Disturbing revelations continue to emerge about how more than half a billion dollars of taxpayer dollars were shoveled into the Solyndra solar-panel boondoggle. It is becoming increasingly clear that the only “green” involved in this scandal is money.
There is no compelling reason to empower the government to use public funds to engage in risky investments. There also is no reason to believe that government bureaucrats – especially political appointees, not usually known for their business acumen or technical expertise – are smart enough to pick winners in competitive business sectors. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has proved that receiving a Nobel Prize in physics doesn’t make one qualified to make key judgments about which companies can survive in a complex emerging market. The real experts were lined up against Solyndra. They knew the company was a failure waiting to happen, and they were right.
What the experts didn’t know was that the deck already was stacked. The reason Solyndra was given shockingly preferential treatment was not because of its promise as a profitable business venture but because of its insider connections to President Obama and his administration.
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