Remember Solyndra?

Do you remember Solyndra?  This is the solar panel manufacturer that went bankrupt after receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in government money.  The Obama administration was blamed for the program.  Loosing and wasting your tax dollars on left wing liberal projects that were supposed to help lower our carbon foot print.  So, was it really as bad as you remember?

This is a short post in reply to a FB post where I'm talking about how peoples views are often distorted by misreporting and out right lying by not only Fox News but most media outlets.  To often people latch on to this stuff and don't let go.  I still hear people make comments about Solyndra and frankly most people have no real clue what happened or even what "Solyndra" was.  They just use it as a "buzz word".  When people bag Obama there are a few "go to" terms.  Solyndra! Benghazi! Obama Death Panels!

The reality is most often very different from the shit that is in people's heads.  Yes "shit".  It is a very apt word to describe the "information" it is largely all the stuff that wasn't useful and probably just out right fake.  Much like what you flush down the toilet every day from your previous days meals.

Did you know that the program that gave Solyndra money was supposed to loose hundreds of millions of dollars.  $780 million dollars has been lost by 4 companies including Solyndra.  The Department of energy factored into the loan program these types of losses.  The whole program was supposed to loose money over all.  The costs was deemed acceptable because of the innovation it was expected to spur.  So Solyndra lost about 528 million dollars.  Three other companies folding lost the program another 150 million dollars.

Before I go on let me talk a bit about the DOE's renewable-energy loan program.  Normally we would hope that private equity providers, like Mitt Romney has made so much money off of, would be the source of funding for programs like this but people like Mitt Romney don't like these "risky" investments do they.  He doesn't actually like investments full stop when you talk about building up companies.  He's more for going in, transferring debt then dumping or dismantling the companies.  So the government had to step in.  The government has been doing this type of stuff for a long time.  Obama's administration isn't the first and it certainly won't be the last to issue loans like these.  Hell the banks get loans like these all the time from the government and they loose hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars.

Anyway what is the state of the renewable-energy loan program that was budgeted to actually loose money.  Well turns out that the program is going to make any were between 5 and 6 billion dollars.   Not bad aye.  Have you heard Fox News or any other news organization talk about that?  Did they explain that the program was supposed to loose money but ended up being a bit of a cash cow?  Probably not.  Doesn't work well with the view that the vocal right wing want to push that Obama wants to destroy America.