The Obama Energy Faceplant: It’s As Easy as A123

[Valin]

Power Line:

Steven Hayward

10/17/12

 

While we continue to dissect last night’s debate, let’s savor this wonderful video (just 2:30 long) from the Michigan Economic Development Association about the whole A123 debacle (filing for bankruptcy right before Obama touted “securing the energy of the future” even as he disdains the energy of the present). This pretty much captures the entire liberal delusion about energy and economics

 

This is a previously-uploaded video from the Michigan Economic Development Association that has since been made private. It was uploaded in October of 2010 and title, "Michigan Advanced Battery Capital of North America." The video shows President Obama, former Michigan Gov. Granholm, Senator Levin, Senator Stabenow and Energy Secretary Chu all praising the troubled battery manufacturer.

 

(Snip)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGwTh-xXoQc

[Valin]

Electric Car Crash

Obama's green energy industrial policy turns up in Chapter 11.

 

Mitt Romney quipped in the first Presidential debate that the problem with the Obama Administration's green energy investing isn't that it tried to pick winners and losers, but that "you pick the losers." He was being generous. Another big green Administration favorite went belly-up on Tuesday with the Chapter 11 filing by battery-maker A123 Systems Inc.

 

Massachusetts-based A123 is—or was—part of President Obama's grand design to build a U.S. electric-car industry more or less from scratch. The company was founded by entrepreneurs in 2001 to make lithium ion phosphate batteries and attracted private investment from the likes of Sequoia Capital and GE. Then Washington picked up the green energy fad.

 

As Mr. Obama put it in August 2009, the government would create an "infrastructure of innovation" by doling out "$2.4 billion in highly competitive grants to develop the next generation of fuel-efficient cars and trucks, powered by the next generation of battery technologies, all made right here in the U.S. of A."

 

In a September 2010 congratulatory phone call to A123's Livonia, Michigan plant, Mr. Obama called it "the birth of an entire new industry in America."

 

(Snip)