Romney's Bain Capital Vs. Obama's Solyndra: Game On
Industrial Policy: At the NATO Summit, President Obama said his opponent's private equity success vs. the administration's failed industrial policy was what this election was all about. Speaking at the bankrupt Solyndra headquarters, his GOP opponent agreed.
It is said a picture is worth a thousand words. The photo of Mitt Romney holding a surprise press conference in front of the headquarters of the bankrupt solar energy firm Solyndra poster may just be worth a good portion of the 270 electoral votes needed for victory in November.
"Two years ago President Obama was here to tout this building and this business as a symbol of the success of his stimulus," said Romney, stepping off a bus and onto the public sidewalk in front of the Solyndra buildings just outside Silicon Valley. "Well you can see that it's a symbol of something very different today."
Indeed, it is a symbol of the failure of the administration's green energy boondoggle, where over a half billion dollars has been spent to reward donors while subsidizing an uncompetitive company with a doomed business model.
Solyndra, where 1,100 employees lost their "green jobs," is only one of many green failures that included companies like Beacon Power, First Solar and Ener1, battery maker for President Obama's fantasy fleet of electric cars.
During a visit to Solyndra Inc.'s Fremont, Calif., facility in spring 2010, President Obama boasted of what the company was going to do with the $535 million in loan guarantees his stimulus package provided.
"We can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra," he said. "(T)hrough the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the result of those loans." Loans, that Romney pointed out, the taxpayers were left on the hook for. The $535 million loan guarantee that was issued despite the warnings of private and federal agencies helped build a plant the size of five football fields outfitted with whistling robots and spa-like showers.
At the NATO Summit, President Obama said he couldn't just think about profits for investors but the good of all the people, at least all the people like George Kaiser, the billionaire behind the Solyndra debacle. Frankly, we prefer the risks and chances for success of firms like Romney's Bain Capital versus the crony socialism involved in President Obama's backing of firms like Solyndra.
What Romney practiced at Bain Capital is called capitalism, Mr. President. It's something practiced by the late Steve Jobs when he dropped out of college to start Apple Computers in his family's garage and becoming filthy rich doing so. He created more jobs and economic growth than any number of failed stimulus packages.
Entrepreneurs invest, reap the rewards or endure the losses. Under true capitalism, there is no need for bailouts or stimulus. No one is too big to fail — or too small to succeed.
"He (Obama) has been choosing businesses that add to his campaign, and putting money in them," Romney said during a February campaign rally in Henderson, Nev. "When we started a little company called Staples, instead of having offices in a big glass Taj Mahal, like Solyndra, our offices were in the back of a shopping mall."
Mitt Romney and Bain Capital oversaw the creation of tens of thousands of jobs by companies like Staples, Sports Authority and Domino's Pizza. President Obama would maintain the highest corporate tax rate in the world, waste more billions on more Solyndras and leave a 200-year-supply of oil in the ground while we subsidize electric cars with a propensity to catch fire.
Let's hope this is what the election is about, Mr. President. If it is, you're going to lose and the American people are going to win. |
