, massively) dropped production costs. We have pretty good evidence few thought this would happen.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, on the other hand, evidently did. They kept dumping money into the black hole, and I’m not surprised that Mr. Kaiser argued for the deal. He may have been totally honest with the Obama peeps - I wasn’t there and don’t know. But I’ve no doubt he would try for any Hail Mary pass, since after all, the deal was all good for him. I fact, AFAIK Kaiser gets to walk away with dibs on whatever Solyndra has left, now that all its assets can be sold off. Including a large factory facility and plenty of pristine machinery.
I’m trying to keep my criticisms of the program as a whole separate, because the right and left have a more basic difference of opinion on that. I don’t totally deny the usefulness of government loans, but I look upon with dubiousness. IMHO, they ought to be used for either programs of extreme utility to the nation as a whole (think transcontinental railroad), or for far-out research where any answer could be useful. Solyndra had a purely technical problem. It wasn’t being funded because it wasn’t good technology.
Can you cite that? The cite that Shodan gave, and that I was referencing, does not support that conclusion. It doesn’t disprove it, but it doesn’t prove it, either.
While I agree with you on the first part, it is simply not correct to say it wasn’t being funded. It had received funding from venture firms at a level higher than what the government put in.
There may have been a slight financial crisis that occurred at the same time . It may have impacted the decision process since the government had just asked for 700 billion dollars.
Because [ol][li]that is the version backed up by documentation, and not merely the spin put out by an administration official in the hot seat, and [*]because the Democratic spin is pushed as gospel and we need at least a little balance.[/ol][/li]
[list=A][li]What a silly quibble, and [*]where did I use the term “proved”?[/list][/li]
Please don’t use scare quotes unless you can back them up.
Regards,
Shodan
Solyndra looks like the tip of the iceberg-the Obama government gave money to a firm controlled by a relative of Pelosi.
The plot thickens…
Turn off Fox. It is not big news anywhere else.
It is not like Cheney deciding energy policies behind closed doors that was a huge giveaway to his polluting friends.
Obama was investing in green technology and the technology of the future. Not like the Shrubs advisers who helped loot for the wealthy and kill regulation on the worst polluters and oligarchies in the world.
[quote=“Shodan, post:156, topic:596401”]
Because [ol][li]that is the version backed up by documentation, and not merely the spin put out by an administration official in the hot seat, and [*]because the Democratic spin is pushed as gospel and we need at least a little balance.[/ol][/li][/quote]
No, it’s not “backed up by the documentation”. Both versions are spin by their respective party. The article doesn’t give us enough information to decide which, if either, is correct.
[quote]
What a silly quibble, and [li]where did I use the term “proved”?[/list][/li][/quote]
I don’t think there is any space between “proved” (my paraphrase) and “exactly correct” (your statement). If you prefer the latter, that’s fine with me. Your version is not “exactly correct”.
Quotes don’t always indicate “scare”. In that case, as in the previous sentence, they indicate a quotation from the article and a substitute word for that quote which would not be accurate.
I mentioned that. The firm in question was the Kaiser Foundation, which raises some questions on its own. That said, why are you arguing this? In no way does it help your argument, as far as I can see. The Kaiser Foundation may not understand the concept of “sunk costs,” but that doesn’t mean the Energy Department should follow their lead.
The reason this is is important is that the other investors who got in early were pulling out and denying more funds. George Kaiser chose to double-down, but it’s definitely noteworthy that the big-name funds who were in on the experimental level jumped ship as Solyndra showed no sign of turning a profit.
It’s one thing for the big startup investor firms (Kaiser is most definitely not one of them) to put in a few mill on longshots; they won’t pump more cash in unless things look good. It’s quite another for the government to blow a half-billion on speculative investments. For one thing, we can’t do a lot of them, and for another, governments do not have a track record of success in this field.
Ah well, it’s a little late now.