How does one begin to understand just how bad our government really is after reading this story? And how do people still believe 'big' government is what we need to solve our financial problems?
These people that advocate bigger government are our neighbors, friends that we have known for decades but now it seems, all of a sudden, they want others to control their personal lives and seemly happen to live a substandard life style. What?
The scary part in this dark tale is maybe our friends and neighbors have always been this way, we just never recognized it until our own personal lives have come under attack. But why do some of us see this as a threat to our freedom while others accept enslavement without a word?
Are we in trouble here - you bet!
Firm Sells Solar Panels, Taxpayers Pay
Source: Timothy P. Carney, "Firm Sells Solar Panels -- to Itself, Taxpayers Pay," Washington Examiner,March 19, 2012.
A heavily subsidized solar company received a U.S. taxpayer loan guarantee to sell solar panels to itself, says the Washington Examiner.
First Solar is the company and the subsidy came from the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im).
Here's the road of subsidies these solar panels followed from Perrysburg, Ohio, to St. Clair, Ontario.
First Solar is an Arizona-based manufacturer of solar panels.
In 2010, the Obama administration awarded the company $16.3 million to expand its factory in Ohio.
In 2010, then-Ohio governor Ted Strickland announced more than a million dollars in job training grants to First Solar.
The Ohio Department of Development also lent First Solar $5 million, and the state's Air Quality Development Authority gave the company an additional $10 million loan. After First Solar pocketed this $17.3 million in government grants and $15 million in government loans, Ex-Im entered the scene.
In September 2011, Ex-Im approved $455.7 million in loan guarantees to subsidize the sale of solar panels to two wind farms in Canada. That means if the wind farm ever defaults, the taxpayers pick up the tab, ensuring First Solar gets paid.
But the buyer, in this case, was First Solar. A small corporation called St. Clair Solar owned the wind farm and was the Canadian company buying First Solar's panels. But St. Clair Solar was a wholly owned subsidiary of First Solar. So, basically, First Solar was shipping its own solar panels from Ohio to a solar farm it owned in Canada, and the U.S. taxpayers were subsidizing this "export."
This subsidy undermines the arguments for Ex-Im's existence. Ex-Im, whose authorization expires May 31, is supposed to be a job creator, helping U.S. manufacturers beat foreign manufacturers by having U.S. taxpayers backstop the financing.
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