More Solyndra good news for the taxpayer

You are already on the hook for $528 million as a result of the Solyndra bankruptcy.  But, to add insult to injury, you will now have to dig deeper into your pocket to cover an additional $14.3 million.  The original $528 million was courtesy of the Department of Energy.  Last week, the Department of Labor decided to spend an additional $14.3 “fixing” the problem created by the DOE.  Here is how this works.

As a condition to voting for the trade agreements with South Korea, Columbia and Panama, democrats in Congress, as well as the President demanded that we throw money at the Trade Adjustment Assistance program run by the DOL.  The theory is that by allowing other countries to sell more products in this country, Americans will lose jobs.  I know, that is completely faulty logic as, among other things, the agreements also allow American companies to sell more of their products overseas, thus, boosting employment.  But, we will leave that for another day.

Given their new found money, the DOL has decided that all employees of Solyndra who have lost their jobs due to the bankruptcy, really lost their jobs because China exported solar panels to the United States…i.e., lost their jobs because of foreign imports.

Each of the approximately 1100 Solyndra employees who lost their job is now entitled to approximately $13,000 in taxpayer aid.

The TAA program offers help to domestic workers who have lost their jobs due to the trade practices of foreign countries. The assistance includes job retraining, allowances for job searching, health benefits and up to 130 weeks of income support. The average recipient gets about $13,000 in assistance. [emphasis supplied]

Parenthetically, don’t you just love the way the government creates the problem, by spending your money, and then decides to solve said created problem by…spending more of your money?

I could be wrong now, but, it seems to me it would have been far cheaper had we just “cut out the middleman”, aka, Solyndra, and given these people TAA assistance from the get go.

 

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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.

19 Comments

  1. sammy22 on November 28, 2011 at 5:44 pm

    I wonder where the money loaned to Solyndra went. I don’t imagine it was burned. If it went into the pockets of the Solyndra management I suppose we should be able to get it back. But then who knows?



  2. Gary J on November 28, 2011 at 7:40 pm

    It went to the stock holders, that way the execs. got their money back in exchange for the donations to the party. not so tough eh?



  3. Gary J on November 28, 2011 at 7:42 pm

    If green energy was worth a damn,someone would already be making money at it besides dem0ocrats.



  4. free431 on November 28, 2011 at 9:14 pm

    The level of corruption, cronyism and corruption in our country is starting to resemble Nigeria or a banana republic.?
    Consider also what just happened in a federal court in Texas. In this case, As described at http://LawInjustice.com , a Dallas business owner was involved in a civil dispute and paid millions of dollars to lawyers, and when he objected to additional fees after settling the case, they had a “friendly” judge, appointed by President Clinton,? seize all of his possessions, without any notice or hearing, and essentially ordered him under ?house arrest? as an involuntary servant to the lawyers and denied a jury trial. The business owner has been under this “servant” order for 10 months and is prohibited from owning any possessions, prohibited from working, etc..



  5. ricbee on November 28, 2011 at 11:17 pm

    ?Many years ago when the TAA law was passed I was a union official & actually read it as it was in the NY Post. My company Cushman Inds was failing because of poor management. I asked the union president to ask the company to apply for it & after a battle they did & were found qualified. A few years later they got rid of me & I exhausted my 6 months of benefits. I then applied for TAA & they started sending those checks once again. The law is so poorly written like so many of our laws that most anyone can qualify.



  6. ricbee on November 28, 2011 at 11:19 pm

    ?I want to know what the “Big Boys” in Solyndra got paid-I’m betting they sucked up most of the money.



  7. sammy22 on November 28, 2011 at 11:38 pm

    According to the Law of Conservation of Money, the loan to Solyndra is being cycled back into the economy with a yet unknown (but greater than 1) multiplying factor. Is it not being leveraged?



  8. Lynn on November 29, 2011 at 12:43 pm

    Sorry, Sammy, but Dream On! All that money will not make it back into the US economy unless every dollar that was given away is spent on goods and services and not socked away in some overseas bank accounts or politician’s war chest.



  9. JBS on November 29, 2011 at 2:58 pm

    Isn’t what Solyndra did “receiving money under a false premise”? Essentially, fraud! That’s a criminal complaint worthy of arrest.
    With all of the Congressional hearings into the loan debacle with Solyndra, WHY hasn’t anyone tried to find out just where is the loan money?!
    Giving the employees unemployment benefits is just Democrats being Democrats. It’s the executives at the now defunct Solyndra who stole the DOE (our) money. It’s obvious that those executives had NO intention of putting the money to work in the company, they instead used the money as their golden parachute. The employees? Hah! They can go . . .
    Money? Prosecution? Silly me. I forgot that the executives at Solyndra are friends of the ZerO and big contributors to the Democrat National Committee. That makes them untouchable and the money is, pfffffttt, gone. What money?



  10. sammy22 on November 29, 2011 at 3:10 pm

    I thought that according to Republican theory, people who have money invest it in the economy and generate jobs. You mean that the money “stolen” by? Solyndra, even if in a political war chest, is not spent to generate jobs? Don’t? TV ads, posters, and even pizza for the all-nighters “generate” jobs and move the economy forward?



    • Dimsdale on November 29, 2011 at 3:24 pm

      But we are talking about Democrat supporters here, and that would indicate that they are, in fact, Democrats, since ?bama took a liking to them (at our expense).? Democrats don’t subscribe to “Republican theory”, given the reticence of the many Democrats (Kerry and Rangel come to mind) against paying for taxes while asking us to do so out of the other side of their mouths, is it a stretch to believe that (once again) it is actually the Democrats doing the very things they accuse Republicans (the rich ones anyway) of doing?



  11. sammy22 on November 29, 2011 at 4:29 pm

    And I thought that money from any source spent/invested would “create jobs”. There is a whole industry devoted to spending political campaign money. Silly me.



    • Dimsdale on November 29, 2011 at 6:16 pm

      As I noted, when Dems like Kerry buy yachts in New Zealand, and moor it in Rhode Island to avoid taxes, the money either goes to other countries or is not spent as required taxes.? Now if you are saying that letting people spend their own money as they see fit instead of giving it to the pols, you have a point.?? Unfortunately, it makes for very hypocritical Dems.



    • Dimsdale on November 29, 2011 at 6:17 pm

      You may have a point though: when ?bama took all that illegal campaign money from foreign sources, some of it may have been redistributed here.



  12. sammy22 on November 29, 2011 at 6:26 pm

    Instead of being like Kerry (see above), let’s all take a pledge. Let’s ALL stop buying everything made in China or any other foreign country. That will fix all problems.



    • Dimsdale on November 30, 2011 at 10:08 am

      I’m doing my best!



  13. Lynn on November 29, 2011 at 7:18 pm

    You are going to hate this, but there are lots of American made products at Wal-Mart. I know because I look at almost every label to buy American.? You are pretty safe with soaps, toothpast and lotions. Also, MadeinUSAForever.com .



  14. winnie on November 29, 2011 at 9:59 pm

    So, wait…lemme get this right:? The average, run of the mill, unemployed dregs in the US are *entitled* to up to 99 weeks of unemployment & no medical benefits (until 2013, one could assume) , but employees of an Obama-endorsed & taxpayer funded “business” are *entitled* to 130 weeks, training and medical.?
    Personally, I think the 99ers (not to be confused with the 99%) should stage nationwide protests…



    • Dimsdale on December 2, 2011 at 8:29 am

      Makes you wonder who the real “1%” are….



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