Shocker: Big bets on solar company aren't paying off for taxpayers. The key phase of the entire article:

She (Granholm) declined to speak to the Free Press for this report.

Freaking idiot! Plus:

Then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm got the company's United Solar Ovonic subsidiary to open in Greenville. She promised $37 million in incentives to create more than 500 jobs in a west Michigan town devastated when appliance maker Electrolux took its jobs to Mexico.

Government investments, commitments and congressional earmarks totaled more than $170 million for the company. The hope, if not the promise, was that ECD would create more than 1,000 new jobs in Michigan as green technology took hold.

But ECD and United Solar are dying. Stock worth nearly $80 a share three years ago was trading for less than 40 cents a share this week. A Battle Creek plant -- never opened -- is for sale. Hundreds of employees already have been laid off, and this week the company said it will let go 500 more and furlough 400 as it suspends its operations.

Solar Ovonics actually has a really good product, but it cots too much:

UPDATE: From the Free Press comments:

Well Golly Freep that is a big surprise. You could not shut Granholm up when it came to all this green crap and I kept telling all of you since the beginning these solar panels and wind mills were a flash in the pan.

We tried this during the Jimmy Carter days and it was a bust then too. Will you libs ever learn not to repeat the same costly mistakes?

Look at the billions of taxpayer money that has been wasted on this green crap. Look at the mercury poisoned CFL blubs we are now mandated to use.

Being Liberal and green is a disease and a costly one at that.

Can we drill baby drill now?