I’m a conservative, so let me absolutely clear on this issue: I am most decidedly against clean water, clean air, and taking care of the environment. I think every tree on the planet should not only not be hugged but should actually be cut down and stripped of every natural resource that it can offer, and the sooner the better. Trees just get in my way. In fact, if we could all just get together and turn the planet into a smoldering, smoking shell of itself within, say, oh, I don’t know – maybe the next three to five years – I’d be a happy camper indeed. Yessir.
Oh, I’m against camping, too. I also enjoy watching grandma die on the sidewalk, but that’s a separate issue.
How utterly ridiculous. Those on the Left who make the conscious decision either to believe or disseminate such information are the true cancers in our efforts to preserve our way of life for future generations. The people that they purport to support are the ones who have no qualms whatsoever about raping the planet of its natural resources and using energy in such unfathomably careless ways that if we all lived as they do, our planet would probably more quickly resemble what’s left of the Fukushima nuclear power plant before any one of us could say “Solyndra”.
How else do you explain the scope of Al Gore’s mansion on the California coast, a home that uses an outrageous amount 
of electricity? Further, if he were truly concerned about the “sea levels rising”, why would he build such a monument to opulence right on the Pacific Ocean? And why hasn’t Gore come out and informed the people that since his landmark film on global warming of several years ago, global temperatures have actually decreased half a degree?
Talk about an inconvenient truth.
All of this is, of course, context for explaining the very nature of the clean energy scam that has been perpetrated upon the people of the world in general but America more specifically during the course of the past four decades. The efforts of those who are heavily invested in seeing their global efforts come to fruition have obviously intensified during the past three years of the Obama administration, as the cosmic tumblers of political power seemed to have aligned for them in the form of liberal super-majorities in Congress in 2008. This was their time, a time in which they would have to act fast, because they were clearly well aware that the American people were bound to wake up to what was happening around them sooner rather than later. I suppose an apt name for their efforts might be, ironically, “fast and furious”.
Wake up we have.
By now, most Americans – and I do emphasize most, since there is certainly a sizable portion of the electorate who are either ill or completely uninformed as to what’s taking place in our nation, and it is on this portion of the electorate that Barack Obama will depend in order to be re-elected – know about the breathtaking scope of the Solyndra scandal. As it turns out, however, there is now a second “clean energy” corporation, Beacon Power, that received taxpayer money, this in the form of a $43 billion dollar loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. Just like Solyndra, this company has also filed for bankruptcy. Consequently, people like Jeff Schreiber and myself have handed over an incredible chunk of change to people for no particular reason, and it’s fair to assume that we’ll never see that money again.
Let’s quickly review the details of both green collapses.
One of the biggest donors to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign was a man named George B. Kaiser, who happens not only to be the wealthiest man in Oklahoma but also the primary owner of Solyndra. Miraculously, Solyndra, an unproven energy company, received half a billion dollars in 2009 in federal “investment” money – taxpayer money – during a time when the economy was still balancing itself on the edge of the proverbial cliff. Just as had been predicted some two years earlier, Solyndra went under in September 2011.
As stated above, Beacon Power received $43 billion in taxpayer aid, ostensibly because it was working on a “state-of-the-art energy storage facility in Stephentown, New York”. It also has gone under, in a reasonably short period of time.
Do these two examples sound vaguely similar to any other “business practices”? Off the top of my head, they sound very much like two other types of organizations, both of which are closely, closely related and in some cases inextricably conjoined with one another – organized crime and unions. In fact, what we’re seeing uncovered directly in front of our faces is nothing short of blatant money laundering, all wrapped up in the “nice-sounding” liberal tenet of “clean energy” and “begin sensible caretakers of the planet”.
Theft with a smiley face.
As everyone knows, Al Capone was finally brought down on income tax evasion. Unable to pin Capone to any of his more blatant and nefarious crimes, federal agents were finally able to decipher his bookeeper’s records and were able to determine that while he technically received no income, his criminal empire was principally funded by “front” businesses under his control but not under his name. If any of the businesses ever went bankrupt or collapsed, it didn’t really matter; Capone had by then milked them for all they were worth. In fact, in many cases he was responsible for seeing to the business’s demise.
How else to explain the billions of taxpayer dollars being passed along to clean energy companies, companies that seemingly collapse within months of receiving the dough, with nary a blink of conscience from the Obama administration?
As far as the similarity to union practices, let me ask this: how much of a stretch is it to at least think that of the billions that are handed off to the Solyndras and Beacon Powers of the world, a good portion of that chunk of change might be channeled back to to the DNC for the political war chests? While I have no specific evidence, is there anyone who can say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a practice such as this – much like the manner in which the unions operate in the public school, for instance – is beyond the ethics (or lack thereof) of the Obama administration?
Shortly after news had broken on the Beacon Power development, Bill O’Reilly had as guests on his show two committed, progressive, clean-energy enthusiasts. As O’Reilly pushed the envelope in his questioning on whether or not the federal government should continue to “invest” in the development of clean energy sources, he finally reached the point at which he said to them (paraphrasing), “Look, just give me one example – any single one – of a clean energy initiative or business that has actually worked. Any one.” Their only response was that such a consideration was “not the point”, that there were all sorts of reasons for continuing on this path to nowhere and for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels……
Why not simply take a look at the Chevy Volt? This alleged “Car of the Future” has been touted throughout the time of the Obama administration, and all it’s done is repeatedly fall flat on its face. The project is rife with the most basic of problems: first and foremost, it’s an electric car, which means that ultimately, the source of its energy comes from coal, which is both dirty and is an industry that Barack Obama has promised to “bankrupt”; Eric Bolling of Fox News’s “The Five” did an extended test drive of the vehicle and discovered that the car had to be charged for 10 hours in order to travel 26 miles; sales of the car have been so poor (indicating that the American people are not falling for it, despite the packaging gymnastics of the president’s people) that GM actually went so far at one point that they forced (par for the behavioral course for leftist politics) their employees to drive Volts; further construction of the Chevy Volt has now been suspended; and, lastly, I’d be completely remiss if I didn’t inquire of the reader as to what he or she thinks about the cost of electricity, for two reasons. First, Barack Obama has promised us that his policies will make the cost of energy “skyrocket” – so why would you want to drive an electric car? Let’s even go so far as to suppose that by next month, we’re all buzzing around in our little electric golf carts. Do you really believe that it’s going to be automatically cheaper to run that vehicle? Once we’re not paying for oil and gas, the price of electricity will go through the roof. Use some common sense – if we were driving cars that ran on water, for Heaven’s sake, we’d be paying an arm and a leg for water. Anyone who thinks otherwise is foolish.
The second cost of running an electric car about which no one seems to be talking is the potential cost of the batteries. If such a vehicle depends on the battery to a much greater degree than the one in a standard car, how much might we paying to replace that bad boy? If anyone has bothered to look into it, those batteries are already ridiculously expensive. Go online and have a look….the prices for the battery pack right now range anywhere from $9,000 to 15,000.
Sign me up for some of that.
But who cares, right? It’s all about the “Have a Nice Day” smiley face that’s telling all of us that we’re taking care of the planet and that our government will cover all of these costs for us. Sure they will.
Allow me to end with the standard dictionary definition of “Demagogue”:
A leader who makes use of popular prejudices, makes false claims, and makes false promises in order to gain and maintain power.
Sound familiar?
It should.
