Green Energy

Is Obama in Deep Shit Over Solyndra?

Reliapundit says this could sink his chances at re-election.

Man, I hope so.

More:

SOLYNDRA TYPIFIES THE CORRUPT "GREEN ECONOMY" BUBBLE

And more:

Congressmen Ask White House for Documents on Solyndra’s Federal Loan.(Heritage).One day after solar company Solyndra closed its doors, two U.S. congressman are asking the White House for all documents related to the federal government’s $535 million loan guarantee. The probe also seeks correspondence between administration officials and the company’s investors, seeking to uncover if the White House engaged in cronyism to reward a major campaign donor.
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) was pursuing an investigation of the Department of Energy’s $535 million loan long before Solyndra announced plans to file for bankruptcy. Now, using his perch as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Stearns is turning up the heat. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), chairman of Energy and Commerce, also signed Thursday’s letter to White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. (Copy of the letter below.)
The congressmen ask the White House to turn over all documents by Sept. 12. Previous attempts have been met with resistance, including the refusal by the administration to testify before Congress about the taxpayer-backed loan.
“Solyndra represented the first step in the Obama Administration’s $60 billion loan guarantee program, which promised to create thousands of new jobs,” Stearns said. “Now with the collapse of Solyndra, we see 1,100 employees out of work and taxpayers out of $535 million, most likely.”
Solyndra secured the loan from the Department of Energy under a stimulus program. It was hailed as a model example by President Obama, who even visited the plant in May 2010. Vice President Biden spoke via satellite at Solyndra’s groundbreaking ceremony in September 2009 and Energy Secretary Steven Chu was in Fremont, CA, to mark the occasion.
Perhaps it wasn’t unusual to shower so much attention on the company. After all, Obama has close ties to one of Solyndra’s investors, Oklahoma oil billionaire George Kaiser. He was a “bundler” of campaign donations for Obama in 2008. In that role, Kaiser raised at least $50,000 for the campaign.Reps. Upton and Stearns Letter to White House on Solyndra.Read the full story here.

And more:

This ain't gonna go away!Why the Special Treatment: Is there a Solyndra/ObamaCare Connection?(Biggovernment). The LA Times editorialized: “Solyndra was the first company to be awarded a federal loan guarantee under the stimulus, worth $535 million. Taxpayers are likely to end up on the hook for much if not all of that amount, a highly embarrassing development for President Obama because he was among the company’s biggest cheerleaders. He visited its Fremont plant in May 2010 even though PricewaterhouseCoopers had weeks earlier raised doubts about its plans for an initial public offering by questioning whether it could continue as a going concern. …”

Also, “Other flags have been raised about how the Energy Department pushed the deal forward. The Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News and ABC disclosed that Energy Department officials announced the support for Solyndra even before final marketing and legal reviews were in. To government auditors, that move raised questions about just how fully the department vetted the deal — and assessed its risk to taxpayers — before signing off.”

Given the obvious rat-hole nature of the lost half-billion, LAT piquantly inquired, “is Obama using stimulus funds to reward his political contributors?” By all means, follow the odor of the ties between major Solyndra backer, key Obama fundraiser George Kaiser of Tulsa.

But there is another question about what political deal may have been involved in the Solyndra boondoggle.Solyndra resides in Fremont, California, which in turn rests within the then-cozy confines of California’s 13th Congressional District, represented by Fortney “Pete” Stark. As chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee’s Health Subcommittee during Obama’s push for Obamacare, Stark was critical to Obama’s signature step in ‘fundamentally transforming America.’

You might recall a few procedural curiosities, some strong-arming and vote-buying that went on way back then. So possibly this is relevant.The search for rationales is intensified given the questions about Solyndra’s sweetheart status, which begin with a point made to me by gentlemen with decades of experience inside energy policymaking:

Solyndra’s was the only loan to be handled exclusively by the DoE, absent OMB oversight. Also, it was issued about a year before the second stimulus loan guarantee which is actually from what almost all commitments were made, a year later.Also, for almost all other loans the stimulus paid for the value of the risk of default that participants (via the infamous loan-guarantee program, originally intended for nuclear plants but thanks to Porkulus is now being used for manufacturers of non-innovative solar technologies). Not Solyndra:

Although the government typically guarantees loans made to a company by a commercial bank, that was not the case for Solyndra. Solyndra borrowed the money from the Federal Financing Bank, part of the Treasury Department, so in effect, the government was lending the money to the company directly. The Energy Department gave Solyndra a conditional guarantee for $535 million, in multiple stages, contingent on reaching a variety of milestones, and to date, it had received $527 million.

The stimulus loan-guarantee was guaranteeing a loan from the Treasury. Ah.Which initiated free of OMB scrutiny. In addition to being otherwise inexplicable as well as unique, Solyndra’s facility happens to reside in the district of a congressman whose enthusiastic assistance Obama desperately needed for his principal vehicle of social engineering.

That there is no explaining the special treatment Solyndra appears to have received, in apparent ignorance of protocol and procedure is surely one reason House republicans continued to press for documents being refused by the Obama White House for which transparency is a great talking point, to be eschewed in reality at all costs.

Today, on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I am sending a request to the Department of Energy under the Freedom of Information Act reading, in pertinent part:

Please provide us within twenty (20) working days copies of any and all record(s), defined here as correspondence and any memoranda, analysis, other communications cited therein or attached, which were created, received and/or held by DoE’s Office of Congressional & Intergovernmental Affairs, or Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which were sent to or from any of the following:

1) the office(s) of Congressman Fortney “Pete” Stark;

2) the company Solyndra;

3) [enumerated individuals and entities identified in public records as being paid representatives of and advocates for Solyndra before the federal government.Stay tuned for how the most transparent administration in history handles this.

Read the full story here.

-
WHITE HOUSE REFUSES TO COMPLY WITH SUBPOENA FOR SOLYNDRA DOCUMENTS From Ace:The White House on Friday all but refused to turn over the documents House Republicans have subpoenaed on bankrupt solar firm Solyndra, firing off a letter saying the request...

-
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...

-
Head of DOE Loans Program Resigns Following Solyndra Scandal From Will at The Other News: The head of the US Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Programs Office has resigned in the midst of the controversy surrounding the bankruptcy of solar panel...

- Solyndra E-mails: Dept. Of Energy Was Poised To Approve ***second*** $469 Million For Solyndra
WaPoThe Obama administration’s Department of Energy was poised last summer to give Solyndra a second major taxpayer loan of $469 million, even as the company’s financial situation was growing more dire.The Energy Department was actively pushing to...

- 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