More Crony Capitalism

Neil W. McCabe at Human Events reports on a solar power company (no, not Solyndra) that just received a $1.2 billion loan from the federal government:

How did a failing California solar company, buffeted by short sellers and shareholder lawsuits, receive a $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee for a photovoltaic electricity ranch project—three weeks after it announced it was building new manufacturing plant in Mexicali, Mexico, to build the panels for the project. The company, SunPower (SPWR-NASDAQ), now carries $820 million in debt, an amount $20 million greater than its market capitalization.  If SunPower was a bank, the feds would shut it down.  Instead, it received a lifeline twice the size of the money sent down the Solyndra drain. Two men with insight into the process are SunPower rooter Rep. George R. Miller III, (D.-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee and the co-chairman of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, and his SunPower lobbyist son, George Miller IV.

The article goes on to detail how SunPower's PAC contributes money to important politicians (almost entirely Democrats, of course) while getting in deeper and deeper financial trouble as part of Obama's effort to create jobs--in this case, $80 million in federal funds lent per job created.  Somehow, I think if we taxpayers were allowed to keep the money, we could produce jobs a bit more efficiently than that.  Heck, burning one dollar bills for a living would produce jobs more efficiently than that.