Green Energy
The Solyndra Fraud - Fraud against the United States is one of the most serious felony offenses in the federal penal law
From National Review, via Will at The Other News:
-
Energy Department Altering On-Line Press Releases About "Green" Energy Loans Update: Reason For Alteration RevealedFrom Ace:Sun Power got a $1.2 billion loan guarantee, and we might be eating that one shortly, too. And Sun Power is very well-connected...
-
US Gov't approves 4 more solar energy loan guarantees worth nearly $5B on Friday From Will at The Other News: The U.S. Energy Department approved four more solar energy loan guarantees worth nearly $5 billion on Friday just hours before a controversial...
-
Solyndra Insiders: Once We Got That Fat Loan, We Overspent Like CrazyFrom Ace:Of the myriad problems with socialism, one is this: People take good care of their own money. They earned it, they sweated it. They are reasonably careful about how they dispose...
-
Did Solyndra Actually Get a Second Loan of $469 Million, Bringing the Full Loan Package To Over A Billion?From Ace:This is unclear. The great @williamamos highlighted the fact that Solyndra did indeed apply for a second big loan guarantee, noting this...
- Your Stimulus Dollars At Work: $535 Million Given To Solar Power Panel Manufacturer In Fremont, Ca - Company Goes Bust
A $787 Billion Stimulus, and we have nothing to show for it. I expect that more and more stories like this one will be forthcoming in the next year. This could very well be the kind of story that will sink Obama: Solyndra, Inc. was supposed to have showcased...
Green Energy
The Solyndra Fraud - Fraud against the United States is one of the most serious felony offenses in the federal penal law
From National Review, via Will at The Other News:
The solar-energy company was a con game.The Solyndra debacle is not just Obama-style crony socialism as usual. It is a criminal fraud. That is the theory that would be guiding any competent prosecutor’s office in the investigation of a scheme that cost victims — in this case, American taxpayers — a fortune.Read the full story here.
Fraud against the United States is one of the most serious felony offenses in the federal penal law. It is even more serious than another apparent Solyndra violation that has captured congressional attention: the Obama administration’s flouting of a statute designed to protect taxpayers.
Homing in on one of the several shocking aspects of the Solyndra scandal, lawmakers noted that, a few months before the “clean energy” enterprise went belly-up last week, the Obama Energy Department signed off on a sweetheart deal. In the event of bankruptcy — the destination to which it was screamingly obvious Solyndra was headed despite the president’s injection of $535 million in federal loans — the cozily connected private investors would be given priority over American taxpayers.
In other words, when the busted company’s assets were sold off, Obama pals would recoup some of their losses, while you would be left holding the half-billion-dollar bag.
The criminal law, by contrast, is not content to assume the good faith of government officials. It targets anyone — from low-level swindlers to top elective officeholders — who attempts to influence the issuance of government loans by making false statements; who engages in schemes to defraud the United States; or who conspires “to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof, in any manner or for any purpose.”
The penalties are steep: Fraud in connection with government loans, for example, can be punished by up to 30 years in the slammer.
Although Solyndra was a private company, moreover, it was using its government loans as a springboard to go public. When the sale of securities is involved, federal law criminalizes fraudulent schemes, false statements of material fact, and statements that omit any “material fact necessary in order to make the statements made . . . not misleading.”
And we’re not just talking about statements made in required SEC filings. Any statement made to deceive the market can be actionable. In 2003, for example, the Justice Department famously charged Martha Stewart with securities fraud.
Among other allegations, prosecutors cited public statements she had made in press releases and at a conference for securities analysts — statements in which she withheld damaging information in an effort to inflate the value of her corporation and its stock.That’s exactly what President Obama did on May 26, 2010, with his Solyndra friends about to launch their initial public offering of stock.
The solar-panel company’s California factory was selected as the fitting site for a presidential speech on the virtues of confiscating taxpayer billions to prop up pie-in-the-sky clean-energy businesses.By then, the con game was already well under way.
Solyndra had first tried to get Energy Act funding during the Bush administration, but had been rebuffed shortly before President Bush left office. Small wonder: Solyndra, as former hedge-fund manager Bruce Krasting concluded, was “an absolute complete disaster.”
Its operating expenses, including supply costs, nearly doubled its revenue in 2009 — and that’s without factoring in capital expenditures and other costs in what, Krasting observes, is a “low margin” industry.
The chance that Solyndra would ever become profitable was essentially nonexistent, particularly given that solar-panel competitors backed by China produce energy at drastically lower prices.
Yet, as Stiles reports, within six days of Obama’s taking office, an Energy Department official acknowledged that the Solyndra “approval process” was suddenly being considered anew.
-
Energy Department Altering On-Line Press Releases About "Green" Energy Loans Update: Reason For Alteration RevealedFrom Ace:Sun Power got a $1.2 billion loan guarantee, and we might be eating that one shortly, too. And Sun Power is very well-connected...
-
US Gov't approves 4 more solar energy loan guarantees worth nearly $5B on Friday From Will at The Other News: The U.S. Energy Department approved four more solar energy loan guarantees worth nearly $5 billion on Friday just hours before a controversial...
-
Solyndra Insiders: Once We Got That Fat Loan, We Overspent Like CrazyFrom Ace:Of the myriad problems with socialism, one is this: People take good care of their own money. They earned it, they sweated it. They are reasonably careful about how they dispose...
-
Did Solyndra Actually Get a Second Loan of $469 Million, Bringing the Full Loan Package To Over A Billion?From Ace:This is unclear. The great @williamamos highlighted the fact that Solyndra did indeed apply for a second big loan guarantee, noting this...
- Your Stimulus Dollars At Work: $535 Million Given To Solar Power Panel Manufacturer In Fremont, Ca - Company Goes Bust
A $787 Billion Stimulus, and we have nothing to show for it. I expect that more and more stories like this one will be forthcoming in the next year. This could very well be the kind of story that will sink Obama: Solyndra, Inc. was supposed to have showcased...