Embarrassing Video of Biden's Speech to Solyndra Unearthed

Video here. Here are some of the key bits:

Part of our plan is to make sure that as we create these jobs we create jobs in the future like the ones you're creating, jobs you can raise a family on, green jobs, jobs that will serve as a foundation for a stronger American economy. Which is why it's so important we invest in Solyndra and invest in what Solyndra is doing.

Can we invest more? I know they're bankrupt 'n all, but I really do want that stronger economy.

Not just to get us through today but to power our way to a much brighter tomorrow.

You know, there was a 19th Century Scottish author and political reformer named Samuel Smiles. He once said and I think the quote is appropriate here, he said, “Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us."

Hope is like the sun, in that both seem to be about constructing naively optimistic forecasts about triumphs just around the corner.

Well, that's exactly, exactly what we're doing here today. We are journeying, in a sense, closer and closer to the sun...

Icarus just emailed me about journeying closer and closer to the sun. He doesn't recommend it.

... to a more solar powered America. And as we do, we're leaving a shadow of a less efficient, more damaging past behind us.And I'm really happy, along with the Secretary, to announce today that we've closed a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, more than half a billion dollars. This is the first in what the Secretary is going to be announcing the Department of Energy will be making available for more than $30 billion in loan guarantees the Recovery Act is providing and will provide to American companies that are leading the way to a new, clean energy future.

The loan to Solyndra will allow you to build a new manufacturing facility and with it almost immediately generate 3000 new well paying construction jobs. And once your facility opens, there will be about 1000 permanent new jobs here at Solyndra and in the surrounding business community and hundreds more to install your growing output of solar panels throughout the country.

Let me interrupt Slow Joe to note that I suppose those 3,000 short-term construction jobs were created (and then of course un-created). What did those 3000 construction workers build?

Oh, wonderful things. Wonderful things, my friends.

It wasn’t just any factory. When it was completed at an estimated cost of $733 million, including proceeds from a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee, it covered 300,000 square feet, the equivalent of five football fields. It had robots that whistled Disney tunes, spa-like showers with liquid-crystal displays of the water temperature, and glass-walled conference rooms.

“The new building is like the Taj Mahal,” John Pierce, 54, a San Jose resident who worked as a facilities manager at Solyndra, said in an interview.

The building, designed to make far more solar panels than Solyndra got orders for, is now shuttered, and U.S. taxpayers may be stuck with it....

Amid the still-unfolding postmortems, the factory stands as emblematic of money misspent and the Field of Dreams ethos that seemed to drive the venture, said Ramesh Misra, a solar-industry analyst in Los Angeles for Brigantine Advisors.

Seems to me that with that half-billion loan, plus the anticipation of a second half-billion, this venture socialism enterprise wasn't thinking much about economy and grinding out profits. They were more concerned with whistling robots.

Back to "Sheriff Joe," the guy who would keep a weather eye on our spending. You remember that, right? Obama appointed him point-man on making sure our stimulus dollars were wisely spent. "I've got my badge on," the retarded older man said.

The Hill, at least, remembers.

“Sheriff” Joe Biden’s remarks could come back to haunt him when it comes to Solyndra, the solar company that went bankrupt after winning a $535 million loan guarantee from 2009’s economic stimulus package.

President Obama named his vice president the sheriff of the stimulus, and Biden’s duties were to ensure that no money was wasted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Back to the Sheriff of Strict Accounting.

It's important. It's important because these jobs are going to be permanent jobs.

Permanent...? In the sense that all eighth grade romances will live forever.

In that sense of "permanent" -- a childishly naive belief that nice feelings are enough to make things last forever -- sure, the jobs were "permanent."

These are the jobs of the future.

Jobs of the future? Dude, these aren't even the jobs of September.

You heard of that show Whitney? Whitney has avoided cancellation longer than these jobs.

These are the green jobs.

He's right about that. These are the Greenest Jobs in the World, jobs that produce precisely zero greenhouse emissions and have a carbon footprint of size triple zero.

The unemployed are just terrific "carbon sinks."

These are the jobs that won't be exported.

Again, he speaks the truth.

These are the jobs that are going to define the 21st Century...

I hope he's not right about this, but I fear he is.

... and the jobs that are going to allow America to compete and to lead like we did in the 20th Century.

Sure, during the period of 1930-1938. That's the 20th Century.

But beyond that, by doing this work you're also reducing carbon emissions just at the plant you're about to build by more than 100 metric tons, folks. That's the equivalent.

Got a little bonus, now that the entire venture is shuttered. Add a couple of metric tons.

I know you know it but the rest of America may not -- that's the equivalent of pulling 25 million cars off the road. They're exactly the kind of steps we need to take to make our air cleaner, to save money and to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

To quote another famous person, Galileo, he once said...

You have to love Slow Joe's description of astronomer and polymath Galileo as "a famous person."

Shit yeah he's famous. Almost as famous as Paris Hilton!

... "The sun, with all the planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do."

Well, folks, there is still a whole lot more we can do with the sun and you're leading the way.

Yup. We can fleece billions from overburdened taxpayers, too.

And out there at Solyndra, you guys have figured it out. You've figured out how to harness the sun's power for a better, more efficient, more prosperous future for all of America and in the process you're creating more jobs.

I haven't seen an endorsement that embarrassing since Paul Krugman pimped Enron.

But Slow Joe was right -- Solyndra did figure it out, if by "it" you mean "running an Enron-style scam on the taxpayers."

Solyndra LLC had such steep financial problems in late 2010 that the company violated terms of its loan-guarantee agreement with the Department of Energy and technically defaulted on its $535 million loan, according to people familiar with the matter.

The failed solar-panel maker, which is under numerous criminal and congressional investigations, ran so short of cash in December 2010 that it was unable to satisfy certain terms of its U.S. loan agreement, these people said. The agreement required Solyndra to provide $5 million in equity to a subsidiary building its factory but cash-flow problems prevented those payments.

WSJ's Ryan Tracy reports a new Congressional report says warnings about Solyndra's competitive abilities came out before the government awarded the company a $535 million loan guarantee and the company's subsequent collapse.

The Energy Department ultimately restructured the loan agreement to help keep the company afloat and Solyndra continued to draw money from its loan.

Yup, Solyndra really figured it out.

FBI Said to Be Probing Solyndra for Possible Fraud

Now let's go back to Sheriff Joe's statement about another $30 billion in loans to just this sort of solid corporate citizen as part of its "stimulus" efforts.

posted by Ace at 05:29 PM

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