Softball Practice With US Green Energy

Unchallenged horsecrap is horsecrap.

Stop me if you’ve heard these lines before…

Despite woes, company pushes forward with new energy

This sounds remarkably like when Brad Mainland (The Web Parts Job Bust guy) took a Register & Bee reporter to his new building and talked about his grandiose plans that most people knew were total horsecrap. The reporter swallowed everything he dished out and didn’t challenge anything at all. Needless to say, it was all horsecrap and Mainland’s gone for good. The building went back to Danville’s IDA and Danville’s soon going to be on the hook for the Tobacco Commission Free Money that he got.

Here we go again. US Green Energy CEO Bob Bennett is now in the spotlight and he’s got lots of reasons excuses on why US Green Energy is a Job Bust. Let’s analyze a few quotes…

“For instance, two years ago, the federal government changed the banking requirement in how much money the banks had to hold and reserve. The banks went out and cancelled credit lines,” Bennett said.

Commercial entities are U.S. Green Energy’s main customer base. Most of them utilize those credit lines for the majority of their purchases. The credit line cancellations effectively pulled the plug on potential sales. Bennett estimated that caused a loss of $20 million in business overnight.

A good reporter would have asked who this “main customer base” was and where did Bennett get the $20 million figure from. That didn’t happen here. I think that $20 million amount was pulled ex rectum because he knew he wouldn’t be challenged on it. Credit lines were pulled in, but businesses still had money to spend.

Next…

The company previously qualified for a solar manufacturing incentive from the government. The incentives were repurposed recently and applied to a broader fund, which was less focused and did not include solar manufacturing, Bennett said. “We had planned on that support for years.”

The crucial incentive could have provided the company up to $6 million per year. In response, the company took on the expense of a lobbyist to protect a portion of the incentive. “We got an extra year of partial support,” he said.

Hello? Boing. Anybody out there heard of Solyndra? The federal government threw lots of Free Money down the toilet at alternative energy companies and cut back on that flow once they realized NOBODY WAS BUYING THEIR PRODUCTS! You can’t make a company survive on Free Money anyway.

Another excuse, please…

Through international business contacts, Bennett had secured investments “in excess of $100 million” that were expected in 2013. However, “international money laundering laws were changed and [the company] had to cancel the transaction and start over again.”

…

While obtaining stateside investments would be an ideal solution, Bennett, a businessman of more than 20 years, explained that most U.S. investors were too apprehensive to put money into a volatile market. “It’s impossible to get money out of the United States now,” an exasperated Bennett said.

“I think the investors are afraid of what’s going to happen,” he continued. “There’s a great deal of fear. They’re just sitting on their money.”

Yeah right. GOK is still looking for that foreign investor money too. I don’t buy this grandiose excuse one bit. OK, you can’t get 100 Milllllllliiiiion Dollars (best said in a Dr. Evil voice). How about maybe 2% of that? You know, $2,000,000? Enough to pay off this Tobacco Commission money that you’re putting Danville on the hook for?

And you can’t get US investors to put money in? Maybe that’s because solar energy projects have usually gone bankrupt because nobody is buying what products they’re making? Speaking of that, what exactly does US Green Energy have in their warehouse to sell?

That’s enough quotes from that interview that Larry King would call a softball.

Other quick points…

US Green Energy got “pressured” into completing their building. Boo Hoo. Shame on the people for actually having the nerve to “make” the company do what they said they were going to do. And hey, let’s also blame Danville Utilities and the cost of electricity. If Bob Bennett is struggling to pay his company’s $1000 electric bill, that’s him and his company’s fault for not having the money. He was in front of City Council a month ago saying US Green Energy was having trouble paying his $450 electric bill. Hey Bob? Sell some solar panels. You get money from that. Use that money to PAY YOUR BILLS! GAH!

This article is chock full of reasons why things have failed and very little on how things can get better except some new products (like what?) and small orders.

I wonder if Bob Bennett knew that he wouldn’t be challenged by the Register & Bee reporter on this Spin-O-Rama?

I’ll interview him. I’ll be glad to tour the factory and tell you what I see. I’ll make the call this week.