Republicans are demanding that the Obama administration officials explain why they gave taxpayer dollars to a United States solar company even after the firm warned it was near collapse. Yes, heaven forbid we invest in ourselves. We should just let the free market export all these jobs overseas.
Enough with this partisan garbage. These are jobs going overseas and we're busy arguing over which individual is to blame when it was a very obvious bi-partisan team effort?? We have let a brand new industry slip away to allow other countries to take the lead in this field. What are we going to do about it? We can't keep this up. We're burning all our capital on stupid internal fights while our more nimble and organized competitors swoop in and take these companies and the jobs they create for themselves.
For decades the United States business community led in new innovations. This is no longer the case. Tax spending on research and development remains under attack in this age of austerity, while the expansion of old energy sources such as natural gas and coal are promoted, despite the unaccounted passed down costs these industries may do to the environment and our health. Our competitors have no problem investing tax dollars to subsidize companies to bring wealth to their nations. Yet, if one party even proposes to invest a few dollars on improving just infrastructure, there is screaming and yelling from the party out of power. So, aside from the loans in question, we basically chose not to help solar power companies on our shores and instead have decided to let China take the lead so they can export solar panels back to us.
These weren't just simple manufacturing jobs of interchangeable goods that could be done anywhere and, arguably, make sense to be done elsewhere due to vastly lower costs. These are skilled positions producing complicated materials that we are losing. How does not investing or producing anything help our workforce? Nothing is a sure bet, and perhaps the Obama administration chose poorly in supporting California solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, but at least they tried. For the good of the nation we can't just stand back and allow other nations who have no qualms in taking risks to help their own industries to surpass us while we fiddle.
This isn't the 19th century anymore. There is no Henry Ford building the next major game changer in his garage. And this isn't one state taking jobs from another state for "job growth." These are nations, our competitors, taking more wealth out of our pockets. We can help ourselves by investing in ourselves, yet our "leaders" continue this partisan nonsense while ignoring real external challenges to this nation (I'm not even going to get into the unconscionable debt we are requiring our children to accumulate just so they can get enough of a higher education, that taxpayers used to be happy to subsidize as a wise investment in tomorrow, to try to get these disappearing jobs). Some would call this treason.
So instead of wasting time and energy asking whether investing in local solar companies was the right move, how about asking ourselves why we are letting our country fall apart while we chose to ignore our external competition? Our competitors have their priorities straight. They know what to do when they see a fire. And while a fire can lead to renewal and rebirth, it can also lead to total destruction and annihilation. Why do we seem to want the later?
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