A Colorful Scandal

President Obama tried to promote "green energy" with a federal loan to a solar panel manufacturer in California to show that jobs in companies like this one were the wave of the future. The failure of Solyndra, Inc., the company in question, turned colors in Washington from green to red as if they were traffic signals or autumn leaves; Obama and his staffers are red-faced with embarrassment, and congressional Republicans are red-faced with anger.

Republicans in the House of Representatives are investigating to see if maybe the $528 million loan to Solyndra was rushed and approved before it was given a chance for a thorough review. The White House had touted the program as a model for kickstatting the renewable energy industry, but Solyndra went bankrupt and laid off over a thousand workers. The FBI then found that Solyndra spent over two million dollars lobbying in Washington regarding many of the provisions in the loan program just before White House officials sought the approval of said loan.

The GOP is trying to see if the Obama administration at least tried to protect taxpayers from getting shafted, and even if they don't find anything to suggest that taxpayers weren't adequately shielded, this is going to be a real black eye for "green jobs." The mainstream media are most likely going to tout this as a failure of Obama's renewable energy policy and crookedness in the solar panel business while forever downplaying the crimes of the oil and gas industries.

With pundits laughing at the idea of "green jobs" and the American renewable energy industry in disarray, it's time Obama gave up on his promotion of "green" energy. Selling such an idea to Americans is like trying to get them to eat muesli for breakfast or bike to work.