“Creating” a Green-Tech Winner
Obama Backs a Monstrous Loser
President Obama now touts a whole new STIMULUS for the ailing American economy (the American Jobs Act, AJA). Some are calling his AJA, “Son of Stimulus,” and pointing to a nasty scandal within the first $787 Billion Obama stimulus – a scandal which is being nicknamed “Solargate.” While adding the suffix “gate” is no guarantee of real coverage and fairness by the nation’s mainstream media, it does show a deepening of interest by we mainstream Americans who so deeply distrust our politicians and the media that protects them. What, then are the facts about Solyndra, Inc.?
1. Solyndra was a solar-cell manufacturer which from its origins has NOT been able to compete successfully against both American and foreign rivals (most notably the Chinese solar-power industry).
2. Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 6, 2011.
3. Solyndra has served as Obama’s poster-child for green-tech job creation.
4. Solyndra laid off virtually all its 1,100 person workforce on August 31st.
5. Solyndra first applied for the loan in 2006, under President George W. Bush. After three years of applying, the loan application was tentatively approved in March 2009 by the Obama administration. 6. Solyndra received its much-ballyhooed $535 million federal subsidy as part of Obama’s green-jobs initiative. He promised to create five million new green-tech jobs during the presidential campaign.
7. Solyndra first came to the wider nation’s attention during a September, 2009, Joe Biden speech at their company headquarters in Fremont, CA. Their facilities and main plant have been visited by the President and Vice-President six times for photo- and speech-ops.
8. The owners and CEO and top investors in Solyndra are all enthusiastic supporters who contributed and also raised a lot of money for the Obama-Biden campaign.
9. California Representative Henry Waxman said he talked with Solyndra’s CEO and other top officials a month ago and said he was told that everything was going well and that they expected to “double revenues” in 2012.
10. After multiplying the number of loan-approval employees in one government office almost sixteen-fold from 15 to 250, the Obama administration over-ruled the already established bureaucracy’s recommendations to investigate the green-scheme known as Solyndra, Inc. fully rather than just giving them the $535 million. In a sentence: despite at least two cautionary e-mails from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) the Obama Administration pushed for an immediate loan for Solyndra. How did this company then fail?
11. In February, 2011, seven months before the company went bankrupt, the Energy Department restructured a “loan” to the company despite the OMB’s clearly expressed doubts about the company’s future viability and the company’s very dubious fiscal prospects.
12. Somewhere close to 76% of these loans and or grants under Obama Stimulus One were granted to businesses run by Obama contributors** located in heavily Obama supporting districts. For example Obama carried the Solyndra-surrounding district with 71% of the vote.
Solyndra was hailed by President Obama in 2010 as a great example, an innovative company that would use stimulus money to create jobs and lead the economic recovery. When it laid off most of its 1,100 workers August 31st and announced it would cease operations an immediate howl went up from green-energy doubters and conservatives. When next the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 6th, the howls became a crescendo of anger and scorn. Two days later, agents with the FBI and Energy Department's inspector general served a search warrant at Solyndra's Fremont, Calif., headquarters. The Solyndra bankruptcy and the criminal investigation have raised questions about the administration's decision to pour billions of dollars into clean-energy programs. Cheer up, Solyndra, you can always serve as a very bad example! Representative Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., the subcommittee's chairman, pressed Energy Department loans director Jonathan Silver on Wednesday to explain how the agency could approve more than half a billion dollars in loans despite questions about the company's financial health. "You should have protected the taxpayers and made some forceful actions here," Stearns said.
Under questioning Silver noted that Solyndra had first applied for the loan in 2006, under President George W. Bush. He said the loan was tentatively approved in March 2009 by the Obama people. The hearing, which lasted more than four hours, focused significant attention on emails showing the White House encouraging the Energy Department and budget officials to speed up and to approve the Solyndra loans. Why? It’s called “Crony Capitalism” and Rajjpuut says this haste was done to make an impactful photo-op for Joe Biden and to push the green-jobs initiative regardless of consequence and fiscal-prudence. Virtually all of the Obama Stimulus that so recklessly shuttled $787 Billion worth of taxpayer money to favored left-wing industries and Obama supporters is finally becoming more and more transparent every day and the revelations are disgusting all thinking Americans. The lesson here is that government involvement in industry is 100% the same as government involvement in tax loopholes . . . it all amounts to the feds deciding who wins and who loses; who is the “teacher’s pet;” and it all works to destroy free enterprise, jobs, the dollar; and America’s self-respect.
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
** It's almost impossible for Rajjpuut not to comment upon the mainstream media's (MSM) incompetence and willful cover-up of Barack Obama's scandals. Now after Rajjpuut has personally written blogs exposing 74 such MAJOR scandals . . . the MSM is finally on board for exactly 1 1/2 of the most recent of them. There has been some slight coverage of OFF (Operation Fast and Furious) a scandal so nasty (we, the United States are arming Mexican drug cartels, for crying out loud) that it reeks to high heaven and now Solyndra.
A few weeks ago a very leftist academic who calls himself a "political scientist" made news by saying that he could already predict the winner of the 2012 presidential race with virtually absolute certainty: Barack Obama. Many pundits on conservative radio and FOXNews attacked Lichtman's methodology and showed that clearly rather than being an extremely objective technique for predicting presidential elections, Lichtman's work was a statistical scam. Some items on Lichtman's list were clearly subjective and chosen after the historical "facts" were all in. Case in point: Solyndra. Rajjpuut has covered 74 Major scandals in the Obama 2.6 years; Lichtman listed "an absence of major scandals" as the strongest point favoring Barack Obama's re-election in 2012. Of the 74 Major scandals under Barack Obama, Solyndra might NOT even rank among the top 50. But Solyndra was the very first company chosen to receive a loan guarantee as part of the 2009 stimulus package.
That being the very first Stimulus money handed out and the fact that OMB memos and White House memos have been found showing that the White House Obama and Biden were very interested in "rushing this through" on their very first one and all the photo ops, etc. makes Solyndra so symbolic that even the MSM has found it difficult to ignore this particular Obama scandal.
Solyndra was, Vice President Biden said, "exactly what the Recovery Act was all about." Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winner, said Solyndra would help "spark a new revolution that will put Americans to work." Obama said on one of his visits, "It is here that companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter, more prosperous future," he said. Hailing the green jobs loan guarantee program, he went on, "We can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra." But most importantly . . . .
The White House went so far as to prepare a propaganda video about the company, a slick public relations quality product designed to convince the MSM that green jobs were obviously the wave of tomorrow (not next year, tomorrow), Obama was super competent and involved himself with super competent folks like those at Solyndra. Reality and propaganda seldom jive. The Washington Examiner's David Freddoso reported, an audit of the company performed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers two months before Obama's visit showed Solyndra had accumulated losses of $558 million in its five years of existence.
Solyndra's audit showed the company "has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders' deficit that, among other factors, raises substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern." That didn't impress the MSM. The most damning factor in the eyes of the MSM (the Washington Examiner is considered a slightly conservative mouthpiece unlike the NY Times and Washington Post) was this: original Solyndra investor, Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, a major contributor to Obama's 2008 election campaign, and others provided an additional $75 million in financing to Solyndra. They did so on condition, approved by the Energy Department, that THEY receive priority over previous creditors, including the government. And there was the fact that not only the Republicans on the oversight committee were on Solyndra's case, but Henry, the weasel, Waxman a California Democrat protecting the interests of California investors was involved in seeking truth about Solyndra.
On Aug. 31, while Obama played golf at Matha's Vineyard, Solyndra filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy papers. On the day Obama made his "pass this bill now" AJA speech, the FBI was raiding Solyndra's offices. Even without "provable malfeasance" the decision to loan money to Solyndra was so clearly incompetent that even IF everyone in the administration acted with good faith . . . Solyndra is still a huge scandal. Very shrewd venture capitalists lose money on most of their investments and win huge on a few, and keep on winning. But when THEY lose, it's their money, not ours.
The green jobs scandal is still with us, since the Energy Department handed out more loan guarantees in the past few weeks. According to a contributor at the Rasmussen Reports website, these loans all look tainted: "$150 million to 1366 Technologies of Lexington, Mass. (73 percent for Obama in 2008), 80 percent of $344 million to Solar City of San Mateo, Calif. (72 percent for Obama in 2008)." The article asked the question, "Will one of them be the next Solyndra?" Rajjpuut would suggest that the extent of political largesse and corruption by this administration; and its corruption is far closer to his figure: 74 major scandals and a whole lot of incompetence and philosophical (Marxism) sabotage.
