The Obama administration is tying itself in knots in attempts to prop up unfeasible "green energy" programs.
That became evident with the recent bankruptcy of Solyndra, a California solar panel manufacturer that got more than half a billion dollars in federal loans before it went belly-up -- sticking taxpayers with that bill. It was clear early on that Solyndra was struggling, yet the federal dollars kept flowing.
And now, it has been shown that the Obama administration knew Solyndra was in serious trouble but got the company to hold off on announcing dozens of layoffs until after the 2010 midterm elections.
In October 2010, a Solyndra investment adviser sent an email to a billionaire supporter of Obama. The email stated that the U.S. Energy Department was pushing "very hard" to keep the layoffs from going public prior to Nov. 2, 2010, The Associated Press reported.
Sure enough, Solyndra complied and did not announce the layoffs until Nov. 3 -- a day after the elections.
Then in August of this year, the company went under and laid off the rest of its 1,100 workers.
The Solyndra boondoggle is a big problem for the Obama administration, because the president had touted the company as a symbol of the future of alternative energy production. Solyndra's collapse, after it got hundreds of millions of dollars from the taxpayers, is obviously embarrassing to the administration.
And that is compounded by this new revelation that the administration got Solyndra to withhold information about the company's troubles until after the 2010 elections -- in a transparent attempt to minimize Democrats' electoral losses.
Sadly, these are the natural consequences of distorting free enterprise by using subsidies to promote this or that sector of the energy market -- or any market. That's one more reason why Washington should abandon such subsidies.