Crony Capitalism

The Barry is sagging under the weight of two crony capitalism disclosures -- Solyndra Corp. (see: Reuters Article) and LightSquared (see: LightSquared).  Now we hear that Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric and a clear Obama crony, has just been thrown a $230 million bone from OGX, the Brazilian oil company, to supply them with off-shore drilling technology (see: Surprise GE Contract).  Now, clearly coincidentally, when Obama was in Brazil earlier this year, he announced a $2 billion U.S. loan to help Brazil develop its huge off-shore oil discovery (see: Forbes Take on the Loan ) ... despite the fact that he has effectively stopped oil exploration off our own shores.  He punctuated this largess by another of his arm-waving grand gestures ... saying that the United States is looking forward to importing this new Brazilian oil (see: Drill Brazil Drill).

Is anyone surprised that Obama will raise $1 billion to fund his re-election campaign?

Long afterthought:  Here is another link to a listing of Green Energy pork: Michelle Malkin

Solar Flare

Once again we learn the painful lesson that the federal government is seldom a savvy investor.  It seems that The Barry has thrown $535 million of taxpayer money down a rat hole to show how sensitive he is to growing "green jobs" (see: Solyndra Shuts Down). 

As it turns out, these 1,100 jobs at Solyndra Corp. in Fremont, CA lasted only a little over one year and now the only green left there is the envy that these erstwhile environmentalists feel for their neighbors who are still gainfully employed.  To be perfectly fair, one has to mention that $600 million of private venture capital had also been frittered away on this cadre of tree-huggers (see: The Green Wombat).  And this also parallels an even more foolish investment of something like $20 billion of federal funds in 1979 by Jimmy Carter on the pie-in-the-sky Synthetic Fuels Corp. (see: Synfuel Sin).

Now, Thursday next in his "jobs, jobs, jobs" pep rally, when The Barry calls for our government to "invest" in more green jobs, please also invest a healthy amount of scepticism on your own at his pom-pom waving.