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Mitt Romney’s Solyndra Moment

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romney solyndra Mitt Romneys Solyndra Moment

Talk about the ultimate glass house. Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney has been on the warpath recently, taking his time to decry President Obama’s backing of Solyndra. Turns out that a solar company Romney supported when he was governor of Massachusetts has just gone out of business, too.

As reported in the Boston Globe, Konarka Technologies Inc. filed to liquidate on June 1. This company was the beneficiary of both state and US aid, an aspect that will absolutely declaw Romney’s attacks on Obama for supporting Solyndra. “It demonstrates the ‘problem’ of having a record, in that obscure decisions and circumstances come to light, often far removed from their original frameworks,” University of Kansas political science professor Burdett Loomis explained.

When Romney was still governor of Massachusetts, he gave $1.5 million in loans to Konarka as part of a $9 million state-funding project for clean energy companies. Romney additionally announced a restructured “green fund” amounting to $15 million would be available to bolster renewable energy in Massachusetts. In all Konarka got $170 million in private capital and $20 million in government research grants.

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul tried to spin this situation as much as possible explaining the subsidies were approved before Romney came into office and turned the topic back to Obama, claiming he has “a lot of questions to answer about why he used taxpayer dollars to reward wealthy campaign donors for bad ideas like Solyndra.” Solyndra’s leading investor was billionaire Obama supporter George Kaiser, but the Republican-led congressional investigation into the Obama administration’s alleged ties to the billionaire has come up with nothing supporting the claim that Obama was rewarding a political donor.

“Everyday we see a new example of Mitt Romney’s hypocrisy…just one day after he pulled a political stunt outside Solyndra, we learned even more about his record of picking winners and losers in Massachusetts when one of the companies he gave a loan to went bankrupt,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said. The stunt to which Smith was referring was when Romney made a speech outside closed Solyndra Fremont, California facility to highlight Obama’s lack of job creation.

With Konarka’s failure, Romney should probably not risk throwing more rocks lest his glass mansion shatters.

Romney’s Solyndra Moment Uncovered originally appeared in Green Chip Stocks. Green Chip Review is a free 2x-per-week newsletter, is the first advisory to focus exclusively on investments in alternative and renewable energies.

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Green Chip Stocks Editors & Contributors Jeff Siegel Jeff Siegel is the managing editor of Green Chip Stocks, an independent investment research service that focuses exclusively on renewable energy and organic and natural food markets. Nick Hodge One of the bright young minds in today's cleantech industry, Nick is putting his knowledge of nascent green markets to use in several ways... Nick is the co-author of a best-selling book and has interviewed dozens of times for TV and Web; his keen insight, uncanny foresight, and global contacts have led to double- and triple-digit wins for his readers, time after time.