Here we go again.
Yet another example of the Obama White House’s failed attempt to pick winners and losers and doing so by gambling with our our tax dollars, this time to the tune of $6 million in tax credits and $15.6 in grant money from the U.S. Department of Energy.
This company, Amonix, is only 14 months old.
How in the world did it qualify for that kind of tax dollar windfall without any kind of track record?
Oh:
Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Gov. Brian Sandoval were among the political leaders who lauded the company when it announced it would start making solar cells in the Golden Triangle Industrial Park.
And naturally, Obama has his fingerprints all over it:
The Amonix solar manufacturing plant in North Las Vegas, heavily financed under an Obama administration energy initiative, has closed its 214,000-square-foot facility 14 months after it opened.
Officials at Amonix headquarters in Seal Beach, Calif., have not responded to repeated calls for comment this week. The company today began selling equipment, from automated tooling systems to robotic welding cells.
A designer and manufacturer of concentrated photovoltaic solar power systems, Amonix received $6 million in federal tax credits and a $15.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to build the plant in North Las Vegas.
And here is the likely reason why Obama had to rush in where venture capitalists feared to tread:
“I don’t think they had a lot of training,” Kenerly said. “There were a lot of quality issues. A lot of stuff was coming back because it had some functionality issues.”
Don’t know about you, but stories like this only serve to once again point out how absurd it is that the Obama campaign and its Media Palace Guards are obsessed with what Mitt Romney did with his own money and hardly concerned at all with what Obama is doing to squander our money.
More…
From the Amonix website:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “Flips the Switch” on Amonix Concentrated Photovoltaic Solar Plant at Southern Nevada Water Treatment Facility
308 kW (DC) CPV Plant Owned and Operated by the Southern Nevada Water Authority
Date of Publication: 05/15/2010
Henderson, Nevada – May 15, 2010 – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today presided over a ceremony to “flip the switch” at the first Concentrated Photovoltaic (CPV) solar energy plant owned and operated by the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) at its River Mountains Water Treatment Facility. Amonix, a leading supplier of CPV solar systems for sunny and dry climates, designed and manufactured the plant. Other dignitaries present included Jared Blumenfeld, Region 9 Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, Shari Buck, Chair of SNWA Board of Directors and Mayor of North Las Vegas, and executives of SNWA, TWC Construction and Amonix.
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