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Politics : The Solyndra Scandal -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (190)	10/20/2011 9:20:16 AM
From: joseffy	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1400

Fisker Motors - Solyndra on Wheels Will Fisker Motors Be Another Solyndra? By Isaac Martin http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/will_fisker_motors_be_another_solyndra.html There's been considerable coverage of the Department of Energy's $534-million loan guarantee to bankrupt Solyndra. But lurking unnoticed is a similar $529-million DOE grant to Fisker Automotive to build the high-end hybrid Karma and eventually mid-priced sedans. With Hyundai, Toyota, Porsche, and GM building hybrids, why is the government funding an automotive startup? Somebody must have raised some money for Obama. Fisker's people believe that they can build a car with more consumer appeal. Are they right? The market will let them know, just like it has for Chevy's Volt. There are two considerations involved. First is the Karma itself, and second is the government loan in light of the Solyndra revelations. Details are emerging as Fisker starts its Karma marketing roll-out. In the October 2011 Vanity Fair (VF) print edition, on page 206 and 210 are four-color, full-bleed spreads, plus four more one-page ads ending at 221. That's not surprising, since well-heeled progressive VF readers are Fisker's target buyers. The meager ad copy, which doesn't exude much driving passion, announces that the Karma represents "Responsible Luxury." It is "the first true electric luxury vehicle with extended range." And its performance has "low impact on the environment." The ads explain that the car's EVer hybrid system delivers a "300 mile/483 km extended range" and "100 MPG/160km." This is by virtue of a turbocharged GM ECOTEC four-cylinder engine driving an electrical generator which creates the power for extended range. Fisker also claims a "50 Miles All Electric" range, adding that "Most people travel less than 35 miles/56 km per day." The question unanswered is under what driving conditions was battery range determined. Do they mean covering 50 miles in one hour, or two? While battery-only operation sounds very green, how ecological is it when the recharging current is generated by an icky coal-fired plant? As for being an American job-generator, the Karma is currently being built in Finland, and according to Car and Driver, the electric motors utilized are a product of China. A perfect project for the Obama administration - spending Americans money and not creating a single American job! For a $88,400 vehicle, "low impact" performance is not a characteristic I'm looking for, particularly when you consider that Chevy's Volt offers "low impact" performance. By comparison regarding performance appeal, consider the copy in a humble 2012 Ford V6 Mustang ad on page 174 in the same VF issue: "305 horsepower and 31 mpg in the same car. Or how to blow people away twice." That says "drive me." "Low impact" doesn't. Currently, there's no full instrumented road tests. Popular Mechanics (PM) completed their basic test drive. The 196.7-inch-long, strikingly styled aluminum-body sedan weighs "about 5000" pounds, which is porky for a contemporary car. Why is weight listed as "about"? What's so hard about weighing a car? Zero-to-60 is 5.9 seconds, which, using the engine-driven generator sending power to the motors, would qualify as just OK for that price. Since PM describes the Karma as a "performance vehicle," a full road test providing 0-60, 0-100, and quarter-mile times; braking; slalom; and skid pad numbers is needed to understand this car's performance character. Plus, flogging a Karma out on Mazda Raceway for a few laps would test for better or worse its hybrid performance capabilities. For its price, they should be pretty high Naturally, it's no surprise that wealthy customers are buying. An Architectural Digest story mentions that Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore are Karma purchasers. It's noble that millionaire celebrities, who wouldn't hesitate a nanosecond to fly their private jets for a weekend jaunt, are buying a car that's environmentally "low impact." Will the Fisker Karma be profitable? Are you kidding???? No, this is just another government financed toy for the rich. They'll probably sell a few hundred at a cost of a million or so apiece to the taxpayers. There is not a chance in hell this will be successful. I presume that the list price means that each sale is profitable and not subsidized by loan funds. Ironically, the Karma will qualify for a $7,500 hybrid vehicle tax credit, which means a despised tax break for millionaires and billionaires. The second consideration is Fisker loan conditions. Part of the proceeds involve buying a former GM assembly plant in Wilmington, Delaware to build their smaller, less expensive $40K Nina family sedan. Will this car be noticeably superior to a Chevy Volt? That's to be determined. As for loan specifics, we don't know yet. In the meantime, here are the questions I would pose: -If there is a default, will the rich "1 percent" private investors, who have ponied up $470 million, get shuffled like Solyndra's so they get repaid before taxpayers do? DUH! -Will UAW workers staff the Delaware plant? -In the loan application, did Fisker management include Nina sales estimates? -Did any Fisker investors or management personnel bundle donations for Obama's political activities? -Did Fisker management have White House access? Delaware, by coincidence, is the vice president's home state. Summed up, a car factory, union workers, and lots of suppliers make for a good way to burn through $529 million so that in the end, no one knows where the money went. It's potentially like Solyndra, but with wheels.

To: jlallen who wrote (190)	10/20/2011 8:06:45 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1400

Update: Fisker Karma Electric Car Gets Worse Mileage Than an SUV ........................................................................................ by Warren Meyer 0/20/2011 forbes.com Electric Car for the 1%. Image via Wikipedia The Fisker Karma electric car, developed mainly with your tax money so that a bunch of rich VC’s wouldn’t have to risk any real money, has rolled out with an nominal EPA MPGe of 52. Not bad? Unfortunately, it’s a sham. This figure is calculated using the grossly flawed EPA process that substantially underestimates the amount of fossil fuels required to power the electric car, as I showed in great depth in an earlier Forbes.com article. In short, the EPA methodology leaves out, among other things, the conversion efficiency in generating the electricity from fossil fuels in the first place. In the Clinton administration, the Department of Energy (DOE) created a far superior well to wheels MPGe metric the honestly compares the typical fossil fuel use of an electric vs. gasoline car. As I calculated in my earlier Forbes article, one needs to multiply the EPA MPGe by .365 to get a number that truly compares fossil fuel use of an electric car with a traditional gasoline engine car on an apples to apples basis. In the case of the Fisker Karma, we get a true MPGe of 19. This makes it worse than even the city rating of a Ford Explorer SUV. Congrats to the Fisker Karma, which now joins corn ethanol in the ranks of heavily subsidized supposedly green technologies that are actually worse for the environment than current solutions. Postscript: I will say, though, that the Fisker Karma does serve a social purpose — Hollywood celebrities and the ultra rich, who want to display their green credentials, no longer have to be stuck with a little econobox. They can now enjoy a little leg room and luxury.

To: jlallen who wrote (190)	10/21/2011 2:09:57 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1400

The Obama gang has first ignored those who ask “impertinent” questions. Now when forced to answer questions they will lie and/or tell half truths then move on to personal attacks on the questioners. When they are finally forced to yield and answer somewhat truthfully, the media will join in the character assassinations. Usually that would be enough to end any investigation. Will this formula hold true this time?

To: jlallen who wrote (190)	10/29/2011 11:27:47 AM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1400

Obama Miracle is White House Free of Scandal: Jonathan Alter ............................................................................................... By Jonathan Alter Oct 27, 2011 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-27/obama-miracle-is-white-house-free-of-scandal-commentary-by-jonathan-alter.html President Barack Obama goes into the 2012 with a weak economy that may doom his reelection. But he has one asset that hasn’t received much attention: He’s honest. The sight of Texas Governor Rick Perry tumbling out of the clown car recently as a “birther” (or at least a birther- enabler) is a sign of weakness, not just for the Perry campaign but for the whole Republican effort to tarnish the president’s character. Although it’s possible that the Solyndra LLC story will become a classic feeding frenzy, don’t bet on it. Providing $535 million in loan guarantees to a solar-panel maker that goes bankrupt was dumb, but so far not criminal or even unethical on the part of the administration. These kinds of stories are unlikely to derail Obama in 2012. If he loses, it will be because of the economy -- period. Even so, the president’s Teflon is intriguing. How did we end up in such a scandal-less state? After investigating the question for a recent Washington Monthly article, I’ve been developing some theories. For starters, the tone is always set at the top. Obama puts a premium on personal integrity, and with a few exceptions ( Tim Geithner’s tax problems in 2009) his administration tends to fire first and ask questions later. The best known example is Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department official who was mistakenly fired by her boss over a miscommunication that led higher-ups to believe -- wrongly -- that she had made inappropriate racially tinged remarks. In several other cases, the decision to give staffers accused of wrongdoing the boot was made within hours, taking the air out of any possible uproar. Mixed Results But the White House’s intense focus on scandal prevention has had mixed results. The almost proctological vetting process has ended up wounding Obama as much as prospective nominees. He gets cleaner but often less imaginative officials. The kind of swashbuckling figures from the private sector who might have, say, come up with a far more ambitious job-creation plan often don’t bother to apply for government service these days. The vigilance about wrongdoing has worked better when it comes to oversight of the $787 billion stimulus program. The money might not always have been spent on the right things. But a rigorous process supervised by Vice President Joe Biden, and made transparent with the help of recovery.gov, has prevented widespread fraud and abuse. A Media Problem Unfortunately, we might not know of scandals in stimulus spending or elsewhere because of changes in the news business. For today’s media, talk is cheap and reporting is expensive. That means we get more chatter and less scrounging for official wrongdoing. In the past, many of those scandal stories originally came from congressional investigators and others with subpoena power. But with the demise of the Office of Independent Counsel, a fount of information for reporters from the Reagan to the Clinton eras, the machinery of scandal-hunting began crumbling. It doesn’t help that so much “news” coverage -- as opposed to commentary that is explicitly opinionated -- nowadays takes place in a partisan context. Fox News has tried to flog stories on manufactured controversies like “policy czars” in the White House (which go back to the 1970s) or whether it was wrong for Elizabeth Warren to consult with state attorneys general on their lawsuits against mortgage lenders. (It wasn’t.) Every time Representative Darrell Issa, the Republican from California who leads a House investigative committee, calls the Obama administration “corrupt” without offering any evidence, he hurts his cause. It’s much harder to make a story register as a bona fide scandal when the political motivation is so obvious. It’s also harder to find room for such stories when so much other news is breaking. Scandals like the Monica Lewinsky affair were almost a luxury of good times, when the nation could afford to obsess about a blue dress. Not these days. These factors are all relevant, but the ultimate explanation can be found at the top. According to a metric created by political scientist Brendan Nyhan, Obama set a record earlier this month for most days without a scandal of any president since 1977. The streak probably won’t last, especially if he gets a second term, where scandals are more common. But the impression of rectitude will be part of the voters’ assessment of him next year. He’ll need it.