Remember the Solyndra "Scandal"? Those Loans Are Now Making Money For American Taxpayers

a reply to: xuenchen

You're just an unmitigated ray of sunshine. The successes of this effort will be in even starker contrast after your new Red Congress gets going. Unemployment back to 12% or so, more bailouts for Wall Street...

Just wait until the American people see what you guys have up your sleeves!

originally posted by: Gryphon66
a reply to: xuenchen

You're just an unmitigated ray of sunshine. The successes of this effort will be in even starker contrast after your new Red Congress gets going. Unemployment back to 12% or so, more bailouts for Wall Street...

Just wait until the American people see what you guys have up your sleeves!

The last time the U.S. had a "Red" Congress, they got the unemployment down to something like 4.6%.

And of course, the big bailouts were under "Blue" Congresses.

The Blue-Velvet Congresses of Reid-Pelosi.



Busted with laughter !!

a reply to: xuenchen

Okay, so which is it, is the President responsible for unemployment, or is it Congress? Is the President responsible for the bills he sends up to Congress or not?

Or is the President only responsible for bad things happening when he's a Democrat?

Because, the way you cook the books, if unemployment goes up, and if there's a single Democrat in Washington (either in the White House or the Capitol) it's their fault, and when unemployment goes down, so long as one Republican has a position somehow somewhere, it goes to their credit?

Wow, that just seems like Republicans can't lose no matter WHAT happens in your scenarios, huh?

a reply to: Gryphon66

Is the President responsible for the bills he sends up to Congress or not?

I'll have to find some examples of Presidents sending bills to Congress.

Then I'll get back to ya.

originally posted by: xuenchen
Can't wait for the new failures to emerge as new loans get approved.

It's comments like this that tell me everything I need to know about not wasting my time arguing with people like yourself.

You “can’t wait” for the loans to fail huh?

That really shows how much you actually care about the welfare of your nation versus how much you just want to be right.

When these loans produce successful returns on investment everybody wins, left and right. The taxpayer wins, the business wins, the economy wins, and the environment wins.

Whatever your outlook might be upfront is irrelevant to the fact that a positive outcome here is a positive outcome for all involved, no matter who bet on which horse. So a bigger person might at least say something like “well I was and still am skeptical, but if I turn out to be wrong then all the better”.

But you are actively hoping for them to fail.

You’d rather the taxpayer, the business, the economy and the environment all lose - so you can feel like you won this piddly little argument on the internet.

originally posted by: xuenchen

a reply to: Gryphon66

Is the President responsible for the bills he sends up to Congress or not?

I'll have to find some examples of Presidents sending bills to Congress.

Then I'll get back to ya.

Here, I'll help:

The first step in the legislative process is the introduction of a bill to Congress. Anyone can write it, but only members of Congress can introduce legislation. Some important bills are traditionally introduced at the request of the President, such as the annual federal budget.

whitehouse.gov

President Obama Sends his 2014 Budget to Congress

Etc. etc.

Oh, and just for the sake of something resembling honesty, you might point out that the last Red Congress lasted from 1995-2007, with a Republican President from 2001-2009 ... and what was it that happened again starting in 2007?

Oh yeah, that little bump in the road called The Great Recession of 2007-2009.

Just for the sake of discussion, I feel that it should be noted that the oil industry went threw its fair share of failures and 'bad investments' before becoming the industry that it is today.

I can cite one area that 'wasted' between $2-$3 billion, of modern currency, before finally finding the right solutions to the problems.

Today, that same area produces billions in tax receipts, alone.

originally posted by: Gryphon66
a reply to: mc_squared

You will notice that our friends on the right don't really ask us or care about what our thoughts actually are on the subject.

They're always too busy telling us what we and all the other "liberal/progressive/communists" believe.

I've found their entire thought process is a giant bubble under constant threat of collapse from new and challenging ideas - so they need to persistently reinforce it with this silly inaccurate narrative of big-gubbermint-luvin-socialist-libtards-who-just-want-free-handouts-and-hate-the-rich-because-they’re-successful.

I’m not even all that Liberal to be honest, at least not relatively compared to some of my friends. We often get into intense, heated debates about what’s wrong with the system/how to fix it/etc (I’m the black sheep conspiracy theorist in the circle), but even though we can all be pretty damn stubborn at times, the cool thing is no one is afraid to be wrong. So we actually listen to each other and build our perspective and overall understanding, even if we end up agreeing to disagree. It’s healthy.

But here, holy hell – as the post above shows it’s all about satisfying one’s ego. Any hint of being wrong about something, no matter how simple or trivial, carries the potential to open an absolute floodgate of cognitive dissonance.


So you know what tyranny scares me the most? The self-imposed, mental kind that way too many people willfully engage in. These days it seems you don’t need a military or even a gun to be an effective tyrant, you just need a blog and a bunch of people who will listen to anything you say, as long as they think you're on their team.

a reply to: mc_squared



You act like I'm against solar power.

Wrong.

I'm against the failures associated with government interference usually because of underlying political corruption.

And I think the lists of failure cited are not complete.

I think 100% private enterprises are doing o.k.

List of Failed Obama Green Energy & Solar Companies

And I think this latest attempt to shed positive light on the "loans" is evidence of book cooking and egg boiling.

It's all based on the jealousies from the election.

So there !!!

a reply to: mc_squared

Xuenchen, even though they claim to be independent or libertarian, always seems to post in support of the party of "Obama Must Fail."

The heck with the country, they aren't sent to Washington to govern, or to work together with their colleagues, here, let me let the Leader of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh say it in his own words:

“It is the biggest and perhaps the most important mandate a political party has had in the recent era and it is very simple what that mandate is. It is to stop Barack Obama. It is to stop the Democrat Party. There is no other reason why Republicans were elected yesterday. Republicans were not elected to govern.

Compare this with that "darned piece of paper" ... the US Constitution:

Section 1.

All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

a reply to: Gryphon66

and what was it that happened again starting in 2007?

A Democrat Congress !!!!

Yikes !!!!

a reply to: mc_squared

I'm socially liberal, probably, mostly, and fiscally conservative, in that, I do believe that a fiscal policy based on running deficits, as expanded upon by Reagan, is foolhardy. I was "mostly libertarian" until that became a synonym for Tea Party.

I actually did join the Democratic Party as of the last election. As flawed as the Democrats are, and they are, at least they mouth support for consensus science and equality before the law. They haven't been at the helm of government in every single financial catastrophe that the United States has ever known. And they don't state quite clearly that they want the country to fail for political gain.

a reply to: WanDash

How do we know, though, that stealing/intercepting/subtracting this energy...from the Earth...that has made the Earth a wonderfully livable planet...won't cause havoc with everything from volcanoes, earthquakes, super storms, seasonal-inversions, oxygenation, ocean temperatures & currents, and ice coverage...?

All of our global energy use is a drop in the bucket compared to how much of this resource we get directly from the Sun.

The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year.[8] In 2002, this was more energy in one hour than the world used in one year.

When it comes to “intercepting” sunlight, you really don’t need to worry. And, unlike fossil fuels, this resource is forever renewable (at least for the next few billion years or so - and when it finally goes we’ll have much bigger problems to worry about than how to power our toasters).

How do we know that thriving species, today, will not be wiped-out in a few decades?
We don't - but - we'll gamble on an unknown future over the present paradigm...

Because for one thing we do know the present paradigm is pretty much obliterating the world today. It’s already causing so much damage and strife, and that situation is only getting worse and worse. It also carries an entire minefield of very bad “unknowns” too, particularly when it comes to issues like climate change. So even if the alternative was a giant cosmic mystery I would argue there’s pretty much no place to go but up at this point. And again, fossil fuels won’t last forever anyway, so it’s only a matter of time before you have to face this direction regardless.


But the alternative is not a big scary unknown - it’s a much safer, more stable bet. It’s just getting there that’s the hard part. What the success of this loan program shows though is that we absolutely can get there, no matter how badly the Solyndra fear-mongering shill-billies want to derail it.

originally posted by: xuenchen

a reply to: Gryphon66

and what was it that happened again starting in 2007?

A Democrat Congress !!!!

Yikes !!!!

Yes, it did take a Democratic Congress AND a Democratic President to Reverse ten years of Republican Control of Government!

Wait, which side are you arguing for again? You're just making points for the Dems everytime you type.

Great thread. Thanks for the info.

The Department of Energy loan program was used to kickstart the clean tech industry in America. But after some high profile defaults like Solyndra and Fisker, it became a focal point for partisan grandstanding - even though the program itself was actually first developed under the Bush administration, and it was entirely expected (and thus prepared) to incur some losses:

Hmm is that right ?

The results of the Congressional probe shared Tuesday with ABC News show that less than two weeks before President Bush left office, on January 9, 2009, the Energy Department's credit committee had voted against offering a loan commitment to Solyndra.

Even after Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, analysts in the Energy Department and in the Office of Management and Budget were repeatedly questioning the wisdom of the loan. In one exchange, an Energy official wrote of "a major outstanding issue" -- namely, that Solyndra's numbers showed it would run out of cash in September 2011.

I see blame Bush is alive and well 6 years later.

originally posted by: xuenchen
a reply to: mc_squared
And I think this latest attempt to shed positive light on the "loans" is evidence of book cooking and egg boiling.

Yeah I remember the last time I got sucked into one of these discussions with you - you started a thread poo-pooing all over a carbon tax when you didn't even understand how a carbon tax worked. You invited me to look at the issue "objectively" by making sure I add the word scam to any google searches lol.

When I pointed out and cited real world examples of a revenue neutral carbon tax that actually costs taxpayers nothing - you replied with "well I don't believe any of that".

Every time you seem to meet a factual argument you can't counter you just resort to "I don't believe it", or "it's a conspiracyyyyyy".......


As I stated in my reply to Gryphon above - I proudly play the role of conspiracy theorist in debates with my very Liberal friends. Your arguments as a conspiracy theorist...embarrass me.

a reply to: Gryphon66

Yes, it did take a Democratic Congress AND a Democratic President to Reverse ten years of Republican Control of Government!

Well yes.

The Democrat Congresses sure did reverse the unemployment rate didn't they.

And then Obama made it worse.

And then all that damage got partly undone starting in 2011.

Face the music as they say !!!!

a reply to: mc_squared

Perhaps we should focus on the private successes involved in solar energy?

a reply to: xuenchen

Yes, they did ... it did take almost two years until late 2009 to stop the absolute financial freefall that the Bush White House and the Republican Congress had left the Country in.

And it took the obstructionist Republican House in 2011 to do its best to slow down the advances the economy was making and what was the reason? Save the country, help the economy, make things better for Americans?

No.

"Stop Obama, stop Obama, stop Obama" ... the same mindless chant we hear now, in stereo.


Look forward to more tax cuts, less banking regulations, more ridiculous amounts of money redistributed to the richest Americans so that it will trickle down to the rest of us.

You know, the failed policies of the past. Oh, and more God, can't forget that.

Right.