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Not Like New Coke
September 24, 2011 Entrepreneurs

Just remember what happens in a market when a product is a failure, it disappears, often spectacularly, and with much pain to the entrepreneurs. However, it’s a lesson learned. You don’t get the good stuff (like Cherry Coke) without having the intense trial and error that produces and weeds out the bad, like New Coke.

Keep that in mind when you see that the government cannot even manage to rid itself of one of the worst “investments” it has ever made in its history, and a small amount at that. Here, we learn that:

The spending levels in the bill complied almost precisely with the debt-ceiling deal agreed by both parties and the White House last month. Senate Democrats objected in part because they want about $7 billion in disaster relief, but their larger complaint is that the House bill contains $1.1 billion of offset savings from “clean-energy” programs.

Given the scandal at Solyndra, which may cost taxpayers more than $500 million in loan guarantees gone bad, this would seem to be an ideal place to cut. About $100 million of the savings would come from the solar energy loan program that financed Solyndra, whose executives invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination at a House hearing yesterday. Another $1 billion or so would come from de-funding a vehicle fuel efficiency program that the auto industry and technology companies ought to be able to finance themselves.

Apparently these green subsidy programs have become sacrosanct for Democrats, even if they don’t create any “green jobs” and even when they lose money for taxpayers.

In “fairness” if you changed the topic from Green Jobs to Farm Subsidies, which are an order of magnitude larger, you can replace Democrat with Republican.

"4" Comments
  1. Remember, Mussolini got the trains to run on time.

    Solyndra is peanuts compared to the Volt, or the screwing of the Chrysler bondholders.

    By the way, when I typed in Solyndra on my IPhone it yielded “sophists”. No fooling.

  2. And don’t blame Republicans for farm subsides.

    While we are on the subject of the EPA and the USDA, do any readers remember Anne Gorsuch or Earl Butz?

  3. “Apparently these green subsidy programs have become sacrosanct for Democrats, even if they don’t create any “green jobs” and even when they lose money for taxpayers.”
    It’s even worse than that. The products, ethanol, for instance, are a government-imposed failure in the marketplace, taking the place of products that work better and consumers want while distorting peripheral markets, like feed grains in the case of ethanol.

  4. Right, Chuck.

    Tonight on the evening news was a story about shipping containers of good alfalfa to China, which has all these dollars, which are being depreciated rapidly by our government, which also has embarked on a grand effort to depress the yield curve. I guess the Chicoms have decided that alfalfa, even after huge shipping costs, is a better bargain than ten-year treasurys.

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