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Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Solyndra, Crony Capitalism and the Leviathan State

Conservatives, Libertarians and even Republicans should use the stunning example to the bankruptcy of Solyndra to reach the obvious conclusion. Whether the Obama administration is corrupt, incompetent or simply the victim of ideological stupidity is almost beside the point. Of course it's all three.

The larger point is one that Conservatives and Libertarians have been making for some time: that government screws up and the bigger the government the bigger the screw-ups. Only government intervention could have produced the housing bubble, and the economic rubble that we are living with was created by government policies. Only government can run up fifteen trillion dollar deficits. Only government can create Ponzi schemes like Social Security and not go to jail. Only government can create programs like Medicare and Medicaid that can literally bankrupt the biggest, richest country in the history of the world. At the local level only government can promise its employees’ pension benefits that are impossible to pay.

Whatever the motivations or cupidity of the people that gave half a billion dollars to a solar panel company that had no hope of ever even breaking even, Solyndra is the poster child for a government that has grown gargantuan, that is the go-to guy for big capital in this country, that doesn’t have any idea of what works and what doesn’t and is determined to run your life and mine because it has the arrogance to believe its own bullshit about its intelligence and wisdom.

If Republicans could break away from its own adherence to crony capitalism, it could use Solyndra as the cudgel to break the hold that the statists, socialists and social engineers have on the country. Solyndra, it’s easy to understand, the dollars are big enough and the country’s in the mood to listen. Don’t play small ball with this one: go big. To avoid the next Solyndra, downsize government.

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