posted January 31, 2012 11:26 AM            

Hey O'Bomber, if you want to play venture Capitalist, then use your own money and not ours.

More Solyndra-style failure: Obama-tied Amonix Inc lays off most of company
By Neil Munro
The Daily Caller
01/31/2012

Neil Munro Some of President Barack Obama’s top donors and fundraising bundlers are partners in Amonix Inc., the latest Solyndra-like corporate crash. The company has announced a layoff of 200 workers — two-thirds of its workforce — despite a federal green-technology tax credit of $5.9 million in 2010.

The investors include John Doerr’s venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Daniel Weiss’ Angeleno Group LLC and Steve Westly’s eponymous Westly Group, according to Amonix’s website.

These three investors have also invested heavily in Obama and other Democrats — and the president’s aides are now trying to minimize the political damage.

According to a database maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics, Doerr has donated $171,900 since 2008. Weiss has donated $26,480 and Westly has donated $181,250. Nearly all of those contributions went to Democrats.

Together, the three have also bundled at least $700,000 for Obama.

Obama publicly lauded Amonix in 2010 as an example of a company deserving federal support and private-sector investment.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and other GOP figures are portraying these mutual favors as “crony capitalism,” and the charges are adding up to a real political headache for the administration.

They’re such a headache that the Obama campaign’s first televised issues ad sought to shield the president from the fallout by criticizing its critics.

“Secretive oil billionaires are attacking President Obama with ads fact-checkers say are not tethered to the facts,” said the January ad, which highlighted criticism from David and Charles Koch. The Kochs are libertarians who run an huge oil-services company and are funding a political campaign against Obama.

On Sunday, Obama’s chief campaign adviser, David Axelrod, used the same aggressive tactic to to deflect criticism of Obama’s spending program.

When asked on ABC’s “Meet the Press” about the green-tech spending, Axelrod countered by saying that “leveraged buyouts of the sort that Governor Romney profited off of are quite different, Where you buy a company, load it down with debt, strip it down, let it go bankrupt and then make money off of fees on the bankruptcy.”

“That’s quite different” from Obama’s investment plans, he said.

Obama’s 2010 endorsement of Amonix came in the form of a flattering mention during a speech in Las Vegas, not far from the firm’s manufacturing plant.

“A solar panel company — a solar power company called Amonix received a roughly $6 million tax credit for a new facility they’re building in the Las Vegas area, a tax credit they were able to match with roughly $12 million in private capital,” Obama said, while touting his policy of subsidizing green-tech companies.

“The only problem we have is these credits were working so well, there aren’t enough tax credits to go around,” Obama said. “When we announced the program last year, it was such a success we received 500 applications requesting over $8 billion in tax credits, but we only had $2.3 billion to invest.”

The Amonix downsizing is the latest in a string of failures that include the high-profile bankruptcy of solar-cell maker Solyndra in California, November layoffs at a battery-maker A123 in MIchigan, and the January bankruptcy of Ener1.

Obama’s green-tech program gave those companies $535 million, $118.5 million , and $249 million, respectively.

The donors have a shared interest in federal funding for green-tech companies, but they also compete among themselves for available government dollars.

Westly had a stake in Amonix in May 2010 when he warned Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett that a planned federal government visit to Solyndra might backfire. “If it’s too late to change/postpone the meeting, the president should be careful about unrealistic/optimistic forecasts that could haunt him in the next 18 months if Solyndra hits the wall, files for bankruptcy,” Westly wrote to Jarrett.

His premonition proved right: Solyndra’s collapse has so undercut political support for green-tech spending that Obama was forced to admit error while defending it in his State of the Union speech.

“Some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail,” he said Jan. 24. “But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy. … I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here.”

posted February 07, 2012 12:42 PM            

Yet Another Gov’t-Sponsored Clean Energy Project Results in Layoffs
February 7, 2012
Becket Adams

Vice president Joe Biden, left, and Henrik Fisker, CEO of Fisker Automotive announces that the company will produce plug-in hybrid electric vehicles at the former General Motors Boxwood Plant, Oct. 27, 2009, in Wilmington, Del. (Rob Carr/AP Photo)

“In another setback for President Obama’s clean energy loan programs, the recipient of more than a half-billion dollars in federal loans is laying off workers at their Delaware and California operations [emphasis added],” Bryan Tau of Politico reports.

Fisker Automotive, a California-based electric car company, is laying off an “undisclosed number” of staff to try to reserve enough capital in order to qualify for more federal help from the Department of Energy, according to a Delaware state development official.

Wait a minute. The Fisker Automotive?

That’s right, that Fisker Automotive: a company backed by an Al Gore-associated venture capital firm that was awarded a $529 million federal loan guarantee in April, 2010.

This is the same government-assisted automaker that outsourced manufacturing jobs to Finland because, “There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle,” the car company’s founder and namesake told ABC News. ”They don’t exist here.”

Now they are laying off workers in both Delaware and California.

“They’re trying to preserve the cash that they have,” said Alan Levin told the News Journal. “And unfortunately, until they meet the milestone that DOE continues to set … they’re not able to access the additional capital that they need.”

Before announcing the layoffs, the company was working on reopening a closed General Motors plant in Wilmington to produce vehicles — an effort the Obama administration was quick to praise.

“While some wanted to write off America’s auto industry, we said no. We knew that we needed to do something different – in Delaware and all across the nation,” Vice President Joe Biden said about Fisker in Delaware in 2009.

“We understood a new chapter had to be written, a new chapter in which we strengthen American manufacturing by investing in innovation. Thanks to a real commitment by this Administration, loans from the Department of Energy, the creativity of U.S. companies and the tenacity of great state partners like Delaware – we’re on our way to helping America’s auto industry reclaim its top position in the global market.”

“This is proof positive that our efforts to create new jobs, invest in a clean energy economy and reduce carbon pollution are working,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “We are putting Americans back to work and reigniting a new Industrial Revolution that is paramount for the economic success of this country.”

To date, the company has received $193 million of the total $529 DOE loan to produce two lines of plug-in hybrid cars.

“Our loan guarantees have strict conditions in place to protect taxpayers. The Department only allows the loan to be disbursed as the company meets certain milestones and demonstrates results,” DOE spokesman Damien LaVera said in a statement.

“As has been widely reported, Fisker has experienced some delays in its sales and production schedule — which is common for start-ups. As Fisker works through those issues and incorporates lessons learned from the production of the Karma, the Department is working with Fisker to review a revised business plan and determine the best path forward so the company can meet its benchmarks, produce cars and employ workers here in America.”

So, let’s see if we got this straight:

1.Fisker Automotive is given $193 million of a $529 million DOE loan to produce two lines of plug-in hybrid cars and, presumably, create jobs
2.The company is unable to find a contract manufacturer in the United States, so it outsources manufacturing jobs to Finland (the company vehemently denies charges that it has used any part of the federal loan to fund manufacturing operations in Finland)
3.The automaker falls behind its production schedule and experiences“delays” in its sales (i.e. poor sales), depleting its capital
4.But to qualify for the rest of the $529 million loan guarantee, the company has to maintain a certain amount of capital
5.Therefore, in order to meet this DOE benchmark, Fisker Automotive decides it will save money by laying off an “undisclosed number” of employees

posted April 04, 2012 01:04 PM            

It's interesting to see what "hoops" and changing of their technology would have been required by the business challenged O'Bomber administration to get the government money...Read that as TAXPAYER MONEY!

Your "green energy" bankruptcy of the day: Solar Trust of America Another "keystone" crumbles
John Hayward
04/04/2012

Let’s follow up on the progress of our President’s brilliant “investments” in “green energy,” which have mostly ended in horrible failures and bankruptcy. Obama wanted us to give $2.1 billion of our hard-earned money to Solar Trust of America, which undertook the Blythe Solar Power Project in California, a 1,000-megawatt fountain of morally superior solar energy.

Thankfully, Solar Trust CEO Uwe T. Schmidt turned down the offer, citing “very sound business reasons.” Specifically, as the Washington Post noted in a September 2011 article, he was worried that “the influx of inexpensive flat solar panels was undercutting his company’s year-old proposal to use a field of parabolic mirrors that focus the sun’s energy to heat liquid-containing tubes.”

Why not take the federally guaranteed Obama bucks and just switch technologies? Well, “the terms of the federal loan guarantee wouldn’t let Solar Trust switch in midstream to flat panels,” so they got private financing. Think about that for a moment.

Incidentally, you might have gathered from the CEO’s name that Solar Trust of America isn’t actually an American company. It’s an Oakland-based subsidiary of a German corporation called Solar Millennium AG, which owns 70 percent of Solar Trust. (The other 30 percent is held by another German concern called Ferrostaal AG.) Sadly, the “solar millennium” appears to have ended 988 years early, as Solar Trust’s parent company has launched insolvency proceedings in Germany.

Nevertheless, the Blythe Solar Power project was hailed as a “keystone” achievement in President Obama’s efforts to Win The Future by harvesting the majority of America’s energy from “green” sources within the next 25 years. (Apparently offering a $2.1 billion subsidy gets you some soapbox time.) Interior Secretary Ken Salazar hailed the Blythe Solar Power Project as “proof we are meeting our ambitious goals.”

While he mourned a nation that “went to sleep in the 1980s” (you know, the decade when we had jobs and growth and stuff) Salazar was delighted that we were finally “reawakening to the reality that we can power the energy security of America forward, and today’s example here with the largest solar facility in the United States of America is one of those milestones we can all celebrate.”

California Governor Jerry Brown didn’t wait to start those celebrations. He was positively giddy at the ground-breaking ceremony. “This is a really a very important day to be in California, where the world’s largest solar project is commencing. This is really big!” he chirped, bringing us close to the level of Big Government ecstasy that Vice President Joe Biden classifies as a Big Effing Deal. “Today we’re looking out at the possibility of unimagined wealth that can be produced with cooperation, risk-taking government assistance and hard old-fashioned work of manufacturing transportation and all the other stuff that goes into making things happen.”

Ah, the “unimagined wealth” of crony capitalism! Forever it glitters in the fevered imagination of the statist… but how often it turns to bankruptcy, leaving the taxpayers with lighter wallets and heavier hearts!

Such was the case with Solar Trust of America, which filed bankruptcy on Monday, in accordance with the standard life-cycle of “green energy” corporations that lack an umbilical connection to the American taxpayer. It’s not a gentle bankruptcy, either. As Reuters reports, Solar Trust ran out of “liquidity” after Solar Millennium went belly-up. Solar Millennium tried to sell the American company off to another German “green energy” company… but then they went bankrupt.

Other companies are now looking to pick useful assets from Solar Trust’s bones, but there’s a problem: when Solar Trust filed for bankruptcy in Delaware, it estimated “as much as $10 million of assets, and between $50 billion and $100 million of liabilities.” How does that even happen? “Green energy” may not produce much useful energy, but it certainly does have formidable powers of financial destruction.

Naturally, the crony capitalist engine will learn absolutely nothing from this disaster, or any of the others they have inflicted on us. Solar Millennium CEO Schmidt wrote a retrospectively hilarious op-ed in the Huffington Post last September, in which he sternly cautioned us to avoid drawing any conclusions from the Solyndra debacle. “Indeed, despite the posturing and finger-pointing, the American solar energy industry is alive and well. I should know,” Schmidt wrote, six months before he became the proud overseer of a titanic financial disaster, and the “finger-pointers” were proven right once again.

But fear not! Local authorities are confident somebody, somewhere will come forward to finish the Blythe Solar Power project, and if Barack Obama is re-elected, you can bet your bottom dollar that he’ll give your bottom dollar to another politically-favored project, while a chorus of Administration officials sing the exact same hosannas to sustainable energy and job creation they offered, back when they were trying to stuff two billion of your dollars into Solar Trust’s coffers.

Update: Thanks to Weejad on Twitter for reminding me not to confuse my centuries and millennia. The solar millennium ended 998 years early, not 98! Time flies when you're going bankrupt.

posted April 09, 2012 05:48 PM            

Last week, as President Obama delivered his economic speech deriding the so-called "trickle-down" economic policies that created 16 million jobs under President Reagan, his Energy Department was preparing to announce the next stage of a policy that may never create any.

David Frantz, chief of the DOE's clean energy loan program, informed Congress by letter on Thursday that his department will "begin issuing conditional commitments over the next several months" for new loans and loan guarantees to green energy companies. Why Obama is doubling and tripling down on one of his worst and most embarrassing policy mistakes is anybody's guess. Maybe it's change that only he and global warming diehards can believe in.

The DOE promised that it will back these new loans only after "rigorous internal and external review of each application." Sound familiar? Energy Secretary Steven Chu said almost precisely the same thing about the $535 million loan guarantee he approved for the solar panel company Solyndra -- that it was awarded only after "proper, rigorous scrutiny and healthy debate" among the responsible bureaucrats. Solyndra declared bankruptcy in August 2011, leaving taxpayers holding the bag. The price tag was even higher than it had to be thanks to a highly unusual (and possibly illegal) decision by the DOE to restructure the loan so taxpayers took a back seat to the company's other creditors.

Another solar firm, Beacon Power in Massachusetts, still owed $39.1 million in loans when it went under in October 2011. Ener1, the parent company of an electric car battery-maker that received $118 million in DOE grants, declared bankruptcy in January. The DOE also conditionally awarded a $2.1 billion loan guarantee to Solar Trust for America. Luckily, in this case, the company declared bankruptcy last Monday before it could even collect any of the money. But why is Obama's Energy Department dangling treats before so many companies in such bad financial shape?

Not all questionable DOE subsidies end in bankruptcy. Abound Solar, for instance, has merely laid off 280 employees since receiving its $400 million loan guarantee. A123 Systems, an electric car battery company in Michigan that received $249.1 million in DOE grants, has laid off 125 employees and faces a lawsuit for allegedly hiding information about defective batteries. As he did with Solyndra, Obama showered that company with effusive praise before anyone knew whether it would power cars or just produce hot air: "Thanks to the Recovery Act, you guys are the first American factory to start high-volume production of advanced vehicle batteries. I am looking forward to continuing to see the great work that you guys do in the years to come."

posted April 09, 2012 06:42 PM            

------------------
Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal