Congress Investigates WH Taxpayer-Funded Payoffs to MSNBC’s Olbermann, Maddow

Stimulus funds allegedly directed at Obama’s worthless “green job” ads created zero jobs

InfoWars

Melissa Melton

Still unsure where all of the president’s $831 billion dollars in stimulus went?

So are a lot of Americans, including a House committee currently demanding records on half a million dollars in phony MSNBC ad buys the White House procured to promote job opportunities that did not exist.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce wants to know what, if anything, came of the over 100 “green jobs” initiative commercials purchased through the 2009 contract that ran exclusively on Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC programs. According to the Washington Times:

“Spending reports showed that no jobs were created through the contract. The Washington Times first reported on the contract earlier this month, quoting one taxpayer watchdog who questioned not only the lack of jobs but why the commercials aired only on MSNBC, considered the most liberal of the major cable news outlets.”

If the assertions of this inquiry prove correct, it is, like the Solyndra scandal and others, further evidence that stimulus money was used not to stimulate the economy as promised, but to sell the public on the perception that the President has been effective in tackling the financial quagmire that continues to unravel society and destroy jobs — all while subsidizing his allies with lucrative deals, or in this case, ad revenue.

MSNBC’s leftist agenda is no secret; it’s “Lean Forward” branding, which launched circa 2010, mimics the president’s “Forward” campaign slogan, and the channel has been caught in the past demonizing anyone who would dare criticize Obama. As political talk show hosts, neither Maddow nor Olbermann have ever really challenged the Obama Administration’s agenda, leading to the obvious conclusion this contract was little more than a presidential media payoff for public influence.

This tired White House tactic of using the mainstream media to promote hollow promises to the people is sadly nothing new. Infowars has previously reported on a 2005 Government Accountability Office investigation which concluded the Bush Administration’s influential journalist payoffs and fake news planting were an illegal “covert propaganda” push. In the case of Armstrong Williams, it was revealed that the Bush Administration had funneled more than $240,000 to the commentator in return for glowing reports on No Child Left Behind. Obama took a lesson from Bush in his attempt to gain favorability through fooling the public into thinking there were actual employment opportunities in place of meaningless propaganda.

As the bought-and-paid-for dinosaur mainstream media continues to die a slow and agonizing death, its ability to influence anyone is quickly slipping away. Market viewership for the “big 3″ networks continues to decline, and CNN recently felt the sting of the worst ratings the channel had received in over two decades.

Investigator who cleared Obama in scandal is his campaign donor

Examiner
Jim Kouri

The financial institution executive who was in charge of the “independent probe" that ended up absolving the Obama Administration for wasting billions of taxpayers' dollars spent on green energy schemes was neither bi-partisan or non-partisan, but a big contributor to the Obama reelection campaign, according to a report by a Washington, D.C., public-interest group that investigates corruption.

According to a report on Friday, Herbert Allison’s role as a special investigator of the Department of Energy's stimulus-funded loan program that is sparking curiosity. Not long after Allison determined that billions in taxpayer dollars invested in Obama-favored “green” technology companies were at nominal risk, "he made campaign donations -- big ones -- to the Democratic National Committee and the president’s re-election efforts," officials at theNational Legal and Policy Center claim.

In addition, according to officials at Judicial Watch, this situation raises doubts about the integrity of Wall Street maven Allison's investigation, "which centered on nearly $3 billion in loans that the Obama Department of Energy (DOE) doled out for experimental alternative energy projects."

Among the loans was an alleged fly-by-night California company named Solyndra, that was bankrolled by another Obama donor and fundraiser (bundler) George Kaiser, wasted more than half a billion dollars before finally going bankrupt.

In early 2012, a federal audit confirmed that “serious concerns” expressed by U.S. Treasury officials involving the risky $535 million Solyndra infusion were ignored as the deal was fast-tracked by top White House officials.

As a result, Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against the Department of Energy to obtain records regarding the Solyndra loan because "the administration has blown off a public records request that dates back to early September 2011."

The Treasury Department Inspector General's report, “Consultation on Solyndra Loan Guarantee Was Rushed,” revealed that Department of Energy cut out the Treasury Department officials from issues regarding Solyndra, ignoring the agency’s advice and limiting its opportunity to review the high-priced, high-risk financing of what critics called "an Obama green pipe dream."

Incredibly, the so-called in-depth investigation that is now known to have been conducted by Obama’s donor found no wrongdoing on the part of the administration.

"The donor/watchdog scandal was uncovered this week by a mainstream media outlet, which in and of itself is incredible considering the love fest that exists between most news organizations and the commander-in-chief. Puff pieces dominate coverage of the administration -- in major newspapers as well as television networks -- so this is a rare treat," stated the Judicial Watch blog entry.

The veteran Wall Street executive Herbert Allison, who was handpicked by the Obama administration to investigate the Obama administration's disastrous green energy loan losses, contributed $52,000 to re-elect Obama in the months after he completed the in-depth probe.

It’s all documented in federal campaign records reviewed by the national wire service that broke the story. The cash started pouring in just two weeks after Allison testified before Congress about his report, which exonerated the administration and was heavily touted by the White House.

"It started with a $2,500 donation to the Obama campaign in late March, the story reveals. In May he plopped down another $15,000 for the Obama Victory Fund, a joint group that supports the president’s reelection and the Democratic National Committee. In the following two months, Allison generously deposited another $40,000 into the coffers of the Obama/DNC account. In the news story he defends the integrity of his probe and assures he did not make the decision to back a presidential candidate until after his work was finished," according to the National Legal and Policy Center.

According to Allison's thumbnail bio, he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability of the United States having been confirmed by the Senate on June 19, 2009. He left the Treasury Department in September 2010. As part of his duties he also oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the $700 billion fund to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions in order to strengthen the financial sector of the economy.

Stupid people do stupid things

Daily Bell
Adrian Krieg

Really stupid people repeat the same failed process over and over ad infinitum. Please pay attention, Dr. Chu! Einstein said it was the proof of insanity.

Case in point is the Obama administration's solar power loan guarantee program. Not one of the loans made since 2009 have proven successful. The most costly failure, as of now, is Solyndra at $535 million. After Solyndra received its loan it laid off 1100 workers and filed for bankruptcy, in which it had the government (Department of Energy) restructure the loan to put the taxpayers behind the bus, losing US taxpayers $535 million.

Before that, Spectrawatt went belly up and we lost $500,000. Spectrawatt was one of 13 companies given grants. How many are still in business is anyone's guess. We can't even find a list on the Internet.
All this has not satisfied the Obama energy department headed up by Dr. Chu. On the last days of availability he doled out another $4 billion. The question now is, is it even possible to run printing presses fast enough to keep up with Obama's insane spending? More astutely, how did Solyndra wind up with all that money? Seems that a review of the George Kaiser Family Foundation shows it was the grantor of $10,000 to the Urban Health Initiative at the University of Chicago Medical Center, the very place where Michelle Obama was employed, at a salary of almost a quarter-million dollars per year, after her husband became a federal senator and had siphoned a massive federal grant to the same institution.

Kaiser was a frequent White House visitor and the principal in an investment vehicle called GKFF Investment Company that is involved in Solyndra. While the payola by investors in Solyndra is not large, there is a pattern within this administration where donors become winners and taxpayers become the losers. Just so we don't upset anyone by leaving them out, we should mention that Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod were both also employed at the University of Chicago Medical Center and employee Michelle's hubby, Barack, was a lecturer at the University of Chicago. Oh, and I almost forgot good old George Kaiser, who in the weeks before Solyndra got its loan guarantee, visited the White House and gave the president's 2008 campaign a little gift of $53,500.

Newly released information indicates that the California Democratic Party was a major stockholder in Solyndra and is one of the creditors that will be bailed out while the taxpayers are left holding the bag. Now, we can all understand why the loan guarantee was renegotiated in favor of the stockholders over the government (taxpayers) at the last moment before filing for bankruptcy. And just by the way, Solyndra donated $7,500 to the Democratic Party of California, before the stock purchase or the loan guarantee, in October 2010.

Sadly, many lobbyists will now be looking for new jobs, which is not good for the president's jobs initiative. Seems that Solyndra had scores of DC-insider lobbyists and contractors working on their behalf, including, among others, McAllister & Quinn, McBee Strategic, Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY ret.), Senator Maria Cantwell (R-NY), Nancy Pelosi and Rice Hadley Group, whose principal is Condoleezza Rice.

New loans include $737 million to Tonopah Solar Energy on September 28 and then $646 million to AV Solar Ranch on the 30th. Total loans now outstanding to solar energy projects are $6.5 billion; projected cost per job created is $23 million. How much of the entire $1.383 billion in new loans will be used to manufacture the products in Mexico is unreported. But at least one of the companies built a plant in Mexico. One can only be amazed that no one in the administration has looked at Spain!
One can only guess that when these go belly up, this administration will find some more campaign donors looking for a handout. This administration has become the sleaziest, most corrupt and least transparent in my memory. Consider now: Operation Gunrunner, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, LightSquared, Chrysler – the list gets longer every day. There is so much dirt just on Operation Fast and Furious and Solyndra that the others don't even make the news. The fact of the matter is companies who are unable to secure loans in the private sector either have bad technology or a poor business plan. I have looked over the plan for Tonopah as well as Solar Power and know exactly why the private sector is not investing in these boondoggles.

Judge denies bid by government for Solyndra trustee

FBI sought contract information

Seldom photographed
Mary F. Walrath ruled
against a more
transparent procedure

Washington Times
Jim Mcelhatton

WILMINGTON, Del. — Customer contracts figure prominently in the FBI’s criminal investigation of solar panel maker Solyndra LLC, which went bankrupt despite receipt of more than a half-billion dollars in federal loans, according to testimony on Monday.

A top company official testified in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware that the FBI’s search warrant affidavit specifically sought information about company contracts.

The official, Ben Schwartz, a vice president and lawyer at Solyndra, was testifying because the U.S. Office of the Trustee said he had refused to answer questions about contracts. His refusal, government lawyers argued, proved that a trustee should be appointed to take over the company.

But U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Mary F. Walrath refused, saying there was no indication of any fraud or mismanagement at the company.

Mr. Schwartz’s testimony sheds new light on the federal investigation of Solyndra. The company’s former chief executive officer, Brian Harrison, and current Chief Financial Officer W.G. Stover both cited their Fifth Amendment rights in refusing to testify about the company’s collapse at a recent congressional hearing.

In a recent legal filing, the trustee's office cited the executive’s refusal to testify, difficulty in getting information about contracts, and Mr. Stover’s current position at the company as factors in their seeking a trustee.

But lawyers for Solyndra argued that there’s been no proof of any fraud or mismanagement and that the Department of Energy had representatives attend company board meetings for months before the bankruptcy.

Mr. Schwartz testified that he was surprised the FBI raided the company days after the bankruptcy filing last month. He said Solyndra had a good relationship with the Energy Department, which had awarded the company more than $500 million in government loans. He also said the DOE had access to the same financial information given to regular board members.

“An FBI raid is not something I would have thought was necessary,” he said.

Mr. Schwartz also said contracts were specifically “called out” in the FBI’s warrant. He said the FBI had copied the company’s electronic database so agents would have access to anything at the company that was in electronic format. He did not indicate what other information was included in the affidavit.
He said he discussed contract matters with outside lawyers as well as company officials, but noted those discussions were confidential under attorney-client privilege.

Last month, Solyndra officials refused to discuss the company’s contracts at a private meeting with a bankruptcy analyst for the Justice Department. The decision fueled the push to have a trustee take over the failed company.

SOLYNDRAGATE: Huge Email Dump Implicates Obama And Rahm In Bankruptcy Scandal

Business Insider
Grace Wyler

The White House released a bunch of emails related to the Solyndra bankruptcy scandal to Congressional investigators today, in what has become a regular Friday evening email dump.
The emails, obtained by several news organizations, implicate the most senior levels of the Obama administration in the scandal, which has tainted the White House since the solar company went bankrupt last month, leaving taxpayers on the hook for a $534 billion federal loan.

Here are the highlights:

One email, obtained by the Washington Post, suggests that Obama and/or his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was actively involved in trying to get Solyndra's loan application approved in time for a September 2009 press conference.

“Ron said this morning that the POTUS definitely wants to do this (or Rahm definitely wants the POTUS to do this?),” one White House staffer told an Obama scheduler on Aug. 17, 2009, referring to Ron Klain, former chief of staff for Vice President Joe Biden.

Steve Spinner, an Obama fundraiser who worked in the DOE loan department, repeatedly pushed the chief loan officer to expedite approval of Solyndra's loan — despite the fact that his wife worked for the law firm representing Solyndra. The firm received at least $2.4 million in fees related to the loan, according to the AP.  DOE officials have previously stated that Spinner did not "actively participate" in Solyndra's application.

“How [expletive] hard is this? What is he waiting for? Will we have it by the end of the day?” Spinner wrote on Aug. 28, 2009. “I have OVP [Office of Vice President] and WH [White House] breathing down my neck on this. They are getting itchy to get involved if needed. I don’t want that.”

In 2011, the Treasury Department warned the DOE about the questionable legality of Solyndra's refinancing deal, which put investors ahead of taxpayers in the event the company went under.
"In February, we requested in writing that DOE seek the Department of Justice’s approval of any proposed restructuring,” an assistant Treasury secretary wrote in an August 2011 memo to the OMB. “To our knowledge that never happened.”

Another email, obtained by TIME, suggests that Solyndra's bad finances and poor business model were well-known within the solar panel industry. A February 2009 letter from the CEO of Solyndra's main competitor, Nanosolar, basiclly asks what everyone in the country is asking now:

“In light of the DoE loan program application of a competitor of ours, Solyndra, and given the well-publicized rapidly deteriorating financial state of this company as well as its failure to secure new investors and maintain a balance sheet adequate for product introduction, I would appreciate clarification from you about whether the DoE loan guarantee program is suitable as a ‘bail-out’ program for failing private manufacturers."

Solyndra and the Solar Shakeout: Bankruptcies in Context

TriplePundit
Mike Koshmi and Seth Masia

During August, three homegrown photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturers failed and two European manufacturers decommissioned their U.S. production lines. All told, the United States lost 20 percent of its panel manufacturing capacity.

By far, Solyndra’s fall was the loudest. In September 2009, the Fremont, CA-based thin-film manufacturer received a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to ramp up to a 450-megawatt (MW) factory. Solyndra’s was the first section 1705 loan guarantee awarded, and the first to backfire. The bankruptcy triggered a congressional investigation into whether the timetable on Solyndra’s loan guarantee application was accelerated. Search warrants were issued, and the FBI raided the spanking-new and shuttered Fab 2 factory and Solyndra executives’ homes.

For a time in September, solar received unprecedented front-page ink. The media storm around Solyndra brought light to dramatic, unforeseen declines in the cost of PV, China’s influence on the market and doubt over the United State’s ability to compete.


Back Story

Solyndra offered a novel product, a cylindrical cadmium-indium-galium-(di)selenide (CIGS)  thin-film panel. The product’s economic viability depended on the price of pure polysilicon —the raw material for competing crystalline-silicon (c-Si) PV technologies. Four years ago, when the cost of polysilicon approached $1,000 a pound, Solyndra’s silicon-free product was a hot commodity, attracting venture capital connected to Richard Branson, oil baron George Kaiser, the Walton family, and investment bank Goldman Sachs. By late 2007, the Bush Administration DOE had moved to develop a conditional loan guarantee commitment.

By the time Solyndra’s application was approved in March 2009, under the Obama Administration, polysilicon prices had dropped by nearly 90 percent. They never bounced back and global c-Si PV prices fell off, throwing a wrench in the thin-film business model. There is no evidence Solyndra ever sold its panels at cost. According to filings for a cancelled initial public offering, Solyndra was producing its panels for $4.00 a watt and selling them for $3.24 a watt as recently as June 2010. With competing factories moving toward $1.00 a watt PV, a best-case-scenario for the Fremont factory was $2.00 a watt.

Those market conditions set in much faster than expected. Some indices have spot prices for modules down 40 percent since January. “What happened earlier this year is that this massive [module] oversupply situation led to prices plummeting,” said Shayle Kann, managing director of solar for GTM Research. “And we haven’t seen any recovery in prices yet. It’s [a] continued difficulty for every manufacturer globally, but it’s hitting those that can’t compete on price first.”

Kann expected more factory closures, both in the United States and abroad, over the next six months to two years. By and large, the so-called “shakeout” has been attributed to China’s influence on the global market.

Bigger Picture

It’s not that Western manufacturers can’t make competitive, well-made products. The problem is that they can’t get competitive financing. Western investors and banks are simply unwilling, and probably unable, to compete with the Chinese government’s vigorous investment in solar manufacturing. It means that Chinese factories ramp up faster, achieve economies of scale more quickly, and flood the market with cheap, commoditized c-Si. A Sept. 25 Mercom Market Intelligence Report laid out the raw numbers.

Since January 2010, Chinese banks have offered Chinese solar companies a staggering $40.7 billion. For perspective, U.S. solar manufacturers have received $1.4 billion in DOE loan guarantees since 1705’s inception (Solyndra’s allotment was the largest). The Chinese manufacturer Suntech disputed the figures cited by Bloomberg and Mercom, but declined to give an interview for this story.

Fallout widens from collapse of Fremont solar manufacturer

Mercury News
Dana Hull

FBI agents seizes items from
Solyndra headquarters in Fremont

Fallout from the implosion of Fremont solar panel manufacturer Solyndra expanded Tuesday when California Treasurer Bill Lockyer called for a "pause" in the state clean-energy program that had provided Solyndra a $25.1 million tax break.

"In light of recent events, we owe it to taxpayers to see if there is more we can do to make sure we don't give their money to companies headed for a fall, or companies that take California's money and run to other states to create jobs," Lockyer said of the program, which gives solar and other alternative energy companies sales tax exemptions on manufacturing equipment.

Lockyer's move follows a failed attempt by House Republicans to slash funding for electric vehicles, and announcements that at least two solar companies expecting to be awarded federal loan guarantees from the Department of Energy have been told in the wake of Solyndra's collapse that their applications won't clear the Sept. 30 deadline.

Suddenly it seems that every government program related to cleantech is under increased scrutiny, review or outright attack.

Sacramento attorney Jon Costantino, an expert on clean energy policy who attended this week's Renewable Energy Finance Forum in San Francisco, summed up the new reality.

"Shadow of #Solyndra hangs over event," he tweeted Monday.

The collapse of Solyndra, which raised more than $1 billion from venture capitalists and won a $535 million loan guarantee in 2009 from

the Department of Energy, has triggered investigations by Congress and the Justice Department while igniting a political firestorm, with conservative critics citing it as proof that President Barack Obama's economic policies have failed. 

"These are tough economic times, and we have our work cut out for us to make sure solar is not viewed only through the lens of one company," said Tom Kimbis, a vice president of SEIA, the Solar Energy Industries Association. "One hundred thousand Americans are employed in solar, and those points are getting lost in the storm that is Solyndra."

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, whose congressional district spans the heart of Silicon Valley, says Solyndra's finances and its Department of Energy loan guarantee deserve to be investigated by Congress because so much taxpayer money is at stake. But she argues that Solyndra's demise has been blown out of proportion, and she notes that many companies the government has supported, including Palo Alto's Tesla Motors, are growing and creating jobs.

"The Republican majority views Solyndra as red meat, and these attacks take a toll," Eshoo said. "When these broad attacks are made it's like a very effective bomb. It doesn't just hit the target -- there's collateral damage."

Last week, House Republicans tried to cut funding for the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program, also overseen by the Department of Energy, arguing that the money was needed to pay for Hurricane Irene cleanup. The ATVM program supports electric vehicle startups like Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors, as well as Ford, which used a $5.9 billion ATVM loan to upgrade factories in the Midwest.

Eshoo mounted a ferocious fight to save the program and succeeded after 108 members of Congress signed a letter of support and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, environmental groups and the United Auto Workers lobbied on the program's behalf.

"The ATVM program was signed into law by President George W. Bush. It's saved and created jobs, and a phoenix is rising from the ashes of the NUMMI plant," said Eshoo, referring to Tesla's purchase of the former New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant in Fremont. "Silicon Valley is unique: We believe in guts and ideas and ingenuity. In many ways, you don't count if you haven't failed. It's important to be a risk taker. And there's a difference between risk and waste."

One victim of the Solyndra fallout is San Mateo-based SolarCity, which was told it would not get a $275 million loan guarantee to help install solar panels on military housing because of "increased documentation requirements."

"We believe that the valuable work done to move the SolarStrong project to completion should not be lost because of the Solyndra bankruptcy," wrote CEO Lyndon Rive in a letter to Congress asking for an extension. "SolarStrong sharply contrasts with Solyndra in every regard concerning risk and cost to the government."

Another victim is First Solar of Tempe, Ariz., which was told in June that its Topaz Solar Farm project in San Luis Obispo County had been awarded a conditional commitment for a $1.9 million Department of Energy loan guarantee. Late last week, the company announced it would not meet the Friday deadline because there was "insufficient time" to process requirements.

First Solar is in discussions with potential buyers for the project, and spokesman Alan Bernheimer declined to say what requirements are keeping the company from meeting the deadline. But privately, many solar industry analysts say the Department of Energy has no choice, given the political climate, but to become more stringent with any pending loans.

If loan guarantees fall through, companies can still seek private financing. And the private sector is still bullish on solar: Google announced a $75 million investment Tuesday to create a fund with San Francisco startup Clean Power Finance that will help as many as 3,000 homeowners go solar.

Global Warming Hysteria: Skepticism Is Not “Anti-Science”

SecondHandSmoke
Wesley J. Smith

Some GWHs like to try to impose their policy views by stifling the debate about man made global warming.  “It’s the consensus!” they will thunder–deaf to the irony that “science” isn’t determined by consensus.  “The skeptical scientists are on the oil company payroll!”they scream, which works for the choir but shows the rest of us their true ideological colors.  “Skeptics are mere ‘deniers,’ akin to those who deny the Holocaust!,” they sneer, as if insults persuade and a predicted end-of-the-century future is as certain as the already happened past.  And then there’s their supposedly great trump card, “To deny ‘climate change’ is to be ‘anti science!”


Rubbish, all of it.  Over at the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby has a good rejoinder to some of this nonsense.  Jacoby is reacting to the political slur from Bill Clinton that one can’t become the Republican nominee for POTUS unless they “deny science,” meaning man made global warming.  From “Climate Skeptics Don’t ‘Deny Science:’”

In truth, global-warming alarmism is not science at all — not in the way that electromagnetic radiation or the laws of planetary motion or molecular biology is science. Catastrophic climate change is an interpretation of certain scientific data, an interpretation based on theories about the causes and effects of growing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is not “denying science’’ to have doubts about the correctness of that interpretation any more than it is “denying economics’’ to have doubts about the efficacy of Kenyesian pump-priming.

Exactly, when people say man made global warming is a “fact,” they play us for chumps, and conflate knowledge obtained via the scientific method–where the complexities of the forces that drive climate still are far from fully understood–with ideologically driven policy proposals that pretend to be objective science but are actually politics using global warming as the front.  That’s GWH.
Jacoby also notes that the dissenters from the vaunted “consensus” about are some of the biggest names in contemporary science:

You don’t have to look far to see that impeccable scientific standards can go hand-in-hand with skepticism about global warming. Ivar Giaever, a 1973 Nobel laureate in physics , resigned this month as a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) to protest the organization’s official positionthat evidence of manmade climate change is “incontrovertible’’ and cause for alarm…By now, only ideologues and political propagandists insist that all reputable scientists agree on the human responsibility for climate change. Even within the American Physical Society, the editor of “Physics and Society’’ (an APS publication) has acknowledged that “there is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree . . . that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are . . . primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.’’

Giaever is only one of many distinguished scientists who dissent from the alarmist view on climate change. Among the others are Richard Lindzen of MIT and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, both noted climatologists; the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study; and S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia. 

The attempt to stifle such dissenting views about global warming–while still ongoing, alas–have failed. People have seen through the propaganda.  They know they have been force fed, and they don’t like it.

They also don’t like anyone unilaterally declaring the to be debate over (as Clinton, Gore, and others have), when, in fact, it is just getting interesting.  Nor do they like being looked down by their self-declared rescuers–snobbery is a real problem for the GWHs.  They have seen the lies exposed–such as the end of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035–and taken the measure of  the GWHs credibility.  Whatever the ethics of Climategate, they saw that the scientists involved were not merely interested in a full and objective discourse.

They are sick of the DIRE WARNINGS OF DOOM! Their common sense tells them that there is far more to this story than the alarmists pretend or presume, particularly since things aren’t turning out the way the vaunted “models” have predicted.  For example, their common sense tells them that record arctic blasts of the last few years are not evidence of global warming.

They rightly see GWH as a material threat to their pocketbooks.  They see that the oil, gas, and coal industries are being suppressed by bureaucratic fiat.  The know that the “green jobs” promise is, for now, hollow.  They have noticed the Solyndra Scandal, and realize that it was partly caused by GWH, in the sense of why that company and industry had been picked as the target of a mass money throw and flush.  They know that increased gas and energy prices could be the death knell for any kind of meaningful recovery–which they are well aware that low growth would be just fine with those GWHs who preach decline and poverty.  And they see the high-living hypocrisy of some of the most strident GWH advocates like Al Gore, Prince Charles, and Thomas Friedman, and think that since they don’t do what they say, don’t really believe what they say.

If GWHs want to know why the polling shows an ever decreasing urgency over climate change–and why their panic mongering over a small hurricane and a bad Texas drought haven’t helped the cause (at least in the USA)–read this post very carefully.

I know, I know: 97 percent of scientists, and all that jazz.  But the jig is up, fellows.  You are going to have to impose your policies on an unwilling public, which we know you are more than happy to do (another reason for the growing skepticism.  We don’t like authoritarianism).  But that is not going to be as easy as you may wish.

Solyndra Executives To Plead the Fifth

jobmouse
Anneline Waldman

Top Solyndra executives have decided that they will not testify before Congress about the federal government’s backing of the failed solar power company.


Solyndra Chief Executive Brian Harrison and Chief Financial Officer Bill Stover will be exercising their Fifth Amendment rights at an upcoming hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to a statement released by the company Tuesday.

The Fifth Amendment:

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without dueprocess of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The executives will be taking the advice received from the Company’s counsel and will be “unable to provide substantive answers” to lawmakers’ questions at Friday’s hearing. However, the company has stated that it followed the rules of the application process and that the Department of Energy conducted extensive due diligence of the firm, according to CNNMoney.

Lawmakers have recently been referring to the company’s failure as a precedent to highlight the danger of government funding for private firms. The company was one of 18 companies that received more than $10 billion in backing from the Energy Department as part of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus program to support renewable and clean energy technology.
 

U.S. House of Representatives to probe Solyndra’s bankruptcy

Ecoseed
Jhoanna Frances S. Valdez

The United States House of Representatives is set to investigate the collapse of a solar startup which obtained a hefty amount of funding from the government, to identify possible misrepresentation on the part of the company or if state officials overlooked details that could have determined whether the firm had the capability to pay back its debts or not.

House committee on energy and commerce chairman Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan, said his committee will probe circumstances surrounding California-based Solyndra L.L.C.'s immediate suspension of operations and planned filing for bankruptcy next week in Delaware.

"As the highly celebrated first stimulus loan guarantee awarded by the [Department of Energy], the $535-million loan for Solyndra was suspect from day one," Mr. Upton said.

"Our investigation to protect American taxpayers has revealed that in the rush to get stimulus cash out the door, despite repeated claims by the [Obama] administration to the contrary, some bets were bad from the beginning," Mr. Upton added.

"Our investigation continues, and with Solyndra's bankruptcy we expect full and continued cooperation from the [Office of Management and Budget], as we must ensure American taxpayers are not left holding the bag," he said.

The committee has been checking up on Solyndra since the energy department awarded a $535-million loan guarantee to the company in September 2009 to inquire about the company's financial health, to which Solyndra executives, lobbyists and investors have been responding in the affirmative, Mr. Upton said.

Manufacturing plant 
 
The loan guarantee was intended for the construction of a commercial-scale solar panel manufacturing plant which was expected to generate 3,000 jobs.

The committee started an inquiry into the energy department's Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 spending last February. The move was followed by the subcommittee on oversight's public hearing on the department's use of stimulus funds last March 17.

Last June 24, the oversight subcommittee initiated moves to determine how much influence the management and budget office has on the energy department's loan guarantee process.
The energy and commerce committee issued a subpoena last July 15 to the management and budget office for the submission of documents related to approving the credit subsidy costs of all D.O.E. guarantees.

Since closing the D.O.E. loan guarantee, Solyndra has suffered financial setbacks, including the cancellation of a planned initial public offering in June 2010, factory closures, laying off of workers totaling 1,100 and postponement of a plant expansion.

Under the government's loan guarantee program, the government will not provide an actual loan to a company but will repay the commercial loans the company receives in case of a default.

Solyndra Spent Liberally to Woo Lawmakers Until the End, Records Show

New York Times
John McCardle

The 1,100 full- and part-time employees who were abruptly laid off two weeks ago aren't the only ones whose paychecks have been affected by the sudden and dramatic failure of bankrupt solar energy company, Solyndra Inc.

Because for its brief lifespan, Solyndra proved to be pretty good for the lobbying community.
According to records filed with the Clerk of the House and a search of disclosure forms compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, Solyndra spent nearly $1.9 million on lobbying activities over a period of 43 months from 2008 to 2011.

About $1 million of that was earned by the company's two in-house lobbyists, Joseph Pasetti and Victoria Sanville, over an 18-month period from 2010 until this year. But Solyndra has also had several big-name lobbying shops on its payroll, including established powerhouses Dutko Worldwide and Holland and Knight, which began representing the then-fledgling company in 2008.

While Holland and Knight helped the company with renewable energy tax credit issues, Dutko was brought aboard, according to its filings, to "identify decisionmakers and to assist with the client's loan application" through the Department of Energy.

It is that DOE loan that has touched off an outcry on Capitol Hill and has singed the Obama administration, just as President Obama campaigns across the country for his new jobs plan and Republicans look to scale back clean energy and environmental programs.

By 2009, Solyndra was finished with Dutko and Holland and Knight and was working with well-known energy lobbyist, McBee Strategic Consulting, whose clients have included the Applied Materials Inc., a semiconductor and solar panel equipment manufacturer; Babcock & Wilcox; BrightSource Energy Inc., a solar developer; Google Inc.; Better Place Inc., an electric-vehicle charge station developer; Honeywell International; and Tesla Motors Inc., a developer of electric cars.

McBee was brought on to monitor how the new American Reinvestment and Recovery Act would affect the solar industry. The group specifically reported on lobbying forms that its issues included the DOE loan guarantee program, through which Solyndra eventually received $527 million in funding before it went bankrupt.

Behind Solyndra's own lobbyists, McBee was the shop that made the most off the company, taking in $360,000 over a two-year period.

By 2010 Solyndra had hit its lobbying peak. Not only had the company begun paying its own in-house lobbyists but it was also working with nine other lobbyists at three different agencies including McBee and two others, the Washington Tax Group, which had been brought on board to handle the company's interest as it related to the Solar Manufacturing Jobs Creation Act that was up for consideration, and McAllister and Quinn, which was handling the company's interests on the National Defense Authorization Act.

McBee stayed on board through the first quarter of this year but filed no lobbying report for the company beyond then.

One lobbying shop that was added to Solyndra's stable this year was the Democratic-leaning Glover Park Group. Glover Park had had a communications relationship with Solyndra for about a year before filing with the Clerk of the House on July 18 to conduct lobbying.

The stated purpose on that filing was to provide an "introduction of the company to [House] Energy and Commerce Committee Members."

Glover Park only worked with the company a month but it was efficient.
Three days after it filed with the clerk's office it hosted a media event in Washington at which Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison sought to convince reporters that his company was fiscally sound. At that meeting, Harrison told reporters that he was in town to brief several members of Congress about the health of his company.

But in light of the company's subsequent downfall, those meetings have left a bad taste in some members' mouths.

At an Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee hearing this week, members said they felt misled by the meetings they participated in with Harrison.

"This July, Solyndra's CEO visited my office as well as other members and talked about the strong demand for the company's products and how 2011 revenues were projected to double from 2010. Now as we all know, less than two months later, the company announced it would file for bankruptcy," committee ranking member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said in her opening statement at the hearing. "I'm perplexed how they could be in my office in July, telling me things were looking better and filing for bankruptcy two months later."

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) questioned Jonathan Silver, the head of DOE's loan program, and Jeff Zients, the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, on Wednesday on whether they ignored warning signs from their staff about the company as recently as July.

"Apparently ... Solyndra was here on Capitol Hill speaking to members of Congress indicating everything was on track at the same time that your observer was telling us -- was telling you all that there was a problem," Griffith said. "I'm not saying that you all knew they were up here telling fibs, but I am concerned that they were up here telling fibs."

Obama admin reworked Solyndra loan to favor donor

AJC
Matthew Daly

FILE - In this Aug. 31, 2011, file photo,
Solyndra workers leave Solyndra
in Fremont, Calif. Newly released
emails show that the Obama
administration was worried about
the financial health of a troubled
solar energy company even as officials
publicly declared the company in
good shape. An email from a White House
budget official to a co-worker
discussed the likely effect of a
default by Solyndra Inc. on
President Barack Obama’s
re-election campaign.

Administration officials defended the loan restructuring, saying that without an infusion of cash earlier this year, solar panel maker Solyndra Inc. would likely have faced immediate bankruptcy, putting more than 1,000 people out of work.

Even with the federal help, Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month and laid off its 1,100 employees.

The Fremont, Calif.-based company was the first renewable-energy company to receive a loan guarantee under a stimulus-law program to encourage green energy and was frequently touted by the Obama administration as a model. Obama visited the company's Silicon Valley headquarters last year, and Vice President Joe Biden spoke by satellite at its groundbreaking.

Since then, the implosion of the company and revelations that the administration hurried Office of Management and Budget officials to finish their review of the loan in time for the September 2009 groundbreaking has become an embarrassment for Obama as he sells his new job-creation program around the country.

An Associated Press review of regulatory filings shows that Solyndra was hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars for years before the Obama administration signed off on the original $535 million loan guarantee in September 2009. The company eventually got $528 million.

Given the company's shaky financial condition, Republican lawmakers say the decision to restructure the loan raises questions about whether the administration protected political supporters at taxpayers' expense.

"You should have protected the taxpayers and made some forceful actions here after this analysis," Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., told a top Energy Department official this week. "Because you should have seen the problems. And you should have said, 'Taxpayers need to be protected and this has got to stop.' "
The loan restructuring is one element congressional investigators are focusing on as they look into the federal loan guarantee Solyndra received under the economic stimulus law.

Under terms of the February loan restructuring, two private investors — Argonaut Ventures I LLC and Madrone Partners LP — stand to be repaid before the U.S. government if the solar company is liquidated. The two firms gave the company a total of $69 million in emergency loans. The loans are the only portion of their investments that have repayment priority above the U.S. government.

Argonaut is an investment vehicle of the George Kaiser Family Foundation of Tulsa, Okla. The foundation is headed by billionaire George Kaiser, a major Obama campaign contributor and a frequent visitor to the White House. Kaiser raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for Obama's 2008 campaign, federal election records show. Kaiser has made at least 16 visits to the president's aides since 2009, according to White House visitor logs.

Madrone Partners is affiliated with the Walton family, descendants of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. Rob Walton, the eldest son of Sam Walton, contributed $2,500 last year to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The AP review also found that officials at Solyndra had been seeking a second round of loans from the Energy Department to expand the company's Silicon Valley headquarters. The request for a second loan was denied.

"We have incurred significant net losses since our inception, including a net loss of $114.1 million in 2007, $232.1 million in 2008 and $119.8 million in the first nine months of fiscal 2009, and we had an accumulated deficit of $505 million at Oct. 3, 2009," the company said in a December 2009 filing to the SEC. "We expect to continue to incur significant operating and net losses and negative cash flow from operations for the foreseeable future."

Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said Friday that the company's financial losses were not uncommon for a high-tech startup and were a major reason Solyndra applied for the federal loan. The loan program is intended to help promising companies that cannot receive financing through private banks because of high risk.

Jonathan Silver, executive director of the Energy Department's loan program, said DOE officials faced a stark choice late last year and early this year: Refuse to allow the loan restructuring, "thereby ensuring that Solyndra would close its doors immediately" or allow the company to accept emergency financing, "thereby giving it and its almost 1,000 workers a fighting chance at success, and the government a higher expected recovery on its loan."

The decision by Energy Secretary Steven Chu was not an easy one, Silver told the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but appeared to be the right action at the time.

"Without DOE's agreement to restructure Solyndra's loan, the company likely would have faced bankruptcy much earlier — in December 2010" or soon after, Silver said. "Restructuring gave them a fighting chance to compete and succeed, and kept approximately 1,000 workers from losing their jobs."
Republicans were not impressed.

"If their model was weak to begin with, and then the market gets worse, doesn't that mean that maybe we should have just not thrown good money after bad?" asked Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va. "Because now we're in a worse position in the bankruptcy courts to get our money back."

GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann called the Solyndra loan an example of "crony capitalism" that benefited political donors.

"It's wrong to abuse executive authority with unilateral actions" Bachmann said at a campaign event Friday in California. "And of course the other problem with Solyndra is the fact that it appears there was crony capitalism, that there were political donors that benefited by this $535 million loan."
Newly released emails show the White House was worried about the likely effect of a default by Solyndra on Obama's re-election campaign.

"The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad," an OMB official wrote in a Jan. 31 email to a colleague.
"The timing will likely coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up."

The budget official, whose name is blacked out in the email, wondered whether Solyndra should be allowed to restructure its loan.

"Questions will be asked as to why the administration made a bad investment, not just once (which could hopefully be explained as part of the challenge of supporting innovative technologies), but twice (which could easily be portrayed as bad judgment, or worse)," the email says.

Associated Press writer Gillian Flaccus in Costa Mesa, Calif., contributed to this story.

Follow Jack Gillum at http://twitter.com/jackgillum and Matthew Daly at http://twitter.com/MatthewDalyWDC

SOLARGATE: Obama’s Big Green Scandal That Won’t Go Away

21st Century Wire
Patrick Henningsen

In the first year of his presidency, George W. Bush was under siege. At that time, he had appeared to win his war in Afghanistan, only to find himself tangled in another story, a tale of corporate greed and political corruption made by the hands of a company known as Enron.

Back then, it was the new energy brokerage houses and the new energy futures market that drove the hubris, and the greed of men like Ken Lay. Today in 2011, Barrack Obama now finds himself in the midst of his own ‘Enron moment’, but this time it’s political favouritism and a seemingly bottomless pit of green government stimulus handouts that has driven his green juggernaut into a ravine.

The Enron scandal saw, among other crimes, the savings and retirement funds of tens of thousands of employees disappear when the politically connected energy giant went bankrupt overnight, but it was the cronyism- the company’s direct connections to Bush, Cheney and other insiders which left the worst taste in America’s mouth. Last week, deja vu hit the Obama White House, as his favourite green pet- solar energy firm Solyndra, managed to do an overnight disappearing act with over $500 million in taxpayer funds. What’s worse is that just like Enron, the solar energy firm’s connections go right up through Washington, and right up to the President himself.

From a policy level, it’s a complete wash out due to the fact that despite over half a billion dollars in Federal Financing Bank handouts, Solyndra did not manage to create any new ‘green jobs’. On an insider corruption level, things are looking even bleaker.

Indeed, in the Obama White House, just as it was in the Bush White House, money buys influence, and more importantly, money also buys business opportunities. Apparently, when Solyndra first applied for its green subsidies, auditors at the Department of Energy (DOE) had serious doubts about the company’s financial strength, yet, they were still fast-tracked for one the biggest green subsidies in US history. Jonathan Silver is executive director of the Loan Programs Office, and is the man who signed off on Solyndra’s loan. Will he thrown under the bus later, if the investigation reaches Congressional hearings? The plot thickens.

The $500 million question is why this firm was allowed to win such a large handout if its fundamentals did not pass grade? The answer to that question is a man by the name of George Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire and a major investor in Solyndra, who also happened to be… a key fundraiser for Obama’s 2008 election campaign. But it gets worse.

When Solyndra when down under Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, you would think that the US taxpayer would be first in line as a creditor who hoped to recoup its $500 million loss. Not so. First in line was… George Kaiser, who managed to pocket his initial $75 million investment before anyone else got to the butchers table.

In an ABC report, Kaiser, like with every inner circle Obama Democrat, moved quickly to place the blame on our far eastern neighbours.“Solyndra’s collapse saying the solar firm faced “serious challenges in the marketplace, especially the drastic decline in solar panel prices during the past two years caused in part by subsidies provided by the government of China to Chinese solar panel manufacturers”, said Kaiser.

Now there is an ethical and perhaps criminal element to Obama’s green scandal. Like with Enron, where thousands of employee retirement accounts were pilfered away by its cowboy executives, Solyndra’s employees were informed literally overnight, that their company was closed and was so broke, that there would not even be a severance cheque waiting for them. But it turns out that insiders in Washington did know the company was in trouble long before it closed its doors last week. The question now is who knew. Which Washington insiders had off-loaded their stocks and shares in the months before the solar manufacturer went down the drain?

Criminal proceeding will certainly follow should investigative authorities come up with any information pointing to gross insider trading and financial malfeasance. At the orders of the DOE’s Inspector General, the FBI have now already raided the offices of Solyndra, seizing all its files, as well as raided the homes of Solyndra executives, seizing their computers and related company documents.

The reality of Obama’s green revolution in 2011 is that, despite his pledge to handout $38.6 billion in Federal loan guarantees to companies like Solyndra, a promise to create 65,000 “green” jobs has only produced a rather pathetic 3,545 permanent jobs- this after giving out almost half the allocated amount so far, according to the DOE.

One only needs to do the math, and you will discover what every other developed country around the globe already knew in 2008- that the cost per green job is hardly worth the financial pain and suffering.

Unquestionably, this scandal will throw into question every other ‘green jobs’ award that Obama’s White House has given out since 2008, as well as severely damage confidence in any other DOE projects on the table, or in the future.

Now, it is perhaps only a question of time before the investigation reaches the Congress hearing level, where Democrats will be hoping to push a major investigation past the election next November 2012. In the meantime, GOP opponents on Capitol Hill have already caught the scent of political blood left by Obama’s big green debacle. In a recent Washington Post article, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn) exclaimed, “My goodness. We should be reviewing every one of these loan guarantee”. Audit baby audit.

Early indications imply that the sheer size and scope of Obama’s “Solargate” scandal leave us with the impression that this may only be the tip of a much, much larger iceberg. It will be Obama’s first classic Pennsylvania Avenue scandal he has had to face in his first term, one in which we will discover the true quality of this President’s tephlon coating.

Above all, this scandal underlines the very same issues which were present during, and which grew out of the Enron days, because Obama’s “green economy” rides squarely on the back of some very questionable “science” which endorses a belief in Al Gore’s universal theory of man-made global warming and climate change. From this idea also sprung a vision whereby the people of the world would one day be buying and selling their carbon emissions in a carbon marketplace, a market designed by Ken Lay himself. It seems that with Solargate, the house of cards is well and truly coming down.

With Enron it, was pure hubris and greed, combined with opportunity. With Solyndra, it is green hubris and green greed, combined with opportunity. When you get right down to it, they are no different.