More “green” layoffs

Last week, Abound Solar announced that it had fired 180 employees, and would shut down production of its solar panels at least until the end of the year.  Advanced Solar was the recipient of a $400 million loan guarantee from you, the taxpayers, to build two factories.

Abound Solar will use this 9 month, or so, period to retool it’s plant to manufacture 2nd generation solar panels (whatever they are) as, apparently, 1st generation panels are now passe.   The good news, here, is that Abound Solar “only” drew down $70 million of that loan guarantee, so, you are only on the hook for $70 million…at least at the moment. 

There was more exciting news on the solar front recently that you may have missed.

[Abound’s decision] comes a week after a bankruptcy auction of Solyndra generated sales of $3.81 million, or less than 1 percent of the federal financing.  [emphasis supplied]

Doesn’t it make more sense to let the “greedy capitalist entrepreneurs” lose that kind of money?

Oh, wait, I forgot, the greedy capitalistic folks saw a turkey as it was…a turkey, and refused to throw more money at Solyndra.

Thank goodness the federal government doesn’t recognize a turkey when it sees it.

 

Posted in ,

SoundOffSister

The Sound Off Sister was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and special trial attorney for the Department of Justice, Criminal Division; a partner in the Florida law firm of Shutts & Bowen, and an adjunct professor at the University of Miami, School of Law. The Sound Off Sister offers frequent commentary concerning legislation making its way through Congress, including the health reform legislation passed in early 2010.

4 Comments

  1. ricbee on March 5, 2012 at 11:03 pm

    I am convinced whenever government money gets involved,the goal becomes more government money even when well intentioned business is concerned. A new adage should be; Money corrupts,but government money corrupts absolutely.



    • Lynn on March 7, 2012 at 8:15 am

      Love your new adage. This could be a great T-shirt too.



  2. JBS on March 6, 2012 at 8:17 am

    Hmm, the DOE is still throwing our money after bad money (stolen money).
    Where are we concerning retrieving the $535 MILLION that the DOE gave to Solyndra just one week before they went bankrupt? I thought there were Congressional investigations as the company received the money under false pretenses. They lied!
    But, the DNC got their cut.



  3. Sad4CT on March 6, 2012 at 3:35 pm

    “Money corrupts, but government money corrupts absolutely.”? That is so true…

    And as for the 1500 so-called layoffs at GM due to the suspended production of the Chevy Volt…? I would bet money that none of those 1500 will be signing up for unemployment…? I believe their union contract requires that GM continue to pay them for the next two years…

    We wouldn’t want to mess up the downward trend in the unemployment rate now would we?



frontpg-solar-panels-desert

The website's content and articles were migrated to a new framework in October 2023. You may see [shortcodes in brackets] that do not make any sense. Please ignore that stuff. We may fix it at some point, but we do not have the time now.

You'll also note comments migrated over may have misplaced question marks and missing spaces. All comments were migrated, but trackbacks may not show.

The site is not broken.