The robber barons are back. The liberals who warned us against the crony capitalists in history books are the crony capitalists in front of us. Solyndra, declaring bankruptcy after taking more than a half-billion in tax dollars, demonstrates the degree to which saying "green jobs" acts to obscure the designs of robber barons. As I write in my column @ Human Events, the green in "green jobs" always referred to cash, not the environment.

You can bleat and squeal all day long about the failures of American green energy companies. That's great, pat yourself on the back over the loss of a relative pittance. Meanwhile, Chinese enterprise is creating the green technology of the future, has the world's fastest supercomputers, is hacking American governmental agencies and business enterprises, and has the world's most advanced mass transit systems.

In the past, when America's competitors outpaced us, we made massive appropriations in public enterprise to develop the first computers, put a man on the moon, and put American GIs through school. Today, the postmodern conservative bungler calls those actions communistic, fascistic, and socialistic. In the past, Eisenhower Republicans called it fighting against the Nazis and the Soviets.

Dan, do you direct that same ire toward GE and the oil and natural gas industries who receive massive corporate welfare benefits? Or is it just more cool and culturally palatable to attack green enterprise?

I do, PMA. In fact, I mention GE in the article I wrote. Read it. One thing I didn't write in the piece but is germane to your first post is that the scandal here isn't that the government picked a loser. The scandal is that the government is subsidizing private corporations. If Solyndra had paid back its loan, it wouldn't have made the referee's intrusion into the contest any less scandalous. It just so happens that government investing in corporations that the private sector has largely decided not to invest in can't help but result in disproportionately picking losers. But the scandal here isn't that Solyndra failed. It's that our govenment favored one corporation over the competition.

I think "Bunglers" is certainly an appropriate term for the administration pouring, what was it, half a billion(???) into a company that is now bankrupt. Green technology is not the problem...throwing money at the wrong company is.

Sure, it's a "pittance", but maybe a bit of due diligence would have invested that pittance in a viable green company. Bunglers...good ol' Biden & co. I think we know what they were shoveling with this, "shovel ready" project.

NR: If a green company were viable, why would it need the federal government's "investment"? Certainly a viable green company, or any other viable company for that matter, attracts private investors. That is to say viability, at least when it pertains to private companies, suggests the ability to turn a profit. So if a company were viable, it by definition wouldn't need a subsidy, loan, or sweetheart deal from the feds.

Very true Dan.

Let me parse my words a bit...Green technology is not the problem; government investment in what appears to have been a total sham, is.

It's the same with oil subsidies or farm subsidies or price regulation(check out the Canadian Wheat board sometime).

I just get amused by PMA's fallacious use of the term "conservative bunglers" when literally shown proof of liberal bunglers in action. Kinda stepped in some troll poop there.

One question though. What would your view be on something like NASA? I grant that the private sector could certainly do the same job (and probably for less) but would we want them to?

(btw...I realize that's a bit tangential to the conversation)

I hear conservatives complain that Obama has cut NASA. I wish they were right. NASA is a relic of a Cold War p!ssing contest. I am fascinated by space and astronomy. But I don't see why a massive federal bureaucracy needs to be the engine to study space. Might private universities be a better fit? Couldn't airlines, such as Virgin's endeavors, invest to recoup space tourism dollars? How about the private companies who put satellites in space? Don't they have an interest in investing more than they do?

Rather than explore Mars, we should invite the Martians here. This would be a much cheaper way of learning about their planet.

While I'm definately no fan of NASA they do much more than deal with space, one of those A's stands for Aeronautics. Also NASA doesn't design or build virtually anything, private industry and universities do at NASA's request.
I think we're on the verge of purely private space for profit industry and NASA can go back to being what it's suppose be, strictly research and exploration.

Dan, c'mon, you're better than that. You wrote one sentence which vaguely mentioned companies that received subsidies and beat the dead Solyndra horse ad nauseum.

Public enterprise will oftentimes run losses. Educating poor children and providing care for poor children will always be a loss to public coffers. While I agree that public enterprise has no business aiding and abetting private business enterprise, there is an important place for public enterprise in providing for safety and resources for new technologies and infrastructure. But if our competitors, who are outpacing us in the technology of the future and who do not in any way, shape, or form respect fundamental and basic Western values and human rights continue to outpace us, we as a society could be in tremendous trouble, from without as well as within.

If private business enterprise has succeeded in making Americans think that the technological breakthroughs of the 20th century were merely symptoms of a Cold War p!ss!ng contest, then their victory over society and morality is complete. When will Americans stop worshiping the golden calf on Wall Street and return to the policies of the Golden Era of American Prosperity, 1945-1979, when wages rose commensurate to productivity gains, public infrastructure spending was at an all-time high as a percentage of the budget, and marginal tax rates were at their most progressive? We may never see these days of widespread prosperity again.

1945-1979...lol - damn that Reagan.

Don't worry, I'm sure if we continue on the path we're on, we'll find a way to exterminate another 70 million of our fellow human beings from the planet. Then you'll very likely get another 34 years of "golden age".

Funny you should mention that, because I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

It dawns that the best times for this country were the years after the turmoil of the last World War. I would go a wee bit past 1979 as I thought the 80's and some of the 90's were pretty good, but we are definately in decline.

Just how long will it take for another World War to kick off to again right the U.S and the Planet?? No guarantee we win this one.

There you go PMA. An argument without name calling or vitriol. Good for you. You really are at your best when you don't undermine your case with ad hominems. That will get you more respect than name calling ever will.

Thanks guys for the views on NASA.

As to World Wars, are we not already in one? Unconventional warfare is still warfare but has the nefarious dimension of being not easily definable. How is Islamism any less evil than Nazism or Communism/Stalinism/Maoism?

I would not consider the constant danger we and the rest of the world face from Islamist terrorism a war, per se. There are no definable borders, no countries in particular and our enemy are not combatants in the sense that they are defending or expanding their territories. I would say that they are more of an ideological enemy than anything else.

And that is why I worry. Assymetrical warfare is often under-rated. Like fighting smoke.

My point was that the liberal answer to most problems is death, though they seldom realize it. The earth needs to be saved from over-population (abort, prevent, let die), crime can be controlled by aborting black babies, health care is too costly because we don't let sick people die - or we don't just outright kill them, women are enslaved to their households by babies (so they kill them), babies with development problems will have a hard life - kill 'em. On and on and on.

Liberal solutions to the World's problems: Survey says! "Kill dem before dey grow" - number 1 answer.

Yes, liberalism is the culture of death. But they so try to mask themselves as the culture of compassion. Compassion if you're not a living breathing human that is.

It was evident from the beginning that this kind of corruption would be par for the course coming from a virtual unknown who leaned his trade in Chicago.

The only private sector that this piece of excrement honors include those who will bundle for him and benefit from his big government largesse and re-distribution schemes in a business model where a loss sees them getting paid back before the taxpayer.

Is there any doubt that if this guy were Barry Hubert O'Brien, Irish Catholic from Chicago, that he would have long ago been impeached?