When the MSM isn’t outright ignoring Green scandals like Climategate, it is shrugging off the failure of Big Government’s green “investments” like Solyndra as isolated incidents.
“The failure of a single company — and anyone who knows anything about transformative technologies knows there will be failures — is no reason to stop our efforts to catch up,” huffs the New York Times’s editors.
“Those who oppose taxpayer-funded subsidies for alternative energy, either on ideological grounds or to protect their own stake in the carbon-based status quo, have pounced on (the Solyndra bankruptcy and Chevy Volt troubles) as proof that all such government initiatives are prone to failure,” writes the Detroit Free Press editorial page.
But the proof is everywhere.
Before Barack Obama hung out his White House Investment Bank shingle (“We invest, taxpayers bear all the risk”), former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm had already thrown away millions in taxpayer money on green ventures from bankrupt Fisher Coachworks to Evergreen to RASCO. Obama & Co. have followed with investments in boondoggles like Beacon Power and A123 Systems — which is struggling in part because government has mistakenly invested in too many battery suppliers chasing too little demand.
Now the snowball of bad investments has claimed another victim: Saginaw’s GlobalWatt solar company.
ABC-affiliate WJRT reports that “eviction proceedings have begun for . . . GlobalWatt. It’s no secret people have been skeptical about this business . . . especially when the CEO has declined to comment on production or how many people have been hired.”
Due to skimpy press coverage, it was likely a secret to taxpayer investors who are about to lose even more money.
“It was two years ago, mid-December, when California based GlobalWatt Inc. announced it would bring 500 jobs and invest $177 million into making solar panels in Saginaw,” continues WJRT. “The state of Michigan awarded millions in tax credits, A MEGA grant included, and the break was to come when jobs were created.
This despite the fact the experts like the Mackinac Center’s Michael LaFaive and consultant Chris Philbrick were warning of GlobalWatt’s lack of viability. “I’m not surprised, based on the public record,” Philbrick said this week at the news of GlobalWatt’s eviction.
Meanwhile, Governor Granholm continues to parade around the country on a book tour touting green energy as the future and the federal Department of Energy continues to pour money down the drain. And Green cheerleaders like the Free Press blindly insist that “there’s a great deal (of evidence) to suggest that federal support for alternative energy is increasingly critical to America’s economic recovery.”