http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/green-tesl ... epage=true
Green Tesla Motors: Another Day, Another Solyndra
The "green" loan scandal grows to include yet another seemingly hopeless company.
October 17, 2011 - 12:00 am - by Richard Pollock
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The resignation of Jonathan Silver, the U.S Energy Department’s top loan officer, over the Solyndra scandal may be the tip of the iceberg. He supervised a much larger DOE loan program that suffers from the same problems as Solyndra: over the last 18 months, the Department has awarded more than $9 billion in below-market loans to auto companies under its Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program.
The most troubling transaction: a $465 million loan to California’s Tesla Motors. Tesla received a loan rate of 1.6% from DOE to manufacture an all-electric car that will sell for nearly $50,000. It will not exactly be the people’s car. Tesla also builds luxury sports cars that retail for $103,000 to $128,000.
Tesla also is no simple new age car company. It is owned and financed by big donors to the Democratic Party and to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Tesla’s principal owner is Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal. He has an estimated personal wealth of $672 million. His firm received venture capital from the The Westly Group, Daimler Chrysler, and from Abu Dhabi investors. The firm has partnerships with luxury sports car manufacturer Lotus and with Mercedes-Benz.
The secret to access to the DOE money is The Westly Group, run by California Democratic Party stalwart and big Obama campaign bundler Steve Westly. The former eBay executive wasn’t merely a prodigious fundraiser for Obama, raising $500,000 for his presidential campaign. He also served as the president’s California campaign co-chairman. Another Obama $500,000 bundler was Solyndra investor George Kaiser and his foundation.
Westly got statewide attention in 2006 when he spent $35 million of his own money to run an ugly and largely negative race against California state Treasurer Phil Angelides for governor.
Westly is a personal friend of President Obama, and since the election has visited the White House for meetings and social parties. He privately dined with the president in February with a small group of Silicon Valley billionaires. It was called the “trillion-dollar dinner.”
This is how you feed at the DOE money trough
You know, this bickering against Elon Musk and Tesla is pathetic. Forst of all Tesla is writing black numbers, something that cant be said about any of the other recipients of government money in the auto industry. As we all know they got a lot more money and have very little to show for it. Most of them dont even produce in the US (Chevrolet produces most of their stuff in China).
I find this article absolute bullcrap and propagandistic.
I find this article absolute bullcrap and propagandistic.
I'm sorry you find it propagandistic... If the freaking government wants to play venture capitalist, it can do it with its own money.Skipjack wrote:You know, this bickering against Elon Musk and Tesla is pathetic. Forst of all Tesla is writing black numbers, something that cant be said about any of the other recipients of government money in the auto industry. As we all know they got a lot more money and have very little to show for it. Most of them dont even produce in the US (Chevrolet produces most of their stuff in China).
I find this article absolute bullcrap and propagandistic.
Wait a minute... the government doesn't make its own money, it steals mine so it can play games with it. So, no... they can't take my money and give it to whomever they like, loan or not.
You mean like the billions in bailout money that they gave to the fracking banks and the fracking US car industry so that their CEOs could pay themselves a large bonus from that? You mean like that?I'm sorry you find it propagandistic... If the freaking government wants to play venture capitalist, it can do it with its own money.
The money that went to Tesla, a very successful company btw, unlike the aforementioned banks and car manufacturers, was miniscule in comparison.
For the money invested, the US is getting something in return too, you know. They get high tech that stays in the country and jobs and earnings that pay taxes. In the long term that is a lot more than the bit of money they invested into Tesla.
And I am not even mentioning the hundreds of billions worth of earmarks that have been going to the defense industry companies and lately also security industry companies. The latter in particular is money that I am really concerned about, because it is a prime example of wasteful government spending.
I think you should read up on that and then rethink your position.
That may not be such a bad idea. Perhaps the FedGov should determine how much money the SS and other retirement systems have "put into" the various retirement funds (in theory), and assign that much of it's holdings to the newly formed US Common Wealth Inc. Then the USCWInc would be required to maximize LONG TERM profits for its long term investors. Hmmm.mdeminico wrote:I'm sorry you find it propagandistic... If the freaking government wants to play venture capitalist, it can do it with its own money.
Last edited by KitemanSA on Tue Oct 25, 2011 11:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
Elon Musk has a large financial interest and is heavily involved in the day to day operations of both Tesla and SpaceX, but they are separate companies.choff wrote:Isn't that the same Elon Musk discussed in another thread about commercial rockets. I'm curious how the money being doled out in this thread would compare if it was given to NASA instead?
SpaceX's latest rocket, the Falcon Heavy, which will launch in first quarter 2012, has a payload capacity twice that of the space shuttle and will cost 80million$ per launch. Less than 10% of the cost of a shuttle launch.
SpaceX also has a capsule called Dragon which they have successfully launched into orbit on their Falcon9 rocket. It will be officially man rated as soon as the design of the capsule's emergency escape system is complete.
If the falcon heavy works as advertised then it will save the US government 1billion$ annually in space launch costs....
The company developed all this for approximately 500million.
If tesla can perform as well as spaceX then it will be money well spent.
here is a promotional video for the falcon heavy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTwRxtmQ9IY
) they have been in the black since 2007 and have 40+ launches scheduled.coff, this is about a loan that Elon Musk got for Tesla motors, not so much about SpaceX.My point would be that rather than have a system that forces Elon to deal through this political dreck, wouldn't it be more straightforward to raise NASA's budget by an equivalent amount to pay space X to build rockets. Same difference only smells better.
You know a LOAN, not a bailout, or anything like that. Also, from what I understand Elon Musk did not pay himself a large bonus for that, like certain other people did. I just absolutely can not understand the animousity towards Tesla here. There are many other cases where this would be much more warranted.
It is also worth mentioning that Elon Musk was not a big fan of Solyndra himself. His Solar City is a very different concept and in contrast to Solyndra is profitable.
It is just a really strange article where completely different companies and situations are thrown into a pot, completely disregarding others that are much worse for no reason at all. The only thing that I can see is some political bias against Elon Musk and maybe an attempt to support some of his competition for some reason. The author is clearly biased and clearly has some secondary agenda.
I have nothing against Elon, its just in my country providing donations to political parties to secure government loans is frowned upon, public donations of up to $500.00 by an individual to a party is the limit. My complaint would be with a political system that forces a business man to provide such payments to secure such loans, not the individual himself.
CHoff