Obama campaign totally not sure about this Solyndra thingie.
Remember when everyone cared about “green jobs?” No, I don’t either, because as it turned out, by “everyone” we just meant a bunch of really rich people with some really weird ideas who got really awesome government loans for some really sh*tty companies. As it turns out, “alternative energy manufacturing” happens to be a fairly unstable industry with a product of limited use that the market doesn’t support because consuming all of the Earth’s resources is far cheaper.
That explains, of course, why private investors shied away from supporting companies like Solyndra, a California company that made solar panels for no one: they prefer making tons of cash to watching hilariously inept people waste millions on post modern office furniture for the board room where they’ll celebrate their inevitable victory over common sense. Private investors (like the ones who work for that dastardly, villainous company of campaign financiers, Bain Capital), are held responsible for shoveling millions down the throats of lost causes.
The government, of course, usually isn’t, which is why we continue to support programs to study owl vomit and the sexual habits of people in other countries with our hard earned cash. And which is why the Obama deputy campaign manager is having a shockingly hard time figuring out how to respond to claims that the Administration p*ssed away American money on stupid Al Gore sh*t.
Obama Deputy Dampaign Manager Stephanie Cutter defended President Obama’s investment in green energy companies like Solyndra, and said that because of his investments, the “country was prospering.”
“Politics did not play any role and thats a known fact,” she said about the investment in Solyndra, adding that president was “not picking winners or losers” but making “strategic investments” for the country “on behalf of the American people.”
Cutter claimed that Obama’s green energy investments created over a quarter of a million green jobs for America.
“The president was making investments for the country, because he’s not going to cede an entire industry to China and India,” Cutter said. “And as a result the company – country is prospering.”
There are a few problems with this. (1) “Making investments” is technically not his job, because – and this is key – the government only creates jobs for people who work for the government. (2) If that is how he wants to define his job, well, he sucks ass at it. The CBO recently estimated that every job government spending “created” actually ended up costing American taxpayers around $4.1 million. It actually would have been cheaper to give the money to homeless people to use as toilet paper and kindle. And (3) Solyndra ended up costing the taxpayers in total $535 million, which was actually handed to the company over the objections of federal budget analysts who saw the failure coming a mile away. Solyndra, though, did have one very powerful argument in its favor, when, already basically in bankruptcy when it went to beg more money from the White House: the guy in charge of doling out your cash on behalf of the Department of Energy was previously in charge of collecting it for the Obama 2008 campaign.
At any rate, according to Stephanie, you’re supposed to be really cheesed off that Mitt Romney took people’s money, invested it and made a profit for them (he only picked winners!), but you’re not supposed to care that Barack Obama took your money, invested it (on your behalf and on behalf of America!) in a bunch of politically connected lemons whose potential for failure could be smelled in a crowd of hipsters from a ten mile distance. I’m not really a Republican, but objectively, I kind of like the Romney deal better.



