Further evidence that when government officials usurp the role of the free market to choose winners and losers, they inevitably shuffle taxpayer dollars across the table to … losers. The Heritage Foundation’s Lachlan Markay reports:
President Obama used a weekly address in July 2010 to tout his stimulus package’s support for the solar industry. One of the companies he mentioned specifically, Abound Solar, just announced that it will lay off 70 percent of its workforce.
Abound would “creat[e] more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs,” Obama claimed, and would be integral to the administration’s quest to “create whole new industries and hundreds of thousands of new jobs in America.”
But a year and a half later, the company’s staff numbers only 120. It announced Tuesday that it would lay off 180 full time and 100 part time employees, halt solar panel production, and delay the construction of a manufacturing plant in Indiana.
Just how much money went to Abound Solar through the Energy Department’s 1705 renewable energy loan program? So far, the company has drawn $70 million of its $400 million loan. The company won’t be able to draw more until it resumes production.
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