Update: Innovation, Guts, Better Products, and Transparency
Categories: Uncategorized
Some of you may have seen a story that John Stossel reported which mentioned us.
There were substantial factual omissions and incorrect facts reported. We believe that John was terribly misled by a third party to create a report with so many facts incorrect. Here are the actual facts. So you can decide.
1. The company has NEVER received a dime from DOE or any other federal agency before or after Ms. Zoi began working there in late June 2009. Stossel suggests we might have…well we didn’t. Period. He must have been terribly misled to suggest that we had received any money.
2. Robin Roy is an excellent employee and an expert in the energy field who had worked for us long before Cathy Zoi (his wife) was offered a job at the DOE. Her bi-partisan hearings included full disclosure about Robin’s job and experience in this field. The process was fully transparent from day one, and continues to be. By the way, the DOE has some 40,000 employees, most of whom have spouses in other jobs as well. And a huge list of checks and balances with any monetary decisions. There would be simply no way to favor one company over another with hundreds of people involved in those decisions.
3. Stossel suggests that maybe Ms. Zoi in her role at DOE got the VP to come to our plant. But he left out the timing from his story. Serious Materials opened our Pennsylvania factory on March 16, 2009 and the President mentioned it March 23, 2009. Our Chicago factory was visited by the Vice President on April 27, 2009 when he was already in Chicago for a Mayoral event. We were, of course, honored by this. But the Vice President regularly visits factories with new technology or ones which have opened to create new jobs. This is standard procedure for VP Biden and other VP’s before him. Moreover Zoi was not confirmed by the Senate until June 19, 2009. 2 months later. She was not an employee of the DOE at the time we opened the plants and hired back American workers. There is no cronyism if she didn’t work for the government at the time. Moreover, the VP’s team called our CEO directly because they saw the national news reports of the plant opening like everyone else in America at the time. It was a well covered story on all networks. Stossel must have been miseld about these facts, especially the date of start of employment.
4. Both the Pennsylvania and Chicago factories were bankrupt and closed by others. We purchased the equipment and re-opened and retooled them and have been hiring back American workers ever sense - without any government money. Strictly our own. We have not received one dime directly from the DOE, nor any other federal agency, at any time. Stossel carefully avoids saying we received any money, but insinuates that maybe we could have, and was likely led into thinking that maybe we did. To set the record straight, we have not.
5. While Stossel says “the other window companies say their windows are just as energy efficient”, it simply isn’t true. We do have the most energy efficient windows in the world – an R-11 (U0.09) certified by the NFRC, with a focus on whole window R values of R5 to R11. An important way of measuring energy efficiency of windows is according to the whole-window R-value, the insulation value of the full window. The higher the R-value, the more insulating the window. Single pane windows have an R-value of R-1, double pane an R-value of R-2, and ENERGY STAR® windows are around R-3. Our window lines have R-values of R-5 to R-11. It is not a matter of opinion, but a fact that at this time, and for the last couple of years, Serious Materials indeed has the most energy efficient windows in the world. Fully registered and verified by outside labs. Stossel was likely misled and not told that all windows are registered so there can be no opinion in the matter…just the facts. Also, the three window makers mentioned in the report do not make anything above an R4. Nor do most of the 2,400 window makers in the US.
6. Stossel states that we got a special tax credit no other window company did. That is completely incorrect, and it is also playing with words, as Serious sells much of its product in the commercial glass market. So some of our largest competitors are glass companies, not residential window companies. It is true that one of our plants was recently accepted as one of 183 plants that meet the requirement for a potential IRS tax credit (called 48C) on new equipment that substantially advances energy efficiency, expands capacity and hires American workers. The equipment must be purchased over 4 years for $1.6 million, and our company may receive up to a $548K tax credit to offset 30% of the cost. We believe the three window companies mentioned in the report did not even apply for this potential tax credit given the stringent requirements for new technology. However, 6 other window and glass companies, which do compete directly with Serious, did qualify for a total of $70M, with Serious Materials listed for the smallest amount ($548K) or less than 1% of the glass allocation. The other companies include: Cardinal Glass ($7.8M), Schott Glass ($7.8M), Sage Windows ($31.5M), Viracon Glass ($10.7M), St. Gobain Glass ($8.1M), and PPG Glass ($1.6M). The total awarded to all 183 companies was $2.3B as specified in the ARRA. Serious qualified for only 0.02% of that amount. Hardly a special deal. Stossel clearly was not told about the other window and glass companies or he would not have reported that Serious was the only one. Nor was he told that the three window companies in his report did not apply.
7. The process for the 48C tax credit list involved the IRS and DOE choosing an outside, independent group of experts to evaluate the applications and choose those who would be listed. DOE employees did not chose who qualified. IRS employees did not choose. 100% independent based on the application criteria submitted…so no way for any government employee to have a favorite. Stossel must not have been told these facts, though the process was a mater of public record.
8. Stossel suggests that the company or some employees donated to a specific political party and that creates favoritism. He suggests we or our employees are big donors. In the 2008 election, the top donors to both parties were at or above $1M with all candidates raising upwards of $1.7 billion total. But as a matter of policy, the company has never donated to any political party or candidate or partisan cause or PAC on either side. With 300 employees in 20 states (both red and blue), it is certain that many donate to a variety of local and national candidates on their own, as in any company, and to both major parties. However we could not find any donation to either party over $1000. To suggest that a personal donation of this size would even register is beyond believability given the magnitude of the largest donors.
9. The group that created this story was actually not John Stossel, it was the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota. There are reports suggesting that major donors to this organization have included window companies in Minnesota and their executives, specifically the three mentioned in Stossel’s report. That organization and their leader Annette Meeks have not refuted these allegations. In the end this looks more like some old companies didn’t like the fact that a newer one was working hard for Americans and showing how much energy can really be saved with new technology. And Stossel simply became their messenger. Not his fault…but clearly he was misled in so much of this…and never told about this.
John Stossel has been a journalist for many years. In this case, this report failed the test of true journalism. We need journalists share all the facts equally. To let the audience decide for themselves what is really going on, and stay neutral in their reporting. Walter Cronkite of course was the epitome of this. Not sharing all the facts suggests that the audience is not smart enough to absorb them and decide for themselves. But we know Americans are smart enough to have all the data, and all the transparency, to decide for themselves. Which is why we have nothing to hide. If we have nothing to hide, and never have, why would a reporter only tell you half the story? All we can surmise is that Stossel was misled by the group in MN for the purpose of them raising money from local companies. Simply the big company attacking the smaller one, and misleading Stossel to do it.
As a triple bottom line company, we rank environment and social responsibility equally with potential profits. All of our employees participate in social activities in their communities, from clean-ups to building homes for the needy, as well as helping to reduce our impact on the environment. We all abhor cronyism in any manner, and this misled Stossel report was painful to all our employees around the country. We earn our customer’s trust with world-class products they simply cannot get elsewhere. And employ more American workers right here at home. We are working very hard to do our part to rebuild this country, bring back manufacturing jobs, and develop products that save more energy and more money than any others you can buy. And that is what we are doing every day.
Many people wrote to us asking of John has apologized to us. Well, we haven’t seen an apology yet, and may not get one, and that is fine. But we do hope that in the future, facts are checked carefully first, especially when a story is brought in by an outside group that could just be trying to throw mud on behalf of big corporations. That will help all Americans be best informed.
Thank you.
Two years ago, concerned citizens in Sydney, Australia, began a global movement with one simple motion- a flick of a light switch. From those first 2.2 million homes and businesses that switched off their lights for one hour- Earth Hour has grown into the world’s first “global election”. People around the world can cast their vote for a more sustainable future that will decrease the effects of global warming by turns off their lights for just one hour on Saturday, March 28th from 8:30- 9:30pm.
