Let's imagine.
In California, mainly Democratic legislators, regulators, and utility executives forced residential, commercial and industrial customers to pay $1.5 billion for a solar plant years before it was due to begin operations, then cancelled the project without it generating one kilowatt-hour, and brazenly refused to refund the $1.5 billion to customers.
What would have been the reaction of the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and the like had the Duke Energy nuke rip-off in Florida involved solar and had been sanctioned by Jerry Brown and the Democratic Legislature of California?
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2013/08/01/fla-rep-duke-energy-wont-build-florida-nuclear-plant/.
The Duke Energy $1.5 billion nuclear ripoff wastes 3-times as much money as Solyndra, but the reaction to it draws no breathless coverage or Congressional hearings!
For years, the political right coddled nuclear, even though it is only built by state-sanctioned monopolists and governments themselves. The right's love of nuclear is irrational, born of the tribal impulse to love what the left hates. And because so many environmentalists (but not all) hate nuclear, the right loves it, excusing even nuclear's worst excesses like the Florida fiasco.
Another reason why the critics of Solyndra are so silent about the Florida nuke debacle may be simple partisanship. The Sunshine state is run by Republicans from top to bottom. and so the Duke Energy rip-off is embarrassing to conservative media. By contrast, Solyndra could be used to attack President Obama, involved solar (much of the right loves to hate it), and so was doubly enticing to Fox and the Wall Street Journal editorial writers.
No matter the reaction, the Florida pillage of consumers is the biggest consumer rip-off of 2013 so far and it will be hard to beat.
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