Another stimulus-funded corp. goes bankrupt
Chris Woodward - OneNewsNow -
Last week, just after President Barack Obama touted the manufacturing of high-tech batteries in his State of the Union address, Ener1 filed for bankruptcy protection. The corporation received a $118 million stimulus grant to expand its operations, but now says it cannot pay its pressing debt.
Seeing as how this is not the first government-funded company to file for bankruptcy, Lachlan Markay of The Heritage Foundation says it does not make sense for the government to continue making such investments.
"It's become really a poster child for what's wrong with government intervening in the energy marketplace," he contends. "Of course, it's not the first company to go bankrupt since receiving funds. Solyndra is the most high-profile example, but there have been others, and a clear pattern is developing here."
Even so, Markay does not think this bankruptcy will stop the president, nor does he think this will be the last company to resort to that.
"He said [in the State of the Union] something to the effect of 'I won't be deterred by a single company failing,' in what was a clear reference to Solyndra," the reporter recalls. "But the fact that the very next day another company failed shows that this was not an isolated incident."
He goes on to argue that more bankruptcies are inevitable because when the government intervenes, "competitive technologies" disappear. And Markay laments that the president fails to understand the problem.
Vice President Joe Biden visited Ener1's new plant in Indiana last year to highlight its progress with federal funds.
Read Markay's related piece:
Obama, Biden both lauded now-bankrupt, stimulus-funded Ener1
