The Solyndra boondoggle is already a politicized hand grenade, but as anyone in venture capital will tell you, investing in the future doesn’t ensure return. Malfeasance should always be remedied, but fear of failure will guarantee no success. From “A Waste of Energy?‘ by the New Yorker‘s reliably lucid James Surowiecki:

‘Of course, some think the Solyndra failure shows that the government isn’t investing smartly. But, while government subsidies have built-in problems—most obviously, some money will go to projects that would have happened anyway—there’s little sign that the Department of Energy has handed out money recklessly: the vetting process, which relied on three thousand outside experts, was unusually rigorous. Solyndra was a wager that went wrong, but failure is integral to the business of investing in new companies; many venture capitalists will tell you that, of the companies they fund, they expect a third, if not more, to fail. By those standards, the government is actually doing pretty well so far: under the stimulus program, the D.O.E. has handed out nearly twenty billion dollars in loan guarantees to renewable-energy companies, and only Solyndra has defaulted, accounting for a small fraction of the money guaranteed. Solyndra’s failure isn’t a reason for the government to give up on alternative energy, any more than the failure of Pets.com during the Internet bubble means that venture capital should steer clear of tech projects.”