Why on Earth Would the Obama Campaign Call Solyndra ‘Successful and Innovative’? Because It Was.
Solyndra was once the toast of Silicon Valley, a hot start-up whose product was not only innovative but revolutionary. It was one of the most successful fund-raisers in the history of clean-tech finance, attracting an astonishing $1 billion from elite investors…
That’s why the Obama Administration (like the Bush Administration before it) was so eager to finance Solyndra’s state-of-the-art factory in Fremont, California… Sure enough, Solyndra’s revenues soared from $6 million in 2008 to $140 million in 2010, and were on track to double again in 2011. Some of us thought the company had a good chance to survive.
Of course, it didn’t, which made some of us look stupid. Silicon prices plummeted, so Solyndra’s business plan imploded, and the company defaulted on its $585 million loan…
There has never been the slightest bit of evidence that political influence had anything to do with Solyndra getting its money. Even Darrell Issa, the top Republican investigator in the House, has admitted that. Every lender makes bad loans, and overall, the federal clean-energy loan portfolio is doing fine. But the idea of the feds giving half a billion dollars to a company that goes bankrupt sounds so shocking that people naturally assume there must be a corrupt explanation. So Republicans have seized on the fact that one major Solyndra investor, George Kaiser, was an Obama fundraiser, ignoring the fact that the Republican donors in the Walton family were also major investors, and that the Bush team was just as gung-ho about the loan…
Solyndra was a potentially transformative company, “widely praised as successful and innovative.” It was a calculated risk that went sour. That’s a shame, but it’s not a scandal.
