Solyndra, another stimulus economic failure

House members probe $535-million loan guarantee by Obama Energy Dept. for Solyndra solar plant

Here's a sad and revealing chronology about a U.S. president named Obama, a California company named Solyndra and, now, a congressional investigation into the administration's loan guarantee of $535 million in a failed green energy project that was supposed to create jobs.

But it didn't.

At enormous taxpayer cost.

The story starts in the early 2009 days of the Democratic administration of Barack Obama and the hastily written economic stimulus legislation passed by the whopping Democratic congressional majorities of Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

You'll remember it was very important to pass the $787-billion economic stimulus bill as quickly as possible then to keep the 7.1% national unemployment rate from rising further. Today, it's 9%. So, that didn't work out well, either.

On Sept. 9 that year in a special closed-circuit TV program for the groundbreaking of Solyndra's new plant, Vice President Joe "Recovery Summer" Biden announced the signing of the $535-million federal loan guarantee, the Energy Department's first under the stimulus plan.

Joe said, "These jobs are the jobs that are going to define the 21st century that will allow America to compete and to lead like we did in the 20th century.”

But now Fred Upton and Cliff Stearns, chairmen of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Oversight Subcommittee, have been examining the company's financials and the possibility of waste and fraud. (Full story here)