{"id":38577,"date":"2013-11-24T08:20:58","date_gmt":"2013-11-24T13:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=38577"},"modified":"2013-11-24T13:38:45","modified_gmt":"2013-11-24T18:38:45","slug":"yet-another-current-administration-green-energy-success-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=38577","title":{"rendered":"Yet Another Current Administration Green Energy “Success Story”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most TAH readers know that the current administration is a big fan of pumping exorbitant sums into “green energy” projects as\u00a0 paybacks for past political support<\/del>\u00a0 “the way to a secure future” (or some other similarly contrived but totally bogus justification).\u00a0 Well, we now have yet another “success story” from the green energy front.<\/p>\n

The US Department of Energy made loan guarantees to a company called Fisker Automotive. Those loan guarantees totaled well over $500 million.<\/p>\n

In case you’ve forgotten:\u00a0 Fisker Automotive is a California firm that made – yep, you guessed it – “extended-range electric vehicles”. \u00a0 Things didn’t go so well for them, business-wise (surprise, surprise).\u00a0 They declared bankruptcy<\/a> in March of this year.<\/p>\n

By that point, Fisker had received over $192 million of those taxpayer-guaranteed loans.\u00a0 The Federal government seized $21 million from the company earlier this year to protect its interest in the outstanding loan guarantees.<\/p>\n

Uncle Sam has now sold the outstanding loan guarantees<\/a> to a Chinese company called Hybrid Tech owned by Chinese billionaire Richard Li. \u00a0The sale price for those outstanding loan guarantees?\u00a0 $25 million<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Fisker apparently had repaid some $7 million before going belly-up; Uncle Sam has seized $21 million, and will get $25 million from Hybrid Tech.\u00a0 That leaves $139 million of what Uncle Sam loaned to Fisker outstanding.<\/p>\n

That remaining $139 million that the Federal government loaned to Fisker?\u00a0 Uncle Sam eats that as a loss<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It’s the biggest “green energy”\u00a0 fleecing of Uncle Sam<\/del>\u00a0 financial failure since a firm called Solyndra went down the tubes a couple of years ago.\u00a0 Perhaps you remember that\u00a0 windfall<\/del>\u00a0 boondoggle<\/del>\u00a0 financial fiasco<\/del>\u00a0 blatantly obvious incompetence<\/del>\u00a0 minor incident?<\/p>\n

Look, some degree of Federal support for R&D is one thing.\u00a0 But pouring literally hundreds of millions into half-baked ventures that simply aren’t anywhere near ready for prime time is a different thing entirely.<\/p>\n

That seems to have become a pattern with the current administration.\u00a0 And at this point, I’m not convinced it’s simply due to incompetence either.<\/p>\n

Yo, DoE – assuming anyone working for you actually gives a sh!t about fiscal responsibility, I’ve got a small bit of advice for them.\u00a0 If a technology is really “ready for prime time”, private industry will run with it and use it to make some $$$.\u00a0 You don’t have to fund the commercial end of it.<\/p>\n

But if it’s not “ready for prime time”, you’re p!ssing away my tax money funding it past the R&D stage. And yeah – I got a problem with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most TAH readers know that the current administration is a big fan of pumping exorbitant sums … Yet Another Current Administration Green Energy “Success Story”<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,213,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teh-stoopid","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}