Solyndra, Meh

Solyndra is back in the news, and republicans continue to point to it as wasteful government spending run amok. You remember Solyndra, right? We gave them $535 million dollars to make some solar panels then they went bankrupt because the Chinese made cheaper solar panels.

So, on its face, you can say that the government wasted that money. I would say that, wasted or not, we can and should be helping the private sector develop and commercialize technologies that will be broadly useful, and sometimes we’ll screw it up and lose some money. Such is life.

But here’s my broader point. I just can’t get excited over republican accusations of wasteful spending because they’re so boldly hypocritical. These guys will flip over half a billion on a bad bet, but they refuse to cut anything from the defense budget. The Pentagon even said “we don’t want that jet fighter, actually. Please don’t fund it”. Yes, you read that right. The Pentagon doesn’t want a weapons system. That happens approximately never. But they refused to cut it. Now there’s some wasteful spending! Solyndra, at least, had the potential to be useful.

So when I hear people going on and on about Solyndra really all I can say is “meh”. Which is probably good, because otherwise I’d be saying something involving the phrase “self serving jackasses”.

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