The radio spot: (click on the image to open)

"A battery maker runs out of juice

I'm Jason Gillman, and this is your free market minute

A123 Systems, a Michigan manufacturer of batteries for electric vehicles has said it may be selling an 80 percent stake to a Chinese firm, in order to remain viable.

Normally, this would be simply a story of a business that risked, yet failed to profit enough to survive. Risking capital to seek reward is a function of free and open markets, and has been the foundation of the freest civilization on the planet.

In 2009, A123 received millions in federal and state funds, for the creation of jobs for Michiganders. Taxpayers  unwillingly, or unwittingly saw their paychecks shrink for promises never realized, and now they may have ultimately subsidized a technology transfer to a competing world power.

As the picking of winners and losers continues in Lansing, Should we wonder what opportunities have been missed? What if money taken by Lansing would have been left in the registers of Michigan jobs creators who need no incentives?

For business seeing its pockets being picked, the answer is clear.

Government is not an energizer.

I'm Jason Gillman, and this has been your free market minute."

The ponies are off at the races. Rounding the first corner, Could-Woulda-Shoulda leads by a nose, but wait! Cant-Spend-Fast-Enough is coming up from the rear! Trailing far behind is I-Heart-Michigan, with It-Used-To-Be-Us somehow even further back!

And the surprise winner by a nose is  ... Mao's-Red-Rider!

A123 is gone.

""If the (CFIUS) has any doubt about what's going on here, it need only look at its own annual report to Congress, which it filed last month. For the first time in the history of the committee, it warned that `there is likely a coordinated strategy' underway by unnamed foreign powers `to acquire U.S. companies involved in research, development, or production of critical technologies for which the United States is a leading producer.'"

A retired Navy vice admiral, Barry Costello, echoed those apprehensions in his own commentary for Politico. The former commander of the Navy's Third Fleet noted how A123's batteries - developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - performed well in extreme weather conditions and how it "serves critical military applications like satellites, communications, unmanned aerial vehicles, high energy lasers, advanced armor and tactical vehicles." And Costello agreed with Skelton and Hunter that simply selling the military contracts to a U.S.-based company wasn't good enough.

"...The core technology will still belong to Wanxiang and is potentially available to the Chinese military," Costello wrote. "Furthermore, that American company will still have to rely on Wanxiang's manufacturing assets and willingness to share future intellectual property. In other words, the sensitive technology today will be exported, and our future military supply -- and troops -- will be dependent upon a Chinese entity."

No one can say they haven't been warned.