By: Frank Tissle

Editors note: Shared from The New York Times – Please consider the following insert while reading this piece… “The Republicans hoped to prove that the Solyndra loan was a political favor to wealthy investors with Democratic ties, chiefly George Kaiser, An Oklahoma billionaire. They have not made this case…nor have the Republicans succeeded in showing President Obama’s green energy strategy to be a flop. About 40 projects have received loans under a clean energy program authorized by Congress in 2005 and incorporated in the Obama administration’s 2009 stimulus package. Only two have failed, Solyndra and Beacon Power, a battery company in upstate New York that borrowed $39 million. These defaults represent just 1.3 percent of the $37.6 billion loan portfolio.”

While many are calling the Solyndra loan a pockmark on either the liberal agenda, Obama’s administration, green energy, or all of the above, it is more so a blemish on the States’ need to find alternative energy sources. The story regarding Solyndra first broke about a month ago; it’s a story about an alternative-energy company called Solyndra specializing in solar panels that received a $535 million loan in 2009 as part of Obama’s policies in reviving alternative energy as well as creating jobs—it was supposedly going to create 4,000 new jobs. The scandal comes about two years later when Solyndra files Chapter 11, effectively going bankrupt.

The most obvious questions circulated around where all that money went, half a billion dollars in taxpayer money that apparently evaporated. Pundits, ranging from the New York Times, Government Accountability Office, Washington Post, etc., have commented that the problems rests on Obama’s administration’s failure to evaluate the company before it gave out so much money and that Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, approved the company out of zeal in promoting green technology as the new platform of progressivism in Obama’s administration. But the desire to fund alternative-energy companies during a recession and their failure does not constitute a crime.

Perhaps what was most troublesome about the Solyndra loan was not the company’s bankruptcy, but how it happened that they received so much money, since Solyndra surely wasn’t the only company trying to manufacture more commercial-friendly methods in alternative energy while asking for federal loans—though they did receive one of the largest federal loans (at least, for alternative-energy companies). Many have cited that the reason Solyndra received half a billion in taxpayer money was because some of the company’s top executives supplied substantial donations for Obama’s 2008 campaign, which essentially makes the situation look bought.

The Department of Energy, a mere 11 days before Obama took office, stated that Solyndra was not ready to be approved for funding. Further analysis disclosed that the company’s blueprints were not sufficiently planned out or developed.

So it’s not hard to see why so many commentators have gone after Obama and his administration’s malfeasance on the Solyndra loan. But is it truly only evidence for what Obama has done wrong? Sure, in the short-term it makes Obama’s administration look crooked and bought (but show me a president that hasn’t received donations from major corporations in the past century and given them financial favoritism). In the long-term, though, the problem will rest in alternative energy, as conservative pundits gear up in the war against alternative energy with Solyndra as one more arsenal of ammunition to take it down a peg.

As of right now, it is unfortunately not profitable to invest in alternative energy if you’re wanting short-term benefits. In the long run our society will not have the choice, though, for either oil will not exist or exist in so little of quantities that it’s not financially feasible to drill it or pollution due to oil-consumption will drastically alter the Earth’s terrain to the point where life will not be sustainable. That is the inevitable future. What Obama did wrong was not supplying taxpayer money to an alternative-energy company, but rather supplying it to the wrong company despite reports that Solyndra was not ready to get off the ground. It is necessary that the government give these sorts of companies loans, since the private sector has continually neglected finding alternative energy and have rather taken the approach of getting as rich as possible by exploiting mankind’s technologically-modern dependence on oil. For example, General Motors bought out a car manufacturer that specialized in electric cars for the specific purpose of shutting the company down and, essentially, getting rid of its competition—but at what price, one must ask. While buying out companies to eradicate competition is a natural part of any capitalist system, perhaps that is its greatest fault when it comes to energy, since what do you do when the thing that makes the most money is also killing out an entire ecosystem? Simple answer: Keynesian economics.

Keynesian economics was the leading model of America’s precarious relationship between the private sector and public sector for a good part of the 20th-century before Reagan came along with Milton Friedman’s economic model, i.e. one step closer to neoliberalism, which allowed for corporate ethics to go right out the door and be replaced by business models that revolved around making the most money no matter what corners or ethics had to be broken. For the past twenty years the government has been trying to combat some the negative effects of Reaganomics, but has only succeeded in bandaging much worst cuts, which invariably led us to this current recession. The 2005 Energy Policy Act intended to counteract some of the negative consequences of the oil industry’s sometimes unintended, sometimes intended destruction of the planet, which represents legislation that is very much Keynesian in essence. And so Obama’s federal loan approval to Solyndra did not constitute a criminal act by any means.

The reasons why many are hinting that the Solyndra loan could be a crime mostly comes from anti-Obama pundits that would rather ignore similar measures passed by past conservative politicians with similar effects and hone in on the fact that this Solyndra catastrophe was created by the Obama administration. Solyndra failed because, for one, its foundation wasn’t as well constructed as it should have been, and also because the company was using expensive technology with little hope for financial profit in a down market.

Any misconstruing of the “green jobs” guarantee loans is a blatant lie in the face of massive amounts of scientific evidence that suggests our need to move towards a future that uses alternative energy. I have the feeling, though, that people are going to justify getting rid of green-friendly policies that may cost taxpayers more money than it nets because they are thinking about a short-term return in profits without consideration to what that will do to our existence. So yeah, you should probably be pissed off, if only a little, that Obama could be bought and led to loan out such a massive amount of your money to a poorly-founded company, but I implore you to not take it out on green energy.