Washington Post: “Obama’s Green Technology Program was Infused with Politics at Every Level”

The Obama administration’s green-energy programs were driven by politics, not the public interest or sound policies. As The Washington Post recently noted in discussing the Solyndra scandal:

“Obama’s green-technology program was infused with politics at every level, The Washington Post found in an analysis of thousands of memos, company records and internal e-mails. Political considerations were raised repeatedly by company investors, Energy Department bureaucrats, and White House officials. The records, some previously unreported, show that when warned that financial disaster might lie ahead, the administration remained steadfast in its support for Solyndra.”

(Solyndra’s stakeholders include major Obama donors and bundlers, such as George Kaiser.)

I discuss these revelations — and other ways that the Obama administration is wasting taxpayer money, shifting resources away from productive uses, and killing jobs — at this link.

As Glenn Reynolds notes, “all the ‘stimulus’ and ‘green energy’ stuff was never anything but a program to put taxpayer money into the hands of cronies and supporters.” As an Obama fundraiser and Solyndra stakeholder exulted, “there’s never been more money shoved out of the government’s door in world history and probably never will be again than in the last few months and the next 18 months. And our selfish parochial goal is to get as much of it . . . as we possibly can.”