Another US Government Sponsored ‘Earth Hour’ Company Goes Bust

First, mainstream environmental politics tell us of the need to become energy independent

Next, mainstream environmental politics tell us that people have been mainly responsible for the deterioration of the environment [based on computer models].

Third environmental politics tell us of the need to shift to green energy, by suggesting that prices of oil should rise to facilitate such a shift.

I may add this really serves as cover to promote the interest as well as to ensure the survival of welfare state nations, whom has depended on the sustainment of lofty oil prices to bribe their citizenry for them to stay in power.

Overall, mainstream environmental politics has been about promoting the privileges of a few entrenched vested interest groups through political privileges of social control by immersing the public with indoctrination based on tomfoolery and propaganda.

So how has the business of green energy fared?

Here is Zero Hedge, (bold emphasis mine)

Solyndra was just the appetizer. Earlier today, in what will come as a surprise only to members of the administration, the company which proudly held the rights to the world's largest solar power project, the hilariously named Solar Trust of America ("STA"), filed for bankruptcy. And while one could say that the company's epic collapse is more a function of alternative energy politics in Germany, where its 70% parent Solar Millennium AG filed for bankruptcy last December, what is relevant is that last April STA was the proud recipient of a $2.1 billion conditional loan from the Department of Energy, incidentally the second largest loan ever handed out by the DOE's Stephen Chu. That amount was supposed to fund the expansion of the company's 1000 MW Blythe Solar Power Project in Riverside, California. From the funding press release, "This project construction is expected to create over 1,000 direct jobs in Southern California, 7,500 indirect jobs in related industries throughout the United States, and more than 200 long-term operational jobs at the facility itself. It will play a key role in stimulating the American economy,”said Uwe T. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Solar Trust of America and Executive Chairman of project development subsidiary Solar Millennium, LLC." Instead, what Solar Trust will do is create lots of billable hours for bankruptcy attorneys (at $1,000/hour), and a good old equity extraction for the $22 million DIP lender, which just happens to be NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, another "alternative energy" company which last yearreceived a $935 million loan courtesy of the very same (and now $2.1 billion poorer) Department of Energy, which is also a subsidiary of public NextEra Energy (NEE), in the process ultimately resulting in yet another transfer of taxpayer cash to NEE's private shareholders.

As Bloomberg notes: "The company joins Energy Conversion Devices Inc., a U.S. solar manufacturer that suspended production last year; LSP Energy LP, the owner of a natural-gas-fired power plant in Mississippi; Ener1 Inc., maker of lithium-ion batteries for plug-in electric cars; solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC; and energy storage company Beacon Power Corp. (BCONQ) in bankruptcy."

And so central planning fails again, and again, and again, and again. But it sure will be better with the centrally planned monetary (and in the absence of a working Congress - also fiscal) policy. Because this time it really will be different.

US taxpayer's money down the drain again.

Politics based on social control, this time applied to environmentalism, fits very much into Ben Franklin/Albert Einstein’s description of insanity —doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to come out different. [The insanity quote may have been misattributed to Mr. Franklin and to Mr. Einstein but the essence of the message holds. ]

The unsustainable political picking of winners and losers will work only for as long as the public remains dense to reality, and for as long there remains real savings from the private sector from which would be forcibly diverted into such wasteful political enterprises.

As the great Professor Ludwig von Mises warned,

An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever. The whole system of interventionism collapses when this fountain is drained off: The Santa Claus principle liquidates itself.