Some things are so completely screwed, you just have to write verses about them. Case in point: “A $1 Billion Solar Plant Was Obsolete Before It Ever Went Online“. Get a load of this:
SolarReserve’s Crescent Dunes received backing from Citigroup and the Obama Energy Department but couldn’t keep pace with technological advances … it looked like the future of renewable power. Citigroup Inc. and other financiers invested $140 million with its developer, SolarReserve Inc. Steven Chu, the U.S. Department of Energy secretary at the time, offered the company government loan guarantees, and Harry Reid, then the Senate majority leader and senior senator from Nevada, cleared the way for the company to build on public land.
We were here the whole time. Blissfully checked out, of course. Obliviously preoccupied, naturally. But we let it happen. Those government loan guarantees? That was our money. That public land? Yep. Ours, too. We let it be given away. FWIP! Just like that.
Now, where the hell is my pen? Oh, yeah. Here it is. Let’s see now:
Grift, graft, or merely daft,
It’s nothing like legit statecraft.
The governed are bamboozled as
Their leaders trade in overdraft.
Fair Warning
Given what we continue to let our pals in Washington get away with, don’t be at all surprised to read breathlessly effusive announcements in the near future about a new federal barbecue facility in the desert near Tonopah, Nevada. That’s right. Uncle Sam will likely be serving up all manner of bird burgers. (Hey! Bring your own buns! What do you think, money grows on trees?)
Nope. This isn’t news either. But come on. We can’t be expected to be on top of everything, right? After all, that’s why we have a representative government — to prevent travesties like these from being perpetrated.
Uh oh. I feel another verse coming on:
The politicians we elect
Are sworn to see boondoggles checked.
And as we all can clearly see,
That works out just smashingly.
Horsefeathers
Squandering resources at all is reprehensible. Squandering resources on this scale is obscene. And the fact that 6,000 birds a year are already fried in flight is only symptomatic of the fact that our goose is cooked. And we let it happen. If it weren’t for presidential term limits, Crescent Dunes might have qualified for Cash for Clunkers.
Oh, dang! Here comes another one:
I hope discernment will return
Before we have no birds to burn.
But we don’t seem too keen to learn.
This worm might be too big to turn.
At this point, kids, we’re somewhere between the Fifth Dimension and the Twilight Zone.
The only way to fix it is to let the sunshine in (fast forward to 2:19, if you must).