Romney's Green Energy Initiatives Failed Too: Romney at Solyndra Attacks Obama With All the Wrong Reasons

“Two years ago, President Obama was here to tout this building and this business as a symbol of his stimulus. Well you can see that it’s a symbol of something very different today, it’s a symbol not of success, but of failure,” Romney said. “It’s also a symbol of a serious conflict of interest. An independent inspector general looked at this investment and concluded the administration had steered money to friends and family, to campaign contributors.”

Romney, standing in front of the gleaming Solyndra office building which has a red “For Sale” sign hanging on it, said that the building was a symbol of “gross waste.”

“If you look at this building behind us, this is not the kind of building that is filled by private enterprise. This is the kind of enterprise, the kind of building that’s built with a half a billion dollars of tax payer money,” Romney said. “It’s not just the Taj Mahal of corporate headquarters, you probably also heard that inside there are showers that have LCD displays that tell you what the temperature is of the shower water.”

"Gross waste" Mr. Romney? Once again we see Mitt Romney doesn't argue from a Constitutional standpoint. Giving companies billions of dollars in corporate welfare is not a power the Constitution gives to government. Yet, Romney can't make this distinction and never once mentions this important tidbit in his attacks against Obama at Solyndra. 

Let's not forget here as Romney attacks Obama forgetting the Constitution in this matter--never once bringing it up--Romney used tax payer money for his own version of Solyndra at Massachusetts governor. It wasn't that long ago, Mitt Romney was investing millions of dollars taken from Massachusetts taxpayers to fund these same green energy initiatives he attacked Obama over posing in front of the Soyndra building.

“We need to initiate a bold, far-reaching research initiative -- an energy revolution -- that will be our generation's equivalent of the Manhattan Project or the mission to the moon. It will be a mission to create new, economical sources of clean energy and clean ways to use the sources we have now. We will license our technology to other nations, and, of course, we will employ it at home. It will be good for our national defense, it will be good for our foreign policy, and it will be good for our economy. Moreover, even as scientists still debate how much human activity impacts the environment, we can all agree that alternative energy sources will be good for the planet. For any and all of these reasons, the time for energy independence has come.”--Mitt Romney


Guess what? Romney's record on green energy is little different than Obama's. Romney too believed it was the job of the government to redistribute wealth from the taxpayer to the the green energy corporations. Romney had similar results. In case you haven't noticed, Massachusetts is making no claim as the green energy center of the United States.


Politico reported:


In 2003, Romney launched the Massachusetts Green Energy Fund, a $15 million project aimed at providing "an opportunity to capitalize on two emerging trends: the growing level of investment interest in clean energy and the importance of Massachusetts' academic and corporate R&D in forming clean energy technology companies," according to its website.

At the time, Romney called the fund a "springboard for the commonwealth by focusing on job creation in the renewable energy sector."

And it is in the nature of venture funds that some of their projects fail. That's why the private sector funds can get such high returns, and why some energy projects seen as having a huge public upside -- from nuclear to solar -- have convinced government officials to back them.

And so while Romney has criticized Solyndra on the campaign trail as a major failure of the Obama administration, his Green Energy Fund invested in several companies that have since failed or not lived up to expectations.

Of the six companies listed in the fund's portfolio, three are either struggling or have shut down completely.

Wouldn't you have more respect for Mitt for Brains had he just admitted he tried these same green energy initiatives on a state level and got the same results and its time for the federal government to live within the means of the Constitution and quit redistributing wealth in the form of corporate welfare? Romney's such a flip flopper and continues to hope his real record won't be exposed.