Another Solyndra? Ener1 Bankruptcy Is Latest Obama Green Jobs Flop

Ener1 Bankruptcy Is Latest Obama Green Jobs Flop

By SEAN HIGGINS, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 01/26/2012 06:46 PM ET

President Obama's green jobs effort has suffered two more black eyes, as one federally backed company filed for bankruptcy and another laid off two-thirds of its workforce.
Ener1, which got a $118 million federal matching grant to develop electric car batteries, filed for Chapter 11 on Thursday. The Indiana-based company has been in dire condition, having been delisted from Nasdaq last November.
Meanwhile, solar panel maker Amonix laid off 200 people on Wednesday. It had received a $6 million tax credit in 2009 to build its Las Vegas facility.

Vice President Joe Biden tours Ener1 in Greenfield, Ind., on Jan. 26, 2011. The lithium-ion battery-maker, which got a $118 million federal matching... View Enlarged Image

They are the latest embarrassments in the White House's efforts to boost the green technology industry. Loan recipients have gone bankrupt, green jobs numbers have stalled and sales of electric cars have been sluggish.
Much like defunct Solyndra, Ener1 was once a White House darling. Vice President Joe Biden toured Ener1's Indiana facility last year. The administration put it as No. 67 on its list of "100 Recovery Act projects that are changing America."
The Day Before Yesterday
Two days before in his State of the Union address, President Obama took credit for the electric battery industry's success.
"In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world's leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries," he said. "Because of federal investments, renewable energy use has nearly doubled, and thousands of Americans have jobs because of it."
Left unsaid was that the president had originally promised the green energy investments would create five million jobs, not thousands. The silver lining for the administration was that Ener1's filing hasn't led to any layoffs at its EnerDel unit. At least not yet.
"The restructuring is not expected to impact EnerDel's oper ations and the company has made clear that they do not expect to reduce employment at the site," said Jen Stutsman, spokesperson for the Energy Department.
Ener1 was less optimistic, saying in a statement that while it had no plans to cut jobs, it would "make adjustments to the workforce as appropriate."
The administration awarded a matching grant to the lithium-ion battery company in August 2009. This was under the Recovery Act, aka the stimulus bill. Ener1 has drawn on $55 million of the available $118 million to date, according to the DOE. Its most recent SEC filing put its workforce at 769 people.
Electric Car Sales Stalled
The electric car industry has not taken off despite generous administration incentives. GM's (GM) Chevy Volt missed its 10,000 sales mark for 2011, selling 7,671. Nissan's (NSANY) Leaf also fell just short in its goal of 10,000 in sales, with 9,674.
"Development of this market has been slower than the industry originally anticipated," said Ener1 spokesman Brian Sinderson in an email, citing intense global competition.
Sales have not been helped by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's investigation into the Volt after its batteries caught fire in government crash tests.
Mariana Gerzanych, CEO of 350Green, which installs public charging infrastructure for electric cars, says the industry needs federal investment to get off the ground, but says the administration's random approach is creating its own problems.
"Investors won't come on board because they don't know what the policies will be" from year to year, she said. She thinks the administration has played favorites too.
Not Backing Down
The administration stood by the investment Thursday.
"While it's unfortunate that Ener1, the parent company, has entered a restructuring process, the new infusion of $80 million in private capital demonstrates that the technology has merit," Stutsman said.
The administration has continued to fund green energy companies. It doled out more than $7.5 billion in loans last fall while conceding it expected them to create only about 338 permanent jobs. That's about $20.7 million per job.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., said in a statement that the filing underscores the failure of the White House's green jobs push.
"Sadly, the Department of Energy's jobs record seems to grow worse by the day ... and it is American taxpayers who are paying the price," he said.
Stearns has also questioned the timing of the announcement, noting it came just after the State of the Union address. Emails publicly released in the Solyndra bankruptcy indicate that DOE officials pressured the company to delay bad news until after the 2010 election.
Solyndra is still winding its way through bankruptcy courts. The company filed for bankruptcy last year, having burned through more than $327 million in federal loans which are now unlikely to be repaid.
Last October, Beacon Power, recipient of a $43 million federal loan, filed for bankruptcy and was delisted from Nasdaq.
Also Thursday, FirstEnergy announced it was closing six coal-fired power plants, four in Ohio, the others in Maryland and Pennsylvania, due to new Environmental Protection Agency rules.
The closures will affect 500 workers.

Communists Sue Democratic Party For Stealing Platform

This a great post I found on thepeoplescube.com I had to repost it on my blog it is just to damn funny please do enjoy.
Red Square

4/12/2010, 5:27 pm

In a surprise move, the CPUSA (Communist Party USA) has announced a lawsuit against the Democratic Party and its leadership for the alleged theft of intellectual property. The plaintiffs claim that the entire so-called "new" Democratic agenda is, in fact, the product of a decades-long, painstaking campaign by CPUSA theorists, agitators, and underground subversive cells - which makes it the intellectual property of the Communist Party USA, protected by American copyright laws. "They stole our entire platform, rebranded it 'progressive', and claimed it as their own," declared a CPUSA spokesperson at a press conference in San Francisco. "And we communists say, not so fast! Not in this country anyway, where we still have property rights and the rule of law, thank God! Actually, let me rephrase that..."
~
The Communist Party representative explained that government ownership of the auto and financial industries, redistribution of wealth, and free rationed healthcare have always been among the glorious CPUSA objectives: "We held on to these goals through all the difficult years of factional infighting, purges, denunciations, and heroic espionage on behalf of the Soviet intelligence services."This may seem like a foreign idea to you, but we sacrificed everything for it - our friends, our neighbors, and our nation. We suffered from all kinds of ulcers and split personality disorders by blindly following Stalin's directives. We risked our chances of promotion within US government agencies by dutifully advancing Soviet foreign policy. And for what? So that some spoiled Democrats could ride on our backs to power while throwing us crumbs in the form of minor cabinet appointments?
"It's just like taking someone else's hard-earned income and redistributing it! ... Never mind, bad example... It's like infiltrating a respectable organization and taking over its management while engaging in subversive propaganda and the rewriting of history... Whoops, bad example again... It's like being devoid of moral standards and rejecting all the norms and values of Judeo-Christian civilization... No, that was totally inappropriate. Scratch that...
"It's time we got our fair share of credit from the current administration. As a gesture of good will, we would be pleased to accept the credit in the form of stimulus checks, subsidies, and loan guarantees for our members. If not now, when?"
CPUSA lawyers presented documents to the press showing that the Democratic platform of 2010, almost-line-for-line, reiterates the CPUSA platform of 1963. As the lead attorney for the plaintiffs pointed out, even a casual reading shows that while the rhetoric occasionally varies, the underlying policies are nearly identical.
"If the public knew that all the Democrat ideas are ours, we'd have more high-paying jobs in the Obama administration," remarked the CPUSA spokesperson. "While all our members can't be czars, we should at least get royalties. We can't survive on government handouts alone, not yet anyway."
This announcement seems to overturn past communist policy favoring the liquidation of czars and royalty.
The Democratic National Committee has declined to issue an official comment on the lawsuit, but a high-ranking White House official stated privately that this development is the result of an historically inevitable "convergence of opposites" - a philosophical concept outlined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - whereby the American public catches up with the glorious promise of communism, while the CPUSA becomes so American that it becomes embroiled in litigation. "Don't quote me on this," he added, "but Barack and I believe we can easily reconcile whatever minor differences we have with the CPUSA, and work together to prepare Americans for the final march, in well-organized and neat columns, towards our radiant progressive future."

Special thanks to Will Beria for contributing to this story

U.S. forces rescue kidnapped aid workers Jessica Buchanan and Poul Hagen Thisted in Somalia

This news just warms my exceptional American TEAhadist Conservative Infidel heart! Seal team six members after killing the captors found two hostages, unharmed.

Annoy a Leftist. Work Hard, Succeed & Be Happy!

The ongoing Presidential election has got me thinking about the contrast of the left and right. The whole thing can be summed up with in just two sentences. Annoy a Leftist. Work Hard, Succeed & Be Happy!

What do I mean by this? The simple Conservative truth of Fair taxes, limited government, states rights, and school choice through vouchers, competition and charter schools verses the unsustainable Marxist redistributive model exposed by the leftists. 

Does the fact that they have to reinvent their brand every so often to hide their real intentions mean any thing? Marxists, Socialists, Progressive, Communists are all variations of the same tired Marxist redistributive ponzi scheme that has repeatedly failed in every attempt that has been tried in the last two centuries. Why do they have to use warm and fuzzy half true misleading terms like social justice, The Conservatives have used the same simple message from the beginning!

Solyndra the Bankrupt Green Company Caught Destroying Brand New Parts

The leftist green company Solyndra that stiffed American taxpayers. CBS 5 has caught them red handed destroying millions of dollars of assets. This poster child for the Progressive Socialists brand of crony-capitalism that for some strange unexplained reason is being ignored by OWS (Occupy Wall Street) and the main stream media.

55% Say Obama More Liberal Than They Are

55% Say Obama More Liberal Than They Are

According to Rasmussen Reports

Friday, January 13, 2012

Most voters still believe President Obama is to the left of them ideologically.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 27% of Likely U.S. Voters feel that the president has about the same ideological views as they do. Fifty-five percent (55%) say Obama is more liberal than they are, while 11% believe he’s more conservative.  (To see survey question wording, click here.)
The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on January 9-10, 2012 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Rubio in letter to Obama: You are turning America into a 'deadbeat nation'

Warning if you click on the link above for the article by by Jason Mattera do not down load the free viewer for the Rubio letter as it will put a bunch of unwanted aggressive programs on your computer!

In a scathing letter sent to Barack Obama this morning, Senator Marco Rubio said that under the President’s first term in office, “more and more people have come to believe that America is becoming a deadbeat nation.”

Rubio went on to pledge that he would challenge any further increase in the debt ceiling, arguing that “we [Congress] need to make it routine to actually spend no more than we take in.” In the letter obtained by HUMAN EVENTS, the Florida Senator said that President Obama’s upcoming request to increase the debt ceiling by a whopping $1.2 trillion will cause the nation’s public debt to surpass the $16 trillion mark.

“I will oppose your request to continue borrowing and spending recklessly.”

President Obama is expected to request the new borrowing power from Congress once the Senate and House return from their holiday recess.

The president must notify Congress when the debt closes within $100 billion of the ceiling, according to the Budget Control Act passed in August.  This triggers for Congress their only available option to block an increase, in this case $1.2 trillion, by passing legislation. However, even if the House and Senate do that, the president can still veto their objections.  In short, there is very little Republicans can do in a Democratic-controlled Senate to block an increase.

If President Obama led the charge to reduce the country’s unsustainable debt in mid 2011 rather than punt the enterprise to a “Super Committee,” asserted Rubio, we’d already be on a pathway toward economic growth and prosperity. "Unfortunately, the first three years of your presidency have been a profile in leadership failure."

The letter concludes: “America deserves leaders who will stand front and center, level with the American people about our challenges and offer real solutions to solve them.  Instead of simply asking for another debt ceiling increase, I urge you to come forward with a real plan to tackle our debt in 2012.”

This is the latest salvo in the debt ceiling debate in Washington.

The Florida Republican’s warning letter to Obama can be read in its entirety below.



This letter by Marco Rubio is a must read!