E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Republicans have latched onto a new report about the defunct solar panel maker Solyndra, in an attempt to ding the Obama White House for embarking on a fool's errand with its green energy initiatives and engaging in cronyism when one of its biggest investments took a turn for the worse.
Solyndra has been on the tongues of conservatives -- including Mitt Romney, who staged a surprise press conference out of the company's former headquaters in May -- for months. And they feel that a new report released this week by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee only strengthens their case against the incumbent administration.
Republicans' central narrative is this: the White House anxiously approved $535 million in loan guarantees for Solyndra -- a company with a principal investor who was a major fundraiser for President Barack Obama -- as part of its green energy program. And, the GOP contends, when Solyndra started to struggle, the Department of Energy restructured its loans despite misgivings from the Office of Management and Budget.
In a series of emails obtained and published by the committee and written during the initial approval process for the loans, one OMB staff member writes of the pressure to finish its review of the Solyndra loan.
"It's based on pressure from the VP's office," another OMB staffer wrote in response. "[The Department of Energy] would like to schedule the closing for tomorrow, and [Energy Secretary Steven] Chu will be in CA and [Vice President Biden] by video link for Friday announcement."
A Democratic report issued Thursday by the minority staff of the Energy and Commerce Committee acknowledged that the White House was certainly interested in an "expeditious decision" on the loans -- but mostly because Solyndra was the first major loan guarantee of the program.
But, Democrats contend, there is no evidence that this pressure influenced the ultimate decision to offer Solyndra a guarantee. Moreover, Democrats said in their dissenting report that White House officials told investigators that they weren't aware of any involvement in Solyndra by political fundraisers until it was first raised by Republicans.
The White House said Thursday, too, that the Republican-led inquiry was about little more than politics.
"I did see these reports, and what it points out is, yet again, proof positive that none of the accusations that the Republicans have made about this particular loan have turned out to be true -- that this was a merit-based decision," White House press secretary said in a gaggle Thursday aboard Air Force One. "What we knew then we still know, and this is a 18-month, costly investigation that only highlights the fact that Congress is not doing what it should do to help the American people."
The Republican report produced no hard evidence of malfeasance in the Obama administration's management of Solyndra, but the mere appearance of impropriety has fed into a narrative about transparency and waste that the GOP has sought to advance.
"When President Obama claimed government helped build businesses, he must have been thinking about his failed attempt to prop up Solyndra," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said Friday in an email to reporters. "But after half a billion in wasted taxpayer dollars and nearly 2,000 unemployed workers, it’s clear the only people who lost on President Obama’s Solyndra gamble were American taxpayers."
In particular, Republicans have highlighted a portion of the emails contained within the same GOP report detailing the cost to taxpayers if the government restructured Solyndra's loans, or rather, let the company liquidate.
An energy official wrote in early January of 2011 that the expected loss under liquidation would be $141 million versus an expected loss of $385 million under a loan restructuring.
Democrats argue, though, that the Solyndra loan wasn't imprudent in the way Republicans would make it seem, and that the process to restructure the loan was the process of usual internal administration deliberation. Besides, Democrats contend, Solyndra might not have had to file for bankruptcy if it weren't for a sudden influx onto the market of cheaper Chinese alternatives.
But Republicans aren't likely to let go of Solyndra as an issue during this campaign. The June NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that Americans who were familiar with the company had a negative impression of it. Two percent of respondents in the June poll said they had a positive impression of Solyndra, versus 24 percent who said they had a negative opinion of the failed company. But 59 percent of respondents said in mid-June that they were unfamiliar with the company.
GOP officials also said that Solyndra tests particularly well in data they’ve collected, especially as individuals are exposed to more information about its difficulties and the government's support for the company.
The bet is that if Obama and Solyndra are tethered together in voters' minds, it will benefit Romney come election day.
"Let’s look at the results. Today, Staples employs roughly 90,000 people," the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said Friday in Nevada, referencing the office supplies company that Bain Capital helped support during his time in charge.
"And Solyndra, I think you know how many people it employs," Romney added.
Leave a Comment:
Yawn.
GOP wields Solyndra report as cudgel against Obama - AS THEY SHOULD..........
Funny the GOP won't attack Obama on the endless wars, failed drug war, Patriot Act signing, bank bailouts.... because the last president supported all of these atrocities too.
Do the American people support these crimes upon humanity?
Seems like it.
derek
it's gona take time to clean up the mess bush made. Bunch of racists criticizing the President at every opportunity. There has never been a president in history that has has a Jewish dessert wielded at him, but let a black man in the white house and the racists start a food fight!
Jon R---Obviously you are willing to send more of your money to the government, right? This administration is only interested in the middle class right? They make such good decisions with our money...yawn is right..you are nothing but a tool?
Derek---Nice diversion from the topic...lame at best!
Typicalliberal..how long is it going to take to clean up Obama's mess? I don't think we can recover....
Wasting $ 1/2 billion on Solyndra is a valid issue for the GOP, just as wasting 2,000 times more invading and occupying Iraq was a valid issue for the dems. We need better oversight and more transparency in all government operations and programs, no matter which party is in charge because both of them as party to corruption and croynism. Turning this into a partisan pissing contest is the wrong way to deal. We need to make permanent improvements in government oversight that affect both parties and expose crooks and croies, like Obama's Solyndra andBush's no-bid contracts to Haliburton.
watt
If he needs a couple more terms, I'm all for it. But the obstructionist GOP won't give them to him because he's black.
Despite your name, you're not very bright, are you? Try sticking a halogen bulb where the sun don't shine and maybe you'll get it.
As Thomas Sowell would say .... Racism is not dead, but it is on life support - kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people (like liberal woman in #1.3) who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as racists.
typical liberal woman,
We are absolutely tired and fed up with you trying to pull the race card all of the time. Given the blind suport that blacks give to Obama I don't think you have any right to yell race. Besides, Obama is not black, he is biracial. Frankly, I don't care if he is black, tan, green or pink, I don't like his overly liberal policies and the screw job he is doing on the economy.
And just to address the typical liberal response before you even get there, I did not really think that Bush was a good President and if you think that Bush was a horrible President then is that the standard to which you want to compare your President. So Bush was horrible, so what is Obama, barely better than horrible?
Liberal woman, Real classy post.....why are you so angry? Thanks for keeping racism alive and well...you are part of the problem.
I have to confess.........Instead of playing politics with this issue, like I and many others are doing, shouldn't we use a story like Solyndra to agree with one another. I have to imagine that both parties see the ability to gift $500 million to political backers as a bad thing. It doesn't matter who is in power, congress and the president shouldn't have that ability. It encourages corruption and gives companies a reason to employ lobbyists by the thousands. We should set aside our differences and demand that congress STOP any more of these types of loans/gifts. They shouldn't wield that much power.
Jon R-469000. says 'yawn' about $535,000,000.00, he must be a 1%er lol.
Typical liberal woman you are a hoot! LMAO!! You perfectly convey the liberal stance..priceless parody!
Great point. Obama was supposed to be hope and change.
Solyndra was started by Bush and Obama gave the okay. So really it's Bushes fault that this happen. As for hope and change because the party of no (GOP) don't want change. They want to destroy Obama anyway they can.
everyone hates government waste but, the US military wastes much, much more on cutting edge tech that doesn't pan out, we just don't hear about it.......and it's not just this administration, it has been all of them !~!
Let's be clear, $500,000,000 isn't chump change but let's see;
1% of the overall stimulus program would be $7,870,000,000
so 1/10th of 1% of the entire stimulus package would be $787,000,000
and its expected that us taxpayers will recover about 60% of the loan guaranteed that went to Solyndra so at the end of the day we'll be out about $200,000,000
which amounts to roughly 1/2 of 1/10th of 1% of the stimulus/recovery money.
It still isn't chump change but if any business in the private sector could keep their losses through bad investments, r&d, shrinkage etc. anywhere near that low the would be jumping for joy!!
At the end of the day this is far better than the government has handled OUR money in a whole wide variety of situations!
Romney's going down, so out comes more GOP clowns!
These Losers are grasping at every straw they can, whether Solyndra loans started by Dubya,
Fast and FuriousOperation Wide Receiver started by Dubya -- both of which have been debunked by news organizations. And as if the Birther conspiracy hasn't been enough, now Batcrap Bachmann and the Muslim Brotherhood McCarthyism is still going on.But the real scandal is all the shenanigans Romney has pulled throughout his perpetual run for office. To quote Bachmann, "Oh my goodness!" Romney bluffed saying he would release his taxes if Ted Kennedy released his, and is still using this as one of his lame excuses. He lied about filing taxes in Massachusetts until he got busted for filing in Utah, and all the while he had the arrogance to demand tax returns of all his opponents including their spouses.
Romney got away with all the lies and cheating in his earlier runs, the most despicable being the campaign for governor of Massachusetts, transferring the Bahamas Trust Fund Corp into Ann's name the day before he was sworn in, and taking the hard drives with him when he left. Now he is trying to pull the same scam AGAIN. Fool me once...
"You people" think you have something on President Obama? Really, seriously? Especially in comparison to Mitt Romney and his mysterious IRA, possible amnesty for money in the Cayman Islands, and definitely paying way below 13.9% tax rates for who knows how many years. Puleeze!
Romney -- YOU put up or shut up!
palm,
Of course solandra was started by Bush - everything was started by Bush; even the campaign to re-elect obama in 2012! And heaven forbid, if obama lost the election it would be Bushs' fault wouldn't it?
Bush did it! Bush did it! Do you want a cracker?
true,
" Especially in comparison to Mitt Romney and his mysterious IRA..." Substitute birth certificate for IRA and it's exactly the same. He could be hiding something but not obama. Obama was straight up honest and produced his birth certificate when asked, didn't he? Answer no, true.
You can't say equal = equal+, now can you?
You R's want transparency???
OK - fair enough....
Mitt, where are your tax returns?? .... transparency is a 2 way street.
Cheney...Haliburton...Cheney...no bid contracts for Haliburton...Cheney...Haliburton immune to lawsuits for shoddy and over budget work in Iraq...Cheney...billions and BILLIONS of dollars of no bid contracts for republikan contributors in Iraq...republikan hypocrisy...over the top.
Great rhetorical point, but on a serious note, it raises an almost fundamental issue.
Thomas Paine said .... "Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ...."
Bush spent too much - Obama is Bush on steriods; Bush massively increased the size of government and government regulations - Obama is Bush on crack; Bush was big government - Obama is bigger government .... Bush was a best a necessary evil - Obama is an intolerable one.
And sadly and honestly, that is the basic choice to make in November ...
A perceived necessary evil in Romney ... or a known and intolerable one in Obama.
Your choice America.
The attacks on Romney's tax plan (very valid as they are bad for the middle class) must be working, because the GOP and slinging mud to see what sticks.
Does anyone else see that demonizing green energy is counter productive?
Solyndra is just one of a long line of gaffs by the current administration. Don't take it personally, this is just one of the many ways that we can numerate in which Mr. Obama never should have even visited the White House in 2008, let alone occupied it....
typical liberal woman, I have spent many hours trying to talk sense to people who write racist garbage here on First Read.
These are people who have written right here on this blog that the president should go back to Kenya, that he isn't a REAL president, that he only cares about black people, that black people are inferior to white people and on and on and on.
I didn't see it coming with his election to be honest. I thought America had moved into the 21st Century, but what I see written here is just sad.
Try asking Romney to denouce the things Michele Bachmann has to say. He won't. Ask about John McCain blaming the Mexicans for fires in his state. He made it up to satisfy the haters in this country. Look at new voter suppression laws.
The Republican Party has become an out and out insane party who have no feeling for anyone except their rich class, with no concern for the future of America. They have become citizens of the world and explains why they hide their money elsewhere.
Now Obama is supposed to be the "foreign" one according to them.
Liars.
Looks to me the GOP and their TeaReTards are getting very Desperate for Votes !!!!!!!!!
You were going along pretty good, but then you fell off the cliff. If President Obama lost the election, we would return to the failed GOP/Bush-era policies on steroids. So yes, Bush and supply-side voodoo economics that started with Reagan and that has NEVER worked would be to blame.
Where have you been, living under a rock, or on Newt's moon base? Did you not see the report by the Tax Policy Center? Romney would increase the deficit with MORE tax cuts for himself and his crony capitalists as well as increased defense spending, and to pay for it he would slash programs for the working class and raise middle class taxes by an average of $2,000/year.
What part of NO don't you understand, how many FACTS have to be put before you, how blind can you be to the scam Romney is? Just research his personal tax scandal to qualify to run for governor of Massachusetts. This is only one scam of many in Romney's life.
That the rich and powerful like Romney play by different rules and are above the law is an indicator that our nation is in decline. If you want a strong America, you need to join the increasing majority who want to put an end to people like Romney gaming the system, and doing so with such an arrogant sense of privilege and entitlement. It's sickening, and a plutocrat like Romney at the helm would be disastrous. Enough!
Romney is NOT trustworthy. Character matters. ABR - Anyone but Romney.
If both sides spent half as much energy addressing the issues and actually working on solving these problem imagine what good they could do. Instead its all piss takes at each other. At this point, neither one of them deserves my vote. They played political football with a lot of issues that are hurting a lot of issues. I wound up losing my job over health care reform, when I went to my representative, they did not give a damn and they were anti Obama. Guess it was all lip service after all.
I finally got a job. A better job. The only person who got me out of this fix was myself. Thanks Democrats and Republicans for nothing, I will remember you both at the voting booths in November.
test
RonInColorado -
Great job of selective twisting, folding and spinning the facts.
How about twisting the fact that Solydra is the tip of the iceberg, folding a rational for all the failed projects, the green projects that created jobs in foreign countries such as Russia, Finland, Spain, China, etc. instead of America and
..... please spin a rationalization for the 15-25 million unemployed and underemployed and temporarily employed Americans about EACH GREEN JOB COSTING AN AVERAGE OF $9.8 MILLION TAX DOLLARS!
typical liberal woman if you want to see a racist.............get a mirror............voila a racist.
If he needs a couple more terms, I'm all for it. But the obstructionist GOP won't give them to him because he's black.
Despite your name, you're not very bright, are you? Try sticking a halogen bulb where the sun don't shine and maybe you'll get it.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Talk about being dim witted.. He can't have 2 more terms or are you really unaware of that. Or maybe you want to by pass that as well and just put him in for life?????
It's a REPUBLICAN REPORT!!!!! Can you spell BIASED! Is there anything more to be said?
If Obama loses it is Bush's fault???
We'll take it. So will "W".
BARRACK OBAMA ...FAILED LEADERSHIP!!!
Hey, Pat Boston, it was the Liberal Woman who brought up the racist crap, big boy, just like you and the other lib regulars on this site do all the time. And I understand why. You have absolutely nothing of substance with which to defend Obama's completely miserable performance....so, you play that old reliable race card! Trouble is, it's gotten so old that it doesn't work any more; every body just sighs and says, "oh, not that old s**t again"!
Talk about being dim witted.. He can't have 2 more terms or are you really unaware of that. Or maybe you want to by pass that as well and just put him in for life?????
So only white men can have more than 2 terms? Racist!
Do some comparison:
Bush - Great Recession - vast amount of wealth lost, trillions and trillions (or zillions) of dollars lost - even incalculable
Obama - Solyndra ? OK less than half a billion dollars - which reminds of Fighter Jets 22 which haven't seen action yet, but $70 billion wasted.
Bush - Great Recession (personally responsible)
Obama - Solyndra (bureaucrats failed to slow down - be careful what you wish for, you might get it. Bureaucrats have been blamed for being slow and blamed for red tapes, for once, the bureaucratic process goes real fast on Solyndra, it screwed up).
President Reagan took office in 1981, and one of his first moves was to order the solar panels removed from the White House Roof. They where not replaced until President Obama planned to put them back in 2010. It's clear that the GOP does not care if we conserve energy or not. Republicans can attack solar power all they want but it is a technology long overdue. The GOP is the most environmentally unfriendly party to ever hold office. They prove this by everything they say and do.
>You guys do realize that the money for Solyndra actually saved the BANKS that loaned money to them.
Here, Here to True Patriot who points out that trickle down hasn't worked since Reagan.
With Romney, do we really want to Triple Down on Trickle Down????
Check this out: http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
Hey Pat,
Remember how the west was "won". Remember how this young nation was founded on high integrity principles on the one hand and slavery on the other. Even today the sole purpose of corporations is to turn a "profit".
Nothing is going to happen overnight. I opine that it will take another few generations without major wars or disasters for the human species to evolve beyond racism, greed, and petty partisanship.
However the election of President Obama, an extremely gifted, educated, honorable man, has signaled a paradigm shift. Most certainly not all at once or today, but a paradigm shift none-the-less. Particularly Black Americans and in general all minorities world wide are experiencing the lifting of the yoke of false inferiority from their necks. White supremacy is dead and the various ridiculous attacks from the right on President Obama are it's dying gasps.
typical liberal women:
I'm tired of the left spewing racial hatred. This president is the worst. Check out this video.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/MYcGui5JrQg?
Obama pledged to change the way Washington worked, which he did, he made it worse. Wasting millions upon billions upon trillions without so much as a second thought. This country had been creeping toward financial insolvency before Obama came to town, and just like he fast tracked the waste of millions to Solyndra, he has accelerated the financial collapse of this once great nation. It is no longer if, but when.
There is simply no way you can look at the numbers, the massive deficits, the massive debt, and the unfunded liabilities without realizing the United States has passed the point of no return. Obama and the rest of Washington doesn't even give it a passing thought, and they certainly do not care. Obama and the rest of Washington are all just taking care of themselves and their cronies. But for the American people, a day of reckoning is fast approaching.
Derek-908696...please make note that the republicans are also not talking about the outsoursing of jobs that went on under the CEO leadership of Romney. No politican talks about the tax breaks that companies got for taking jobs elsewhere.....I do not hear them refering to the huge debt that Bush left this nation in. I do not hear them refer to the jobs lost under Bush and his ideas. But, it seems many in the republican party wnat to do it all over again under Romney...I have to wonder just how far the republican party is willing to go to have control of the whitehouse....ruining this nation is one way...and they are pushing for it. Its amazing...the congress, including all republlicans....have a worse rating than Obama..but, everything is Obama's fault..even though the republicans have blocked any bill that could have helped this nation.
Racism? I know...just saying that word makes me a reverse-racist, right? It is definitely legitimate to bring up the issue. Let's not forget, this half-white president has been accused of not being born here, of being Muslim (nothing wrong with being Muslim, but this charge was a direct appeal to the haters), unAmerican, a terrorist, and everything else. He was disrespected during the State of the Union, been finger-wagged in AZ. The list of disrespectful attacks this president has endured is unprecedented. Nothing but crickets from the right...nobody with the guts to call out the nasty and baseless attacks that have become an accepted part of our dialog. How about Jindal or Haley? When will these two VP wanna-bes, be asked for their birth certificates. I heard they were Hindu's. That's really not acceptable in the United States of Christianity is it? But seriously, would Obama be disrespected and treated like someone's "boy" if he was white...I think not!
typical liberal woman
So only white men can have more than 2 terms? Racist!
___________________________________________________________________________
Your bulb is getting dimmer and dimmer. It doesn't matter what your color, party or gender you can only hold the office of United States President for 2 terms!!!!! DUH!!
Solyndra is old news, but it's okay to use it. But if they do use it, they need to shut their pieholes when the Democrats point out the many foul-ups created by the Republicans as a whole, and Mitt Romney in particular. You can't have it both ways. Wait a second, they have used it, so they should just shut up about the things Democrats correctly point out about Mitt, W, and the rest of thev Republicans. And for those people talking about cleaning up after Obama, I point to the fact, that "Obama's Mess", is the result of the problems left behind by George W Bush and the Republicans. Therefore, it's actually the Republican's mess. The Really funny part, is that it would have been better served, if they hadn't insisted on fighting Obama's attempts to fix the problems he inherited.
I mean, folks, you can't be serious if you don't realize that typicalliberalwoman is not a liberal and likely not a women. Those posts are solely designed to create false outrage by our conservative posters. It's a false flag attack - "oh, I'm a liberal woman! See how crazy and extreme my views are? If you don't like Obama you're a racist! This is how us liberals think!".
Puh-leaze. The very fact that this person has snagged a bunch of you here either means that: we have some pretty gullible posters here, or we have posters that know this person is falsely representing and are jumping on with the feigned outrage anyway to vent their spleen. I don't know which is more pathetic...
Rick-3416939 -- How many times must we tell you rightwingers to get some new material? Sweet Jeebus it's so boring and wastes so much space.
Changing demographics, Teapublican exclusion of all groups except old white men, and escalating attacks against all other groups, etc. -- You REALLY believe that rubbish?
Romney is losing badly with Hispanics, and the GOP/TP are preoccupied with English as the only language. Romney is losing badly with women and the GOP/TP are obsessed with passing yet another extreme abortion bill and trying to block women's health in general. Romney is losing badly with young voters and the GOP/TP attack student loans, LGBT rights, criminalizing drugs, etc. -- As these voters replace the old white men, these issues will swing like a pendulum crushing the Teapublicans into oblivion.
Yes, the day of reckoning is fast approaching, and all the gerrymandering, voter suppression, propaganda, etc. won't save the far-Right radicals and Tea Party anarchists. Let's just hope it's sooner than later, so progressives and sane moderates -- Go online and check voting requirements in your state, get a couple of other people registered and get to the polls to reelect our president AND give him a congress who will actually do The People's work.
"Democrats said in their dissenting report that White House officials told investigators that they weren't aware of any involvement in Solyndra by political fundraisers until it was first raised by Republicans." This tells me that the White House does not know what they are doing. I wonder what else the White House is not aware of. Considering how the economy has been going I can only assume, quite a lot,
Solyndra was funded under W. Bush & GOP years in office. Political, Factcheck, etc. already found Mitt Romney claim to be misleading and totally false. “After a year of hearings, twenty-six witnesses and 187,000 documents from the White House, all Republicans have to show for it are some context-less quotes and a lot of baseless assertions." The Nation
Romney had multiple failed green companies in M.A when he was a governor. Romney like Solyndra failed investment, such as Acusphere & Spherics company, and millions of tax dollars went burst. What a joker and hypocrite?
By the way, Romney went to England and got a lot of campaign donation from England Banker scandal, is that count?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3096434/#47640054
Your bulb is getting dimmer and dimmer. It doesn't matter what your color, party or gender you can only hold the office of United States President for 2 terms!!!!! DUH!!
Two words: Franklindelano Roosevelt.
Let's tell the truth. Both the GOP and the Dems shovel money into corporations that donate to them with no regard to the tax payers. Look at the companies that won the "bids?" in the middle east. Chaney's friends. None of them have clean hands and none of them have the right to say anything against the other because they both did it for their own profit.
Mark O Pierce -- Blaming the president for the Great Recession (really a depression), or even for the slow recovery from such a deep downturn, especially in view of Teapublican obstructionism is such a farce -- Just based on job creation. President Obama has created more jobs in his one term already than Dubya created during both of his terms combined.
All the historical data is now proving supply-side to be voodoo economics, as Bush Sr. referred to Reaganomics. The only reason failed GOP policies (and prior Bankster scandals like the Savings & Loan fiasco) did not completely tank our economy before is because Reagan and Bush Sr. realized they needed to correct their failed policies and raised taxes several times, as well as increasing the public sector and other government spending.
Dubya also increased the public sector, but unfortunately his deficit spending was on unnecessary protracted wars, one of which we rushed into based on lies. Deregulation and the artificial housing bubble gave folks a false sense of prosperity. Like Japan, I call the period from 2001 to 2011 a Lost Decade, because an entire generation will suffer permanently from this time. Older workers will pay the consequences the most, because they don't have time to compensate financially, so will not be able to retire with dignity the way their parents did.
The "Race to the Bottom" nightmare that Romney and his ilk like Paul Ryan propose, and that low-information Haters in the Tea Party blindly enable, is what would finish this country off beyond just a Lost Decade. This fallacious argument about the last 3-4 years being the cause of all our woes is complete BS.
We only need to compare the two terms of peace and prosperity during Clinton to the two disastrous terms during Dubya to clearly see the choice voters will make in 2012.
but the teabaggers don't blink at the couple trillion dollars we threw away in Iraq due to "pressure from the VP office"
I guess its fine to throw away money as long as you are killing people for no good reason
Patriotic American U.S.A. @ 1.27 "Looks to me the GOP and their TeaReTards are getting very Desperate for Votes !!!!!!!!!"
You're kidding right. I mean Obama is just about to have a sex change operation to get the transgender vote.
BTW, why do Democrats, liberals, or progressives (whatever you call yourselves), have to make up all the asinine names. You know "TeaReTards, Teapublicans, right wing nut jobs, etc, etc?" Is it because you're emotionally 6 years old? I just don't get it.
When asked by Gingrich about so many people losing their jobs at companies taken over by Bain Capitol Mr. Romney said: "Doesn't he understand how the economy works? In the real economy, some businesses succeed and some fail."
Not every business loan supported by the government works as intended. That's business. But many do, like the ones received by the business owners in the Romney ad about who did or didn't build the roads industry uses to move their product or people.
Sollmann Electrical Company was rewarded a $915,117 contract for work in the Trotwood-Madison City school district.
Sollmann Electrical Company placed a $1,080,700 bid to do work in the Dayton County School District.
And we can't forget the $1.6 billion, BILLION, Romney got from the US taxpayers to fund the 2002 Olympics.
Again, sometime investment work and sometimes they don't. That's just business.
typical liberal woman
You can quit trolling now. Even I don't believe you are that stupid but you come close....
Its hard to defend when something does not work out the way you had expected. I think George W. Bush probably came to the same conclusion about Iraq. Let's see, which decision has the most negative consequences? Anyone?
Motherof2+1 -- You come in here and "swoop and poop" yet attack other posters. If you bothered to follow and read other member's posts, you'd know the history of terms like Teabag or Teapublicans. I use Teapublican to distinguish the time before the 2010 mid-term election after which the Tea Party hijacked the Republican Party, and out of convenience as opposed to typing out both terms every time.
As for other name calling, since the rightwing attacks against the president trump anything Democrats may do, who gives a sh!t about rightwingers crying like little school girls over this? Romney the bully who doesn't like to get hit back is perfect for you.
it's not racist typical liberal woman Obama is not American he was not born here and people are sick of you calling him American when he is not o BTW he has done a horrid job to
Typical Liberal Woman
Actually, it is 3 words, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Term limits change in 1951 by the 22nd amendment and I'm sure that was before you were born. Should have learn that in your history class.
/
First of neither President "started" Solyndra. Here are some basic facts for you to try and comprehend. Solyndra applied for a Government Loan. Solyndra's loan "approval process" began under the Bush administration. However, emails show that two weeks before Obama took office, the Energy Department panel considering the loan "unanimously" decided not to proceed. In plain english they DENIED the loan as it should have been. On March 20, 2009 the Dept of Energy made a "conditional commitment" to a $535 million loan guarantee to support Solyndra's construction of a commercial-scale manufacturing plant for its proprietary solar photovoltaic panels.Federal reviewers gave final approval on September 2, 2009 under Obama's administration. After securing the loan guarantee, the Dept of Treasury through the Federal Fiancing Bank loaned Solyndra $527M.
Bush = Loan DENIAL
Obama = Loan APPROVAL
As for Obama being detroyed, he's doing a bang up job himself. He doesn't need help from the GOP.
I find it revealing that President Obama wants to raise taxes on himself and his wealthy friends, while Romney wants to cut taxes for himself and his wealthy friends. You know, if he pays 14% and he wants to cut taxes on the wealthy by 20%, what that does is leave him paying nothing.
clb-462357 -- You make a good case, which should be applauded as refreshing compared to the usual rightwing garbage. Even with your argument, however, it still holds only so much water because there are so many cases like Solyndra throughout all administrations, and when compared to money lost due to lack of oversight in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, money wasted by the pentagon and to war profiteers like Cheney/Haliburton, and the many failed companies raided by Bain/Romney it is silly hypocrisy at best.
And the bottom line is the peanuts lost from Solyndra does not on any way constitute "high crimes and misdemeanors" to go on a witch hunt against the president, or Operation Wide Receiver to go after members of the Obama administration. In fact, it's just a further waste of tax dollars like voting to repeal ACA for the 34th time and stalling the national security matter of cyber security -- And obviously only efforts to obfuscate the immense failings of Romney and the Teapublican Party.
Don't throw stones when you live in a glass house. Rightwingers should concentrate on their own miserable Party about to become extinct.
youraloser -- This coming from a troll like yourself is laughable. And perhaps you failed to notice that unlike rightwingers, progressives will call out the fakes in this forum as well as in their Party as a whole. The Teapublilcans wouldn't know where to begin now that there are so many crazies in their leadership. Walsh, Bachmann, even Eric Cantor may well be ousted, and others like King, Mourdoch, Cruz, etc. are already on notice.
Fair enough. I know how we can recoup this money: let's not subsidize the oil industry for 3 months.
Response in General- Obama accelerated the the spending? Hardly- there was nothing left for him to spend- the Republicans saw to that. "Trillions" of dollars- I suggest you look at the figures closer.
If ther Reppublicans think this was a waste of money ( total loss of 141 million according to the article after liquidation- not 5oo million) then what do they say about the 6 billion unaccounted for to contractors in Iraq under Bush or the 1.2 billion dollar embassy what we will most likely give back to Iraq? Let's not even get started on the waste these unfounded wars have cost in dollars and lives. The GOP does not have an argumen it can stand on agianst Obama on any issue that can not be turned to show they did much worse.
blah blah blah, solyndra blah blah blah.
Even IF the POTUS knew he was throing 500million dollars away into that company, and thats a big IF, how does it compare to the money squandering ways of the rethuglicans who want to cut taxes while trying to pay for a war they started? Sounds like they are digging deep for ammo against the POTUS.
Lets get back to basics, Romney: How about some transparency where are your taxes? How about you act like a leader and lead by example instead of hiding from your past! How about you clarify with documents your position at Bain, such as you were on the fence screaming for the POTUS to produce proper documents about the Mr. Obama's birth origin. All i see from the republicans are weak attempts to misguide the public from the real questions about Romney.
Politics at its best folks, demand answers to the first question asked before you allow yourselves to be lead on a goose chase by either party. Its no coincidence that Solyndra is under scrutiny at this very moment. It was brought to light by Republicans to steer you away from the questions you're demanding answers to, Romney.
Romney is a Empty Suit and has Nothing to offer this Nation !!!!!!!!!!
Duh ....
It reveals Obama and his friend's rank hypocrisy.
So why does Obama take the deductions if he wants to pay more? Why doesn't pay the full 35%, or more if he wants. Afterall, he is the leader of the country - shouldn't he lead and set the example.
Same with Buffet and Gates and all the rich libs with their money protected in foundations and shelters.
Btw - Has Buffet's company ever paid their back taxes and penalties?
How do you guys feel about GE, one of the biggest conglomerates in the world, (run by Obama's job czar) paying no US taxes. How do you feel about the world's biggest auto maker, GM, being given a tax credit calculated at between and $14-$40 billion - the record profits made possible by $49 billion tax payer dollars and THEY PAY NO TAXES FOR YEARS TO COME (another bankruptcy law broken by Obama btw)
How do feel about Obama's staff, paid for by tax payer dollars - OWING ALMOST $900,000.00!
Obama and all the libs are worried about tax rates ... that they don't pay?
If obumbo is involved it is most likely corrupt! He's a dismal failure and must go!!!
Very similar plan to Ronald Reagan's... 19+ million jobs added, largest increase in real GDP, but you feel that we should stick with Obama's plan...
Not nearly as empty as your post...you must be a wolf in sheep's clothing, because I noticed you had patriotic in your name...
Bob 180
I could pay more taxes, too. In fact, I think long term this country will suffer significantly if we don't do something about the "Banana Republic" income inequality we seem in which we find ourselves. But if you want it, you have to vote for politicians with "b--ls to change the laws. This is the United States, not the Vatican. No charity from me; come and get it! I am looking into Cayman and Swiss bank accounts. If it is good enough for our prospective leader, its good enough for me.
My impression as well. Screams re-reg. The right love to plant "crazy liberals" and then point out that liberals are just as mean and nasty as they are.
Romney's going down, so out comes more GOP clowns!
These Losers are grasping at every straw they can, whether Solyndra loans started by Dubya,
Fast and FuriousOperation Wide Receiver started by Dubya -- both of which have been debunked by news organizations. And as if the Birther conspiracy hasn't been enough, now Batcrap Bachmann and the Muslim Brotherhood McCarthyism is still going on.But the real scandal is all the shenanigans Romney has pulled throughout his perpetual run for office. To quote Bachmann, "Oh my goodness!" Romney bluffed saying he would release his taxes if Ted Kennedy released his, and is still using this as one of his lame excuses. He lied about filing taxes in Massachusetts until he got busted for filing in Utah, and all the while he had the arrogance to demand tax returns of all his opponents including their spouses.
Romney got away with all the lies and cheating in his earlier runs, the most despicable being the campaign for governor of Massachusetts, transferring the Bahamas Trust Fund Corp into Ann's name the day before he was sworn in, and taking the hard drives with him when he left. Now he is trying to pull the same scam AGAIN. Fool me once...
"You people" think you have something on President Obama? Really, seriously? Especially in comparison to Mitt Romney and his mysterious IRA, possible amnesty for money in the Cayman Islands, and definitely paying way below 13.9% tax rates for who knows how many years. Puleeze!
Romney -- YOU put up or shut up!
That has to be the least factual post on the vine in the last month.
I would bet 10,000 dollars that you don't have a single link to base your claims???
Solyndra equals about 1.2% total used for energy which equals 43 billion. Also remember that it was a loan guaranteed and the investors had to put in the same amount of money that was borrowed. Tell me who in the company got rich by doing this deal? It employed 1100 employees for 2 years.
There was more than 100 companies that got money form the government for energy and only 5 have failed. Tell me how that is not a good investment on your money?
Also the reason the solar panels form this company was a good investment was because the solar panels could be installed in half the time of ordinary panels. We just couldn't compete with the Chinese.
Just tell me how you got 9.8 million per green job?? Thats right you wont answer this.......
Lets do a little math.
500,000,000 for Solyndra 250,00,000 for the 2 years it operated at 1,100 employes per year equals 227,000 per employee each year. Now tell me... all the other companies are working and still have people working. How in the @%#$ did it costs 9.8 million per worker?
LMAO, the only real issue the GOP has is a mess up on a potential investment for the USA which could have added industry to the country. Good luck with that. Many loans from the government to business fail, but many succeed. To hold on to one as your only real issue is just plain sad.
We are called to appraise, discern, evaluate, and discriminate in making wise choices for ourselves, our family and our country. How can any informed American attack Romney’s Bain Capital record and their eighty plus percent rate of success? As a matter of record, Bain Capital engaged in a multifold business strategy involving investment in and the purchase of struggling businesses that were in decline or headed toward insolvency and possible bankruptcy as well as stronger companies. Their goal was improve the overall management and infrastructure transforming these declining companies into a position of fiscal strength thus providing a bright future for employees rather than one of unemployment and company bankruptcy.
SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE WHAT IS NEEDED HERE IN AMERICA, DOESN’T IT?
Romney’s Bain Capital “successfully” invested private money in:
OBAMA INVESTED “OUR HARD EARNED TAX DOLLARS” in companies owned and/or managed by his campaign contributors. Spin it any way you want, but that would appear to be corruption by any standard of measure.
Would we be better off with a BUSINESSMAN WHO GENERATED MILLONS
OR
A SOCIALIST WHO HAS WASTED TRILLONS?
I am surprised that GOP would even try to use cronyism against Obama since that is a GOP Republican staple move.
Pat, True Patriot, Clear Voice,
Romney/GOP/Koch are scraping the bottom of the beer barrel with Solyndra.
Private companies fail, techno experiments fail, rocket Challengers to the Moon EXPLODE no matter how many $Billions are spent in the attempt to CREATE.
Tearing down and denigrating is all Romney and his buds have got.
DESTRUCTION is the GOP vision for the future of America.
Those are all low wage paying jobs with the potential for a big return on their investment on every business.
Obama Invested 43 billion in energy and you are fighting over five hundred million that were invested in to a company where private investors had to put up the same money that was loaned?
How come you don't bring up the fact that Mitts company sent thousands of jobs overseas all for profits? You really think they invested in all those companies out of the goodness of their heart?
You guys are going to see your Mitts business experience fly out the window once the debates get here. He would have to tell the American people what are hes plan to transform America.
gmainco - not only stupid butt ugly, too.
clb-462357 - Obama = credit rating cut
In approving the loan to Solyndra, bureaucrats were supposed to be slow, but they didn't slow down, didn't study Solyndra's finances and other important indicators before approving the loan.
That's all, the President is not at fault. Republicans incongress conducted hearings which didn't find any problems originated from the President. All these details are in the news, why haven't you studied these before yapping in here? Do your homework.
That's it, don't complain about bureaucrats being slow any more; they are supposed to be slow.
-usa1967- -- Your post is so feeble as to not warrant a response.
ClearVoice2 -- Here's a test to see if you're Mormon. What if we passed voter suppression laws requiring voters to buy and wear Calvin Klein or Victoria's Secret underwear to vote? It doesn't really matter what brand if you get the comparison...
Bill-857242 -- Here's an assignment for you. Go read (yes, read) credible sources about the down-grade in our credit rating, and the aftermath with Teabaggers cheering, and now the additional debt as a result of higher interest rates to pay for the bills incurred during Dubya that Teababggers don't want to pay, and then get back with us on that.
typical liberal woman, can you really be that stupid? You get the permanent ignore button from me and anyone with sense will do the same, your ignorant posts are just of waste of time.
Recognize a rightwing plant when you see one, and don't feed the troll. Hopefully the moderators will ban this individual and delete all his/her posts.
"But, Democrats contend, there is no evidence that this pressure influenced the ultimate decision to offer Solyndra a guarantee."
Oh REALLY? Then why was it rejected under Bush, but suddenly resurrected and approved under Obama? Does anyone REALLY believe that Obama's big donor had no influence on the decision?
And to top it off, it cost the taxpayers an extra estimated $244 Million for it to be 'restructured' to help out Obama's big campaign donor.
This type of CORRUPTION is common in Chicago, but not acceptable from the White House.
This is a SCANDAL that would be front page news for months if it happened under Bush, but it will be largely ignored by the liberal media.
Michael O'Brien
Exhibiting the yellow journalism PMSNBC and the Liberal lamestream media are famous for!
ROTFLMAO!!!!!
This guy needs smelling salts for how often he sniffs Barrack Husseins chair every time he gets up. What a typical Liberal bobble head.
Solyndra was, and is, a typical example of failed government bureaucracy pretending they have a clue about the private sector. This was a decision based on ideology rather than financial viability. Of course the government won’t blame anything on cronyism because they know all malinvestments are created this way. Our criminal government only does things for two reasons, future benefit for themselves or votes.
Secretary of the Department of Energy, Steven Chu, although an established scientist and academician, has NEVER had a private sector job. His biggest achievement, that can even mimic the private sector, was securing government funding for his academic positions. This is the typical mentality of the faculty lounge elitists who have never had to worry about anything dealing with a business.
Of course they’ll argue they have economists and other financial guru’s that helped make their irrational decisions, but none of them have ever worked in the private sector either. When these self-anointed authorities decide their collective academic decisions should work, that’s it, based on theory rather than real life experience.
Good ole Michael O’Brien seems to forget that Solyndra liquidated their facility and equipment last year but taxpayers won’t see a dime of that money. The Energy Department decided to subordinate taxpayers to Solyndra’s private investors. These private (read crony) investors recouped $75 million of their investment the taxpayers should have gotten first.
A Treasury official who testified in front of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee last year said they had NEVER before seen taxpayers subordinated to private investors in repaying a government loan. The Energy Department helped refinance Solyndra’s loans that gave priority to private investors. But then again we saw the same cronyism from this administration in the GM bankruptcy when secured shareholders were subordinated for the benefit of the goonions.
So we invested $535 million in the company and the most they will recover is less than $75 million. A CBS affiliate in San Francisco reported that Solyndra workers were seen throwing away millions of glass tubes, which could have still been used, into dumpsters. The German manufacturer (interesting we’re buying components from an offshore company, isn’t it?) was owed $8 million. They won’t see a penny of any money either.
Michael O’Brien also seems to forget how Solyndra’s CEO and CFO promised not to plead the 5th Amendment if they were given an extra week to prepare for the Congressional hearings. A week later, the pled the 5th Amendment. How excited do you think the White House was, with public interest in this sweetheart loan, for them to decline to answer in public as it may place them in legal jeopardy? Those 27 invocations of the 5th Amendment should make a nice montage for the RNC at some time in this election cycle.
With all this the pathetic Liberals are more concerned with what Mitt Romney did with his money rather than what Barrack Hussein, or anyone in government for that matter, does with their money.
It must be so humiliating knowing they are the reason this embarrassment of a president is trespassing in our White House just because they believed in Hopey Changey.
JimSpence -- A glutton for punishment coming back for some more arse-whopping? No that's pathetic, humiliating, and an embarrassment. Run along back to TheBlaze...
peacenik33472 "Mitt, where are your tax returns??"
He submitted them already - knock yourself out reviewing them.
So why do you want more - just to confirm that Romney is a successful businessman? Unlike Obama, who never ran as much as lemonade stand.
What do you think of the 8 billion lost in Iraq? Halliburton and other contractors owned by Bush/di@k and Co. had some of that money.
At least we can say that the 500 million invested in Solyndra was being used for the 1100 employes it employed for 2 years. Solyndra was a American company that had investors that put in the same amount of money that was loaned. It employed American workers and used American companies for its purchases. HALLIBURTON IS A MULTINATIONAL COMPANY THAT EMPLOYS PEOPLE FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD.
IF THERE WAS ANY CORRUPTION IN A WHITE HOUSE IT WAS IN THE PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATION.
The whole world knows it!!!!!!!
Hear Hear. I can't vote you up more than once. Damn.
ROY WILSON-336103
So why do you want more - just to confirm that Romney is a successful businessman? Unlike Obama, who never ran as much as lemonade stand.
____________________________________________________________________________
Roy that is because Obama couldn't get through all the paper work and fees to open that lemonade stand. And probably couldn't figure out who he had to see to get his government money since he knew he couldn't start a business by himself. Someone had to build that road to his stand.
Aside from voters discriminating between "success" as a venture capitalist versus a "vulture capitalist" (they know very well how hard it is to get some measly savings into their IRAs) or even success defined as wealth versus life achievements -- Romney's trip overseas was final confirmation for many voters that *business experience* does not automatically translate into qualification to be a statesman, POTUS, Commander in Chief, and leader of the free world.
That silly argument has rarely if ever worked in our history, but is is now debunked and old stale reasoning to put forth by Team Romney. Get some new material, if you can.
TruePatriot-445959
Recognize a rightwing plant when you see one, and don't feed the troll. Hopefully the moderators will ban this individual and delete all his/her posts.
Don't count on it. We're still plagued by Feisty Redhead and her minions.
ROY WILSON-336103
Roy, you know better. These little limp-wristed Liberals will never review or read anything. They’re told what to say by Barrack Hussein, the DNC and Debbie Whatsername Slutz. They couldn’t debate a deaf mute if they had to.
Romney’s tax returns are over 500 pages long. The Liberals are on a one page 1040EZ form because none of them work for a living. It would seem anyone, with more than a few functioning neurons, would know that when the IRS, the Liberals favorite agency, see a tax return that massive will spend days evaluating it for any errors. But that’s too simple for them to rationalize unless Hairy Reed demands it.
Their incessant blathering about offshore accounts in Sweden and the Cayman’s is amusing to watch as none of them are illegal. Of course this isn’t about legality, it’s about their self-pitying “fairness” ideology. They don’t realize their favorite progressive tax code is designed for taxes to be avoided and abused. Hundreds of amendments are added to the tax code every year and they think tweaking a few “loopholes” will make a difference. The Liberal mind is indeed a dark and lonely place.
The Liberal indoctrinated envy of successful people is exactly why we need to get this incompetent imitation of a president out of our White House and get Romney in so we can restore our true free-market economy instead of this Keynesian nonsense that didn’t work during the Depression and hasn’t worked since. Real Americans know this has to happen.
Romney 2012
You insulted Liberals and Democrats about 20 times in a single post. How come you don't mention the fact that Obama is winning in every poll in state, local, and national polls? Romney will not win the independents, woman, gay, Hispanic, black, Jews and all other kinds of people in this country.
And just wait because in the 2016 election i predict that Texas will become a swing state. Thats why i think if you guys have any chance of doing something about that. the time is now because next term 2 more justices are coming in and Obama will turn the supreme court LIBERAL. And with the supreme court liberal good luck trying to get rid of the electoral system for at least 20 years.
Thats the only way you guys will have a chance again. I know what i just posted its going to make you realize how bad its going to get for you guys. jaja!!
75% OF THE American PEOPLE want taxes to go up for the most fortunate and no matter what happens between here and December taxes are going back up.
The reason that the green energy companies failed, is the fact that as soon as the investment was made in America, China poured over $20 Billion into their green energy sector driving prices down and destroying the American companies' ability to compete. China now controls the solar market.
alex cali
Interesting that you Libbies continue to dwell on one incident that happened almost 10 years ago. By the way, it was only $6.6 billion and I got that from your favorite “unbiased” source the Huff-N-Post. Be that as it may, let me ask you what do you think of this?
This seems like a lot more than your “$8 billion”, or whatever number you like to make up at the moment, doesn’t it? This was significantly more than the $92 billion in 20010 and $98 billion in improper payments in 2009 reported by CNN. I guess these kinds of things are OK with Liberals but $8 billion almost a decade ago is what needs to be dwelled on, right? Oh, the $125 billion was reported in the Huff-N-Puff Post so it MUST be accurate, right? Seems like your boy-toy Barrack is having a hard time watching our money doesn't it?
Now if this doesn’t upset you, let’s try this. You’ll really like this one.
Hmmmm, look at that alex. Your own sacrosanct government is telling you that almost 25% of your treasured federal programs don’t do ANYTHING to help the people it’s supposed to. At a cost of $123 billion, this equates to $1.23 trillion over 10 years because this happens EVERY SINGLE YEAR!!! Your dysfunctional argument about $8 billion years ago, even though it shouldn’t have happened, means NOTHING in comparison to all this waste, fraud, abuse and corruption in our criminal government.
And you Liberals just want to tax those mean, nasty, rich, fat-cats with the delusional belief it will make a difference. The $85 billion generated annually from Barrack Husseins plan will cover 8.5 days of government spending.
What do we do for the other 356.5 days? Raise your middle class taxes? That’s another 6 ¼ days. Any more brilliant ideas?
Here’s one more.
Once again. A government agency telling the government it has found $140 billion in spending cuts, yet during the debt-ceiling debates NO ONE could find any more than a few hundred million in cuts.
Face it, that $8 billion is long gone and you nor I will ever find out where it went. That's a simple rounding error for all the massive waste, fraud, abuse and corruption in our government.
Yet you bobble head Liberals want more and more criminal government.
Not a very viable argument Spanky.
BTW, I have over 400 more examples of massive waste, fraud, abuse and corruption if you're interested.
Taxes go back up, and then what? How exactly does that help the middle class?
Don't say it will reduce the deficit. Democrats spend far faster than it comes in. So really, how are the middle class helped by punishing the most fortunate?
THANK YOU FOR THIS POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And there is one easy way to fix this you raise tariffs on green energy products that are being imported.
Republicans in here will just call it capitalism and blame Obama for the investment.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2012/05/us-hits-chinese-solar-panel-with-hefty-tariffs/1#.UB2mhaDNkxE
Read that article maybe the solar industry in America will rebound and create thousands of jobs.
Romney lied in his signed statements. Unless he releases his tax returns from 1999 to 2009 and can prove that he did not lie.
Seriously, it looks like he committed a felony and he is not defending himself. Inquiring minds want to know why.
Also, Romney has said that 99.5% of his money is in American enterprises. From what little we know about his foreign enterprises that means he has $6 Billion stashed away somewhere and is only paying taxes on $250 Million. Are you not interested in finding out what is going on here?
Then there is the way he got that money in the first place. For instance, he cleaned out the pension plan at Georgetown Steel to the tune of $44 Million knowing with malice aforethought that you and I would have to pay it back.
Do you really want that sociopath in the White House?
I will bet you 10,000 dollars that if we go trough the whole list of non-working government programs 90% are Bush made programs. In your whole post you didn't specify what programs and when were they implemented. As a matter of fact give me the links i want to check out those programs for myself.
Because i want you to tell me how we went from spending less than 1.8 trillion in 2000(Clinton last budget) to spending more than 3.5 trillion in 2009s Bush last budget?? Thats an increase of 1.7 trillion in 8 years.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals Table 1.3
3.330 trillion dollars plus the 187 billion Obama used for ARRA in 2009. 2012 budget 3.795 trillion a 400 billion increase under Obama. And now you find all this waste and blame Obama? I understand that Obama has to try and get rid of all that wasteful spending including the wars which he has gotten rid of one and closing down the other one. But we had Romney tell an audience the other day that if the government cuts spending in this recovery we will fall back into a recession. This a business man as you guys like to call him knows something about business... but since he agrees with Obama you didn't hear about this right?
JimSpence,
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/25/490532/romney-budget-cuts-recession/
http://thepage.time.com/2012/05/23/the-complete-romney-interview-transcript/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38428898/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/audit-us-cant-account-billion-iraqi-cash/#.UB2s4KDNkYI
More like 8.7 billion
If you look at Romney's 2010 return, the carryover Foreign Tax Credits for form 1116, they show massive earnings that were subject to foreign taxes, which he paid, about mid 2002-2008 if my recollection is right.
This would indicate foreign investment on a large scale if you look at what he paid in foreign taxes.
I understand that that in your whole post you didn't blame democrats or republicans for all that wasteful spending. Meaning that you clearly know that this has been wasteful spending on both parties. Then would you also accept the facts of what happened with the whole debt ceiling debate?? Bhoener had reach a deal with the President of cutting wasteful spending 4 times of what was collected in revenue and the whole thing was derailed by teabagg@#rs in the house. You do accept that right? and that Obama had little to do with it being the reason for a our credit downgrade??
Simply said the Obama administration doesn’t have an effective energy policy, not only did they give “questionable” loan guarantees to Solyndra, they gave a $2 billion loan guarantee to the French Government owned Areva, while denying USEC an American company their loan guarantee request, costing Ohio thousands of highly skilled jobs (both companies are involved with uranium enrichment, for more details Google both under government loan guarantees).
Why does the French government need, or even want, a U.S. government loan guarantee? I can only surmise that part of the reason was to keep USEC from getting it and in that way gain a competitive advantage. French made technology does not put Americans to work, and subsequently Areva didn’t
go ahead with construction of the project.
The biggest question is why the administration chose the French company over an American one.
Well, I see the copy and post crowd has shown up and since they don't have an original thought among the whole bunch it is time to move on.....
Aside from the fact that the Republicans are worse then tax-and-spend, rather they are just spend, spend, spend because deficits don't matter, those would be excellent questions to ask Romney.
Why does Romney claim he will reduce the deficit when the tax cuts and defense spending in his plan would increase the debt? And why does he want even more tax cuts for the rich, but will increase taxes on the middle class by an average of $2,000/year?
And why don't you know this? Do you get your information from FAUX Noise and Hate Radio?
The U.S. Department of Energy has offered a conditional commitment for a $2 billion loan guarantee to AREVA to facilitate financing of its Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility planned for development near Idaho Falls, Idaho. The conditional commitment was offered through DOE’s Loan Programs Office.
Construction of this facility is critical to protecting U.S. energy security by increasing domestic uranium enrichment, a key step in producing electricity from CO2-free nuclear energy. The Eagle Rock plant will use advanced centrifuge technology that has significant efficiency advantages over previous generation technologies.
The project also has enormous economic benefits, creating 4,800 direct and indirect jobs through the life of the project and spurring billions of dollars of investment in the regional economy.
"AREVA is elated by this decision which will enable us to continue development of our Eagle Rock facility in Idaho and contribute to rebuilding America’s energy infrastructure so we can produce more CO2-free electricity," said Jacques Besna-inou, CEO of AREVA North America. "AREVA has considerable experience building and operating enrichment facilities and is putting that experience to work with the Eagle Rock project."
"We appreciate the seriousness and diligence with which the Loan Programs Office analyzed our Eagle Rock project as well as its support in helping make this significant investment in our energy infrastructure a reality," Besnainou added.
DOE loan guarantees are not grants but provide a federal backstop that enables companies to invest in clean energy projects, including smart grids, renewable and nuclear energy projects. DOE staff conducted a rigorous and exhaustive review of AREVA’s application, confirming the project’s creditworthiness and ensuring that AREVA’s proposal met the highest standards for innovative yet proven technology.
The project must satisfy certain conditions before the loan guarantee can be issued, including the receipt of all appropriate licenses and permits. AREVA submitted a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 2008 to build the Eagle Rock plant at a site 18 miles west of Idaho Falls. If approved, construction on the 3.3 million SWU (separative work unit) facility could begin in 2011 and operations as early as 2014.
Can you post the American one that got overlooked that has experience building and operating enrichment facilities???????
Jobs were going to be created here. Not in France.
Alex: Google USEC and look for "loan guarantees", USEC is the only American Company involved in Uranium enrichment, and it has done so from the very beginning of the industry (it was spun off as a private company by the clinton Administration.
Kenn, i did and the reason it got the loan denied was because of financial problems.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Financing_a_concern_for_American_Centrifuge_Plant-1011084.html
alex cali
Yes and no.
Yes, I agree that the waste, fraud, abuse and corruption is bipartisan.
That's why I at least give the TEA Party props for even eating their own wasteful spenders. Is it perfect? No, but at least they're trying to change things. Keeping the same people in office for decades creates congressional stagnation. Repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result was brilliantly defined by Einstein. Yet Americans keep doing it. Historically the retention rate in Congress is over 90%. From 1980 to 2006 the retention rate is 96.5% and our debt and unfunded liabilities have skyrocketed. What makes anyone believe that predominantly keeping the same people in Congress that have created the problems have any idea how to fix it?
No, I don't think the TEA Party candidates were the cause of the debt ceiling crisis. If you look at the "alleged" agreement of the mythical 4:1 spending cut to tax revenue increase, the taxes are immediate and the cuts are "at a later date". This is always the case. Tax rate changes are always an immediate effect because they begin in the year legislation is passed. Spending cuts are always convoluted as cuts at current levels when current levels have increased yearly, or they are deferred to some magical time in the future based on no rational reason. As I've said before politicians do things for two simple reasons, to benefit themselves or for votes. To think any of them are so benevolent is irrational. That's why we have Porkulus bills filled with thousands of earmarks.
I'll bet you $10,000 if you ask your Senators or your Representative that any cuts they propse will be immediate or linked directly to the tax hike you won't get a straight answer. I've been advocating "Sunset Clauses" be applied to every piece of legislation and pork for decades. The chances of that happening are slim to none. This would require them to go back every few years and evaluating their spending. We all know what those results will be.
Tammy Faye Boehner is a RINO, he has no spine to challenge the establishment. Hairy Reed is no better. This is what we get with politicians that become "lifers".
@Alex #116: Yes, that is why they needed the loan guarantee...to help finance the construction of the new American Centrifuge which would be the most efficient in the world...reducing USEC's use of electrical energy by approximately 85% (USEC is, and has been, a large consumer of electrical energy from TVA).
What the Obama administration has done is increase on reliance on France for uranium enrichment. Even though the workers in Eagle Rock would be American, they would be installing French built equipment and they would be under (ultimately) French management!
Why would we want to become reliant on the French for ANYTHING?
alex cali "What do you think of the 8 billion lost in Iraq? Halliburton and other contractors owned by Bush/di@k and Co. had some of that money."
$8 Billion runs the federal government for less than one day - perhaps you should check your numbers.
Can you provide a single RELIABLE link that shows that Bush had even one penny invested in Haliburton?
FINANCIAL PROBLEMS....
Read the article i posted... they had a budget of 3.5 billion dollars for the whole project and they had about 1 billion of that money already they needed 500 million more including the 2 billion loan.
Also read the part where it says that they might run into problems because more money was going to be needed... meaning they were going to have budget overruns. And their problem to fix this was to add less centrifuge machines... Also they were expecting to get the loan and then go shopping for 3rd party investors.
It doesn't sound to me like they were ready. The other company had all the permits ready and they had a series of certain conditions... We don't know what all those conditions were.
I you what you are trying to imply is that Obama and hes administration is trying to undermine American companies you are wrong.
Also did you know that the country in the world that gets the most electrical power from nuclear is the French???? They have the most nuclear stations. I would think that the energy department took all things into consideration and they went with the company with the most experience.
Nuclear power is the primary source of electric power in France. In 2004, 425.8 TWh out of the country's total production of 540.6 TWh of electricity was from nuclear power (78.8%), the highest percentage in the world... i don't know about you but i would also hire the best in the world.
I didn't know about this loan... but thanks to you i know a lot of what it does.
Not all of us think Romney did anything illegal; I for one just want to see what rate he paid during the recession, the corporate scandal years of the early 2000s, and how his tax plan would affect him.
Look, I don't like our byzantine tax code as much as you do, but how the hell can you defend an argument opposing the progressive tax system??? The progressive tax system is technically the ONLY fair tax system; it essentially taxes each person according to his own ability to pay. Flat taxes don't work because the farther down the income scale you go, the more you pay proportionately; what seems like more to someone, 10% from $50,000 or 10% from $500,000???? The fair tax is a joke because it is a consumption tax; the most regressive tax in the world (since poor people tend to spend more of their income on consumption than rich people). I'm all for clearing loopholes and deductions (even some for the middle class), but you'll have to dismantle the progressive tax over my dead body!
Are you @!$%#ing kidding me??? First of all, liberals don't "envy" the successful; we oppose how they game the system and how wealth and income keep trickling up into the hands of the top 1%. And what do you mean "free market economy????" We haven't had a pure free market economy since the 1920s (and we all know how that ended). An economy cannot exist as a purely "free market" organization; without a regulatory framework, laws and courts of justice, systems of education, and security, that economy would collapse. And by the way, do you really think that the safety net is an abomination??? Are you willing to let tens of millions of Americans, many of them children, wander the streets begging for loose change like in Victorian London??
And finally, Keynesian economics DOES WORK. The Great Depression was ended due to World War II, in which the government spent billions of dollars on soldiers, tanks, trucks, jeeps, weapons, artillery, ships, planes, munitions, rations, uniforms, etc. THAT IS KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS!!!!!!!!!!!
Yea, if you want America to become a banana republic where the rich control the power and money and the rest of us languish in poverty.
OBAMA BIDEN 2012
Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense in 1991 when he created a contract vehicle for and gave contracts to Halliburton that resulted in millions of dollars of revenue. After leaving the administration Cheney served as CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. Then he became Vice President and Halliburton was awarded hundreds of millions of dollars of non-competitive contracts as part of the Gulf War in 2003.
WTF!!! you mean link Bush to Halliburton???? Cheney was Bush's VP in 2000 and he was still CEO in 2000. haaaaaahhhhhhh i want to scream at you....
OMG!!!!!!!!!! Roy, please man this is one subject you can win just let it go man....
We the American people let 2 oil men take over the highest positions in our government. And they killed hundreds of thousands of people all over the world including Americans to accomplish taking taking more oil for their profits. Oil prices never went down in America the whole time we were over there. The only way they went down was because of the great recession.
I could go on and on with this there is so much proof out there. they should be tried for war crimes.
And now you guys want to get get bush 2.0 in there. He is going to destroy Medicare and SS and they are telling you.. The Ryan plan.
One thing i know is that a few weeks before the election Obama will make sure the people get familiar with the Ryan plan. Especially people who depend on Medicare.
Freshieee excellent post... like always..
What is utterly stunning is how the liberal mind will gloss over gross malfeasance if it is 'their' guy screwing them over. They are either masochist who enjoy being screwed or else they aren't smart enough to comprehend how seriously they are being screwed over by this administration. Excuses, deflection and outright lies and distortions are used to defend this adminstration.
Solyndra and the fifteeen other failed solar companies received how much money? The cronyism reeks to high heaven, the Obama campaign bundlers and supporters are getting off scott free after getting BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars, losing BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars and the idiots still support a man who is as crooked as a dog's hind leg. Corzine not only 'lost' billions and went unpunished but he is now BUNDLING for Obama's campaign when he should be in prison.
Apparently the Obama supporters wouldn't recognise integrity if it bit them on the A$$. Obama makes the corrupt Chicago polls and mobsters look like cherubs. Bush was bad and Obama is worse and yet it is ok to be a corrupt poll if you are Obama? Sorry, where does the buck stop? When do citizens quit allowing themselves to be screwed? In the case of the Obama supporter, the answer is never.
Freeshie: The mind boggles. You stated that it was Keynesian economics that worked to end the depression??? Please, get a grip here. What ended the depression was the war. Not the other way around. Nothing that FDR did ended the depression until he got us into WWII. That is the real fact, not some idiotic attempt to claim that an economic theory ended a depression, that Keynesian theory PROLONGED the depression for ten years.
Alex Post #120: Yes, you are right...I am implying that the Obama Administration undermined an American uranium enrichment company by not giving them a loan guarantee, but then giving the exact same loan guarantee to a French government owned company!
Alex why does a company owned by a government need a loan guarantee...is the French government broke?
And why is it that the Obama administration had no problem giving General Motors $50 billion in 2009 ($7 billion in direct loans and $43 billion in bailout cash) but would not give USEC a $2 billion loan guarantee? You say it was because USEC was having financial trouble...if USEC was having financial trouble General Motors was having a financial collapse!
The disparity in the treatment of these companies (Solyndra, General Motors, Areva and USEC), demands a satisfactory explanation...an explanation that has not been forth coming!
Incidently when then candidate Obama was running for President he visited the USEC site in Ohio and pledged his support of the American Centrifuge Project, when push came to shove that support went to a French company!
Wait, is this the "Republicans' central narrative", as if it's some type of story they created, or the FACTS OF MATTER. It would be nice of NBC stopped being the propaganda arm of the DNC.
NOBAMA 2012
.
alex cali "ROY WILSON-336103 "Can you provide a single RELIABLE link that shows that Bush had even one penny invested in Haliburton?
As I suspected, you have no link. Nobody disputed Cheney having worked with Haliburton before, but here is a REVELATION - Bush's name is BUSH, not Cheney. Claiming that Bush benefited from any government contracts with Haliburton is just part of your false propaganda.
The more you post i feel like you were directly affected by USEC not getting the loan???
USEC 4,000 to 5,000 jobs created if successful in getting all the cash needed.
General motors? do i even have to explain? millions of jobs directly and indirectly.
2 billion and 50 billion less than 5% of what GM got are you seriously going to compare what each one would have done for our country?
What about all the other hundreds of companies that got loans and are still operating?
Also did you know the French company still hasn't gotten the project started? Imagine now if USEC was still looking for cash?
He was the VP of the United States while being the ceo of company. Dude are you seriously defending Bush?
News98 your just not seeing the reality. You and others that are taking this stand are too hung up on their hatred for a man of color and a funny name in the White House. PERIOD.
Now the reality. I'm sure the cronyism played a role, like the Billions and billions wasted rebuilding Iraq that went to Republican buddies Haliburton. But the real issue here about Solyndra should upset us all, both Republican and Democrats. That issues is the fact that China put Billions into the Solar Energy that made it impossible for Solyndra to compete against, thus their demise and failure, not really Obama's fault. The real issue is that China believes in this Technology while the neanderthal right sees this as an Obama thing. So when Solar technology becames an viable alternative, we will have to look to China. So again we will have to depend on another country for our energy needs because the neanderthal right does not like people of color and won't let it go.
Hilarious!
Even more hilarious!
@Alex post #129: Good points Alex, but based on you analysis Solyndra should never have gotten a loan, since it was smaller than USEC, more risky than USEC and would not have had the job creation impact that USEC has...the only thing it had going for it was an investor who made big donations to the Obama campaign!
P.S.
The main reason GM got the bailout was because of the Union jobs saved!
Freshieee, I have more time now so I'm ready to take this point up with you again. You cannot say with any degree of certainty that Keynesian economic theory cured the Great Depression - the Great Depression had been going on for over 12 years so it is certainly possible the effects of the Depression worked themselves out. Our experience with depressions during the 1800's suggested depressions usually ended within three years and no later than 5 years after they started so 12 years is plenty of time for a depression to end without any outside assistance. In other words, it could have just been a coincidence that the depression ended at that time. Under your theory of correlation equals causation my parents may as well take credit for ending the depression since they got married the same year. I understand your point that the Great Depression was worse than depressions before (some dispute about that by the way), but 12 years is a long time.
Even the Roosevelt administration officials admitted they were disappointed with the results of their attempts to stimulate the economy and Obama's attempts to end unemployment with a stimulus certainly failed. There is no proof, none whatsoever, that Keynesian economics works in the real world and there is quite a bit of proof that it led to hyperinflation in the South American and African economies that tried it.
Your points about fairness are well taken, but from an economic standpoint I can criticize the progressive tax system. U.S. Businesses and individuals combined spend almost a trillion dollars for help on their taxes. That money is being spent on a non-productive activity and non-productive activities should be number one on the hit list for any government. Think about the opportunity cost that we are sacrificing by spending money on that instead of roads, schools, new machinery, etc. Again, I respect your views on fairness, but the progressive tax system really does need to go imho.
I don't know if I will vote for Romney or not (or vote at all), but I would say his time as governor certainly contradicts your claim that he will turn the governed state into a banana republic.
Forty one people have voted for that post. In this case I'm picking on a liberal, but I've seen lots of the same from the conservative side. I'm sure everyone who writes these comments and votes for them will swear it's the other side's fault we cannot work together.... Good lord we are in trouble as a nation :(
I seriously doubt 90% of them are from Bush; I strongly suspect every president since Roosevelt has had a hand in creating some of them. I won't take your bet though, simply because I have no way to make you pay if you lose. I will pay if I lose so for me this bet is all all risk and no reward. There's also the small matter of an internet bet is probably against the law...
Yep, and that is why we voted Bush out. Now that we voted Bush out for that, please explain why we shouldn't also vote Obama out for not only continuing it, but actually making it worse?
Technically speaking, Obama did not get rid of one war, the deal was negotiated by Bush and Obama actually wanted to continue the troops in Iraq, but the Iraqi government insisted we honor the original agreement.
Strictly speaking, Romney is not agreeing with Obama, both Obama and Romney are agreeing with Bush. Don't you think it is funny how spending was a horrible idea under Bush, but a fantastic one under Obama :)
I'm not sure that is as legitimate a criticism as you think it is. There are two ways you can fund a war and both of them will get you criticized. You can do make the military follow the regular procurement process, which is a slow, ponderous process designed to make sure no money gets lost, but that will mean troops will die needlessly while they wait for body armour, new weapons, scopes, etc. The other way is to do what we usually do and throw the rules and regs out the window and speed up the procurement process, but that will get your criticized because it is just a matter of time before someone takes advantage of the process and pockets some money. Natural disasters work the same way. In the end because one way wastes lives and the other way wastes dollars cutting the procurement system is usually the preferred way to go. Nor is this out of line with what happened in other wars - eight billion actually seems kinda small compared to them (though it is still 8 billion too much).
Solyndra was killed by unfair competition from China.
American solar manufacturers since then "won their claim with the U.S. Department of Commerce that China solar module manufacturers were receiving unfair subsidies and dumping solar modules in the U.S. at prices below their cost. The preliminary ruling placed a 36 percent tariff on the modules from the major Chinese suppliers. ... European manufacturers have made similar claims ... and are launching their own investigation into unfair trade practices by China"
ummm, last time I checked, he had hit his term limit...
You are correct; I did word that very poorly. My intent was to show that there are consequences for recklessly spending money. Thanks for keeping me honest :)
Green Energy is here to stay. Get over it Republicans.
Sure green energy is here to stay and I believe it should be developed. But in a rush to make sure political cronies got taxpayers monies, the administration lied and contrived with American taxpayer money. It's easy to play games with OPM. Also, it indicates that the intelligence level in global economics and our global competition in this administration is extremely low. All these academic brains couldn't read the tea leaves that China might jump in with cheaper alternatives. Really??? And what administration turned down the loan because it was a bad risk????
I have come to realize that the 2008 Obama/Biden campaign promises have been incorrectly characterized as promises. Therefore there haven't been any broken campaign promises. Obama just flat out lied and lied and lied and lied to the electorate.
Once the government stops giving our tax money to fund energy companies (ALL OF THEM FROM COAL, GAS, NUCLEAR POWER TO OIL.) then the most efficient and most sustainable energy sources will be used. The free market is not free due to all of the government intervention.
Yes, green energy is here to stay, but so is oil/gas energy for the foreseeable future. The notion we have to throw all of our hopes and surplus cash into green energy is very foolish. Acting irrationally and out of mis-guided desperation leads only to these sorts of problems.
Apparently the corruption and cronyism is her to stay too. Solyndra is just another failure of Obama's. You see it is always easy to spend other people's money, especially when it benefits Obama.
LOL....Only because the liberal, anti-American politicians are attempting to MAKE people like it!
Now if you want to make these energies viable, I stand up and applaud, however, liberal idiots want us to live in 3rd world conditions as we try and get there. You want to impress, figure out how to burn coal cleaner! We have OODLES and OODLES of it right here in the good 'ol US of A!
It's ok if you hate yourself, but don't interfere with my happiness! :)
PS - Power to Chick-fil-A!!
The problem with you people is you hate everyone including yourselves. And yes solar and wind is here to stay!!!
Wrong, green energy will be here to stay when it is supported by the free market without government susidies. Oh, but I forgot, you liberals don't understand the free market and you believe that government is responsible for the success of everything. Get a clue and go read some economic texts.
Wow, way to have an original thought.....good job lil buddy! Please, explain to me the finer points of wind or solar energy. JUST ONE POINT that's not utter bull@!$%# from some freak enviromentalist...lol
The problem is you cannot, except to say that "It's free!" which is only part true. The counterpoint is that it's also VERY undependable. Drive by a wind or solar farm and tell me you want it in your backyard -Hell, even Ted "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy said "NO" to 'em.
That doesn't matter to the crowd that wants us sucking rocks and making fire by rubbing two sticks together tho!
Have all the opinions you want, it's your world, but get to know the subject matter a wee bit better if you want to debate the finer points of a topic! Bull@!$%# is see-through!...lol
And if you look it up you'll find that Solyndra was on the top of Bush's list for the money too... The republicans weren't against it until the democrats were for it... same old story..
Conservatives, don't go away mad...just go away..
Poor Job 1- stuck here trying his damndest to hold down the fort whilst the rest of the libtard gang is out west gambling their monthly checks at the casino!
Hang in there Job - Monday will be here soon enough!....lol
Only a liberal tard would ever consider G W Bush a "conservative". *I'M* a conservative and George Bush was a lot more liberal than I am - Bush was a politician
You mean government subsidies, like the oil companies get? So, you people want to continue to lag behind the Germans?
Derek
Once the government stops giving our tax money to fund energy companies (ALL OF THEM FROM COAL, GAS, NUCLEAR POWER TO OIL.)
But its ok to give tax money to "green energy" companies with no proof that these methods are reliable or cost effective.
Ethanol that destroys your internal combustion engine
Ethanol manufacturing is also a source of pollution, using up fresh water supplies and causing food price hikes
We need to DEVELOP the more renewable energies... I'm a chemical engineer and I can say that while we try to come up with more efficient ways to refine, we pretty much got the oil/gas thing down...
LMAO - typical liberal response - "Hey, let's make a reference as to how we're lagging behind the Europeans!"....lol
Even the Dutch are importing electricty and they're the leaders on wind energy! (*Hint* it's not dependable).....Read your CIA Wold FactBook! After all, the government made, it's like your Bible!
Wonder what all the conservatives and republicans are going to say when in a few years foreign countries are innovating and producing green energy and America is still stuck in the 20th century. All this talk about outsourcing to foreign countries with U.S. money....it's perfectly OK to use U.S. money for oil production in foreign countries. Foreign countries are making alternative energy a top priority and investing their money into that innovation....I guess the republicans are just waiting for them to do the dirty work and jump on the capital bandwagon when it turns out to be efficient and profitable.
climate change will be expensive !!!! and coal is the biggest problem !!!
Michael 1996 the curly light blub as mercury the size of the end of a ball point pen. Regular light blub has three time that much.
We already know how to make burning coal somewhat cleaner, but when you tell the power companies, they have to install expensive and sophisticated "scrubbers" then republicans turn right around and cry about industry killing regulations. The other problem with coal is the after it is mined, it has to be transported in outrageously massive amounts to the locations of the individual coal fired power plants, all which drive up the cost, and the pollution caused of using it to generate electricity. In the end no matter how much we seem to have at present, coal, and petroleum are a finite resource, and we must either reconsider nuclear energy, and look for other cleaner and renewable sources of non carbon based energy.
Do you want our solar power to come from China, because they are investing 6 times what we here in the US are investing.
Instead, Republicans get behind big oil, like they need subsidies.
Solar is the future and we want the solar jobs here in the US.
Republicans are short sighted to say the least.
I wonder if the TeaPubCons know what they are doing, they are looking like fools !!!!!!!
@ Job1 "Green Energy is here to stay. Get over it Republicans."
I sincerely hope it IS here to stay....it's my chosen profession....but, God help us if the moronic Left gets hold of the reins like they did with Solyndra!! There's a lot of brilliant energy specialists out there (on both sides) that can do us a world of good.....if we can just keep our ravaged and imbecilic government out of the mix.....
P.S. Solyndra was such a miniscule dot on the whole energy landscape, that they couldn't even hang with the big boys.....so why did Obama choose them to throw our tax dollars away on??? Pure politics.....the comment made about the CEO/contributor to the Obama campaign had everything to do with it. If BO, and his ilk had the sense God gave a rock, they could have chosen a real "contender" in the world of alternative energy----and solidified the Democratic Party as the saviors of the new era. As it is, he'll go down as the biggest fool and most destructive president in our history.
Just like any new idea there are successes and failures. You won't know which will happen unless you try. If the Republicans had the same ideas about progress 100 years ago we would be living like t he Amish without automobiles or electric lights. Forget the cell phone or the TV. Government and private industry working together can be the most powerful way to advance new technology. With Solyndra, unfortunately the Chinese were able to make the same solar collectors much much cheaper. No doubt some American company benefitted from the cheaper labor in China on this deal. It just wasn't Solyndra. You win some and you lose some. We needed to keep an eye on China and were caught flat footed. Learn from our mistakes and move on.
Yet again, the Republicans use Solyndra because they know they are supporting more moolah in tax subsidies for Big Energy, namely Big Oil. Can they justify handing an industry $12 billion this year alone when said industry has had 3 1st Quarter record profits since 2009?
As for hiring by Big Oil, that too is more long horn BS. Their hiring is far under the record numbers in more boom times.
Now...let's slap the asses of the GOP big time...Hey! GOP...Check out the 20,000 customers in NJ Trinity Solar has ...and that's only ONE solar company out of tens of thousands. No matter how the GOP continues to support a dying industry like Big Oil, alternative energy is here to stay. No matter how much Big Oil wishes it could hang onto the oil addiction it has caused in this caused...they know it's not what it once was...Yesterday...oil was at $87 a barrel...whooooo eeeeee ...Doesn't that hurt the GOP campaign coffers? Doesn't that put a crimp in the next round of luxuries those Big Oil Big Daddies will have to forego? Boo hoo.
The cost of the most expensive, sophisticated industrial scrubber is less than $350,000 and that would have to be the size of 2 football fields. Keep listenting to Big Energy BS and see how much more manure they'll manufacture...I know the cost of those scrubbers..that's what the environmental engineering company I work for designs, installs and repairs. Those in Big Energy are bigger liars than the GOP.
Wow! You are absolutely full of @!$%#!....lol Incandescent bulbs are filled with an inert gas - not mercury! Mercury IS NOT an inert gas....lol
As far as your "ball point pen" reference, why in the world would your beloved EPA have the following guidelines for disposal then????????????????
http://epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html
You libtards make this way too easy. I would respect you a lot more if you just stood up and say, "Hey, I'm a socialist liberal that wants everyone to pool together all of the money in one big pile and the government will figure best who gets it!" instead of bull@!$%#tin' your way through life and trying to "adjust" facts or just plain make stuff up to damage our country.....think "Global Warming" or as you say this week, "Climate Change"
God Bless the USA!
HOLY COW!! I almost feel bad for you libtards having to resort to outright bull@!$%# today!
I triple-dog dare you to produce ONE OUNCE of evidence that a power plant scrubber system could be installed for 350 grand!....LMAO.... Do you EVEN know what a scrubber system is??? Hell, I'll even vote for Obummer if you can!.....swear ta God, I'll take a pic of my ballot for ya!
Man-o-live, keep it up and we'll have to start calling you Harry Reid!.....LMAO
Yet another libtard full of it!
Michael1969...You can always tell a neoconartist when you read their posts. The EPA regulations exist to keep you from paying unaffordable healthcare bills duh....Are neoconartists such dumb dumbs? Or do they work hard at it to avoid a real job?
Those of us who work in the environmental industry can poke more holes through the garbage huggers out there because every time one of them rails against regulating industries that pollute you can only sit back and wonder why they won't buy property near an oil rig, fracking rig or Love Canal...what's the matter cowards? Too afraid to man up to the realities that you can't go around polluting just because you want profit, profit, profit?
ewent
Here's their website:
http://www.trinity-solar.com/about-us
FOUR HUNDRED (400) employees, not 20,000 you bull@!$%# artist.....!!!!!!!!!!!!! LMAO Don't fear your opinions....you can have 'em, just not your own facts!....lol....what a tool!
Michael: Can't read and comprehend: Event wrote "CUSTOMERS", not "EMPLOYEES".....huge difference in those words. One buys energy from said company, the other works for said company.
Keep demonizing green energy GOP. Gotta be loyal to your Koch brother masters.
I know I am looking forward to the day the first Solyndra products hit the market. Green energy maybe around, sometime, but this country will not. There is simply no way the United States will ever recover from the massive deficits, massive debt, or the unfunded liabilities. Obama and the rest of Washington all know the end is coming, and there is no way to stop so why try. Obama went to Washington to accelerate the inevitable, and despite all his faults, he sure can spend others peoples money like it the last day before extinction. As if any of the politicians will ever be honest enough to tell the American people before it happens, they are all too busy taking care of themselves.
Solyndra was funded under W. Bush & GOP years in office. Political, Factcheck, etc. already found Mitt Romney claim to be misleading and totally false. “After a year of hearings, twenty-six witnesses and 187,000 documents from the White House, all Republicans have to show for it are some context-less quotes and a lot of baseless assertions." The Nation
Romney had multiple failed green companies in M.A when he was a governor. Romney like Solyndra failed investment, such as Acusphere & Spherics company, and millions of tax dollars went burst. What a joker and hypocrite?
By the way, Romney went to England and got a lot of campaign donation from England Banker scandal, is that count?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3096434/#47640054
Hey Michael1969 - maybe you should learn to read:
Note that it says "20,000 customers", not employees. So who's the tool here? (check a mirror for a hint)
The Chevy Volt seems to be working out well. Not!
Solar, wind and electric cars are hardly new technologies, electric cars were being sold back in the late 1800s. Windmills were invented in 500-900 AD. Or if you are old enough or have parents who were born in the 20's, you could take a drive through OK, KS, NE back in the 20's 30's, 40's .... you'd see wind mill after wind mill on every farm. The only thing new here is Obama's naivete about their potential, and his eagerness to waste so much taxpayer money pushing them.
Well there must be some reason every single car manufacture in the world already has or is scheduled by the end 2013 to have at least one electric vehicle in it's lineup.
See here in lies the problem. There are currently other forms of "Green Energy" that exist we never here anything about. I am currently experimenting with several of them, just to verify their validity.
The problem with Solyndra, and the other four that took stimulus money, is they were big donors to the democrat party. (kind of looks like a payoff to me). The thing is with wind farms is the power heads are made by GE which is also a big contributor to democrats.
All I am really saying is. If a company can offer a valid product to the open market. Then why do they need government money to operate or as in GM's case stay afloat? If a company makes bad business decisions in operating and leverages itself as far as GM/Chrysler did, are they really worthy of staying in business? Also why does the government get to choose who gets money and who does not?
I can guarantee if any of those companies were supporters of the GOP they would'nt have received a dime from the government.
As I remember history, America (the new world) was found using clean Green Energy. It is what it is. We need to develop more clean energy to offset the 'greenhouse' produced by carbon based fuels.
This shouldn't be a partisan issue, but it is due in large part to the huge profits reaped by the oil, gas , and coal companies. Part of those profits are used to influence our representatives and that influence is not always in our best interest.
By the by my right wing friends, what happened to your much touted outrage that global warming was 'junk science' (as Oklahoma burns today in 115 degree heat)? If the right wing echo chamber was so wrong about such a major issue, one that will no doubt cost us Trillions (see 'drought'), why do you folks so steadfastly continue to buy their other conspiracy theories (Solandra, Fast & Furious, birth certificate, college transcripts, etc, etc)?
Mark - "Wrong, green energy will be here to stay when it is supported by the free market without government subsidies."
So, Mark, can you explain to me what is going on with the oil industry that is STILL receiving huge subsidies?
to michael 1969 and the other liberal haters out there-
wow! the 'i hate liberals club' is out in force today! isn't that special? so i guess it makes you all feel like real live grownups because you can come up with all these cute witty insults to anyone who claims to be a liberal. really, it is sooooooooooooooooooo boring. does it feel good to have someone throwing it back in your face? feels good to me.
to michael, so i guess your answer to the green energy debacle is that we should just go back to throwing caution to the wind-poison that water! fill the air with dirt! who cares about co2 in the atmosphere! to hell with it all and let the future be damned! what really counts is our worship of the god almighty dollar! gimme gimme gimme! i want my energy and i want it now!!!!@!
do any of you think even for one moment about your children or your grandchildren or those children not yet born? are you so full right this minute of hatred for anyone who even whispers the attitude of liberalism that you would see our world go up in flames for poisoned beyond life just to spite us?
why is it just a liberal ideal that we should live in a clean world with air we can breath, with enough clean water to drink? there are garbage patches in just about every ocean on earth and what, that's ok? because to clean it up is a liberal agenda? the mississippi has a dead zone around it where nothing lives that is directly related to pollution coming from industrialization. so, that's ok because 'free enterprise' is more important than humankind.
you should do some actual reading about the environment in periodicals written by real scientists. pick up a copy of scientific american or discover magazine. SA has been around for more than 150 years. it is one of the oldest publications in this country. the people who write the articles are not a bunch of liberals. they are scientists and they follow the evidence. but, you'd have to have an open mind to read these articles without prejudice and well, you have to have in iq over 100, so that would leave alot of you out. (sorry, but well, you sling mud at us, so i guess turnabout is fair play. if you can't take it, don't start it.)
if we had spent half as much money and effort over the last 30 years on finding alternative energy, god only knows how far we would have come by now. even so, if you did some research, as i have done, you would know that there are many, many innovations that we could use today. there are ways to grow crops, more than enough to feed the world with a fraction of the water. there are ways to create solar panels that are thin and flexible and hold a hundred times more energy. there are ways to clean up waste using microbes that would help clean up the dead zone in the gulf. but, all these things cost money and for the oil and coal companies, there's no profit and that's why you're not hearing about them. there's actually a way to create clean coal, but it costs more than the coal industry is willing to pay. it cuts into their profits.
i guess being a liberal i can't understand why the money in your pocket is more important to you than the health and future of your planet, your country, even your own children. it's going to reach a point of no return and will we be able to adjust quickly enough? i sure we will, but many more people will have to suffer and die because of our greed." how many deaths will it take til he knows that too many people have died?" bob dylan's beautifully sad anthem on the human condition. you should listen to it.
I can say from experience, having a 9kW solar system on MY house, and MY company buys its plastic parts from a company that gets nearly all it's power from that wind turbine in my picture there, that going green IS economic and it IS what's going to happen in the future. You just have to think more than one election cycle out! Let's be SMART people! We're ALL Americans wasting time bickering over BS.
Romney's going down, so out comes more GOP clowns!
These Losers are grasping at every straw they can, whether Solyndra loans started by Dubya,
Fast and FuriousOperation Wide Receiver started by Dubya -- both of which have been debunked by news organizations. And as if the Birther conspiracy hasn't been enough, now Batcrap Bachmann and the Muslim Brotherhood McCarthyism is still going on.But the real scandal is all the shenanigans Romney has pulled throughout his perpetual run for office. To quote Bachmann, "Oh my goodness!" Romney bluffed saying he would release his taxes if Ted Kennedy released his, and is still using this as one of his lame excuses. He lied about filing taxes in Massachusetts until he got busted for filing in Utah, and all the while he had the arrogance to demand tax returns of all his opponents including their spouses.
Romney got away with all the lies and cheating in his earlier runs, the most despicable being the campaign for governor of Massachusetts, transferring the Bahamas Trust Fund Corp into Ann's name the day before he was sworn in, and taking the hard drives with him when he left. Now he is trying to pull the same scam AGAIN. Fool me once...
"You people" think you have something on President Obama? Really, seriously? Especially in comparison to Mitt Romney and his mysterious IRA, possible amnesty for money in the Cayman Islands, and definitely paying way below 13.9% tax rates for who knows how many years. Puleeze!
Romney -- YOU put up or shut up!
There is a way out of this BS, RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT. He is the only statesman running. These other 2 guys are puppets for the globalists who do not have the people of the US interests in mind.
Rightwingers should write in the name of the candidate they really support, whether Ron Paul, or Jon Huntsman or Jeb Bush or who ever. Just don't put a weak, capitulating, mistake like Romney the plutocrat in the White House, and hope for better options in 2016.
Hey typical liberal woman you are stereotyping the Republicans and Independents and some Democrats that didn't vote for Obama as being racist aren't you?
I didn't vote for Obama because he was a Black man, I didn't vote for him because he was a democrat.
You are the one trying to make it into a racial issue!!
Get over it!!
1. and you do? Wind makes up about 4% of our energy needs and costs about 5 to 8 cents per KW hour.
If you understood electrical theory you will see that it is a good investment compared to other technologies including natural gas coal and solar panels.
2. eventually led technology will take over at even half the wattage of "curly Qs"
3. Is produced by American farmers and it creates thousands of jobs. Eventually we will start to see 15% up to 40% blends in our gas stations to helps us get off oil. The whole economy of Brazil runs on Ethanol and that makes them the 5th largest economy in the world.
4. Still too expensive. In 1998 the price per watt was 4.50 now its below a dollar. I think they will have to be below 50 cents for home owners to get a profit fast. Government investment is needed in order to bring the price down even further.
5. Switchgrass is used to make jet fuel. You are right your lawnmower will probably blow up.
Coal will eventually died off. Every year more and more regulations are being passed to stop using it. If Obama would have had complete control of congress hes first 2 years he would have eliminated it completely with cap and trade.
ROFLMAO, yet the conservatives have no problem with tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax and government support and subsidies for oil , coal and gas.
re: post #2.29 Wind power, i.e. sail boats and ships are a form of clean enegry.
If......the Solyndra venture was a scam to begin with. If........
Then they certainly went about it naively. They should have taken pointers from the Republicans. First you have to start a war, then when the planes are dropping bombs and the troops and tanks are shooting at everything that moves, you can fly in shipments of 12 billion in bundles of cash straight into the pockets of your cronies, and no one will be brave enough to even ask how it all just disappeared for fear of being branded "unpatriotic". You can dump further billions into contracts for nothing of use, maintain little or no accounting on any of this, wave the flag at the right photo-ops, pretend to be heroes, and laugh on the way to the bank. The republicans are pros at this. If the Democrats really wish to pull some scams they should have been taking notes.
Besides, for any "green" venture to succeed they have to pass through something similar to the "no man's land" of WW1 where every major energy company has laid their mines and have the big guns zeroed in to make sure no legitimate competition survives long enough to become a real threat to their interests. They can manipulate the market just enough to bleed away any profits the greenies might need to survive, much less prosper. I think the history of green energy in our country is littered with the unmarked graves of those companies that died in trying. Goes back a long time.
Am I a little cynical about all this? Damn right I am, and with good reason.
michael1969 - Just so you know: writing "lol" and "lmao" after rather sputtering sentences is a known sign of early onset Alzheimer's.
they weren't aware of any involvement in Solyndra by political fundraisers until it was first raised by Republicans.
Either lying or turning a blind eye
The Obama administration doesn’t have an effective energy policy, not only did they give “questionable” loan guarantees to Solyndra, they gave a $2 billion loan guarantee to the French Government owned Areva, while denying USEC an American company their loan guarantee request, costing Ohio thousands of highly skilled jobs (both companies are involved with uranium enrichment, for more details Google both under government loan guarantees).
Why does the French government need, or even want, a U.S. government loan guarantee? I can only surmise that part of the reason was to keep USEC from getting it and in that way gain a competitive advantage. French made technology does not put Americans to work, and subsequently Areva didn’t
go ahead with construction of the project.
The biggest question is why the administration chose the French company over an American one.
Repost from collapsed thread #1 (Why was that thread collapsed?)
Dem ocrats said in their dissenting report that White House officials told investigators that they weren't aware of any involvement in Solyndra by political fundraisers until it was first raised by Republicans
Does anyone really believe that? Give me a break !!
STexan: @2.3: What surplus?
Job1 "Green Energy is here to stay. Get over it Republicans."
Actually, it's been here for thousands of years. The vast majority of Americans of all political persuasions support common sense 'Green Energy' programs, but they just don't want to pay two to three times as much just to call it 'Green'.
We've been 'transitioning' towards 'Green Energy' for a long time - and when the cost gets competitive with traditional energy sources, we're all for making the change - we're just not there yet for most applications. 'Green' source costs are going down and 'traditional' source costs are going up.
If we're patient, we'll get the 'best of both worlds' (lower cost green energy) - if not, we'll pay with a lower standard of living and fewer obs.
The comparison between Solyndra and Staples would be accurate except for a few things:
Staples was a well established company with good revenue and customer base. Solyndra was a startup. Staples already had 90,000 employees. Solyndra had 200.
I bet if you go back and look at Staples, you'll find that they were feeding off the government just like their other poster boy who took over $1,000,000 in government loans, but Romneycare pointed to as a modern bootstraps self made man.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/24/on-his-own-romney-ad-star-took-over-1-million-in-government-loans/#.UBFu7p1gdJw.facebook
John Doe
Or donating to a political campaign isn't as valuable as you might think.... They all say there is no tit-for-tat on donations, and I tend to believe them. 1) how can they keep track? and 2) if they are not allowed to provide special treatment for donations, then they have every reason not to pay attention or keep track. I may be naive, but it seems more likely to me that donors are hopeful that the donations help their cause and politicians don't dispell the myth.
Liberals don't like what you say so they come out with the typical name calling.
If it's left up to the T Party we will be using kerosene lamps and living in mud huts.
Solyndra was a Bush Project at the onset. Obama tried to prop them up much to his displeasure.
Solyndra? Is that the best the republicans can do?
Well, we do know one thing, if they can't find anything wrong with this president and his administration, they will just make it up... Then swear to it on a stack of bibles...
i.e. birth certificate, Muslim, not christian, born in Kenya, Socialist etc.
Terry, can you address the failure of this administration in job generations, economy, debt and deficit reduction, leadership, statemanship in building international relationships, diplomacy...the tendencies of this president are not supported by traditional American values...we did build it, slowly one customer at a time...government has no money other then what it takes from the private sector, so you can't claim they financed roads...more importantly if left to their own devices the white line down the middle of a road would be on the left side of center. Every piece of equipment "used" by the government was developed and perfected in the private sector, every dime of funding came from the private sector.
TJM: Can you explain to me why the republicans to this day still protect Big Oil and not getting rid of oil subsidies. Big Oil is certainly not a start-up company and they make billions of dollars in profit, yet, they are still needing to "siphon off the government" for survival. At least that is what republicans keep telling the American public. What possible good are these subsidies doing besides using the American tax dollars for propping up one of the most successful businesses in America.
Jesus Christ; why are we so against investing in green energy??? It has two benefits: one, it will help stave off climate change (if you are a skeptic, the severe Colorado fires and the ozone hole in Australia should convince you otherwise), and two, it will be the next big thing, creating thousands of jobs and billions of dollars. I say the U.S. should repeal every subsidy to oil and coal (whose CEOs even said that they did not need them), and use the money in direct subsidies, grants, and R&D for green energy. Plus, I say we ought to let property owners that have solar panels, wind turbines, or anything else to be able to sell any surplus energy back onto the grid; Germany did that, and 20% of its energy is provided by solar (plus 65% of production comes from individuals). This would, over the long-term, create thousands jobs, create a profitable new high-tech industry (immune from outsourcing), hopefully encourage the domestic production of equipment to tap into those resources, and improve the economy. I just wish everyone could realize that instead of arguing against green energy.
OBAMA BIDEN 2012
"Democrats said in their dissenting report that White House officials told investigators that they weren't aware of any involvement in Solyndra by political fundraisers until it was first raised by Republicans." This tells me that the White House does not know what they are doing. I wonder what else the White House is not aware of. Considering how the economy has been going I can only assume, quite a lot,
It’s always amusing hearing meaningless criticism coming from the political party responsible for crashing the economy and costing the American people TRILLIONS of dollars.
I’m not sure which is worse listening to the Republicans spewing out B.S. or the fools that still believe their lies and propaganda.
learning from others...
travel the world, and look, learn, and ask questions, and listen to their answers..
Other Countries around the World, that use wind turbines:
http://windturbinesllc.blogspot.com/2011/02/10-cradles-of-wind-turbines-resourceful.html
Learn from other people too.
Peace to all*
$535 million in US government loan guarantees for Solyndra is a drop in the bucket compared to what GW Bush 43 and Dick Cheney spent on two un-wanted wars ($3 trillions and counting). Plus all the billions and billions of no-bid contracts given to Blackwater, Halliburton, Bechtel and other republican friendly companies during those 7 years (2002 to 2009).
Obama's Green Energy Disaster: $578,333 per Job
To take a note from Congressman "Mr. No" Reid, this came from a highly reputable, un-named, un-disclosed source.
Liberals are rancid.
Green energy is great, using the 'green energy mantra' to scam taxpayers out of billions is not so great. Standard Oil and Firestone tires along with a few other companies convinced the government that buses were the wave of the future. So, many thousands of miles of trolley lines were torn up, trolley cars tossed in the dump so that powerful corporate interests and very wealthy men could sell their products to the government using the 'green' excuse to do so. Obama is nothing but a crooked pol of the Chicago school. His supporters are the useful idiots that Lenin described.
The Solyndra 'green energy' scams are no different. Back then, gasoline was the way to go and today 'green energy' via wind and solar are the 'way to go.' There are lots of options out there, but the cronyism wouldn't allow for some real viable alternative energy source. Nope, the road to hell is paved in good intentions and in this case, the road to green energy is paved with taxpayer dollars going to support wealthy men and their corporations. History repeats itself, again.
Keep slapping the entrepenours who had government support.
We would never have gone to the moon with that kind of thinking.
Keep ignoring the scammers who bilk the government out of billions, all brought to you by corrupt politicans.
Guess you think the government made Apple? Guess you think the internet was created by private enterprise? Guess you think that most of those great enterprises were created for the public weal? Do a little fact check and you will discover that most government investment comes from and for the Department of Defense.
Hey right wingers, this isn't anything different from what Bush and Cheney did with the contracts during the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, or Gov. Palin with the "Bridge to Nowhere". It's funny how we didn't hear you complaining then. So stop being such whiny hypocrites. Both sides of the fence do the same thing to include the Corporate elites.
Alternative energy is a new area of development and like other new areas of development it is volatile with many of the new start up companies going under. The key issue here is Solyndra got "vetted" with the standard step by step process. While I have issues with the Solyndra executives, I see no collusion factor to blame Obama.
And that is exactly what the Republicans want, tag your it - blame Obama. Which is brainless BS. The other part of their agenda is to serve their lords and masters, the Koch brothers, Big Oil and Big Coal. They will use every dirty propaganda trick possible to undermine alternative energy.
As an independent, I complained about many of Bush's policies and I complain about many of Obama's policies. Just because Bush screwed things up doesn't mean it's ok for Obama to also screw things up. Personally, I think these are the 2 worst presidents in my lifetime (born in the 60's).
By the way, I have also praised the policies I liked from each administration. The party doesn't matter to me...the only thing that matters is what they do.
At what point do we stop calling this a new area of development? I remember learning about all of the things Solar energy was going to do for us in the next 10 years...back in the 70's.
I am an environmentalist and I do support alternative energies, but I also think many of the views I hear expressed on these boards and by the mainstream media are wildly optimistic based on what I've seen the last 40 years. Yes, China can make solar panel production somewhat viable by having almost no environmental regulations and using close to slave labor, but is that what we want? (and even then, it's still significantly more expensive than fossil fuels)
It seems to me we still need to be focused on solving the technological issues before we try mass production. Let's put some X prizes out there to help fund research on the big problems such as energy storage and distribution - and how to minimize the environmental damage from used batteries. Let's also look at how to solve the range and recharge issues with electric cars. Once we've got some of these core issues figured out, then we can talk about mass production.
It seems pretty clear that the Administration was eager (overly so) to create "green" stories and photo ops, so they rushed through loans and wasted taxpayer dollars that never should have been spent. Even as many up and down the line were blowing their whistles that these were bad loans and should not be made, the administration was doing everything they could to make sure that all the papers were signed before Joe Biden came to town to tout the "success" of Solyndra.
This whole green energy loan thing is just corruption at it's worst. Money being thrown at bad investments for political reasons. People should be in jail, but instead the story is how the republicans are trying to use Solyndra to damage the democrats. The truth SHOULD be damaging enough, but in the world today, we sort of expect corruption and don't even mind it when it supports our own world view. How far we have fallen as a nation.
At least this will give republicans something to talk about till November. We've already been down this rabbit hole. Come on republicans. Can't you come up with some new material for a change?
Ya Moron. Lets talk about tax returns ad likeability.
Lets not talk about things that matter right.
Job1
Good Day
Hi ranmarie,
Have a Great Day!!!
It's desperation to stop people from talking about Romney's tax plan that raises taxes on the middle class to pay for the tax cuts for the rich.
The GOP TeaWackos are taking one giant leap for man kind, this Party is finish !!!!!!!!!!!
Those in the industrial scrubber business would tell you exactly why these cheap asses in Big Energy won't spend a dime on proper pollution controls they know have existed for more than 50 years...it's a one-time expenditure they'd rather spend on their own salaries.
The BS stories you hear from some of the US's biggest industry giants would make your hair curl. They can come up with the most exaggerated reasons why they can't do what should have been part of the installation and start-up procedures of their businesses...install proper and safe pollution controls.
When you look at it right, what these Big Energy bois are really doing is stalling for time hoping another George W. Bush will come along and saturate the planet with pollution and slime in the air, water and soil by watering down EPA regulations.
These jerks had over 2 decades to put the proper pollution controls in place but every year they look for another loophole to sneak through so they don't have to comply with regulations of the Clean Air Act of 1974. Instead, they use that stalling and delaying to increase their profits while the rest of the people in this country pay through the nose for expensive healthcare for illness that could easily be avoided if the Big Energy jerks would get off their asses and do the right thing.
Yeah, who cares if Washington wastes our money. Whats a few hundred million when we are running trillion plus annual deficits? Besides, Obama has friends he needs to take care of, and what better way then paying them off with taxpayer backed borrowed money. Obama fast tracked Solyndra, he had too, after all if he waited they would have been out of business before he could pay off his cronies. But hey, it is Bush's fault Obama is wasting money, after all he gave Obama the excuse.
Too bad it has been proven that the donor to Obama was not in a position to gain financially from Solyndra's success. It has also been proven that other investors in Solyndra were donors to the Republican party. You guys can try to make something out of Solyndra, but you are only betraying that facts are irrelevant to you.
At least we won't have this type of "scandal" during a Romney presidency because Willard keeps all his major fundraisers a secret. We also know that all those people writing million dollar checks to Willard are philanthropists at heart and there is no quid pro quo there don't we. Oh and I have some nice Nevada oceanfront property for sale too!
Originally posted by jackierawlings in #353 :
Mitt continues to prove he's a born liar and the citizens of Mass. know this first hand and now so does the World.
As Mitt tells his lies in Indiana and on his Bus tour about Obama and Solyndra here's the facts:
May 2005: Just as a global silicon shortage begins driving up prices of solar photovoltaics [PV], Solyndra is founded to provide a cost-competitive alternative to silicon-based panels.
July 2005: The Bush Administration signs the Energy Policy Act of 2005 into law, creating the 1703 loan guarantee program.
February 2006 – October 2006: In February, Solyndra raises its first round of venture financing worth $10.6 million from CMEA Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and U.S. Venture Partners. In October, Argonaut Venture Capital, an investment arm of George Kaiser, invests $17 million into Solyndra. Madrone Capital Partners, an investment arm of the Walton family, invests $7 million. Those investments are part of a $78.2 million fund.
December 2006: Solyndra Applies for a Loan Guarantee under the 1703 program.
Late 2007: Loan guarantee program is funded. Solyndra was one of 16 clean-tech companies deemed ready to move forward in the due diligence process. The Bush Administration DOE moves forward to develop a conditional commitment.
October 2008: Then Solyndra CEO Chris Gronet touted reasons for building in Silicon Valley and noted that the “company’s second factory also will be built in Fremont, since a Department of Energy loan guarantee mandates a U.S. location.”
November 2008: Silicon prices remain very high on the spot market, making non-silicon based thin film technologies like Solyndra’s very attractive to investors. Solyndra also benefits from having very low installation costs. The company raises $144 million from ten different venture investors, including the Walton-family run Madrone Capital Partners. This brings total private investment to more than $450 million to date.
January 2009: In an effort to show it has done something to support renewable energy, the Bush Administration tries to take Solyndra before a DOE credit review committee before President Obama is inaugurated.
But Mitt is sure his lies will work because he has lied all his life and is a Master of it.
Republicons will continue to try to divert attention away from a few facts:
Romney has never created any jobs.
He is still refusing to release his tax returns.
Romney has no plans. He says to trust him.
He lied about his time with Bain Capital.
Romney is out of touch with anyone making less than $15 million per year.
really?????? Romney has never created any jobs???????? Iam not for any of these guys but anyone that has started a biz has created jobs just a thought has our prez ever stared a biz just saying
entrepreneurs create jobs....and take risks....and sometimes fail.
Doesn't Romney know this?
lets take Staples as an example. sure, Staples created jobs, but how many small independant American stationary and office supply small businesses did he put OUT OF BUSINESS?
"Democrats said in their dissenting report that White House officials told investigators that they weren't aware of any involvement in Solyndra by political fundraisers until it was first raised by Republicans." This tells me that the White House does not know what they are doing. I wonder what else the White House is not aware of. Considering how the economy has been going I can only assume, quite a lot,
When Solyndra got it's loan guarantee, China saw it as a threat. The Chinese dumped $20 Billion into their companies to lower prices and crush the competition.
And that's why Solyndra and the others failed. Beware, the Chinese play dirty, as do the Republicans.
Instead of reporting the facts on the Solyndra scandal, Obama-poodle First Read's narrative is the mean old GOP "has latched on to a new report" and that the GOP wields the report as a cudgel" .
"Solyndra has been on the tongues of conservatives....." Of course, as a liberal tool, First Read's tongue has been strangely silent about the Solyndra scandal.
"The Republican report produced no hard evidence of malfeasance in the Obama administration's management of Solyndra"
Nice spin...$500 million of taxpayers dollars wasted , and all is well in liberal land...
Come on VP Bob, let's get the facts about Willard Romney Olympics documents not being released for the public to view.
Let's get the facts about Willard Romney not being honest about his time at Bain Capital.
Let's get the facts about Willard Romney and staff spending nearly $100,000 in state funds to replace computers in his office at the end of his term as governor of Massachusetts in order to keep his records secret.
Let's get the facts about Willard Romney refusing to release his tax returns.
Willard Romney is hiding many things, and don't we the people have the right to know what he is hiding.
bob, bob ,bob. every time you political hacks post you show your ignorance! do you think bush and regan didnt do the same. do you think its wrong to invest in product development? do you think its wrong to invest in the american worker?
better take a good long look at your man romney, a man who invested in many companies of which the majority fail so he could reap profit from their down fall, conquer their pension plan, leaving the government with the tag. after which he would sell the failed company to china, now theres a real american? how about you bob, romney supporter or real american?
You're right on the money Bob. I agree 100%.
This is important, MSNBC is spinning as hard as they can, and Obama has to go.
It is amazing how many failures of Obama are "just politics". Fast and Furious, Solyndra, Unemployment, poverty, the national debt, high gas prices ... all "just politics" ... Obama apologists must have a reason to overlook so much failure and so many broken promises.
Bill and Hillary Clinton were right - Obama was too inexperienced, not ready to lead, and the ability to read a good speech doesn't translate into the ability lead a nation effectively.
The guy just isn't that good as president.
Kr Kr Kr...nobody is disputing investing in product development..the problem was not only was it a unstable company but they were big contributors to Obama....but then again you knew that right...spin away dude.
How many stable companies did Romney shut down for profit. Seems to me like he is no better than the other guy. One invests in bad companies, the other kills off good companies. Which is worse?
same old same old, if gas prices are up its Obama's fault, if they are down he has nothing to do with them, likewise for unemployment (govt doesn't create jobs), debt, etc.
The TeaPubCons are getting so Desperate it getting very sickening, I think the TeaWackos destroyed the GOP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How many stable companies did Romney shut down for profit.
The correct answer is...none
Bob In VA...gee...where was your concern when $200 million when missing on the back of a truck in Iraq? Or that $200 Billion...that's billion with a "b" Bush's egotistical Baghdad embassy cost taxpayers in 2007 and now has to be dismantled because of the cost to keep in operation and because Iraqis never wanted it? Pax Imperialism Bush style?
Bob in VA...reporting the facts? Okay..how about we report the facts about how Big Oil is using that $12 billion the GOP demanded they receive in tax subsidies taxpayers were forced to hand them? Or...even better...we really, really, do want the facts on how much Bush really spent on Iraq and how about that fat no-bid contract for Halliburton that amassed Cheney's company billions? Don't ask for facts from this administration until you come clean with facts that we know were withheld from the prior administration.
Well Bob, here is the thing Solyndra is old news, and the vast majority of the electorate has no idea and does not care about one eighth of the money spent on Solyndra as is given to the oil companies who obviously don't need it each year in subsidies that republicans insist on protecting. When the republicans make a big deal about Solyndra the oil subsidies will be talked about as well and that is a losing issue for republicans with the general electorate. On the other hand every person in the US knows what a tax return is and Romney "taking the fifth" on his is political suicide for him. The swing states are breaking for Obama, Romney basically has to run the table on the swing states to gain the electoral votes to win, Obama just needs Florida and it is over for Romney, Obama now has a 6 point lead in Florida, and it will widen as long as Romney does not release his returns, and may be even worse for him if he does, which is probably why he will not. I know you think Obama has to go, but the truth is, it don't look like he is going anywhere. Every current national poll I have looked at with the exception of Rasmussen has Obama leading by anywhere from 2 to 11 points and that even includes the Fox News Poll. You see what is happening Bob, now that as the focus is on Romney, since the republican primaries are over, people are just not liking what they see, and evidently they like even less what he will not allow them to see. It's kind of funny Bob isn't it, the so called powerhouse of a businessman that can't or won't tell you about his personal business, the man who claims to know how to restructure your taxes, but will not divulge his own, the man who knows how to invest in America, but will not divulge his own investments. Romney had a trust issue from the very start, and his refusal to release his returns is compounding that issue exponentially with the electorate. You can scream and holler all you wish about Solyndra and all the while watch your candidate commit political suicide right before your eyes.
This country is headed for a financial collapse for sure with the massive debt and unfunded liabilities there is probably no stopping it any longer. Many think we are already well past the point of no return and Washington knows it. So who would you rather have in office, Obama with his proven track record of wasteful spending the likes of which has never been seen in modern history, or someone with integrity like Romney? A man with integrity like Romney will definitely take a shot at turning things around, Obama certainly hasn't. But with the massive debt Obama has run up in the past 3.5 years, there is probably not much anyone can do but prepare for utter chaos.
Ha, that is funny, because as long as Romney "takes the fifth" on his taxes he looks like anything but a man of integrity to the American electorate.
Romney...a man of integrity? Good lord, there's absolutely no hope for intelligent discussion with some people.
Well said Forest Gump; the American public is now starting to realize what the primary candidates were talking and pointing to. Amazing how quiet Santorum and Newt are right now....they stated in the primaries how Romney was the worst candidate and the republican public didn't listen. You reap what you sow.
Jackie, the republicans turned Romney away four years ago as their candidate, they don't like him, he got the nod this time only because republicans offered an incredibly weak field of choices, but just being the least dented can in the damaged goods bin, is not going to cut it with the general electorate. He is weak on his own as a candidate and the house republicans have not accomplished anything that indicates they have the knowledge, will, or desire to solve our problems so they have compounded his problems with the American people electing a republican for president. Welcome too Waterloo Mr. Romney.
More important than your wrong answer is the wrong question. No matter how many companies managed to survive corporate raiding or went bankrupt, the answer is Romney profited 100% of the time, often at the expense of tax payers.
WE ARE NOT BROKE. We are not. We have just been spending too much on the wrong things and taxing too little. I say repeal the Bush tax cuts FOR EVERYONE, allow the the defense sequester to happen but spare the the second half of social spending cuts, reform (NOT PRIVATIZE) entitlements by ending fee for service for Medicare and eliminating the payroll cap for SS, and then use 15% of all the deficit savings to boost the economy in the short-term.
Are you kidding me??? First of all, spending has barely gone up under Obama, since Bush's last year was 2009. Secondly, the reason why spending is up is because of the RECESSION, which increases spending (read a book, man). Thirdly, Romney's tax cut for the rich would add TRILLIONS to the deficit, and if he tried to pay for it he would have to raise taxes on everyone else. And finally, Obama DID offer to cut $4 trillion from the debt, but you Republicans said no just because it had $1.2 trillion in revenue increases.
OBAMA BIDEN 2012
They should allow the Bush Tax cuts to expire but Obama wants them still - He has had 2 chances to end them and won't. After 3.5 years please don't blame it on Bush anymore. Obama had a Democratic Senate and House and couldn't get a budget. He can't work with his own party, he has added to our debt. His health care has no tort reform, his jobs haven't been added to keep up with people entering the workforce, while others quit looking for work so they live off the working folks back.
I voted for Obama the first go round but after Fast & Furious and what he lost in green energy - not again.
Bob---Tax payers money should only go to vaginal probes, right?
That's about it. Forget jobs - worry about what people are doing in their own bedrooms.
Someone else brought up an important point. If you run a company that engages in hostile takeovers (and yes, it is hostile, otherwise, it would be a merger or other friendly joint business decision), you don't just take over any company without learning about it. You examine their financial records with a magnifying glass, or your venture (vulture) capital company does not last. You scrutinize every monetary detail, and thoroughly vet every critical member of the organization. As a supposed businessman, Romneycare should understand this.
Yet, he thinks the American people should just hand him the keys to the White House, not just without a plan. He thinks he should get a free pass, just like he has been given all his life. He doesn't understand why people get offended when he displays his 'better than you' attitude. EVERYTHING in Willard's life has been handed to him. Sorry, Willard. We are going to need a little information about you before you can be considered for the highest office in the land. All you RWNJs can go ahead and support Willard if you want, but there are a lot of independent voters out there that won't accept your claim that you can do everything better, but that exactly how is a secret that we don't need to know.
No thanks.
But Republicans aren't likely to let go of Solyndra as an issue during this campaign.
Huffington Post:
"Can you imagine where Mitt Romney would be right now if the economy were booming?" Altman said. "Not only would he be a laughing stock, but he would have no issue to run on."
By blocking Obama's jobs proposals, congressional Republicans are sabotaging the economy to win the 2012 election, said Daniel Altman, chief economist at Big Think and adjunct economics professor at New York University's Stern School of Business.
Altman pointed out that some congressional Republican leaders have admitted that infrastructure projects and reducing uncertainty would boost the economy, then turn around and create uncertainty and block infrastructure projects. For example, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has asked for high-speed rail in his own district, while pushing for deep government budget cuts, Altman said.
As a result of government job cuts, some jobless ex-government workers have lost their savings and homes. Laid off firefighters have had to watch blazes engulf homes without being able to help. Waits have been getting longer for public transportation. And larger school class sizes have hampered children's ability to learn.
Perhaps most importantly, economists said, the government has been withdrawing income instead of pumping it into the economy. Cutting off public-sector workers' livelihoods means less spending by those former workers, which hurts those in the private sector.
___________
Thanx Republican Party for nothing. You all have everything you will ever need in life, and frankly, that's all you care about.
They can fix this but they have no intention of doing it.
They are purposely wanting people to suffer, so that their puppet Romney can get in.
Power. At we the people's expense.
"By blocking Obama's jobs proposals, congressional Republicans are sabotaging the economy to win the 2012 election"
Obama and the Democrats had full control of the House, Senate and White House for 2 years...they passed their massive stimulus, promising 6% unemployment...
They failed miserably. The leftist's blame game is beyond pathetic.
When will you realize that the government does NOT create jobs. His jobs bill shifts money to his support groups like the Veterans, or teachers. Real growth is done by corporate America. The government cannot afford to employ everyone. Hell the retirements would bankrupt us...
Think Progress: FLASHBACK: Romney Economic Advisers Predicted Bush Tax Cuts Would Lead To Huge Job Growth
Mitt Romney and his economic advisers have spent the week claiming that Romney’s economic plan will create 12 million jobs, as they attempt to change the subject away from a Tax Policy Center report showing that Romney’s tax plan would mean a big tax increase for middle-class families.
A Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis shows that, far from creating 12 million jobs, Romney’s economic plan would kill 360,000 jobs in 2013 alone. But this discrepancy is perhaps less surprising considering that the same advisers who gave Romney his number — including economists Greg Mankiw and Glenn Hubbard, who both worked for former President George W. Bush — estimated that the Bush tax cuts would lead to massive job growth:
Unfortunately for American workers, these rosy predictions failed to pan out. In fact, total employment in the U.S. economy created only 2.4 million new jobs by the end of 2004, or less than half of what Hubbard predicted. By 2007 the economy was running nearly 8 million jobs short of what Hubbard predicted.
The Bush tax cuts, instead of leading to the millions of jobs Hubbard promised, led to the weakest job growth of the post-war era. So not only does Romney’s tax plan fail to add up, but his job growth plan is going to fall far short of its goals, if history is any example.
____________________
The Republican Party is an insult to people who actually pay attention to their out and out lies. And incompetence.
Rachel Maddow, David Corn, The Boston Globe, Lawrence O'Donnell, Rev. Al
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Mitt Romney is a liar.
fedup you and virginia bob are simply ill informed and bording on insanity.
The Nation, Robert Reich:
The reforms of the Progressive Era at the turn of the twentieth century saved American democracy from the robber barons, but the political power of great wealth has now resurfaced with a vengeance. And here again, Romney is the poster boy. Congress has so far failed to close the absurd carried-interest tax loophole, for example, because of generous donations by Bain Capital and other private-equity partners to both parties.
But the real issue here isn’t Bain’s betting record. It’s that Romney’s Bain is part of the same system as Jamie Dimon’s JPMorgan Chase, Jon Corzine’s MF Global and Lloyd Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs—a system that has turned much of the economy into a betting parlor that nearly imploded in 2008, destroying millions of jobs and devastating household incomes. The winners in this system are top Wall Street executives and traders, private-equity managers and hedge-fund moguls, and the losers are most of the rest of us. The system is largely responsible for the greatest concentration of the nation’s income and wealth at the very top since the Gilded Age of the nineteenth century, with the richest 400 Americans owning as much as the bottom 150 million put together. And these multimillionaires and billionaires are now actively buying the 2012 election—and with it, American democracy.
The biggest players in this system have, like Romney, made their profits placing big bets with other people’s money. If the bets go well, the players make out like bandits. If they go badly, the burden lands on average workers and taxpayers. The 750 peo-ple at GS Technologies who lost their jobs thanks to a bad deal engineered by Romney’s Bain were a small foreshadowing of the 15 million who lost jobs after the cumulative dealmaking of the entire financial sector pushed the whole economy off a cliff. And relative to the cost to taxpayers of bailing out Wall Street, Solyndra is a rounding error.
Connect the dots of casino capitalism, and you get Mitt Romney. The fortunes raked in by financial dealmakers depend on special goodies baked into the tax code such as “carried interest,” which allows Romney and other partners in private-equity firms (as well as in many venture-capital and hedge funds) to treat their incomes as capital gains taxed at a maximum of15 percent. This is how Romney managed to pay an average of 14 percent on more than $42 million of combined income in 2010 and 2011. But the carried-interest loophole makes no economic sense. Conservatives try to justify the tax code’s generous preference for capital gains as a reward to risk-takers—but Romney and other private-equity partners risk little, if any, of their personal wealth. They mostly bet with other investors’ money, including the pension savings of average working people.
It took more than a decade for America to recover from the Great Crash of 1929 after the financial sector had gorged itself on debt, and it’s taking years to recover from the more limited but still terrible crash of 2008. The same kinds of convulsions have occurred on a smaller scale at a host of companies since the go-go years of the 1980s, when private-equity firms like Bain began doing leveraged buyouts—taking over a target company, loading it up with debt, using the tax deduction that comes with the debt to boost the target company’s profits, cutting payrolls and then reselling the company at a higher price.
We’ve entered a new Gilded Age, of which Mitt Romney is the perfect reflection. The original Gilded Age was a time of buoyant rich men with flashy white teeth, raging wealth and a measured disdain for anyone lacking those attributes, which was just about everyone else. Romney looks and acts the part perfectly, offhandedly challenging a GOP primary opponent to a $10,000 bet and referring to his wife’s several Cadillacs. Four years ago he paid $12 million for his fourth home, a 3,000-square-foot villa in La Jolla, California, with vaulted ceilings, five bathrooms, a pool, a Jacuzzi and unobstructed views of the Pacific. Romney has filed plans to tear it down and replace it with a home four times bigger.
We’ve had wealthy presidents before, but they have been traitors to their class—Teddy Roosevelt storming against the “malefactors of great wealth” and busting up the trusts, Franklin Roosevelt railing against the “economic royalists” and raising their taxes, John F. Kennedy appealing to the conscience of the nation to conquer poverty. Romney is the opposite: he wants to do everything he can to make the superwealthy even wealthier and the poor even poorer, and he justifies it all with a thinly veiled social Darwinism.
what did Fedup and Bob say that is not true or "insane"? Given Obama's carte blanche powers and past congressional support, his use of executive powers, his current Senate leadership that will not allow anything non-liberal to pass through it, and given the dismal jobs and GDP numbers that are released every week and month, and given the 2013 and 2014 Obama policies that are going to take the current dismal numbers and triple down on them, I honestly don't see that you libs and Obama supporters have a ANYTHING to stand on or point to as an accomplishment other than perhaps killing OBL (using a war machine that obama now wants to gut ... how ironic is that)
Admit that Obama fooled each and every one who voted for him and we can move on to fixing this nation before it slides off into the sewer where every other failed attempt at massive socialism has ended up.
No they did not have the Senate for two years.
Correction:
No they didn't have the Senate filibuster proof for two years.
Even with a majority in both houses - nothing could get past the republican filibuster. With a majority and $5, you can get a latte.
Huffington Post...Liberal rag! Wouldn't expect anything else from them.
Robin keep your head in the sand. LOL
Isn't the entire media just one big giant left-wing conspiracy?
GOP 2012 - "Just because you think they're all out to get you doesn't mean they aren't!"
PatfromBost,
Gee, I guess you never considered that the Repubs simply think there is a better way than the POTUS approach. I think the Dems should support the Ryan plan that was put forth. How come they have not adopted that? If they did, our unemployment rate would go down signficantly. Why are Reid and Obama obstructing what is clearly a solution to this economic morras we are in?
Last I looked Obamas budget proposal was rejected on a bi-partisan basis (literally not one vote for it) and Reids budget proposal was soundly.........er....um....I guess Reid has not put a budget proposal out for three years. Way to lead Harry and Barak. LOLOLOLOL
Time for the adults to move into the Oval Office. We need someone in there who will lead and not divide. And equally important, someone who knows how economics actually work.
I wish the POTUS would have been successful in his term in office. Unfortunately for the American people he has proven to be dishonest, in over his head, and a fraud.
The fact is that the republican controlled house has the lowest approval numbers ever recorded in the history of those polls. You can complain about Obama all you want but the general electorate does not see him as the single man who is responsible for all our troubles, and they certainly don't see Romney as the answer to their woes. The truth is the closer the general electorate looks at Romney the better they like president Obama. Republicans have hammered constantly on Obama for three years and seven months, and now faced with the choice of Romney he is winning in all the important swings states, so what else can they do to turn that around in three months, just what is it that Romney can do or say, that will suddenly allow him to run the table on the swing states. Ha he has already taken both sides of every single issue and that has not seemed to work.
I love the liberal that cut and pasted from the Huffington Post that where would Romney be if the economy was booming. Well that is the million dollar question, and just in case liberals forgot was the reason Obama got elected. But the economy is not booming or even sputtering, and Obama is still just wandering around a dark room looking for the light switch. A liberal cuts and pastes from Huffington, and what does the essence of post state? That Obama has no record to run on, or he would. Even liberals are now endorsing Obama by highlighting his failures. There is no doubt the Democratic National Convention theme song has to be Send in the Clowns.
Obama was elected because the previous president wrecked a booming economy, destroyed a government surplus, presided over a collapse of our financial institution, started two unfunded wars, and then could not even capture the man who was supposedly responsible for attacking us on his watch. He was elected, because the American people felt he was a much better choice than the republican ticket, and that is the same reason he will be re-elected. The Huffington Post did not elect him, he won with an electoral landslide determined by the American people.
If Obama gets re-elected he will have to deal with an additional 5 trillion in debt, annual deficits over a trillion, wars he said he would end in his first term, Gitmo he never closed, unemployment over 8%, gas that has gone from 1.78 to 3.69 during his first term, and no end in sight. My what a mess Obama will inherit from himself.
Romney would have to deal with the same, and Obama inherited those problems from Bush, things have improved considerably since he took over from GW Bush, the man who will go down as the worst president in US history. The problems that you describe were there when Obama took office, just because republicans did not want to include them in the accounting of the deficit or acknowledge the havoc they wreaked does not change the fact that they occurred on Bush's watch. Remember when the vice president said "deficits don't matter" remember when Bush was handed a surplus, remember when for the first time in many years the US government was solvent, Bush did not pay any bills with that surplus, he used it as justification of a tax cut, and gave it away as tax rebates. Don't act like our troubles started the moment Obama took office, or that republicans have done a single thing to improve the situation since they gained control of the house, remember they stated their number goal immediately after the election, and that was to see the president fail, to make sure he was a one term president. Remember when the same guys who said that about Obama said it was unpatriotic to say anything bad about Bush because he was a war time president and that doing so emboldened our enemies and put American lives in danger. What the hell happened to that line of thought from republicans. I will never vote for a single republican for any office of any kind for the rest of my life because of the way they have treated the duly elected president of the US, and remember they did this during wartime and at a time our country was facing unprecedented challenges to it's entire financial system, they don't give a damn about this country and they made that known loud and clear by publicly stating what their main goal was, and not one pussy from the republican side has ever called them out on that. I don't vote for pussies who can't handle losing an election, and throw tantrums and pout for 4 years instead of trying to the job they are paid to do and come up with workable solutions and compromise, just so they can punish the man who the American people overwhelming selected as their president. Is that straightforward and frank enough for you, DeMint, McConnel, Boehner, and all the other republicans that were complicit by way of their actions or just their silence on the number one stated goal of of some of the people who were elected to the highest offices in the land to serve this nation to the best of their ability.
Rick: Do you know that the last two Presidents to pay down on the national debt were Clinton and Carter?
Do you know that 94% of the national debt was caused by just three people?
Reagan
Bush
bush/cheney
Gump,
Newsflash: Bush is not running for President, Obama is. People that blame others for not being able to fix problems they committed to fixing are by definition poor leaders. Hence, Obama. The POTUS has done nothing but blame others in the 3.5 years he has on the job. Weak.
Miklkit: You left Obama off of your list. To be factually accurate you should add him to the list (he is, in fact the worst offender of the four) and remove Cheney. Cheney was VP and it was Bush who should be held accountable, not the VP (though Cheney was probably the best VP this country has ever had). Thank you in advance.
It's Grump, not Gump. When Obama explains where the problem originates from and what it entails to correct it, it only is taken as blaming by those who know they are responsible for those problems, and Cheney should be in prison for treason for compromising the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Hey miklkit you need to climb off the Democratic Party soapbox. First off, no president balances the budget, ever. Congress controls the purse strings so it is at the very least a joint effort. Second, in the years of both Carter and Clinton the national debt rose. Period end of story.
Clinton pushed through tax increases in his first year in office. Clinton also increased taxes on Social Security, which at the time was running a huge surplus. But even taking SS out of the equation the federal government ran a budget surplus for two Clinton years. Of course most liberals like to ignore the fact that Clinton presided over a booming economy from huge stock market gains, the dot.com bubble, with unexpected revenue from capital gains and a period of rising salaries. None of which Clinton played any role in creating.
Clinton also signed NAFTA into law, and no other trade agreement ever signed has cost this country as many jobs. Millions of jobs left this country, and the middle class were the ones that paid the heavy price. It did not happen overnight, but the combined losses from Clinton signing NAFTA easily wiped out any surplus or hope of future surpluses as the jobs have never been replaced in this country.
When it comes to presidents they fall in four categories. Good, bad, lucky, and unlucky. Carter was an unmitigated disaster for this country. He sent the country into a recession. Regan ended the cold war by simply outspending the Soviet Union sending them into bankruptcy. Bush Sr got suckered with the read my lips comment, that may have been the beginning of the end to compromise in Washington. Clinton was both lucky and good, but his policies alone would have been nothing to cheer about had he not had the luck of the times. Bush was bad and unlucky. He saw the dot.com bubble burst, 9/11, and he was a big spender. Obama is unlucky and bad. Unlucky to have inherited a mess, but bad because he has only made it far worse.
The real problem in politics is liberals never hold their own party accountable any more then conservatives do. No one standing on their parties sideline can do anything but blame the other side, and that attitude only benefits the politicians. There is a reason Obama has set on a course of dividing the country, because united we stand and divided we fall. Division keeps the politicians in power. If the people were united, it would be the politicians that fall.
Everyone needs to take off the blinders and see the mess this country is in, and there is more then enough blame to go around. Blame will fix nothing. Blame will not end gridlock. Blame will not pay the bills. Blame has gotten this country nowhere, and it never will.
How ellegant the plain truth is. After reading or glancing at the entire posts, I'm glad to see someone besides me has the ability to think. We need to eliminate politics as a profession. God bless America.
Gump,
Thank you for proving my point. Best regards,
Victor
Grump: I stand with you.
An attempt to ding??? DING, DING. I don't know about you Mr. Obrien, but $500 million is a lot to piss away. So far Obama has spent more than 4 million per green job created. How could anyone survice this kind of wasteful spending.
I'm sorry, but I'm having a hard time figuring out your name much less your math. What is it? fedup'with'isite or just fed up wth thisite? Is 'thisite' a mineral? What's the angle?
Wow - that is the liberal way. If you can't attack the facts, attack the person. And boy are you witty ... (NOT)
louisj...I am not having a hard time figuring out that you can't dispute fedup's comment. Go back to bed.
$500 million, how about the two wars and prescription drug and those tax breaks for the 1% your talk about waste.
Fedupwthsite,
During a Republican administration, it was not about the debt, and it is certainly not about the debt now; It's about the poor, minorities, women rights, and abortion, and you know it. This is no surprise because most of the you will watch your own mother die before you offer any assistance. Not to mention (war) so you can kill off American citizens.
By the way, Mitt belongs in prison, not in the white house.
When you read the post from Palmquist1 you can see that in a liberal world two wrongs make a right. Then the follow up post by Jordan3259 is just all about entitlements. Apparently no one has let liberals in a little secret, that money doesn't really grow on trees.
It was not $500 million. After the dust settled it was $141 million.
Do you know that if green energy got the exact same subsidy that Big Oil gets it would be cheaper than Big Oil?
If you plan to vote for BO ... you are part of the problem ...
... and you have never read the Federalist Papers ...
... the only folks who like BO ... really like FREE STUFF ...
.
If you think Mitt Romney is the answer then you obviously don't understand the question.
DJESQ: I have a copy of the Federalist papers sitting right here, as well as the Anti Federalist papers. I have read both.
So, tell me, what is it you don't understand about either of these documents, and what does it have to do with the right wing hatred for their President?
7 Things You Should Know About Solyndra
1. The DOE program that loaned money to Solyndra was started by President Bush in 2005.
2. Congress, in approving the program, thought there would be more failures. They approved $26B for loans and set aside another $10B for losses. So far 2 of 33 recipients have gone bankrupt, Solyndra and Beacon. Solyndra could potentially cost $529M while Beacon cost $12M. This still leaves over $9.4B in case other loans go belly-up.
3. Solyndra wanted another loan but was denied.
4. Private investors in Solyndra lost close to $1B when the firm went bankrupt. While the GOP is quick to point out the largest investor in the firm was an Obama supporter, the second largest investor was a fund controlled by the Walton family...as in WalMart.
5. The DOE loan program for solar and wind energy is over.
6. Contrary to what Team Romney would have you believe, investigators have found no smoking gun pointing to improper influence in obtaining the loan for Solyndra.
7. Why did Solyndra fail? Because the market for solar panels is being flooded by inexpensive panels being manufactured in China. What that says, folks, is that we are behind the 8-ball when it comes to alternative energy.
Did you rip that directly from the Obama team's propaganda website? Nice to know you can think for yourself...
But seriously, how do YOU feel about $500 Million in taxpayer's money being (illegally) funneled to a bankrupt company to repay Obama's campaign donors?
edSmith: Did you have some facts to dispute history that DaNoid posted?
And how is that possible? Well, the Chinese government decided that this was a market they wanted to own. To do so, they have pumped $billions in government subsidies into Chinese manufacturers of solar products. But that's OK because it is China - you know, the same country that Republicans say we can't impose any sanctions on because it would cost jobs here in America.
Now China owns the solar energy market, America cannot create jobs but American companies get rich selling cheap, government-subsidized Chinese crap to Americans who cannot find jobs. Does anyone else see the disconnect in this short-sighted approach to international economics?
It is true that while President Bush was in office that they looked at putting money in. They did not put money in due to the fact that they felt it was a bad risk.
Instead of investing in new techniques or technologies Solyndra built a brand new plant. Solar panels in their present form are not cost effective. There are some new technologies or uses that look interesting, but I have not found anything that would leave me to believe that they are going to be practical any time soon.
edsmith But seriously, how do YOU feel about $500 Million in taxpayer's money being (illegally) funneled to a bankrupt company to repay Obama's campaign donors?
ed Show some proof of your statement, don't have any? You lie!
Yea... illegally? Campaign donors? The Waltons are his campaign donors? The congressional approved program was illegal? Bush wanted to initially do something that was illegal?
The comment makes no sense, just a bunch of buzz words to stir the pot of the ignorant...
EE:
It's the repub game plan - turn the US into China. That way they get cheap labor and no regulations. It's a businessman's wet dream. Low low low labor costs and nobody to tell them they can't pollute and no HR departments to tell them they are being unfair. It costs too much to ship all the cheap goods from China to here, so they will bring the China system here.
All you TPrepubs crying about Obama being a communist ought to watch whats happening. Our business leaders are turning into a kind of communist party leader - buying influence and bossing political office holders.
Smitty: How do you feel about millions of taxpayer dollars lining the pockets of Halliburton and other republican politicians pockets while rebuilding a country we attacked without provocation and have to nation build., Republicans think this is OK, but anything to get the U.S. off oil is bad.
JackieK, independent Smitty how do you feel about millions of taxpayer Dollare lining the pockets oh Hailiburton..........
I was never in favor of going there in the first place. Yes it was a waste of money. Why did Russia or than The Soviet Union in the late eighties go broke? They invaded Afghanistan. They went broke there. Than Bush2 starts two wars in that region. Another reason why America is going broke.
edSmith
You need to be more observant. The article Da Noid linked to was CNN, and the author works for Fortune.com, hardly an Obama "propaganda" web site.
BTW: That article sums up Romney's position on Solyndra nicely:
It also sums up Romney's whole campaign: Disgraceful.
Oh, I don't know Smitty, I don't think it's all that bad.
America may be going broke, but the people running America aren't............
subnormal
subnormal, If you bothered to do some research you would of found out that Solyndra's solar panels where cutting edge. They had come up with a new solar panel that used tubes instead of flat collectors that are way more efficient than the flat panels. They produced more electricity with smaller panels and where the best panels. The problem came when China decided they where a game changer and started subsidizing the panels made in China to make them cheaper than Solyndra's. Maybe if we gave subsidies to companies like Solyndra instead of the oil companies they would still be in business. Re publican's subsidies for highly profitable oil companies that only help increase their profits good, subsidies for a company trying to market cutting edge technology that would cut into those oil profits Bad.
I do, thank you EEngineer. I might add that the Communist government of China gets a lot of that money to invest from good ole American Wal-mart shoppers and Apple products users to name a few of the good ole American companies who support Communist China in the name of American free market capitalism.
Jefromac23: As I understand it the Solyndra panels were more expensive to buy but cheaper and easier to install, plus being more efficient.
Then the Chinese flooded the market. This is an old strategy pioneered by the Japanese in the 1980s called "Business as War". It is Socialism against Capitalism and the results are in.
It's called price dumping, and neither the Chinese or the Japanese are socialists.
Most of money given out for "green" energy went to Obama campaign finance "bundlers" from the 2008 campaign. But does anyone really care, or do they just expect the government to be corrupt?
Really? It was given to people who supported your President? I see. That's why Bush tried to fast track loans to Solyndra. He wanted President Obama elected, knowing what a mess Bush had created in this nation.
Are you equally critical for Romney giving taxpayer funds to a similar company that failed Konarka? Or is it only bad when you think you can use it against your President?
Newday....Why are you trying to rewrite history? Yes BUsh liked it at first, but unlike Obama, Bush was smart and decided that it was a bad investment for the country and Solyndra would likely go bankrupt. Yes, I am critical of all tax payer funds going to companies. Of course the democrats love the corporate welfare like that while republican voters would rather get rid of all of it.
PutAmericaFirst:
As much as I enjoy being reminded of the Fox "news" talking points, that is simply not true. Bush tried to approve the loans right before your President took office.
For an accurate timeline: Bush Administration Advanced Loan Guarantees for Two Years, Media Blows the Story; Stephen Lacey, Richard Capehart.
The right wing like to make hay out of this due to one name who was an Obama supporter, but as my friend Houston wrote, the earliest supporters of this were the Waltons, who are not for Obama.
Facts are stubborn things. Try to sort through what is true and what is not.
I like how they find one company with one investor that might have been indirectly linked to an obama supporter and suddenly he's just giving money to all his donors... Of course those poor innocent waltons just didn't know the "Crony Illegal Communistic Socialistic Nazi Kenyan Keynesian North Pole Honk Honk Dey Took UR JIBS!" president would take interest in the company...
newdayDAWNING...RETURNED
What's really revolting is that the Republicans are vilifying George Kaiser as a greedy billionaire whose only motive for making political donations is to buy politicians who will serve his financial interests -- in other words, a typical REPUBLICAN greedy billionaire donor.
As Politifact reported, the truth is that Kaiser would NOT have made any profit from Solyndra and did not get any of the money given back to private investors after Solyndra failed. His only connection to Solyndra was that his NON-profit Kaiser Foundation invested in the company, and he has not received any financial benefits from his donations to Obama, whom he knew was a proponent of "green" energy (Kaiser is an OIL billionaire for crying out loud).
It's ironic that Repubs accuse Democrats for smearing all rich people as evil, but it's the Republicans who are doing the smearing of George Kaiser.
The other thing that makes me dizzy is this. The right wing accuses the President of attacking business. And now they accuse him of trying to help a business.
The man can't win.
Helping the business climate, and acting like an ill-advised venture capitalist are two separate things..
Funny how liberals think. When Obama pumped a half billion into Solyndra before it went bankrupt, he gets kudos for trying. But when Bain pumps millions into a business that then goes bankrupt, they were being opportunists. All Obama did in the case of Solyndra was make sure his cronies had money in their pockets before the company declared bankruptcy.
Odumbo brought the Chicago way to a corrupt Washington D.C. and has doubled down on the rot. Things will get much better when Odumbo, Holder, Geitner, Dodd, Frank, Pelosi, Reid, et al are all wearing pinstripes at Leavonworth in 2013.
Who is "Odumbo"?
...and while you're at it, in order to end up "wearing pinstripes in Leavonworth (sic) in 2013", perhaps you can enlighten us as to what crime was committed that will require this?
as opposed to, say, the Texas way: leading through stupidity, a failure to master basic English vocabulary, and starting useless wars as a way to settle a score for Daddy?
Giving $500 million in loan guarantees to a worthless company named Solyndra whose main investor was an Obama bundler. Looks like quid per quo. Does bribery, kick backs, influence peddling, malfesance ring a bell.
Doctor,
you are so dumb. Obama is from Hawaii, not Texas. So he loves his Daddy, you got a problem with that? Maybe you don't even know who your daddy is since he didn't pay your momma with a check.
If you don't have anything nice to say about President Obama, STFU!
First of all, the term you are looking for is "quid pro quo" and not "quid per quo".
Second, neither the DOE Inspector General nor the Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have provided a single bit of concrete evidence that any improprieties in this affair. Until anyone does, all you have is a blind accusation.
I believe the Doctor was speaking about the last failed GOP administration.
Typical Liberal....he was referring to Bush! Wow when commenting on someones stupidity you might want to get your head out of your butt before you make yourself look like a dolt.
I'm nearly 100% sure Typical is just a republican poster who thinks he's a hoot or he can make our side look dumb by posting that drivel... sad really...
If Obama gets re-elected, look at the mess he will inherit.
We have been looking at the Iraq Abortion, tax cuts for the aristocracy, and the Great Recession for many years now. It will take at least a decade to recover from them, no thanks to you.
"But after half a billion in wasted taxpayer dollars and nearly 2,000 unemployed workers, it’s clear the only people who lost on President Obama’s Solyndra gamble were American taxpayers."
I wish Romney's staffer could have finished a complete thought, maybe something such as:
...yet, half a billion dollars is perfectly fine for us, the Romney campaign, to spend buying The Presidency. In fact, we'll spend more if we need to. We need to divert our attention away from green energies. A few Americans -- White men, specifically -- stand to make huge profits by raping the earth, polluting the skies, and paving a way for those pesky dumb people in West Virginia to get lung cancer from mining coal. It's a win-win for us, because we don't believe in decent health care for the poor, so we weed them out while simultaneously keeping our heads in the sand about the needs of the planet.
How much did President Obama spend in his campaign in 2008?
How is green energy not raping the earth? Where do you think the metals come from? Have you ever watched a show on how it is made?
And most of those Pesky people in west Virginia are what color?
And the only rich people in the country are white men?
So lets cover the Arizona desert in solar panels that will be made in China, build huge power line towers using metal from China, strung with copper wire produced in China. Dig up the earth every where but here in our country, pollute their water, their air, and give them lung cancer due to all the chemicals they breath in. Yeah that is so green!!!
Rommey has not paid taxes in ten years Obama has, Rommey ship jobs oversea and Obama has not, Rommey is for China and Obama is for America. Solyndra owner where Republican and they didn't give money to Obama. They used the American government to get money remember the Republican are all for the money not for America.
Pill pushing quack in Arizona chanting "Bush" does not absolve the Kenyan from Al Caponia from using tax money to pay off his cronies. Odumbo in Leavonworth in 2013.
Do ya wanna know why Gas Prices are So High.
Republicans” and their Stepchild “The Evil Violent Tea Billy’s” are just like a “Huge Power Outage ”. They are a Major Disaster, Cause Fear, Panic, Chaos, Misery and Destroy anything good in their Paths.
G. O. P. = GREED, OIL, POWER
Remember Folks, “Oil Prices" are about Corruption and Greed, not Supply and Demand.
This is from a Great Article I found Online:
A Senator goes whoring
It happened on the night of December 15, 2000. The country was in tumult over the Bush-Gore election. This diversion offered Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas an exquisite opportunity to push American financial stability back 100 years.
That evening, Gramm inserted a 262-page amendment into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Leaked e-mails would later reveal that it had been written by lobbyists for Enron, Goldman Sachs and the Koch brothers, Kansas billionaires who would later fund the Tea Party movement.
Gramm had turned his office into a subsidiary of Wall Street. From 1997 to 2002, the securities and banking industries had lathered him with $640,000 in campaign contributions. His biggest sugar daddies weren't from Texas; they were Credit Suisse,Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Goldman. And he was more than willing to step-and-fetch-it on their behalf.
Big oil, big banks and big speculators such as the Kochs wanted to make monster bets in the futures markets. But they wanted to do it in secrecy — without any government regulation.
If you want to know the Truth follow the “Money Trail”. It will usually lead to the Lobbyist, Special Interest and the Self Righteous!
Isn’t it Amazing ……..there seems to be Plenty of Gas when Prices go way Up.
If it isn’t “Price Fixing”…then why does Gas Prices go up really Fast within Hours but goes down Really , Really Slow?
Posted by dls 37641 Excellent List and Explains da Evil Agenda from da Republican TeaBilly Conservatives.
The Kind of Men who support Flip Flop Romney
1) William Koch, Runs Oxbow Carbon, worth $4 Billion, Donation $2 Million to Romney’s Super PAC,
What He Wants: To pollute for free, Koch’s fortune is tied to some of the nation’s dirtiest industries
2) Harold Simmons (a Swift Boater and corporate raider), Traffics in Toxic Chemicals, worth $9.8 Billion, Donation $800,000 to Romney total giving $16.7 Million, What He Wants: Plans to store radioactive waste in Texas
3) Bob Perry, Owner of Perry Homes, Worth $600 Million, Donation $4 Million to Romney’s Super PAC ,
What He Wants: Tort reform to limit jury awards on homebuilders who do shoddy work
4) Jim Davis, Chairman New Balance Shoes, worth $1.8 Billion, Donation $1 Million to Romney’s Super PAC
What He Wants: A lucrative Defense Contract
5) Richard & Bill Marriott, Heir to Marriott Hotel Fortune, Worth $3.3 Billion, Donation $2 Million
to Restore Our Future, What He Wants: A legal pool of foreign born workers to work in their hotels at slave labor rates Romney served twice on the Marriott Board
7) Edward Conard, Ex Managing Director of Bain Capital, Worth $250 Million, Donation $1 Million to
Restore Our Future, What He Wants: To screw taxpayers like Romney does with half the tax rates of others
8) Frank VanderSloot, CEO Melaeuca, Inc., Worth $1 Billion, Donation $1 Million to Romney’s Super
PAC , What He Wants: Less consumer protections
9) Steven Lund, Vice Chairman Nu Skin Enterprises, worth $31.9 Million, Donation $2 Million to Restore
Our Future, What He Wants: A world safe for false advertising & marketing scams
10) Julian Robertson Jr., Hedge Fund Titan, worth $2.5 Billion, Donation $1.25 Million to Restore Our
Future What He Wants: lower taxes for the Rich
11) John Paulson, Hedge Fund Titan, worth $12.5 Billion, Donation $1 Million to Romney’s Super PAC
What He Wants: No restrictions on Wall St. gambling
12) Paul Singer, Hedge Fund Titan, Worth $1 Billion, Donation $1 Million to Romney’s Super PAC What He
Wants: He Needs Fed backing in his lawsuit to collect $2 Billion from Argentina
13) Robert Mercer, CEO Renaissance Technologies, made $125 Million in 2011 alone, Donation $ 1 Million to Romney’s Super PAC ,What He Wants: To squelch a proposed tax on stock options
14) Kenneth Griffin, CEO Citadel LLC, worth $3 Billion, Donation $1 Million to Restore our Future What He
Wants: To end Volcker Rule on Dodd-Frank Wall St excesses
15) L. Francis Rooney III, CEO Rooney Holdings, worth $40 Million, Donation $1 Million to Restore our
Future What He Wants: More building contract patronage
16) Steven Webster, CEO Avista Capital, worth $4 Billion, Donation $1 Million to Romney’s Super PAC
What He Wants: To Drill baby drill first owner of Deep Sea Horizon the worst environmental disaster in the Nation’s history.
17) Donald Trump, Casino Operator who knows what he wants he is just a delusional birther nut
CEO bundler for Pfizer contributed $500,000 to Obama's relection campaign. Pfizer also contributed xanax and other benzos, bextra and semi synthethic opioids responsible for the accidental poisoning deaths of 490,000 Americans since 1995 (40,000 in 2011 alone), 100s of thousands of maimings and thousands more deaths due to collateral damage incidents, shootings, automobile accidents, drownings, falls, stabbings etc. directly traceable to Big Pharma's poison pills. Thanks Obama.
Huh, so a random bundler from a drug company backs Obama and suddenly Obama fast tracked approval for a drug that is used every day by millions of Americans (approved over a decade ago) safely and any accidents with any drug by them is his fault? Jesus, I didn't know he was god... just thought he was president...
Felons for President!!! The new Republican standard. Romney 2012!!
They should put Odumbo, Denise Rich and Eric Hold-up in the same cell.
Folks,
Who just Blocked da Campaign Finance Reform Bill?
Who just Blocked Obama’s Jobs Bill?
Who rewrote and put a Loophole in da House Version of da Stock Act Bill ?
You Guessed it……Boehner, McConnell , Cantor and da rest of them Republican TeaBilly Politicians.
Mitt "F da Poor" Romney is nothing more than a "Howdy Doodie Political Puppet” sitting on da Koch Brothers Lap.
You BetCha....Fer Sure.
Do you deliberately try to look that foolish, ignorant, and simple minded just for kicks or do you really believe the pathetic lies that you spout over and over. Seriously, what type of individual would inundate a vine like this with cut and paste projects of nothing but mindless propaganda. At least MSNBC gave us the ignore button to be able to filter through mindless tripe and hate like you post.
Mitt is about as Real as a Plastic Bananna!
Is it Mitt ____________Romney?
“Political Puppet”
“I’m Not a Crook”
“Country Club”
“Middle Class Warfare”
“Not To Much..Out of Touch”
“Cheap Labor is Our Future”
“Outsourcing is Awesome”
“Just Tell me what ya Wanna Hear”
“Profits Over People”
“Corporations are People Too”
“F da Poor”
“No Substance”
“Let Detroit go Bankrupt”
“National Right to Work”
“Swiss Accounts”
“Flip Flop”
“Pray da Gay Away”
Mitt Romney’s Solution to all Problems…….Prayer and a Moment of Silence.
Da Biggest Threat to Mitt Romney’s Campaign……..da Truth!
Of course the GOP and Democrats should both complain about the Solyndra mess and others of its kind. It is corporate welfare at its worst. This is why corporate money gets so involved in politics.....special favors like this. It has the potential to be corruption on a massive scale. Solyndra is far worse than the no bid contracts to Haliburton. Just image how many needy families could have be helped with that $500 million we flushed down the toilet.
Haliburton kill are military personal by electric shock, I say that is a lot worse then Solyndra.
What the Repubs really mean is that it tests well if people are exposed to Repub lies, like the one that Solyndra was supported only by pro-Obama investors. The truth is that money was invested in Solyndra from sources such as the Walton (Walmart) family, who are no friends of Barack Obama.
Houston......I know the left loves to take things out of context so that they can deceive people and try to make it look like they tell lies. Distorting the truth is the only way you can win. Yes, republicans were the ones to initially look at helping solyndra (I am against all of that corruption, regardless of party), but at least the BUsh administration dug a little deeper and withdrew the funding because they figured out how bad of an investment this was. Solyndra is just another example of where the Bush administration did things better than the Obama administration. Why do you only single out the Waltons. There were lots of individuals who gave to Solyndra........and many gave to the Obama campaign.....including the CEO.
Politifact rated Karl Rove's attack ads against the president as "Mostly False".
http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2011/nov/15/americans-prosperity/solyndra-ad-president-barack-obama-taxpayer-money/
The charge that Obama is guilty of crony capitalism is just another vile Republican lie.
And Republicans always fail to mention:
1. The Solyndra loan guarantee was a multi-year process that the Bush Administration launched in 2007.
2. In an effort to show it had done something to support renewable energy, the Bush Administration tried to take Solyndra before a DOE credit review committee to get it approved before President Obama was even inaugurated.
3. Solyndra raised an additional $219 million in private investment just before the $535 million loan guarantee from the government was approved. If this was such a shoddy deal that anyone could see it was a waste, then how did Solyndra manage to convince private investors???
Houston.....WHy is that even worth posting.....don't you know that most political ads are lies. Obama is guilty of crony capitalism just as much as Bush and both spout vile lies. It seems like the left lies more often than the right, but both parties do it.
Eengineer.....Yes it was started AND ENDED by the Bush administration. Bush realized that it was a bad investment and dropped the issue. Just more proof that BUsh was smarter than Obama when it comes to finances. Your third point doesn't even make sense. That is what venture capital firms like Bain capital do. They invest in desperate companies like Solyndra and try to get them turned around so they make millions. The US government on the other hand would not have made virtually nothing from their risk.
PutAmericaFirst
Most Republican ads are lies. Sure, there are exaggerations in most political ads, but Republicans have cornered the market on stinking lies like the ones with the doctored videos of Obama taken out of context.
Repeating the lie doesn't make it true. There's been zero evidence of favoritism in the Obama administration. As the Politifact article noted, George Kaiser, the Obama donor whom the Repubs single out as the major beneficiary of the Solyndra loans, was in no position to make a profit from Solyndra:
The reason that conservatives automatically assume some cozy relationship must have existed between Kaiser and Obmaa is that conservatives assume that all political contributions made by wealthy donors are made to further the financial interests of those donors. That's pretty much true of Republican donors like the Koch Brothers these days, but it's not true of Democrats to anywhere near the same extent. Wealthy donors to Democrats tend to be motivated more by altruism -- the desire to use their money to make the world a better place. I have a better opinion of wealthy people than Republicans do. Unlike Republicans, I don't believe that all wealthy people are always motivated by pure avarice.
Kaiser apparently is one of those motivated by altruism. According to the Politifact article, the Kaiser's foundation focuses "on poverty, community health, civic enhancement — and national energy policy." Wealthy people with those motivations would naturally tend to donate to Democratic candidates, and not to the Republican Paryt, which has become the Party of Greed. So it's no surprise that Kaiser donated to Obama, who's a champion of "green" energy development and then supported a green energy start-up company from which he never stood to benefit financially.
PutAmerica
FirstEengineer.....Yes it was started AND ENDED by the Bush administration.
It was NOT ended by the Bush administration. Read the Politifact article and stop spouting right wing talking points.
EEngineer,
just because you have money does not mean that you are smart. I could have told them it was a stupid idea, but well they never asked.
There has been a big push for supposed Green Energy, there is no such thing, every form of energy we use pollutes in one form or another.
Houston,
I have to disagree, both parties cater to big business. Saying that all Democrats are looking for the common good is not a true statement.
If that was true we would not have light rail, be pushing for high speed trains, have jobs bills that only hire public workers, have cities where you have to be part of a union electrician to set up a booth at a convention center. Make a big speech about how government spending is out of control and spend even more. Talk about our rights while killing even more people with drones.
If our politicians truly cared we would not be in this mess to begin with. We try to do things that are politically correct, well some times the truth is the truth. Until we can recognize that we will continue to struggle.
When it comes to Solyndra the liberal Obama lovers keep harping that it was started by President Bush. They avoid the facts that the Bush Administration said NO to government loans under the DOE program. The left fails to state the facts which is the 500 million dollar loan came from Obama's Stimulus money. The left also fails to point out that it was Obama's energy dept that rewrote the contract to insure private investors got paid before the government in case of failure and bankruptcy.
Sorry sfcret, no matter how many times you post the Fox News talking points, what you say is simply not true. Read the link to the timeline I posted.
Obama's agenda was chosen in place of sound judgement with the Solyndra loan. GSA spending spree, now a report of billions in fraudulent tax returns made by the IRS. Meanwhile President Obama pushes for increased taxes. He needs to show better results with what he is spending before we consider sending him more. Obama is in over his head. OMG (Obama must go)
subnormal
Houston,
I didn't say that all Democrats are looking out for the common good. You're misrepresenting what I said, so I'm not going to bother reading what you have to say.
newdayDAWNING...RETURNED
But conservatives are true believers in the Big Lie technique. If Fox News repeats a lie and often enough and loudly enough, it magically becomes the truth.
subnormal
They didn't ask you because you don't know what you're talking about. Solyndra got in trouble because the cost of silicon for solar panels unexpectedly plummeted to 10% of its previous value in a short period of time. That drop in price made silicon based solar panels less costly than Solyndra's non-silicon based panels, which had been cheaper than the silicon panels before the decline in silicon prices. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I did bother to read the Politifact article. Like all investments in new technologies, there were risks involved but they weren't unreasonable risks. If the Obama administration and the private investors had known about the pending decline in silicon prices, they would not have invested in Solyndra.
Houston: it is like the right wing cannot discern fact from fiction.
newdayDAWNING...RETURNED
And that explains why the Repubs are going to nominate Mitt Romney. He'll tell any lie the right wing wants to hear.
He represents them well. If the lie doesn't work on the first day, he will switch it to the opposite view the next. Can't keep up with this bunch.
newdayDAWNING - I am aware that Solyndra was started under President Bush, but it was not approved by President Bush's Administration, in fact it was denied. It was approved, on a fast track by Obama's Administration, mainly for a photo op. The money came from the estimated 27+ billion dollars that was in the Obama Stimulus bill (ARRA) for the Energy Department.
Not to change the subject but I have asked on several different posts without a reply from the left as to how can Obama campaign on the Republicans raising tax on the middle class when the House passed an extension of the Bush/Obama tax cuts? It would appear if the tax cuts are allowed to expire because the Democrat controlled Senate and Obama refuse to accept the House bill, it would be them that raised taxes on the middle class. We know that Obama has admitted that raising taxes on those making $200K (single)$250K (married) would only raise enough revenue to run the government for about 8 days. Obama admits that it is more of a "fairness issue" than a revenue issue.
sfcet
It was NOT denied by the Bush administration. You're just blindly parroting the Republicans' lie. Read the Politifact article:
The Bush administration officials scheduled the completion of their analysis for March 2009 on January 15, 2009 only five days before Bush left office if they were going to deny the loan, would they? If you've got proof that the Bush officials decided to reverse themselves in the five days before Obama took office, then cough it up. As Mitt would say: PUT UP OR SHUT UP.
sfcret
But you ARE changing the subject because you've lost the argument over Solyndra. As for the tax cuts, the Republicans are holding the middle-class tax cuts hostage unless they get the extension of tax cuts for their wealthy donors. The Democrats already called the Republicans bluff and introduced a bill that would extend middle-class tax cuts only. The Republicans, of course, voted it down in the House.
Sorry, sfcret, you are wrong. If you read the article I posted, you will find out that this has been lied about by the right wing for a long time.
Houston No, I never lost on Solyndra you and your left wing are wrong, but as usual you try to deflect from Obama's failures and blame Bush. See the following from wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra
"Solyndra's loan approval process began under the Bush administration. However, emails show that two weeks before Obama took office, the Energy Department panel considering the loan unanimously decided not to proceed. In March 2009, one White House budget analyst wrote an email stating that "This deal is NOT ready for prime time."[19] However, Solyndra was the first company approved for a loan guarantee under the Obama administration.[20] On March 20, 2009 the United States Department of Energy made a "conditional commitment" to a $535 million loan guarantee to support Solyndra's construction of a commercial-scale manufacturing plant for its proprietary solar photovoltaic panels.[21] The White House scheduled a press event for September 4 and federal reviewers gave final approval on September 2.[22] After securing the loan guarantee, the Federal Financing Bank, a part of the Department of the Treasury, loaned Solyndra $527 million.[23] The taxpayers are not expected to recover much of that money.[24]
Solyndra also received a $25.1 million tax break from California's Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority.[25]
The majority of Solyndra funding was provided under Title XVII section 1705 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (as amended by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.) Title 1705 has provided $36 billion in loan guarantees for renewable energy projects."
NOT TO PROCEED, means not to approve, deny the loan, what part don't you understand? Also what part of the last quoted paragraph don't you understand? You are only spouting the left wing Obama talking points. Get a life and do some research.
As to my point about Obama and the Democrats in the Senate raising taxes on the middle class is TRUE if they refuse to go along with the House vote to retain the Bush/Obama tax cuts. You can't have it both ways. But then the way the left deflects from Obama's failures, I am sure you will try.
Now I have to get back to the Olympics.
sfcret
Nobody blamed Bush for Solyndra. The fact that Bush showed himself to be a poor president for so many other reasons is making you unduly defensive.
And that wiki article states:
Not proceeding is not the same as "denying the application," which is the false claim that you made. As stated by the Politifact article:
If not proceeding means denying the loan, then please explain why they decided to complete the analysis in March (when it was, in fact, completed). There is no denial here, except for your denial of the facts.
And the comment that "this deal is not ready for prime time" does not imply that the author was saying Solyndra was a bad investment; only that the DEAL to approve the loan was not ready for final approval. As Thinkprogress article puts it:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/09/20/323353/what-the-press-is-getting-wrong-about-solyndra/
And finally you say:
Are you competing in the Word Acrobatics competition? Judging how you twist and contort to arrive at your false conclusions, you might have a good chance for the Gold in that one.
BTW: The Republicans have provided absolutely ZERO evidence that anyone in or out of government warned that Solyndra would be a bad investment because the price of silicon was going to drop dramatically. If someone had, savvy big bucks investors like the Waltons wouldn't have put their money into it, either.
Houston - You are really deflecting but you are getting closer to the truth. If you apply for a loan and the bank or lender says it's not ready you need better documentation before you can get finalized is the same as a denial of the loan until it is further studied and more documentation is produced. Why would the Bush administration put if off until Mar 2009, knowing they would not be in office in March. Get your head out of your a$$ and think for once. Not to proceed is the same as DENIAL or disapproval. The BS you post from thinkprogress is nothing but left wing slanting of the facts. Spin it anyway you want, it doesn't change the fact that the whole Solyndra mess is Obama's and his alone.
Here are some more poitiFACTs that for you to juggle, sfcret, as you go for the Gold in Word Acrobatics. This is what the committee that the WIKI page said decided "not to proceed" on the Solyndra loan ACTUALLY said verbatim:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/nov/17/david-plouffe/solyndra-loan-george-w-bush-david-plouffe/
So THAT's what "not to proceed" (in a WIKI article's words, not the committee's words) actually means.
sfcret
Maybe you should have followed your own crude advice. That way you wouldn't looked so stupid after I just posted the fact that the committee that voted "not to proceed" in a Wiki article's words also said Solyndra's project "appears to have merit." Even without that statement, anyone who didn't have their head up their rear could see that they wouldn't have decided, five days before Obama took office, to wait until March if they'd already decided the loan did NOT have merit.
Blah blah blah. Politifact is NOT a left wing outfit. And Thinkprogress was NOT slanting anything. It's clear that there was no objection by anyone to the loan going through, including the Bush-friendly Walton investors that you pretend you don't know about.
Houston - One more chance for you to admit this was all on Obama's watch. FACT: It was the WH that put pressure on the DOE to get the loan approved. It was Obama's DOE that approved the loan and " The majority of Solyndra funding was provided under Title XVII section 1705 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (as amended by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.) Title 1705 has provided $36 billion in loan guarantees for renewable energy projects."
FACT; It was Obama's DOE who rewrote the loan allowing the private investors to get paid first, ahead of the government, if the loan went into default.
FACT: Solyndra went Bankrupt on Obama's watch, and the US Government will lose most of it's $527 million loan because of Obama's DOE changing the loan agreement.
Now dispute those actual facts that I have mentioned. You and I can spin all we want but when all is said and done it was an Obama screw up and we will continue to pound Obama with the failure, just like the left is making a big deal out of Romney's tax returns.
Have a good evening and make sure to put blame where blame belongs: One the Obama Administration.
BTW, why would the Bush Administration set approval for the loan back to Mar 2009 when they wouldn't even be in Washington or be in a position to approve it?
sfcret
When are YOU going to admit that your claim that the Bush administtation denied the Solyndra loan has been proven false. Politifact even spelled it out for you by reporting that the loan committee of the outgoing Bush loan approval committee concluded that the Solyndra project:
My guess is that you'll never admit you've been proven absolutely wrong because you're just another pathetic right wing liar who hates the president and will go to any lengths to smear him with the miserable lies that the Republican lie machine churns out for you to spew brainlessly.
No, it was not! Bush was pushing this right up to the point that Obama was inaugarated. Bush tried to get it passed but:
In an effort to show it has done something to support renewable energy, the Bush Administration tries to take Solyndra before a DOE credit review committee before President Obama is inaugurated. The committee, consisting of career civil servants with financial expertise, remands the loan back to DOE “without prejudice” because it wasn’t ready for conditional commitment.
Bring me facts or STFU!
Well, then I guess the Chinese government is stupid! They have flooded the market with Solyndra technology (wanna guess how much they paid for the IP?) and Solyndra is gone. They own this market and we do not! Who is being paid? American workers or Chinese workers?
Yep! America needs more of this! Elect Romney!
EEngineer
As you've probably guessed by now, these guys are impervious to facts and logic. Arguing with them is an exercise in futility for both of us.
sfcret:
Because, as Politifact explained clearly, it was getting too close to the end of the Bush administration and the loan committee thought it was better to let the issue be handled by the incoming Obama administration.
BTW: You're an idiot.
Solyndra went bust on Obama's watch. He approved it. The went broke. Even he does not deny it. Those are the facts....enough said.
damn the pro Obama folks are treating this like FLOTUS' nearly $7000 blouse - why worry about it?
When will this admin take responsibility for serious screw ups?
It is amazing - absolutely amazing - no big deal to lose several hundreds of millions
Obama et al have to be out of their minds to blow off such a thing as if it is no big deal or someone else's fault!
In 1975, while I was a young man in high school in Cambridge, I met Will. That was his name he used back when he was younger. I was considering Harvard, and went there for an interview. After the interview and tour of the university I met Will as I was leaving. Him and I talked for a little while and he ended up taking me to an 8 Days Inn in his Pontiac Grandville and molested me and continued to overpower me and rape me anally until I could no longer walk. I was 17 at the time and my youth and life was forever changed. This man should never be in public office.
Quick.....go tell Harry Reid. I am sure that he will spill that over the congressional floor and the zombies in the media will put this out regardless of the truth.
Don take the tampon out of your ass and put it in your mouth and stop licking Odumbo's nether regions.
left
what kind of heartless bastard are you? This man was RAPED by Mittens and you make such a callous remark. I thought I had heard everything but you take the cake, or the cudgel, as it were.
Did Will change his name to Harry, right before he ran for Senate?
mlkboneundrwear Did Will change his name to Harry, right before he ran for Senate?
Back at lobbing attacks of lies eh. You righties do nothing but lie. you brought this yesterday why today. You know don from post #22 is lies worst than you. Damn the two of you are fools
Don, while I feel for you if this really happened to you, I believe that you wrote that to try to smear someone. If this is in fact true...instead of writing about it on here, why don't you inform the authorities and seek some legal and therapy to help yourself get over this. Yes, it took many years for people harmed by priest and Sandusky, but, with the help of the legal system you could find some peace. Otherwise, you are just a twisted individual.
If that's the best you Libs have got, then Obama is one and done.
Keep grasping at those straws.
This post should be deleted. Unfounded accusations of criminal acts against anybody have no place here. I'm definitely no fan of the person presumably referred to as "Will", but this is plain disgusting.
Don, If your statement is true, you are right, he should never be in office. Do you have any sort of proof? If you do, it should be publicized. If not, then unfortunately it would just be considered a lie created by the other party.
leftsux, What you wrote in response to Don's note is incredibly rude, just like your screenname. They are both unfortunately disrespectful--to everyone, including yourself. I have read your earlier comments regarding Leavenworth, but I haven't really seen any evidence posted by you to support this "claim." Your comments would be more coherent if they were (a) respectful, (b) lucid, and (c) truthful.
Obama is on the down low. Look at the way he walks and tell me he isn't a sissy. There have been rumors but the media refuses to talk about it. Up until now, he has always spoken out against gay marriage because enough people think he is a sissy.
Doug3495307 - Is it reasonable to conclude that you're a Mitten supporter? If so, can you outline Romney's economic vision and give specific examples of how it would benefit the economy and in particular, middle income brackets where the vast majority of economic growth and activity
originates. After you do that you will be allowed to participate in adult discussions about the “…sissy rumors and the way he walks.”
da dumb dum dum
Staples, and other retail investments, do not create new jobs in the USA. At best they are jobs neutral or they at worst reduce jobs. That's because new retail jobs simply replace existing retail jobs. The way you create new jobs is to pull in money that is being sent overseas. So energy is a prime example as we're sending hundreds of billions overseas for oil. Manufacturing is another example. Let's pull some of that manufacturing back to the USA.
Lets see, Staples employs 90000 people, most of them making minimum wage and dependent on the govt to subsidize their lousy pay and benefits through food stamps and other assistance. Thats a real success story, not.
Yea, he keeps touting that as a success (because its only one of a few that he didn't just rape and pillage instead) but it doesn't look like much of one anyway... besides Solyndra wasn't the ONLY loan... plenty of companies doing alright
What exactly is wrong with making minimum wage?
Commonsenseguy1 your live on it and then tells us how your did it.
Have you ever tried to raise a family, even just a married couple on minimum wage. Kinda hard to pay for food, rent, utilities, and transportation cost(bus fare) just to live. What a dumb statement., a lot of people are doing it. It's also called the working poor....not welfare queens sitting on the couch.
Nothing is keeping you from doing better than your attitude. Just a b who can never be happy.
It's even harder trying to live on Social Security; but that's another topic.
Joe, I'm a happy person with a great attitude anyway! And I think you misjudge JackieK . . . and I'm sorry you chose to apply an inappropriate "b" to your comment. You have no idea who she is or what her life is like. She didn't even say her comment was about her life; rather, just a statement of fact for those who have to live on minimum wage.
The low wage jobs at Staples are the kinds of jobs America will have a lot more of if Romney is elected. That's his solution to competing with countries like China that exploit cheap labor: make America a cheap labor country, too.
Thanks Kirigami: You're right...I work full time in health care, nurse actually, and make middle class wages. I was responding to the post that many do make a living on minimum wages and it is very tough to pay bills on that. Seems many republicans and those on the right want to cut off safety nets for the working poor who are trying not to be leaches and free loaders.
Average wage is 8.45 Hr.,at least Romney created jobs verses job loses since the Food Stamp president took the helm, I see why Obama refuses to make cuts in welfare, he's putting so many people on it feels guilty about cuts. How many more Stimulus programs are in store to get this economy going?
I am scared to imagine Americans would vote this guy in another 4 years , by 2016 we would be on Stimulus 10 and 44 trillion and debt , and Obama still blaming Bush.
Reg: As I stated in the post above...minimum wage jobs are very hard to live on without government support or help. Great that Romney created jobs...the bigger question is that are those jobs with wages at or just above minimum wage or not? Creating low paying jobs and then cutting food stamps, health care to women and children, and assistance for utilities and rent just isn't going to help or sustain the working poor. All I have heard republicans state, is that neighbors, friends, and of course the church help these people out. What I don't get is: stating fellow Americans are suppose to do charity and help each other out.....what do republicans call the "Government"? Are they not American taxpayers and American citizens. Just don't understand the difference.
What this article did not mention is that -
The loan restructuring approved by the Obama Admin guaranteed Kaiser got back $70 million before the American People got paid.
Yeah, nothing wrong with that at all Mr Obama.
George Kaiser got NOTHING from the deal and would have got nothing even if Solyndra had succeeded. Read the Politifact article.
Felons for President!!! The new Republican standard. Romney 2012!!
Houston, Politifact is incorrect if that's what they said. Local reporters discussed this with Kaiser, who admitted he will get his money back before the American People.
mlkboneundrwear
Try reading more carefully. The Politifact article did note that the decision to let private investors recoup their losses before the federal government was a point of controversy. But George Kaiser was NOT an investor. It was his NON PROFIT Kaiser Foundation that would have gotten their money back. You know, the greedy foundation trying to rake in the big bucks by promoting education and anti-poverty programs as well as green energy.
Doesn't matter the tax payers got screwed for trillion dollars because Obama FU! again , nothing new from this guy and his cronies.
Some Americans just don't get it ROMNEY used HIS own money , not TAX payers Money , no one made these people work for Romney, so whatever he did was his business, but since most of those complaining about Romney's business affairs are socialist I can understand the ignorance .
Reg: Sorry, Romney did not use his "own" money....he used the investor's money and money from the companies that Bain took over. All Romney's money was made from investing and he invested some of it in overseas accounts. Illegal no, but that philosophy equates that his money was better in holding in accounts instead of reinvesting in the businesses he was managing.