Great moments in the history of crony capitalism (UPDATED)

please scroll down for update...



Entrance observation: Over $500 million in loan gurantees at near-zero interest rates and they still couldn't make it work tells you pretty much all you need to know about the current competitiveness of green technology.

A politically connected solar company that pocketed a half billion dollar government loan, only to shut its doors, fire workers and file for bankruptcy, benefited from a series of breaks in securing the federal funds -- including an interest rate lower than other green energy projects, iWatch News and ABC News found.

The $535 million loan to Solyndra Inc., issued by the U.S. Department of Treasury's Federal Financing Bank, included a quarterly interest rate of 1.025 percent, the government bank reported in July. Of 18 Energy Department loans cited in the bank's report, Solyndra's rate was lowest. Eight other Energy Department projects, each also backed by the Federal Financing Bank, came with rates three or four times higher, the report shows.

That treatment is in keeping with the history of the loan to the California solar panel maker, an arrangement inked in September 2009 with great fanfare -- and touted, not long after, during a factory visit from the president. Monthly government bank reports filed since then reveal Solyndra's rate as the lowest for any energy-related project in nearly every report; in every case its rate was well below that of most energy projects, which ranged from cutting-edge electric car makers to wind and solar ventures.

The Department of Energy and Solyndra officials begged to differ saying the loan from the bank and its terms were based upon a formula and hard data such as when the loan was granted and the length of the repayment period. That would appear to be at odds, however, with evidence that Solyndra may not have been such a solid bet.

But records show the advantageous terms came in spite of red flags about the risks of investing in Solyndra. In 2008, as the loan agreement was moving forward, an outside rating agency gave the deal with a B+ grade, a less than optimum score, according to records obtained by iWatch and ABC under the Freedom of Information Act. That same year, the records show, Dun & Bradstreet assigned the company's credit appraisal as "fair."

Analysts say there were warning signs about the deal from the start, when Obama's Department of Energy pitched its first energy loan guarantee as a symbol of the expanding green tech movement. Yet the administration repeatedly took steps that would seem to benefit Solyndra: the Department of Energy announced its loan commitment before all due diligence was completed -- later raising concerns from auditors; the president made a personal visit to tout the company's prospects; and the department agreed to grant Solyndra fast-track approval.

And about that Federal Financing Bank?

The Federal Financing Bank, created by Congress in 1973 as a part of Treasury to reduce the cost of borrowing, referred questions about the Solyndra loan to Treasury. "We don't talk to journalists," a Bank employee told iWatch last week.

Transparency!

And now the money shot you've all been waiting for:

Solyndra's most prolific financial backer is George Kaiser, an Oklahoma oil billionaire who was a bundler of campaign donations for Obama's 2008 race. Kaiser's Argonaut Ventures and its affiliates have been the single largest shareholder of Solyndra, according to SEC filings and other records. The company holds 39 percent of Solyndra's parent company, bankruptcy records filed Tuesday show.

Under terms of the bankruptcy filing, investors including Argonaut -- which led a $75 million round of financing for Solyndra earlier this year -- will stand in line before the federal government and other creditors.

"federal government" = "your tax dollars"

And dig this:

Questions have long persisted about why Obama chose Solyndra to be the first green energy company to benefit from the federal loans program. In May, iWatch and ABC reported that the Energy Department announced its commitment to back Solyndra without first receiving full marketing and legal reviews. That shortcut drew criticism from government auditors, who accused DOE of favoring some applicants, like Solyndra, over others.

And Obama's Office of Budget and Management viewed the deal as riskier to taxpayers than DOE had, iWatch found.

(italics, ours)


As would be expected, Kaiser is staying mum on this whole deal.

So, if you're scoring at home, you have over a half billion in federal loan guarantees largely up in smoke, 1,000 jobs neither created nor saved and most likely, a congressional investigation into an apparent sweetheart deal for a heavyweight Presidential donor.

Because of the lack of competitiveness of green technology in its current state, it remains the greatest example of the federal government picking winners and losers, though, unfortunately, we have yet to see any winners even as designated so by the federal government.



(UPDATE #1): Thank god for bridges, roads and choo-choo trains because we don't think the President will be talking a whole lot about green jobs tonight in his jobs speech.

FBI agents armed with search warrants descended Thursday morning on bankrupt solar company Solynrda.

The investigation comes after a request by the Department of Energy's inspector general, FBI spokesman Peter Lee told NBC Bay Area News.

Agents arrived at Solyndra at 7a.m. and were examining the factory. Solynrda has a skeleton crew of 100 workers on the scene, who are closing the factory down.

"It's been an interesting [two weeks]" says Solyndra spokesperson Dave Miller, referring to both the bankruptcy and the FBI raid. "I don't know what they're looking for...but I haven't seen them take anything."

Solyndra filed for bankruptcy last week, shocking both workers and the Obama administration, which had given the startup $535 million in low interest loans.

The announcement was a devastating blow to Mr. Obama who is set to deliver a speech on job creation Thursday evening.

Congress has demanded a hearing into the matter. Wednesday the company was reported to be for sale.

There are no reports of any arrests at this time.

Solyndra officials made numerous visits -- 20 -- to the White House, according to logs and reporting by The Daily Caller.

Solyndra officials in the logs included chairman and founder Christian Gronet and board members Thomas Baruch and David Prend, according to the Caller.

OK, here's the part where we are going to sound totally paranoid: Wow. That didn't take long. Mere days after filing for bankruptcy the FBI comes swooping in. Really? We're all for quick action and everything but considering who the FBI ultimately answers to, we can't help but think this is all a little too good to be true. Totally paranoid, right?

H/T: W.C. Varones

Great moments in the history of crony capitalism (an update)

A follow-up to the politically-connected solar firm, Solyndra, that received over $500 million in loan guarantees at near-zero interest rates (far below other similar projects that received tax-payer support) and which went bankrupt and which also had their offices raided by the FBI last week. We blogged about this initially, here.

From the Washington Times Washington Post:

The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.

The August 2009 e-mails, released to The Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators.

“We have ended up with a situation of having to do rushed approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end of the week),” one official wrote. That Aug. 31, 2009, message, written by a senior OMB staffer and sent to Terrell P. McSweeny, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, concluded, “We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews.”

White House officials said Tuesday that no one in the administration tried to influence the OMB decision on the loan. They stressed that the e-mails show only that the administration had a “quite active interest” in the timing of OMB’s decision.

Solyndra was far from being a solid bet. From our original post:

But records show the advantageous terms came in spite of red flags about the risks of investing in Solyndra. In 2008, as the loan agreement was moving forward, an outside rating agency gave the deal with a B+ grade, a less than optimum score, according to records obtained by iWatch and ABC under the Freedom of Information Act. That same year, the records show, Dun & Bradstreet assigned the company's credit appraisal as "fair."

Analysts say there were warning signs about the deal from the start, when Obama's Department of Energy pitched its first energy loan guarantee as a symbol of the expanding green tech movement. Yet the administration repeatedly took steps that would seem to benefit Solyndra: the Department of Energy announced its loan commitment before all due diligence was completed -- later raising concerns from auditors; the president made a personal visit to tout the company's prospects; and the department agreed to grant Solyndra fast-track approval.

And this:

Questions have long persisted about why Obama chose Solyndra to be the first green energy company to benefit from the federal loans program. In May, iWatch and ABC reported that the Energy Department announced its commitment to back Solyndra without first receiving full marketing and legal reviews. That shortcut drew criticism from government auditors, who accused DOE of favoring some applicants, like Solyndra, over others.

And Obama's Office of Budget and Management viewed the deal as riskier to taxpayers than DOE had, iWatch found.

And as for that "active interest", that just might be George Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire and 2008 Obama campaign bundler who owned 39% of Solyndra's parent company.

But apparently this isn't at all late-breaking news:

The House (Energy and Commerce) committee has been investigating Solyndra’s dealings with the Energy Department for six months. In July , subcommittee members subpoenaed White House documents related to the guarantee.

Questions about the selection process were first raised in a July 2010 audit by the Government Accountability Office. It concluded that the Energy Department “lacked appropriate tools for assessing the progress” of the loan program and that the department treated applicants inconsistently, “favoring some applicants and disadvantaging others.”

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of that panel’s oversight and investigations subcommittee, said last week that the FBI raid confirmed their belief that the “darling” of Obama’s green-jobs program was a “bad bet” from the beginning.

“Solyndra was the hallmark of the President’s green jobs program and widely promoted by the administration as a stimulus success story, right up until its bankruptcy and FBI raid,” Upton and Stearns said in a statement on Tuesday. “Let’s learn the lessons of Solyndra before another dollar goes out the door.”

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.) and Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.) — Democrats on the committee who had once defended the choice of Solyndra — last week also questioned whether they had been misled. In a letter, they wrote that Solyndra chief executive Brian Harrison “did not convey to us the perilous condition of the company, and the Committee should know why. ”

Over a half-billion dollars of tax-payer money to an Obama donor only to prove that solar energy just isn't yet competitive on the open market is an expensive way to learn a lesson in the free market let alone that of political ethics.

Hey, maybe it saved the Senate

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Alternate headline: Solyndra: the scandal that keeps on giving


'Suppose it just wasn't enough to give a completely ill-advised $537 billion loan that was opposed by the Treasury Department and independent auditors and with near-zero interest rates far more favorable than similar DOE loans (with a loan restructuring that put private interests ahead of that of tax-payers') and to a company with ties an Obama bundler/fundraiser.

OK, then, how about delaying announcing your closing up shop until after the 2010 midterms at the behest of the White House?:

The Obama administration, which gave the solar company Solyndra a half-billion-dollar loan to help create jobs, asked the company to delay announcing it would lay off workers until after the hotly contested November 2010 midterm elections that imperiled Democratic control of Congress, newly released e-mails show.

The announcement could have been politically damaging because President Obama and others in the administration had held up Solyndra as a poster child of its clean-energy initiative, saying the company’s new factory, built with the help of stimulus money, could create 1,000 jobs. Six months before the midterm elections, Obama visited Solyndra’s California plant to praise its success, even though outside auditors had questioned whether the operation might collapse in debt.

As the contentious 2010 elections approached, Solyndra found itself foundering, and it warned the Energy Department that it would need an emergency cash infusion. A Solyndra investment adviser wrote in an Oct. 30, 2010, e-mail — without explaining the reason — that Energy Department officials were pushing “very hard” to delay making the layoffs public until the day after the elections.

The announcement ultimately was made on Nov. 3, 2010 — immediately following the Nov. 2 vote.

Aside from the blatant impropriety if not outright illegality of this, we find it almost quaint, cute, in a way.

Now, we can work ourselves into a righteous lather with respect to the aforementioned transgressions of this Solyndra mess but thinking that delaying the announcement of 1,000 layoffs was going to make one iota of difference in that "hotly contested" midterm election shellacking of 2010 has to be one of the more amusing things we've heard in a while.

An ass-kicking that anyone with a pulse could've seen coming would somehow become not so or lesser so due to delaying a layoff announcement of a company no one had really heard of at the time. Awesome.

Another great moment in the histroy of crony capitalism (An update)

While the Feds and Congressional committees will be asking the hard questions of just who it was in the administration that signed off on those loans to Solyndra, why don't we just go to the good people of Solyndra themselves as they appear confident as to who gave the go-ahead for that $535 million loan guarantee at below market interest rates.

From Solyndra's website:

Fremont, CA, March 20, 2009 – Solyndra, Inc. announced today that it is the first company to receive an offer for a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Solyndra, a Fremont, California-based manufacturer of innovative cylindrical photovoltaic systems, will use the proceeds of a $535 million loan from the U.S. Treasury’s Federal Financing Bank to expand its solar panel manufacturing capacity in California.

“The leadership and actions of President Barack Obama, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and the U.S. Congress were instrumental in concluding this offer for a loan guarantee,” said Solyndra CEO and founder, Dr. Chris Gronet. “The DOE Loan Guarantee Program funding will enable Solyndra to achieve the economies of scale needed to deliver solar electricity at prices that are competitive with utility rates. This expansion is really about creating new jobs while meaningfully impacting global warming.”

(italics, ours)

This was still on their website as of this A.M. (H/T: The Corner)



And when you lose Jon Stewart...

Quickies

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A round-up of news items, columns, articles and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.



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Work prevented us from attending one of the many "Stand Up for Religious Freedom" rallies that were held around the country on Friday.

One who did, Dawn Wildman of the Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition had this to say:

Today I attended one of the 140 Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies. This one took place in San Diego, CA , where over 2000 people exercised their First Amendment right in all its forms. They stood up against the HHS mandate that flies in the face of their religious beliefs. They held a peaceful assembly of citizens seeking redress of the federal government due to this latest assault on the US Constitution. For those that are a little fuzzy on the First Amendment this is it in its entirety:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So while Congress did not actually make the HHS mandate which forces religious affiliates as employers to pay for and give their employees free contraception, it is still the government under the tutelage of Secretary Sebilius who is demanding that religious organizations facilitate this law. Many speakers referenced this mandate as a “conscience tax” and I couldn’t agree more.

Here's B-Daddy of The Liberator Today:

I was struck by how impassioned both the speakers and participants were. The President's policies are uniting people of faith against him. The speakers all spoke of the importance of freedom and conscience to the proper functioning of government. They spoke of the continued assault on religious liberty. They spoke of the laughable accounting shell game of the administration: "Religious associations don't have to pay for birth control, only their insurers will be required to provide that." My personal estimate was that about 700 people turned up. We got honks of support throughout the rally.

“Religious freedom is not a gift from politicians: It is a gift from God,” said Bishop Flores. “Today’s debate is not about the access to contraceptives…it is about the federal government forcing the Church to act against its teachings”.

And Leslie of Temple of Mut has a very comprehensive round-up here to which she adds:

Our opponents must be very worried. They sense they have “awakened a sleeping giant and filled it with a terrible resolve”. The elite media reports I am reviewing, with the jaundiced eye of a recovering reporter, are going out of their way to minimize this unification of religious faiths across this country in standing behind the Catholic Church in its defiance to implement the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate to offer contraceptive/abortion/sterilization coverage in health plans.

For those of you in the tea party/freedom coalition movement who are either pining for or conversely running away from any social issues, relax! This issue is perfect. An authoritative and overreaching government mandating goods and services provisions upon a private entity and which also happens to violate the fundamental religious conscience of a religious entity. What are we missing?

If you wanted an issue over which to beat the head of a dreadful administration and which also helps define your guiding principles, it doesn't get any more basic and fundamental than the 1st amendment, gang, so let's have at it and pull no punches!





And speaking of dreadful... similar to his Skip Gates the police acted stupidly remarks, the President can't help putting his foot in his mouth whenever he goes off-script and away from the teleprompter.

President Barack Obama weighed in Friday on the shooting of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, calling it a national tragedy — and saying that the young man reminded him of his own children.

"When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids," Obama said in the Rose Garden. "I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this. And that everybody pull together."

Obama has come under fire from some black leaders for failing to comment on a case that has become a major national story — and brought thousands of Americans into the streets for demonstrations calling for the arrest of Martin's shooter. One black leader even wondered why Obama called a Georgetown student who was attacked by Rush Limbaugh but not Martin's family. Obama's comments Friday represent the first time the president has addressed the growing controversy.


"My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon,"
Obama said. "All of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves."

That's his main message? Bizarre yet entirely predictable. There you have it, ladies and gentlemen: when asked to offer some commentary and perspective on the shooting, he serves up one of the most self-serving and narcissitic statements we have ever heard. Gawd, this guy is a piece of work.






And from the Nice Try Department, the President running away as fast as he can from Solyndra:

"Obviously we wish Solyndra hadn't gone bankrupt. Part of the reason they did was the Chinese were subsidizing their solar industry and flooding the market in ways Solyndra couldn't compete. But understand, this was not our program per se."

-- President Obama talking to National Public Radio's "Marketplace."

President Obama is on a swing-state campaign blitz this week, looking to stifle voter anger over high energy prices. While the White House is casting the trip as an effort to lay out Obama's vision for future energy abundance, much of the message is aimed at reducing the supply of blame.

And how does that square with reality? From FactCheck.org:

President Obama exaggerated when defending his administration’s approval of a $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra, a now-defunct solar company.

Obama referred to Solyndra’s loan at an Oct. 6 press conference as “a loan guarantee program that predates me.” That’s not accurate. It’s true that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 created a loan guarantee program for clean-energy companies developing “innovative technologies.” But Solyndra’s loan guarantee came under another program created by the president’s 2009 stimulus for companies developing “commercially available technologies.”

The president also overstated past Republican support for the program, saying “all of them in the past have been supportive of this loan guarantee program.” Republicans overwhelmingly opposed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and some of them even voted against the Energy Policy Act of 2005 at a time when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.

Independent auditors and even officials within the administration warned Team O that Solyndra was a dog but they cronied ahead anyway with highly favorable interest rates and then shoved their cronies to the front of the bankruptcy line ahead of the tax-payers when the $535 million house of cards came tumbling down.


And you'll love this:

Several key White House offices were involved with the Obama administration’s messaging plans and other preparations as the collapse of the taxpayer-backed solar company Solyndra was imminent, newly released documents show.

The latest White House documents delivered to House Republicans on Friday again highlight the extent to which senior administration officials braced for the fallout as Solyndra – a company President Obama had personally visited – was about to go under.

A White House memo that noted the danger of “imminent bankruptcy” at the end of August 2011 says, “OMB, DPC and NEC have been working with press and OLA to be prepared for this news to break.”

Acronym translation: OMB is the Office of Management and Budget, DPC is the Domestic Policy Council, NEC is the National Economic Council and OLA is the Office of Legal Affairs.

(italics, ours)

Working with the press? We were previously unaware that one of the job descriptions of the 4th estate was to frame a message and provide cover for incompetence if not outright malfeasance in the executive branch. We kind of knew it along along, however, there is still some shock value to see it mentioned in such a casual and matter-of-fact manner.




More media double-standard red meat, this time with respect to gas prices/energy policy:









Column headline of the week:

Why Men Opting-Out Should Make You Angry

Is it us or is there cottage industry within the feminist movement that agitates women to be in a constant state of being pissed-off?




So, who is it that is waging a war against women?

Obamacare contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and employers. Five are especially-harmful for women, be they Moms, singles, or retirees.

The jobs-killing Obamacare law contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and employers. Many of these tax increases fall on families making less than $250,000--a direct violation of candidate Obama's promise not to raise "any form" of taxes on these families. In less than a week, the second anniversary of Obamacare being signed into law will take place. The Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments about the constitutionality of Obamacare next week.

Out of the 20 new or higher taxes in Obamacare, here are the five that most hurt women.

Read about them at the link.





And finally, the way NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was firing off suspensions and fines this past Wednesday as punishment for the New Orleans Saints' participation in Bountygate reminded us of Michael Corleone wacking members of the other crime families in the baptism scene of the God Father I.



Sean Payton. Wack. Mickey Loomis. Blam. Greg Williams. Pop. Joe Vitt. Wham.

More carnage than we've ever seen in one day in the NFL. Lessons learned: don't lie, don't ever lie to Roger Goodell.


OK, gang, that's it. We'll see you all tomorrow.

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Great moments in the history of crony capitalism

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Change

Sanjay Wagle was a venture capitalist and Barack Obama fundraiser in 2008, rallying support through a group he headed known as Clean Tech for Obama.

Shortly after Obama’s election, he left his California firm to join the Energy Department, just as the administration embarked on a massive program to stimulate the economy with federal investments in clean-technology firms.


Following an enduring Washington tradition, Wagle shifted from the private sector, where his firm hoped to profit from federal investments, to an insider’s seat in the administration’s $80 billion clean-energy investment program.

He was one of several players in venture capital, which was providing financial backing to start-up clean-tech companies, who moved into the Energy Department at a time when the agency was seeking outside expertise in the field. At the same time, their industry had a huge stake in decisions about which companies would receive government loans, grants and support.

During the next three years, the department provided $2.4 billion in public funding to clean-energy companies in which Wagle’s former firm, Vantage Point Venture Partners, had invested, a Washington Post analysis found. Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers.

Picking winners and losers in any particular industry is not the business that a presidential administration should be in. But it's particularly galling when that administration keeps picking the losers... after they were told by third-party auditors and investigators that they were losers as in the case of Solyndra, the DOE's $535 million black hole.





Not coincidentally, Fred Upton (R-MI), who has been wishing to speak with White House officials knee-deep in the DOE's clean energy loan program, is running out of patience with the White House's recalcitrance.

Staffers who once worked for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel may have to answer questions about their involvement in a botched solar energy deal.

Congressional Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are putting together subpoenas for five White House aides who allegedly worked to pour more than $500 million in federal loans guarantees into Solyndra, a California solar power company that has since gone defunct. It filed for bankruptcy last year despite the loan support.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to meet on Friday to issue subpoenas for five executive branch employees that they say were involved in the Department of Energy loan given to Solyndra. This will be the third subpoena the committee has considered to obtain information or testimony regarding the Solyndra case.

The staffers being targeted include Kevin Carroll, Kelly Colyar and Fouad Saad of the Office of Management and Budget, Heather Zichal, a White House aide who worked on energy and Aditya Kumar, who worked for Rahm Emanuel in the West Wing and whose name appears in emails on the subject of Solyndra.

It has been one year since the committee started investigating the Solyndra meltdown and to date, the White House has yet to comply with the committee's desire for a sit down.

This must be more of that transparency we've been hearing so much about.

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RINO Alert

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For those Republicans out there that fear the party has been taken over by extremist elements led, in large part, by the tea party, can turn their lonely eyes to Brian Bilbray (R-San Diego) who is more than willing to throw your money away down the crap hole of green energy subsidies.

Rep. Brian Bilbray is winning praise from the solar industry for casting the sole Republican vote this week against efforts to dismantle the federal loan guarantee program for clean energy linked to the Solyndra debacle.

In the run-up to fall elections, many Republicans in Congress have embraced the "No More Solyndras Act," which would go beyond implementing safeguards to improve loan guarantees and dismantle the program altogether.

California-based solar panel manufacturer Solyndra received a half-billion dollar federal loan guarantee before filing for bankruptcy protection last year.

Bilbray participated in vote on a rough draft of the new legislation by the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power. The measure moved ahead 14-6 toward a possible House vote.

The Solar Energy Industry Association expressed its appreciation on Friday in a news release.

"It takes true vision and courage to ignore politics and take a principled, fact-based stand in support of renewable energy," said Rhone Resch, president of the umbrella trade group for solar manufacturing, distribution, research and financing.

Yes. What passes for vision and courage in D.C. is committing $537 billion dollars of tax-payer money on technology that isn't market-ready and which is owned, in part, by a presidential bundler. That Bilbray is some sort of maverick, or something.



So, who does the congressman think is to blame for the Solyndra fiasco?

Reached by phone, the congressman blamed "mid-management" at the Department of Energy for mishandling clean energy loan guarantees and asserted that his colleagues in the House were "blaming the vehicle" instead of the driver.

"The program is being thrown under the bus because people don't want to admit that it was administered horrendously," Rep. Bilbray said. "The program should be able to do great things if it's administered properly."

This is a prime example of willful ignorance. The decision to award Solyndra this money was made at the White House/cabinet level. Independent and Treasury Department auditors, pleaded with the Department of Energy and the White House not to make this loan - they rightly saw it as a bad bet - but ultimately, their pleading was to no avail.

And guess what? We will blame the driver and the vehicle. Yes, it was administered poorly and yes, it is a fatally-flawed concept. If Solyndra's ability to manufacture solar panels was a viable business plan then what do they need of tax-payer money?

As the Department of Energy's green energy loan program body count continues to mount (Solyndra, Abound Solar, Beacon Power, Ener1, Evergreen Solar, Range Fuels, Raser Technologies, Spectrawatt, Thompson River Power LLC; a partial list of companies that participated in the DOE loan program and which have all filed for bankruptcy), we are waiting to hear of one of its success stories and which will then beg the question if they could've succeeded without tax-payer assistance.

More great moments in the history of crony capitalism... cont.

As even more and more legacy media outlets are digging into the Solyndra scandal it becomes more and more evident why the White House is blowing off Congressional subpoena request deadlines.





From the WaPo:

At a number of points in its troubled history, the solar company Solyndra faced dire financial problems that threatened its survival. Yet at each crisis, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and officials at his agency failed to take steps that critics say could have limited taxpayer losses when the company collapsed last summer.

Instead, Energy Department officials monitoring the solar panel manufacturer and its $535 million federal loan stepped in with financial assistance, or worked to dispel concerns raised by industry analysts and other Obama administration staffers, according to previously confidential documents analyzed by The Washington Post.

The officials raised no public red flags even as Solyndra executives presented a glowing picture last summer to Capitol Hill lawmakers, describing a growing company when internal sales figures suggested one that was in serious trouble.

The newly obtained documents, along with other records obtained in recent weeks, offer the clearest picture yet of Solyndra’s deteriorating finances and the Energy Department’s extraordinary efforts to prop up the company. Chu, who is scheduled to testify next week before a House investigating subcommittee, is likely to be questioned about his agency’s willingness to invest millions more taxpayer dollars in the firm, even after the White House had abandoned hopes of a rescue.

Everybody including the Treasury Department, OMB and independant auditors knew that Solyndra was a dog but Chu, the Energy Department and, of course, the White House forged ahead with their continuing support of their fair-headed green power child.

With Solyndra technically in default this past December for failing to make a $5 million reserve fund payment as a taxpayer protection, the Energy Department could have shut down the entire operation. However, instead of doing so, DOE officials wrangled $75 million dollars out of private investors with the stipulation that placed their new investment ahead of taxpayers for repayment in the event of a bankruptcy.

If this sounds familiar it should as in the Chrysler and General Motors bankruptcy cram-down proceedings, secured creditors were told to take a back seat to union concerns.



To recap: Against the better judgement of everyone outside the White House and DOE, a $535 million loan at near-zero interest rates (which were lower than similar DOE loans) was dumped into a solar company, linked to Obama fundraiser/bundler George Kaiser, that produced not-yet-ready-for-market-time solar panels and which ultimately went belly up. If that isn't crony capitalism carried out to a "t" then we don't know what is?

More great moments in the history of crony capitalism

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The gift that keeps on giving...


Not everyone lost out in that train-wreck that was Solyndra; the now-bankrupt solar panel firm that received a $537 million loan guarantee from the highly suspect Department of Energy green loan program back in 2009.

Via the Free Beacon the Wall St. Journal reports:

Argonaut Ventures I LLC—a private-equity fund linked to George Kaiser, a fundraiser for President Barack Obama—and Madrone Partners LP are set to pilot a reorganized shell company out of the wreckage of Solyndra, part of a Chapter 11 plan that promises scant repayment of a $528 million federal loan.

The reorganized shell company could be a vehicle to transform the money Solyndra lost in the solar-panel-manufacturing business, losses that total “significantly more than one-half billion dollars,” into future tax breaks for the private-equity firms, according to the DOE and IRS.

Bankruptcy filings reveal that Argonaut and Madrone could potentially write-down the Solyndra losses saving themselves hundreds of millions of dollars of future income taxes.

And similar to the GM and Chrysler bankruptcy cramdown, private investors, like Argonaut, will be given priority status over the tax-payers in a loan restructuring deal worked out between Solyndra and the DOE back in 2011.

Please remember this sort of shenanigans that have been rampant with this administration when you hear about the success of their green energy program next week.

More great moments in the history of crony capitalism

We suppose the good news here is that potentially only $43 million will be lost as opposed to the over $500 million that was sunk into the doomed-to-failure Solyndra outfit here in California.

Beacon Power Corp filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, just a year after the energy storage company received a $43 million loan guarantee from a controversial Department of Energy program.

The bankruptcy comes about two months after Solyndra -- a solar panel maker with a $535 million loan guarantee -- also filed for Chapter 11, creating a political embarrassment for the administration of President Barack Obama, which has championed the loans as a way to create "green energy" jobs.

Beacon Power drew down $39 million of its government-guaranteed loan to fund a portion of a $69 million, 20-megawatt flywheel energy storage plant in Stephentown, New York.

There are several key differences between the two loans, an Energy Department spokesman said on Sunday, noting the Beacon plant continues to operate, unlike Solyndra, which shut down shortly before filing for bankruptcy.

The Energy Department also had agreed to restructure Solyndra's debt in a last-ditch effort to keep the company alive, a deal which put taxpayers behind $75 million in private investment. But for the Beacon project, the government loan is the first debt the company must pay, the spokesman said.

(italics, ours)

It's comforting to know that in running this green jobs picking winners and losers program, the Dept. of Energy is becoming a little more PR-savvy in recognizing that it's important that the tax-payer recoup at least some of their "investment".


Oh, and about that crony capitalism thing, just how was it that Beacon Power secured that loan?

Beacon is using the money to develop a 20 MW regulation plant at a site in Stephenton, NY. The site will use several 1 MW flywheels to store energy as well as electrical and technological equipment.

Company spokesman Gene Hunt said Beacon didn’t have financial advisors per se, just its outside law firm of Edwards, Angell, Palmer & Dodge. “We also used our in-house expertise and we have good relationships with our congressional members.”

Per se!


For those of you scoring at home: the afore-linked Solyndra, SunPower, Fisker, Lightsquared and now Beacon Power.

Stacking up like cord wood.


H/T: Hot Air

Great moments in the history of the DOE's green loan program

Via Hot Air

We dumped over a half billion dollars into Solyndra only to see that company go bankrupt in 2011 taking 1,100 jobs with it. So, you are probably asking yourself, "Well, what about the assets that got left behind? What about the machinery, the tools and whatever solar panels they produced."


Fear not, o intrepid tax-payer as it seems that 1,368 glass tubes that were to be components of Solyndra's tubular solar panels found their way to a UC Berkely interpretive art exhibit where they transmit light and cool air into a darkened chamber.


From PJ Media:

“SOL Grotto”, by Ronald Rael & Virginia San Fratello, was a delightful meditation on perception. Situated above Strawberry Creek, the dark wooden bunker is pierced with hundreds of glass pipes cozened from local ex-company Solyndra. Tiny snippets of the world outside can be discerned through the tubes, making one feel like they’re inside the compound eye of an insect.

For those of you in Placentia, California, SOL is a euphemism amongst the hep cats out there for "S#%t Out of Luck".



So, what happened to the other 24 million unused Solyndra solar tubes? In a word, they were destroyed. Follow the link for a local CBS News report on how workers were simply throwing these tubes into dumpsters when Solyndra shut down operations.


As sad as it is, we can think of no better metaphor than the DOE's failed and corrupt loan program than dumpster after countless dumpster filled with shattered glass and a few of the solar tubes that were spared this fate to be featured in a hippie quiet room.

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More great moments in the history of crony capitalism

The San Diego Tribune really wants us to get over the Solyndra scandal


Solyndra Aside, State Leads U.S. in Solar Jobs Tally*

California has the most solar industry jobs of any state by far — 25,575 — but was ranked sixth in per-capita employment, according to a survey by The Solar Foundation, a nonprofit education and research organization.

The study, published Monday, runs counter to the gloomy picture conjured by the demise of Northern California solar manufacturer Solyndra and the uproar over a half-billion dollar federal loan guarantee to the company.

Yeah, we probably should just get over this half-billion dollar adventure in cronyism as it's just one example that doesn't prove the entire green sector is rife with corruption, especially when there is another one brewing that makes Solyndra look like child's play.

How did a failing California solar company, buffeted by short sellers and shareholder lawsuits, receive a $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee for a photovoltaic electricity ranch project—three weeks after it announced it was building new manufacturing plant in Mexicali, Mexico, to build the panels for the project.

The company, SunPower (SPWR-NASDAQ), now carries $820 million in debt, an amount $20 million greater than its market capitalization. If SunPower was a bank, the feds would shut it down. Instead, it received a lifeline twice the size of the money sent down the Solyndra drain.

Two men with insight into the process are SunPower rooter Rep. George R. Miller III, (D.-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee and the co-chairman of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, and his SunPower lobbyist son, George Miller IV.

That $1.2 billion dollar loan is for the construction of a solar farm in the San Luis Obispo County that will create 350 construction jobs over two years and 15 permanent jobs. 15.... for $1.2 billion.

Go to the link and check out the political conections and the interesting timing of some of the events surrounding the loan approval and you'll understand how SunPower may just be the latest green jobs boondoggle to blow up in the administration's face.



* We went with the title the U-T used in their print edition today.

Solyndra: explained? (UPDATED)

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(please scroll down for update)


So many different directions to go with but suffice to say that explaining how private equity's private dollars are utilized versus how $535 million public/tax-payer dollars and over one-thousand jobs are flushed down the toilet of crony capitalist wastefulness is a tough sell to a White House press corps that finally appears to be taking an interest in this scrap that Team O wants to fight.

(warning: we may have outlawed waterboarding but this is still going to be a torturous 51 seconds for White House press secretary, Jay Carney)






uhh... what we think he is trying to say is that even when picking winners and losers loses, the President is obliglated to spend even more money to re-train, re-locate or otherwise prop up the lives and careers of people in which he had no business in the first place. Being a paternalistic big brother is a full-time gig, people. Just ask Julia.

We do feel bad for Carney, however. Explaining away the failures of corporatism and crony capitalism is never an easy gig, especially when it's not you but your boss that's responsible. Maybe we can help out Carney and find his boss a new gig on K Street or the rubber chicken circuit come November to put an end to this crap.





(UPDATE #1)


Maybe this guy can explain it:

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Mitt Romney arrived at the shuttered headquarters of Solyndra Inc. this morning, a surprise visit that was shrouded in secrecy and part of the presumptive GOP presidential candidate’s attack on President Obama’s record on jobs creation.

“Two years ago President Obama was here to tout this building and this business as a symbol of the success of his stimulus,” said Romney, stepping off a bus and onto the public sidewalk in front of the Solyndra buildings just outside Silicon Valley. “Well you can see that it’s a symbol of something very different today.”

“It’s a symbol not of success but of failure,” he said. “It’s also a symbol of a serious conflict of interest. An independent inspector general looked at this investment and concluded that the administration had steered money to friends and family – to campaign contributors. This building, this half a billion dollar taxpayer investment, represents a serious conflict of interest on the part of the president and his team.”

“It’s also a symbol of how the president thinks about free enterprise,” said Romney. “Free enterprise to the president means taking money from the taxpayers and giving it freely to his friends.”

Hitting Obama for failing to understand and respect free enterprise? Check.

Hitting Obama for not job creation but rather job destruction? Check.

Hitting Obama for cronyism. Check.



This was Romney's first campaign event since he clinched the GOP nomination and Solyndra provided the perfect backdrop in which to highlight the failings of the Obama administration.


Exit question: For you O-bots out there that decried the corporatism of the Bush administration: How do you square the circle of the current administration that has turned corporatism into an art form?

Is "Government investment" a paradox?

"Felony dumb"

That from Brian Bilbray (R-CA) on the Department of Energy's decision to give Solyndra over a half billion in tax dollar money to...

- invest in the production of the risky and not-yet-ready-for-primetime thin film technology solar panels instead of the less efficient but far-cheaper polycrystalline panels that the Chinese produce exclusively.

- manufacture solar panels in the onerous regulatory regime of California where electricity rates are twice that of Midwestern states like Ohio.

- manufacture solar panels on one of the most expensive pieces of land in the country.

- manufacture solar panels in a completely unnecessary new building when there were plenty of existing Bay Area facilities that could've been retro-fitted or rented.

Add all this up and it doesn't seem like a business plan that would attract a whole lot of private investment dollars and this also helps explain how it is that the government funded it.

There are essentially 4 ways how money is spent and they are as follows (in descending order of efficiency: 1) you spend your own money on yourself 2) you spend your own money on someone else 3) you spend someone else's money on yourself and 4) you spend someone else's money on someone else.


Take a wild guess as to which number best describes how government spends money? If you chose #4, move yourself to the head of the class.


There was simply no incentive for the government to get a quality product at the lowest possible price (#1) and this helps explain the inherent inefficiencies with government subsidies. And when the government has no real skin in the game, they invariably leave themselves open to other incentives such as graft and political favortism which very well may be the case with Solyndra...

... not that Solyndra's big wigs are going to let on to any of that.


Please remember this the next time you hear a pol prattle on about "government investments"... it simply does not work by the same rules, criteria and desired outcomes that our own personal investments do.

Solyndra in summary

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Our economic model summed up in 35 seconds:

"The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra".

How appropriate that this President holds up as an example a company with connections to the administration and which received a $535 million loan from that same administration and which is now bankrupt with scant hope of getting back a nickel of that $535 million because they were selling their product at a loss because the technology they were using was not yet market-ready.

Indeed, Solyndra is the poster child for the failed crony capitalism of Obama's America.

Quickies

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A round-up of articles, news items, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.





Don Draper, where have you gone?

A glass of something fizzy over lunch with an American executive now means sparkling water. The three-Martini lunch fell into decline in the 1970s, the victim of sober economic times that demanded clear-headed executives, and also of political pressure: Jimmy Carter made it an issue in the 1976 presidential campaign. Morgan Stanley’s New York bankers, for example, were instructed to avoid the drinks cabinet except when entertaining European clients (who could hardly be expected to make it through the day without a snifter). Many modern contracts expressly forbid the consumption of alcohol.

After years of having an occasional beer with lunch on a Friday, say, our organization instituted a zero-tolerance policy on booze. It certainly would appear that the kill-joys have beaten booze entirely out of the American work place.

Was it Oscar Wilde who said: work is the curse of the drinking class?






You may not have heard of George Lakoff but he is an academic and the architect of the President's "You Didn't Build That" campaign battle cry.

Sir Charles of DooDoo Economics has an excellent take-down, here, of a piece he wrote for The Huffington Post.

As you will see, Lakoff is firmly in the camp that our individualism springs forth as a result of the efforts of the collective. There is no starker contrast to the ideals of freedom and individual liberty and initiative than what is represented by this guy. We commented to Charles as such:

The contention that we don't become "individuals" until we build enough roads and bridges or something would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous.

It confounds me that the ideas of someone who is so ignorant of our founding documents can inform the philosophy of this country's president.

Be sure to check out Sir Charles' site and pick up some cotton while your there.






We know it's the dog days of August but... dude.

The shocker among all the films was Rocky Mountain Pictures’ political documentary 2016 Obama’s America which opened July 13th in very limited release and expanded into theaters across America this weekend. It wound up in 4th place Friday and 8th place for the weekend. That’s stunning because it was playing in 2/3 fewer theaters across North American than the other wider release films. (See below for more details). Due to its hot pre-sales, the pic proved frontloaded which explains why its ranking started out #1 and then fell steeply by end of Sunday. But the doc’s new cume of $9.2M makes it the #1 all-time biggest-grossing conservative political documentary, besting Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’s $7.7M. And the 6th all-time biggest political documentary behind liberal docs by Michael Moore and Al Gore.

It's coming after you, fat boys!




And speaking of cotton:

Also related: from Iowahawk: "Paul Ryan represents Obama's most horrifying nightmare: math."


Math wins. Math always wins.






W.C. Varones has some thoughts on a readers' poll from the San Diego Union-Tribune asking them to pick the five greatest Americian Presidents.

We won't give it away but the readers also picked the worst Presidents: Obama, GW Bush, Nixon, Carter and LBJ.






How about a visual?

Yep.



Totally related:

Seagate Technology Plc (STX.O), maker of hard drives and storage devices, has agreed to pay $90.3 million for the former manufacturing plant and headquarters building of bankrupt Solyndra LLC, which was financed by a controversial government loan, according to bankruptcy court documents.

Seagate's offer will be considered an initial bid, or "stalking horse," which could be topped by a competing offer of at least $1 million more when an auction is held, according to court documents filed late Wednesday. A hearing to set the terms and date for the auction and declare Seagate's offer the stalking horse has been set for September 24.

Solyndra's Fremont, California, building cost more than $300 million and was completed in 2010, according to prior court documents.

How can we be blamed for piling-on Solyndra when they keeping giving us this 30 cents on the dollar awesomeness?



OK, gang. That's it for today. We'll catch up with you all tomorrow.


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The hits... they just keep coming

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Remember when they told us that if we voted for McCain it would mean just four more years of blatant cronyism and unchecked practices of favortism? Well, they were right.


Solyndra, Lightsquared, Fast and Furious and now... Siga Technologies Inc.?


From the L.A. Times no less (headline sub headline):

Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal

A company controlled by a longtime political donor gets a no-bid contract to supply an experimental remedy for a threat that may not exist.

Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.

Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world's richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.

When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company's financial demands, senior officials replaced the government's lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show.

When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing.

Siga was awarded the final contract in May through a "sole-source" procurement in which it was the only company asked to submit a proposal. The contract calls for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation's biodefense stockpile. The price of approximately $255 per dose is well above what the government's specialists had earlier said was reasonable, according to internal documents and interviews.

Our existing stockpile of small pox vaccine which can cover the entire U.S. population and prevent death if given within 4 days of exposure goes for $3 a pop.

The government's pursuit of Siga's product raises the question: Should the U.S. buy an unproven drug for such a nebulous threat?

"We've got a vaccine that I hope we never have to use — how much more do we need?" said Dr. Donald A. "D.A." Henderson, the epidemiologist who led the global eradication of smallpox for the World Health Organization and later helped organize U.S. biodefense efforts under President George W. Bush. "The bottom line is, we've got a limited amount of money."

Dr. Thomas M. Mack, an epidemiologist at USC's Keck School of Medicine, battled smallpox outbreaks in Pakistan and has advised the Food and Drug Administration on the virus. He called the plan to stockpile Siga's drug "a waste of time and a waste of money."

And don't like how negotiations are going? Go to the bullpen.

Negotiations over the price of the drug and Siga's profit margin were contentious. In an internal memo in March, Dr. Richard J. Hatchett, chief medical officer for HHS' biodefense preparedness unit, said Siga's projected profit at that point was 180%, which he called "outrageous."

In an email earlier the same day, a department colleague told Hatchett that no government contracting officer "would sign a 3 digit profit percentage."

In April, after Siga's chief executive, Dr. Eric A. Rose, complained in writing about the department's "approach to profit," Lurie assured him that the "most senior procurement official" would be taking over the negotiations.

"I trust this will be satisfactory to you," Lurie wrote Rose in a letter.

And here's some more of that transparency we've been hearing so much about.

Neither the HHS spokeswoman nor the Siga representatives would disclose the agreed-upon profit margin or the per-treatment price. Siga has cited terms of the contract in its public financial statements — but without those financial details.

We're not experts in this field but we remain confident that non-disclosure of the financial details of government contracts runs afoul of Federal Aquisition Regulations and certainly that of the practice of good governance.

And just to make you Obama apologists feel a little bit better about this, the effort to stockpile super vaccines such as the one Siga has successfully peddled in the name of counter-terrorism started during the Bush administration lending more evidence to our contention that O > W.


One last goodie: for all that, Siga's vaccine, ST-246, only has a shelf-life of 38 months. Just over 3 years for those of you in Placentia, California. The government had intended in non-competing the replenishment contract but dropped the exclusivity provision after one of the potential contractors lodged a formal protest. Though disappointed, Siga accepted this mere compliance with the rules not wanting to seek "any negative publicity." Probably a little too late for that.


Go to the link for more of the details regarding just how it was the existing system for competing government contracts was rigged, ignored and otherwise gamed to the exclusive benefit of one contractor whose controlling shareholder is a long-time/big-time Democratic and Obama supporter and donor.

Team O: raising crony capitalism to a true art form.



P.S. The Washington Post had finally started covering the unfolding Solyndra scandal and the L.A. Times has been on Fast and Furious and, now, this apparent Son of Solyndra in this Siga vaccine mess. There just might be some hope yet for the 4th estate.

Quickies: the scandals edition

A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.



Gun Runner/Fast and Furious, Solyndra and now did a four star Air Force General get pressure from the White House to change his testimony regarding the owner of a defense contracting firm and Democratic party donor?


It would appear Team O is having to deal with more than unemployment and the economy in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election.

Oh, and how about that AttackWatch website where you get to turn in people who you think may be spreading false information about Team O? Above and beyond anything else... petty. So, so petty.

Sir Charles of DooDoo Economics thinks he may have uncovered a stunt by Twitter to cover up opposition to Obama in "Trending Reports".

But what is the cause for all this?

Is it sinister, stupid or just naive?


Where B-Daddy sees a darker side to many of the President's actions, KT counters with more of a simpler perspective on the matter:

Here's my take on what happened. The Obama Administration is filled with True Believers in two propositions:

•Government investments can lead to wondrous growth in certain industries.

•Global Warming / Climate Change is an existential threat to our way of life.

Solyndra bundled these two things together in a beautiful way. How could it lose?

So, sinister, stupid or just incredibly naive? Possibly a combination of all the above especially if an amalgam of those causes is in any way synonymous with "power-craving, micro-managing statist who thinks the normal constitutionally-recognized rules of governing a republic just don't apply to him.



Terrific.

The U.S. is coming to Europe's financial rescue.

So far, America's role is fairly limited. But if the crisis continues to grow and the U.S. takes on a wider role, U.S. consumers and taxpayers could feel a bigger impact. The biggest exposure could come from America's status as the single largest source of money for the International Monetary Fund.

The latest round of American financial assistance came Thursday with a promise by the Federal Reserve to swap as many dollars for euros as European bankers need. In the short run, those transactions won't have much impact because the central banks are simply swapping currencies of equal value. If the move helps avert a wider crisis, it could help spare the global economy from another recession.

But over the long term, consumers could feel the impact of central bankers flooding the financial system with cash, according to John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics.

Hey, who's up for some more class warfare?

President Barack Obama, in a populist step designed to appeal to voters, will propose a "Buffett Tax" on people making more than $1 million a year as part of his deficit recommendations to Congress on Monday.

Such a proposal, among suggestions to a congressional supercommittee expected to seek up to $3 trillion in deficit savings over 10 years, would appeal to his Democratic base ahead of the 2012 election but likely not raise much in revenues.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in a tweet on Saturday the tax would act as "a kind of AMT" (Alternative Minimum Tax) aimed at ensuring millionaires pay at least as much tax as middle-class families.

(italics, ours)
Don't we already have an AMT? And what was that about putting country above party... or in this case, re-election?




Did we mention we were big fans of this guy? Here's Mark Steyn on the (P)resident's "jobs" plan:

This $447 billion does not exist, and even foreigners don't want to lend it to us. A majority of it will be "electronically created" by the Federal Reserve buying U.S. Treasury debt. Don't worry, it's not like "printing money": we leave that to primitive basket-cases like Zimbabwe. This is more like one of those Nigerian email schemes, in which a prominent public official promises you a large sum of money in return for your bank account details. In the case of Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, one prominent public official is promising to wire a large sum of money into the account of another prominent public official, which is a wrinkle even the Nigerians might have difficulty selling.

Happy Constitution Day, everyone!

One of the greatest successes of the tea party movement has been to restore a discussion of constitutionality to our national political discourse. The constitution is both a conservative and a libertarian document. It is conservative in that it preserves our political structure through separation of powers and a difficult amendment process. It is libertarian in that it constrains the power and authority of the federal government, guarantees individual rights and in turn constrains the states as well. A political alliance of conservatives and libertarians, fighting socialism and progressives would of course turn to the plain meaning of such a document as the first line of defense against the forced march down the "road to serfdom" that the statists desire for our citizens. (I don't mean to impugn all liberals here; but those that are true believers in leftism have shown their colors over the years.)

That's probably it for today, gang. We'll be back tomorrow.

Quickies

A round-up of articles, news items, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.



6 things the film industry doesn't want you to know about'




Awwww... a progressive White House really just a good ol' boys club after all.





From "scandal-free" to "scandal fatigue in 3 weeks!

On August 30, concerning President Barack Obama’s reelection prospects, Allan Lichtman, an American University history professor and author of The Keys to the White House: A Surefire Guide to Predicting the Next President, told US News: “I don’t see how Obama can lose.”

Lichtman’s presidential election success formula, which has correctly predicted the winner of the popular vote in every contest since 1984, requires that the party currently holding the White House prevail on eight of thirteen “keys.” Lichtman contended that Obama was winning nine of them, with a tenth, whether the economy is in recession during the campaign, pegged as “undecided.”

Then came Solyndra, Gunrunner and Lightsquared.

Here's the chief hack of one of the hackiest groups in all of D.C. on standards, ethics...

Unhappy members of the Congressional Black Caucus “probably would be marching on the White House” if Obama were not president, according to CBC Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.).

"If [former President] Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House," Cleaver told “The Miami Herald” in comments published Sunday. "There is a less-volatile reaction in the CBC because nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president."

... and bigotry.




Even liberals know it's over... or never really existed in the first place.

Ezra Klein of the WaPo sticks a fork in Hopenchange.

Satellite photos of North Korean death camps..?

... on Google Earth?

Another great moment in the history of crony capitalism:

President Barack Obama will raise money in early October with a Missouri businessman whose company benefited from a $107 million federal tax credit to develop a wind power facility in his state.

Tom Carnahan, a scion of Missouri’s most prominent Democratic political family, is listed on Obama’s campaign website as a host of a $25,000-per-person fundraiser to be held in St. Louis on October 4.

His energy development firm, Wind Capital Group, was helped by a sizable credit authorized in the stimulus, for an energy project in northwest Missouri.

Republicans argue that it’s inappropriate for the Obama campaign to raise money from a donor who has benefited directly from the Recovery Act.

Missouri Republican Party executive director Lloyd Smith compared the situation to the Solyndra affair, in which the Obama administration reportedly rushed federal support to a green-energy firm that subsequently collapsed.

How many more of these types of cases are floating around out there and are going un-reported due to apathy, covering for the administration or scandal fatigue? They play, we pay.



The Party of "No" .

Calling for a weekend to “cool off,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid set up a Monday vote on replenishing the almost-empty federal disaster relief accounts as all sides race to beat a deadline to keep money money flowing to disaster-stricken states and to keep the federal government at large running.

“Cool off a little bit. Work this through. There’s a compromise here,” Mr. Reid said Friday, minutes after the Senate blocked back a bill drafted by House Republicans that would have replenished the disaster fund accounts through Nov. 18.

Without an agreement, the government could shut down in a week, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency could run out of money even before then.

The House, on the strength of Republican votes, passed a bill early Friday morning that directs an additional $3.65 billion to FEMA, with some of the spending offset by cuts to a clean-energy program popular with Democrats and the Obama administration.

... and Obama donors.


That's all for now. We'll be back at it tomorrow.

Tales from Green Nation

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Fisker: the Solyndra with wheels



Fisker had secured $192 million in tax-payer dollars to build hybrid sedans here in Delaware Finland at $50,000-$60,000 a copy. Unfortunately, no one wants hybrids that cheap, so Fisker went from manufacturing high-end sedans to truly luxury sedans at $110,000 per model.


Given this outstanding business model it should come as no surprise that in 2012 Fisker sold an estimated 900 cars as the Feds moved in to seize assets in this all but closed company.


But there is some good news. The feds have found a buyer. The bad news is that the tax-payer will once again take a bath on yet again another failed DOE green loan venture whose only apparent intent was to line the pockets of this administration’s politically connected.


(Previous posts on this epic boondoggle upon which we have blogged extensively can be found here)



From The Daily Caller:

The Energy Department has sold off its $192 million loan guarantee to Fisker Automotive to Chinese billionaire Richard Li for $25 million — the biggest taxpayer loss on a green loan since the failure of Solyndra.

The Energy Department will announce the “selling of the promissory note” to Hybrid Tech, which is owned by Chinese billionaire Richard Li, according to sources familiar with the sale. The DOE sold the loan to Li for $25 million after lending the financially troubled green automaker a total of $192 million since 2009.

A Chinese billionaire? We were previously unaware that Communists allowed such a species to exist. We’re sure there is nothing fishy going on there.


We’re not opposed to green energy. What we're opposed to is throwing away $167 million at a cronyisitc green scheme that never had a chance of surviving.


Mr. President, we know you will never get the clue that picking winners and losers is no way to run an economy so we’ll just have to wait for term limits to effectively achieve the same goal.





* Perhaps the quintessential image of the Fisker Karma: Being towed off the track after breaking down shortly into Consumer Reports test drive of the car. On the bed of that truck, the Karma achieves the greenie dream of a zero emissions vehicle lumbering down the highway on a flatbed at 50 mph.



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