Are You Ready For The Next Solyndra?

But we're not done with the first one yet!

Meet Nevada Geothermal. You already know their main champion, Harry Reid.

A recent audit by Deloitte & Touche expressed “significant doubt” about Nevada Geothermal Power’s “ability to continue as a going concern.” The company’s vital signs are not looking good: it “has incurred net losses over the past several years, has an accumulated deficit of $44.0 million and an anticipated inability to retire its long-term liabilities,” the audit concluded.

Nevada Geothermal enjoyed significant backing from the federal government. It received a $79 million loan guarantee from the same Energy Department program that helped finance the failed solar company Solyndra. It also got $66 million in federal grants from the Treasury Department.

Reid was instrumental in securing that financing for Nevada Geothermal, the New York Times reported on Monday. “Mr. Reid has taken the nascent geothermal industry under his wing,” the Times noted, “pressuring the Department of Interior to move more quickly on applications to build clean energy projects on federally owned land and urging other member of Congress to expand federal tax incentives to help build geothermal plants, benefits that Nevada Geothermal has taken advantage of.”

Reid defends this kind of corrupt waste by saying if the federal government didn't invest in this type of high-risk speculative project no one would. Which is kind of the point. If the upside outweighed the risks then private investors would do it. Of course, there wouldn't be anything in it for politicians if they couldn't spread around your money to buy votes for themselves.

I think this "green" loan program is going to be a rich source of material for the GOP in the coming year.

Meanwhile back in the original scandal, top administration officials were warned that Obama shouldn't visit Solyndra's plant.

A Silicon Valley investor and senior administration officials warned the White House to reconsider having President Obama visit a solar start-up company because of its mounting financial problems, saying he might be embarrassed later.

“A number of us are concerned that the president is visiting Solyndra,” California investor and Obama fundraiser Steve Westly wrote to Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett in May 2010. “Many of us believe the company’s cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term. . . . I just want to help protect the president from anything that could result in negative or unfair press.”

Yes, so unfair that this corrupt deal is hurting Obama.

Obama himself says, meh no big deal.

“Now there are going to be some failures,” he said. “Hindsight is always 20/20,” the president added about being warned about Solyndra’s financial problems. “It went through the normal review process and people thought this was a good bet.”

Yeah, who could have seen this coming? Except for the Bush administration which rebuffed the company's efforts to get the money sooner and Obama's OMB which called the exact time of Solyndra's bankruptcy.

posted by DrewM. at 04:18 PM

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