“Investment” in green energy is an abject failure. Would someone please inform our President?

“We need to invest for the future.”

That used to refer to your own retirement portfolio, or maybe even a rainy-day fund. In the past three years, however, it has a new meaning: let’s spend tax dollars on “green” companies that may or may not work out.

You have no doubt heard the argument FOR giving money to these firms: we need to flush our money away assist them so they’ll be on an even footing with foreign green energy companies; this technology is the wave of the future, yada, yada, yada……

Okey-dokey.

I didn’t want my tax dollars going to these companies, but I said to myself, “Self….maybe President Genius and his buddies are on to something. Maybe this ONE time they actually are leveling with the American people. Maybe …just maybe ….this isn’t just a complete boondoggle. Maybe this could work…?”

Silly me.

The following is a list that Rush read out at the end of his  radio show yesterday. When I heard it, I was floored. No WAY could there be THAT many now-bankrupt companies that received tax dollars! Surely we’d be hearing of a scandal like this being shouted from the rooftops from more than conservative sites….right?

Guess again:

• Solyndra,
• Abound Solar,
• Energy Conversion Devices,
• BrightSource,
• LSP Energy,
• Evergreen Solar,
• Ener1,
• SunPower,
• Beacon Power,
• ECOtality,
• A123,
• Uni-Solar,
• Azure Dynamics, and
• Solar Trust.

These companies were given millions (and in some cases, billions) of federal dollars. If you had that many companies in your portfolio that ALL went under in the course of 2+ years, your investment broker would be in a soup line right now.

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Consider the obvious: we need energy NOW, and existing methods for obtaining oil (you know: the stuff we actually use to run our cars) like the Keystone XL pipeline recently got shelved. And you can add the new revelation that by delaying the pipeline, any oil that we will get from its eventual building will now cost us more, due to our recalcitrance.

Green energy is a fine idea, as long as the U.S. Taxpayer isn’t on the hook for it. It’s even possible to argue for ending something as essential to our daily life as “evil Oil subsidies”, provided we get out of subsidizing everything ELSE, too.

But attempting to demonize oil while at the same time propping up failing “green” industries accomplishes nothing, save making us pay more at the pump with nothing else to show for it.