DOE in the headlights

BY LEN TRIA, Uncommon Sense

One of the greatest feats of legerdemain has been accomplished by the administration in recent weeks.

The Obama administration made $533 million disappear by giving it to a " green" company named Solyndra. Next came a "green" company named SunPower that manufactured photovoltaic solar panels. This time the money was upped to $1.2 billion of taxpayer money. This company was supposed to manufacture photovoltaic solar panels for its California solar valley ranch.

Amazingly it just happens to be that the company had converted an old auto plant to a manufacturing plant for the panels. Guess where the plant was located, of all things, in the Congressional District of a strong supporter, Rep. George Miller, D.-Calif. Another surprise was that the lobbyist for SunPower just happened to be the son of Rep. Miller. But of course that did not influence the senior Miller as he advocated for the loan.

Imagine a business that has more debt than its market capitalization going to the market and receiving $1.2 billion in investor money. Only the U.S. government has "sucker" tattooed on its bank account book.

The administration from the president on down is selling snake oil when it comes to these so called "green" businesses. They keep touting the green industry as the new provider of clean energy jobs for American workers.

However, they failed to investigate where the jobs were, and it turns out that SunPower was building a manufacturing facility in Mexico with our money. When we look a little closer we find that SunPower was a big contributor to the Democrat Party with $4,000 going to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., $3,000 to Rep. Gabrielle Gifford, D-Ariz., and $2,900 to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

The Department of Energy (DOE) claimed the project would provide 350 construction worker jobs and 15 permanent jobs — more than $1 billion for 15 permanent jobs! At this rate we will go broke long before we can put to work the millions of unemployed Americans. How about $80 million per permanent job created.

To add insult to injury, certain insiders and a French company that bought SunPower made out like bandits as the CEO of SunPower bought stock at $3.30 (428,343 shares) and sold them in June for $11,114,453. The company is beset with myriad lawsuits ranging from gross mismanagement, breach of fiduciary responsibility, unjust enrichment and abuse of control. Yet with all this hanging over the company, the Obama administration saw fit to extend a $1.2 billion loan to SunPower.

I want to know why didn't Mexicali, Mexico, didn't extend some money to the company since the plant and the jobs would be located in their city. Of course, that would not make much sense because the DOE had to get rid of the money before the program ended Sept. 30.

The next thing to expire should be the Department of Energy, which has been useless since its inception.