So a congressional committee found, what many had already suspected, that the Obama administration exerted undue political pressure to ram through the $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra Energy despite the fact that the company didn’t qualify for the loan under the plain language of the law.  Within a year, Solyndra declared bankruptcy.

As I’ve covered in previous posts, Solyndra was but among the first and largest of all the green energy firms backed by the administration that have gone belly up, taking billions of tax dollars with them. Most recently, Amonix, another solar recipient of federal welfare dollars has gone under.  The headlines say it all “Amonix closes North Las Vegas solar plant after 14 months, heavy federal subsidies;” or “Harry Reid’s Pet Green Project Goes Solyndra on Him.”  With the help of more than $20 million in federal grants and tax credits, Amonix opened its plant in May 2011 – by July 2012 the doors were closed – just one more green dream gone awry.

Then there’s news of the Obama administration’s push to loan $2 billion to South Africa to purchase clean energy technology from American firms.  This is a transparent effort to make the administration’s failed green energy “investments” seem like winners after all.  The idea being that while American’s may not be buying green energy tech, foreigners have seen its value.  The problem is South Africa wouldn’t be buying “green” if it weren’t for the low cost loans.  While the administration claims this program is also aimed at helping the poor gain access to electric power, if it really wanted to help the poor gain access to power, it would loan South Africa the money and let them pick the which electric power source to choose from.  Under this scenario, however, South Africa would almost certainly choose to invest in coal fired or  natural gas fired power plant.  Doing so would provide more, more reliable, electric power at lower cost – but it would once again undermine the administration’s green energy message.

And amidst all these stories shining continuing light on the Obama administration’s ongoing attempts to promote a clearly bankrupt (both figuratively and literally) green energy industry comes news of more Presidential fundraising.  You’d think the President would be ashamed to pal around with leaders of failed green energy firms – after all it just reminds the public how tax dollars, their dollars, were steered towards politically connected CEO’s.  But no, President Obama is more than happy to to attend a fundraiser with 60 of his wealthiest supporters, including Matt Rogers, a former senior advisor to the Department of Energy, who played a key role in getting Solyndra’s loan approved.  As my Venezuelan beauty of a wife says “sin vergüenza:” No Shame!

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