I wonder if you’ll hear this willingly brought up by the Romney campaign, or mentioned as a news item on Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh? Make some money now and place a bet in Vegas that you won’t. A reader sent me this link to this post at Think Progress:
On Thursday, Mitt Romney campaigned at the headquarters of Solyndra — the first renewable energy company to receive a federal loan under the stimulus — and reiterated his debunked claims that its bankruptcy symbolized the corruption and cronyism of the Obama administration. But just one day later, a solar panel developer “that landed a state loan from Mitt Romney when he was Massachusetts governor” went belly up, the Boston Herald reports, creating an inconvenient storyline for the GOP presidential nominee.
The company, Konarka Technologies, “filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection and will cease operations, lay off its 85 workers and liquidate.”
….Konarka is the second Massachusetts solar company, along with Evergreen Solar and Beacon Power, to receive taxpayer dollars under Romney’s tenure and subsequently declare bankruptcy.
Oops! I forgot. The discussion is supposed to be about Romney as a businessman, not about his days as Governor of Massachusetts in a different incarnation (and there are indeed moderates who liked the original Mitt Romney when he first started serving in Massachusetts when he was a moderate).
Don’t look for Romney or GOPers to spend much time talking about this case as they press the Solyndra issue against Obama.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.