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Obama's favorite green company raided by FBI


The FBI executed an early-morning raid today on the solar panel plant that President Barack Obama swung by last year and celebrated for their green-friendly products.
The headquarters of Solyndra, Inc. in Fremont, California was the site of this morning’s bust, which has left the plant’s top brass saying they are unsure of why it even happened. Agents on the scene were mum to reporters, but a spokesman for the company suggested it could have something to do with the $535 million in loan guarantees that were awarded to them recently by the Department of Energy.
Despite the federal assistance, Solyndra announced earlier this month that they will be shutting its doors and only this week filed for bankruptcy. In a statement released last week, Solyndra said that the company could not stay afloat with foreign manufacturers offering competitive prices that couldn’t be matched domestically.
Prices for solar panels have dropped by nearly half as of late because of foreign competition.
Regardless of what the FBI was on the look-out for, Solyndra says they weren’t expecting feds to come over unannounced this morning.
"It was quite a shock," Solyndra spokesman Dave Miller told Silicon Valley’s Mercury News today. "When I got here at 7 a.m. they were already here."
The last time a federal appearance garnered as much attention for Solyndra was back in May 2010 when Obama dropped by. The president was supportive of the plant’s products that would help Americans go green while giving money to the America economy, saying that Solyndra was paving the way for a “brighter and more prosperous future.” But barely a year later, Solyndra has been unable to make ends meet, even with the help of the US government.
Republicans have been skeptical of the investment all along, however, with some right wing reps going as far as to call Obama’s backing “a dubious investment” when the commander-in-chief first offered his support.
The FBI has only commented that the raid is being carried out as part of a investigation being put together by the Energy Department, so feds could be considering if federal loans to Solyndra were mismanaged in the months leading up to the company’s demise. FBI Public Affairs Specialist Peter D. Lee has confirmed to reporters only that the raid indeed occurred but that all documents relating to the probe are currently sealed.
In addition to the assistance loans from the government, Solyndra owes private investors an addition $69 million.



Hope and Change...

Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The FBI raided the headquarters of Solyndra LLC, the solar-panel maker that failed after receiving $535 million in loan guarantees from the Obama administration.

Republican lawmakers said after the raid that the administration made misleading claims about the company’s prospects, and Democrats said the company’s chief executive officer withheld information on its financial plight.

The Energy Department gave the Fremont, California-based company the most federal backing awarded a solar manufacturer. One of the principal investors in Solyndra is a foundation headed by billionaire George Kaiser, a campaign supporter of President Barack Obama who made 16 visits to the president’s aides since 2009, according to White House visitor logs.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant today with the Energy Department’s inspector general, bureau spokeswoman Julie Sohn said in an interview. Sohn said she couldn’t provide details about the investigation. Solyndra filed for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 6 with liabilities of $783.8 million, after shutting its factory and firing 1,100 people.

“The FBI raid further underscores that Solyndra was a bad bet from the beginning and put taxpayers at unnecessary risk,” Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said today in a statement. “President Obama’s signature green jobs program went from a darling of the administration, to bankruptcy, to now the subject of an FBI raid in a matter of days.”

‘Misleading Claims’

Investigations by the panel over six months produced “‘misleading claims on Solyndra’s viability by administration officials, company executives and congressional Democrats,” Upton said in the letter with Representative Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican who heads the committee’s oversight panel.

Dave Miller, a Solyndra spokesman, and Debra Grassgreen, the company’s bankruptcy attorney with Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones LLP, didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment on today’s raid. White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined to comment on the raid, referring questions on law enforcement to the Justice Department and on loans to the Energy Department, which also declined to comment.

‘Rigorous’ Review

“Every project that receives financing through the Energy Department goes through a rigorous financial, legal and technical review process,” Schultz said.

Democratic Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Diana DeGette of Colorado said today that Solyndra Chief Executive Officer Brian Harrison assured them in a meeting less than two months ago that the company was in a “strong financial position.”

“He did not convey to us the perilous condition of the company, and the committee should know why,” Waxman and DeGette wrote in a letter today to Stearns.

“At that time, he said the company was projected to double its revenues in 2011, there was ‘strong demand in the United States’ for its shipments, and the company was expected to double the megawatts of panel production shipped this year,” according to the letter. “These assurances appear to contrast starkly with his company’s decision to file for bankruptcy.”

Testimony Sought

The committee today asked Harrison to testify at a Sept. 14 hearing on Solyndra in Washington.

“We smelled a rat from the onset,” Stearns and Upton said in a statement on Aug. 31, when the company announced its intention to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.

In a Sept. 1 letter requesting all documents on White House communications with Solyndra, its board and investors, they said “a major investor in Solyndra, George Kaiser, was a bundler for President Obama’s 2008 campaign.”

The George Kaiser Family Foundation, a charitable organization based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and backed by donations from Kaiser, holds about 35.7 percent of Solyndra, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission

Kaiser raised, or bundled, $50,000 to $100,000 for Obama’s 2008 campaign, according to a list that had been posted on Obama’s 2008 campaign website. He gave $2,300 personally, according to the Federal Election Commission.

White House Meetings

White House logs show that Kaiser had 16 meetings with Obama aides, 11 of them in 2009. His first recorded visit to the White House was March 12, 2009, when he met separately with Austan Goolsbee, a senior economic adviser to Obama, Pete Rouse, a senior adviser to the president, and Heather Higginbottom, deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council. The next day he met with Jason Furman, a member of Obama’s National Economic Council.

That month, the Energy Department awarded Solyndra the $535 million loan guarantee to commercialize its cylindrical solar panels.

In June, Kaiser met with senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, policy adviser David Pope and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. His most recent meeting covered by the White House logs was on April 11 of this year, with Rouse.

Christian Gronet, the chairman of Solyndra, met with Greg Nelson, from the White House office of public engagement on Sept. 22, 2009. The visits cited in the White House log were reported earlier today on the Daily Caller website.

‘Merit-Based Decisions’

The George Kaiser Family Foundation said in an e-mailed statement on Sept. 1 that Kaiser “is not an investor in Solyndra and did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan.” The foundation said it “invests in a globally diversified portfolio across many different asset classes.”

Solyndra has said it failed because it couldn’t compete with larger rivals in other countries as prices for solar panels plunged and demand slowed.

The company borrowed $527.8 million from the U.S. Federal Financing Bank, a unit of the U.S. Treasury Department that’s its biggest lender.

In January, the Energy Department agreed to let $385 million in taxpayer support for Solyndra take a back seat to funds from new investors in an effort to keep the company operating.

There's always the Soylent Green project...

So this guy gets an investment incentive (bail out) from the O, they pay off the big investors (contributors), then they declare?
What a racket!

Obama's cronies where running it. Had to pay them off for being elected. More of our tax-dollars pissed down the drain. Get the "O" out of office and the other "O" off the air.

Quietly being ignored while everyone talks about The ''big jobs bill'', timing is everything.

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war ...

BarrackObama

I beg to differ......demoncats support banks too. But other than that I agree. Both sides need a major bloodletting.

Nay.....it will be quietly buried so it doesn't affect the reelection process..... Most of America won't even hear about this!

Not so sure..

This may be big...

"Justice Department will investigate and prosecute"




ROTFLMMFWPAO!!!!!!!!!

It is the only way to have any way to mitigate the political fallout.

Maybe. Maybe not. I assure you that U.S. Attorney's Office career prosecutors, others than those at the top of the food chain, are willing to play politics over the law. They are a very serious segment of the legal community, who are not to be f'd with. Besides, this is just too big and too wide- lender(s), guarantees, BK court, media, R's, House and Senate Committees, etc., to sweep under the rug. And, there are already anti-Obama TV ads being run more than one year before the election. Time will tell...

I hope they didn't sell solar panels to the Mexican drug cartels.

It's only money...............and this Administration seems to toss it around like confetti at a football game. We need sanity in the White House.

Obama fundraiser linked to loan program that aided Solyndra


The revelation is likely to spur new inquiries about the solar company's political influence. Separately, California lawmakers seek investigation of a state tax break the firm received.

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles— The White House faced mounting political complications as a second top fundraiser for President Obama was linked to a federal loan guarantee program that backed a now-bankrupt Silicon Valley solar energy company, and as two California lawmakers called for investigations of a state tax break granted to the firm.

Steve Spinner, who helped monitor the Energy Department's issuance of $25 billion in government loan guarantees to renewable energy projects, was one of Obama's top fundraisers in 2008 and is raising money for the president's 2012 reelection campaign.

Spinner did not have any role in the selection of applicants for the loan program and, in fact, was recused from the decision to grant a $535-million loan guarantee to Solyndra Inc. because his wife's law firm represented the company, administration officials said Friday.

But Spinner's role as a top official in the Energy Department program, which had not been previously revealed, is likely to spur new inquiries into whether political influence played a role in the handling of the "green" energy fund. Solyndra faces a congressional probe, a criminal investigation and separate internal inquiries at the Energy and Treasury departments.

"This will fuel more questions, and now you've got real people involved at the inspector-general level who will be turning over chairs and cabinets, asking questions," said Stanley Brand, a criminal defense and ethics lawyer in Washington who has served as general counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives.

He noted that none of the details that had emerged suggested any laws had been broken. "It's embarrassing, it's ham-handed, it looks bad, but so far all we have is the White House trying to advantage itself in a political way with a loan," he said.

The largest investments in Solyndra were funds operated on behalf of the family foundation of billionaire George Kaiser, another major fundraiser for Obama in 2008. Kaiser has denied personally investing in the solar energy company or talking to White House officials about the loan.

Some Republicans in Congress charge that the White House pushed to get the loan approved for political reasons, which the White House denies.

Before its collapse, Solyndra was a showcase of the White House initiative to develop clean-energy alternatives. Obama visited the factory in May and praised Solyndra as a green technology company that would create jobs and help lead the country's economic recovery.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Sept. 6. Two days later, agents with the FBI and Energy Department's inspector general served a search warrant at Solyndra headquarters in an inquiry focusing on whether the company misled the government in applying for the loans.

In announcing its closure, Solyndra cited an unexpected reduction in demand for its products and intense competition from Chinese companies that drove down the price of solar panels it could sell.

Spinner, who raised at least $500,000 for Obama in 2008, is leading efforts to raise money from the technology industry for the president's reelection campaign. He did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

Last week, he invited Obama fundraisers who were in Chicago for a national finance committee meeting to the launch of the Technology for Obama fundraising program. In July, the Obama campaign credited Spinner with raising between $200,000 and $500,000 so far this year.

Spinner was a Silicon Valley investor who founded a sports and wellness company before he joined the administration in April 2009 after serving on Obama's transition team. He was named an advisor to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and was charged with helping oversee a loan guarantee program authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the economic stimulus program.

"Steve Spinner acted as a liaison between the Recovery Act Office and the Loan Programs Office," Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said in a statement Friday. "In that capacity, he played no role in the decision-making or evaluation of the Solyndra loan application."

During his tenure, the program approved 20 loan guarantees totaling $25 billion for energy storage, wind power and solar generation, according to Spinner's resume on LinkedIn. Among them was final approval for Solyndra, which planned to manufacture thin solar modules for flat rooftops.

The company applied for a loan guarantee in December 2006, filing under a program created by George W. Bush's administration. It received a conditional commitment for $535 million in March 2009, shortly before Spinner arrived.

In the months that followed, department staffers negotiated the final terms and provided the Office of Management and Budget with data as it assessed the risks of the deal.

In August 2009, while that risk assessment was underway, White House officials began expressing interest in having Vice President Joe Biden announce the deal during a trip to California the following month, according to emails released to House investigators this week. That spurred exchanges between officials

Issa to launch probe of Obama actions on Solyndra, LightSquared


By Justin Sink - 09/20/11 09:55 AM ET

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Tuesday that his committee plans to investigate government loan programs to private corporations in light of allegations of improper dealings between the White House and failed energy company Solyndra and wireless start-up LightSquared.

"I want to see when the president and his cronies are picking winners and losers… it wasn't because there were large contributions given to them," the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee said Tuesday morning on C-SPAN.


Issa said the committee was looking at whether it was improper for members of Congress or White House staff to select companies eligible for subsidized government loans when those companies could give campaign donations. Loan programs have been a popular tool to provide funding for popular industries — like tech, green energy, and American auto companies — at more favorable terms than could be secured privately.

The Obama administration has been defending itself against criticism by Republicans that it exerted improper influence to the aid of both companies.

Solyndra abruptly filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, surprising both employees and the administration, which had secured $535 million in low-interest loans for the company.

Read today Rep. Issa (of Fast and Furious fame) is getting involved in this investigation. We're gonna' need a bigger Oversight Committee.

Megyn Kelly Speaks With LightSquared Founder And ‘Democratic Donor’ Philip Falcone
Videoby Alex Alvarez | 5:54 pm, September 19th, 2011

Previously, we’d told you about early reports that Gen. William Shelton, head of the Air Force Space Command, had informed House members that he’d faced pressure from the Whit House to change his congressional testimony regarding Light Squared, a satellite and communications company owned by a prominent “Democratic donor” (you’ll see later on in this post how those initial reports, while true, were a bit misleading).

On America Live this afternoon, host Megyn Kelly reported on the LightSquared controversy by providing a timeline of events relating to the company. In February of 2005, she shared, President Obama invested up to $90,000 in a little-known firm named SkyTerra. In September of 2009, an investor named Philip Falcone (that’s the Democratic donor in question) met with the individual who would become LightSquared’s CEO at the White House. Then, in March of 2010, Falcone’s Harbinger Capital bought SkyTerra and became LightSquared. In January of this year, the FCC gave LightSquared the go-ahead to pursue its nation-wide wireless project. After Gen. Shelton’s says he felt pressured to present a more favorable testimony, a hearing was held, including testimony from a LightSquared executive. The FCC has since called for additional testing of the company’s wireless project to ensure it does not, as Gen. Shelton worries, interfere with military GPS systems. It was after all this that Shelton came forward with this revelation.

In an effort to get a clearer picture on everything that’s been going on, Kelly brought on Falcone himself. She got right to the nitty gritty asking Falcone (whom she referred to, in a moment of levity, as a “gazillionaire”) about criticism that the FCC may have been politically motivated to have looked the other way where LightSquared’s satellite communications project is concerned. There “a couple of things that I want to correct,” he said:

In your opening statement, you mentioned that I went down to see the President. I’ve never met the President. And he, apparently, acquired some stock back in 2005, 2006 and subsequently sold it. So, that’s irrelevant to what we’re talking about today.

I think the important thing to get across is that we were granted authorization of the spectrum and to use the spectrum to build out the nation-wide wireless network in 2005… Under the Bush administration. And subsequent to that is when I became involved. I became an investor and the more I understood about this company, the more I realized that it was a great asset. So, fast forward, now we’re in 2009, I made a bid to acquire the company. And this waiver that people are talking about… It’s irrelevant. Quite frankly, when we first approached the FCC, it was more of an interpretation of their waiver to acquire the company in 2010. So, we didn’t apply for a waiver. What everybody’s talking about does not affect the network. It’s all about the devices that we were trying to deploy.

Falcone responded to Kelly’s question about whether he would be willing to produce his and his company’s communication with the FCC by saying he was sure they would show that everything proceeded normally, but added that he’d have to “check with my counsel” about making these public.

The two also discuss whether it “looks bad” for the company to mention “fundraising” events in his correspondence. Falcone also mentioned that, surprise!, he’s actually a Republican and has given money to both Democratic and Republican campaigns in the past. Does this make it impossible for something less than ethical to have occurred between the company and the White House? Of course not. But it does offer an interesting additional wrinkle to the story, which looks like it’ll only continue to unfold as additional insight and details emerge.

Check out the full interview, via Fox News:


http://www.mediaite.com/tv/megyn-kelly-speaks-with-lightsquared-founder-and-democratic-donor-philip-falcone/

Soros turns up in Obama's LightSquared imbroglio
byTimothy P. Carney

As Republican lawmakers begin to dig into the White House's cozy relationship with a startup wireless company and the wealthy Democratic donor who owns it, a new character has appeared on the story's edges: liberal superdonor, conservative bete noire and controversial investor George Soros.

Soros reportedly invested in the telecom company LightSquared through a hedge fund, and many of the nonprofits he finances have backed LightSquared in regulatory and policy disputes.

The background:

LightSquared wants to compete with AT&T, Verizon and Sprint to provide mobile broadband (for instance, email and Internet on your Blackberry or iPhone).

Harbinger Capital Partners, a hedge fund run by billionaire financier Philip Falcone, owns LightSquared, and deftly steered the company through some tricky regulatory waters (with would-be competitors AT&T and Verizon fighting him along the way) to get preliminary approval for its plan to start a high-speed broadband wireless network.

Today, LightSquared is scuffling with the global positioning satellite industry, which argues that the company's current plan would interfere with GPS signals. Air Force Gen. William Shelton, head of Space Command, testified to Congress this month that giving LightSquared the radio frequencies it is slated to get would interfere with the military's GPS needs.

Here's the potential scandal: Ahead of Shelton's testimony, White House officials nudged Shelton to go easy on LightSquared, according to Daily Beast reporter Eli Lake. Shelton reportedly said that someone (presumably in the administration) had leaked the first draft of his testimony to LightSquared -- which Falcone denies.

Another government official said the White House pushed him to downplay the GPS worries.

Falcone is a big political donor who has given exclusively to Democrats and independents since Obama's election. Emails have surfaced showing LightSquared executives discussing donations to Obama's campaign in policy conversations with White House officials. Finally, there's the eye-catching detail that another Obama donor, George Haywood, steered then-Sen. Obama to invest $90,000 in the company (then named SkyTerra) back in 2005.

LightSquared's main lobbying firm is owned by Norman Brownstein, a major fundraiser for Obama's 2008 nominating convention.

Into this stew of lobbying, investments, regulation and influence, enter Soros.

Soros has long been a whipping boy for conservatives, in much the same way that free-market billionaires Charles and David Koch have become the target of liberals.

While Soros' influence is constantly and grossly exaggerated by conservatives, it's still real. He generously funds a huge swath of the liberal movement, and has aligned his business interests with Obama's big-government policies. For instance, Obama green-energy official Cathy Zoi left the Energy Department earlier this year to help run a new green-energy (and thus subsidy-dependent) investment fund Soros was starting.

In the LightSquared affair, Soros shows up repeatedly.

First, Soros is reportedly an investor in LightSquared. The Wall Street Journal reported in November 2010: "In 2009, while some investors were asking for withdrawals, others were lining up to put money into Harbinger. They included Soros Fund Management, which during the past year became a significant new investor, say people familiar with the matter."

I asked about this, but a Soros spokesman emailed me, "As a matter of policy, we don't confirm or deny information on our investments."

Additionally, the telecom- and tech-related liberal nonprofits Soros funds have gone to bat for LightSquared in its various policy fights. In April 2010, the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission backing Harbinger's business plans and met with an FCC commissioner on the matter. Four groups that belong to that coalition received six-figure gifts from Soros' Open Society Institute the year before.

Six months later, those four Soros-funded groups -- Free Press, Media Access Project, the New America Foundation, and Public Knowledge -- filed a joint comment backing LightSquared in a related regulatory matter.

Donations from a politically interested billionaire, of course, do not make an activist group a "front" for the billionaire's business interest. In fact, the unseemly fundraising-****-lobbying emails were unearthed this year by the Center for Public Integrity, which Soros funded early last decade. And one profile, by liberal writer Jane Mayer, painted a picture of Soros almost as a rich sucker rather than a scheming moneyman.

Still, as Congress begins looking into the politics behind LightSquared's regulatory victories, it's worth asking if Soros, the Left's leading donor, played a role in the affair.

Timothy P.Carney, The Examiner's senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Monday and Thursday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.


http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/soros-turns-obamas-lightsquared-imbroglio

The outrage continues....


Among the biggest recipients on the Department of Energy's controversial list of loans to renewable energy companies like the failed Solyndra Inc. are a number of non-U.S. firms whose big-ticket energy projects will cost taxpayers billions of dollars -- but will generate no more than a few hundred permanent U.S. jobs.

Some of the companies employ complex solar technologies that cost more than twice as much as any other land-based renewable system, including nuclear.

The huge cost and relatively low long-term employment payoff for the investments could cast doubt on the Obama administration's claims that big investments in new green technologies will lead the U.S. to innovative parity with countries like China, and also create significant long-term employment gains for the U.S. economy.

As recently as July, for example, President Obama declared in a radio address that "we're accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy and doubling our use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power -- steps that have the potential to create whole new industries and hundreds of thousands of new jobs in America."

A case in point is Abengoa Solar, Inc., a Spanish-owned firm that has received more than $2.6 billion in federal loan guarantees from DoE for two power-generating complexes, with the most recent $1.2 billion guarantee closing just this month. Abengoa's press releases tout the thousands of construction and other jobs that will be result from the projects, one in the Mojave Desert in California, the other southwest of Phoenix.

Nonetheless, the DoE's own website reveals that the two projects will permanently employ no more than 130 people after completion.

And then there's....

https://lpo.energy.gov/?page_id=254

BrightSource Energy, Inc. The Department of Energy offered BrightSource Energy, Inc. conditional commitments for more than $1.37 billion in loan guarantees to support the construction and start-up of the Ivanpah Solar Complex, a three utility-scale concentrated solar power plant located in California’s Mojave Desert. The project will create just over 1,000 jobs.


But wait...it gets better!



Thought it couldn't get any worse than Solyndra?
Obama Commerce pick awarded $1.37 billion in 'stimulus funds' for another risky solar plant

---

Posted: September 26, 2011
8:37 pm Eastern


By Aaron Klein
© 2011 WND

President Obama's nominee for Commerce secretary served as chairman of the board of a solar energy company that recently received a $1.37 billion federal loan guarantee – the largest the Department of Energy has ever given for a solar power project.

Now that company, BrightSource Energy, is attempting to build the world's largest solar power plant amid concerns such ventures may be too risky an investment for the federal government.

In June, BrightSource Chairman John Bryson was nominated by Obama to head the Commerce Department.

WND reported in June that Bryson co-founded an environmental activist group that is a member and funder of the controversial Apollo Alliance.

Read what we'll need to accomplish to restore America to greatness.

Apollo is run by a slew of socialists and radicals, including Jeff Jones, a founder of the Weather Underground domestic terrorist organization. Jones himself boasts of doing work for the environmental group founded by Bryson, the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Bryson served until June as co-chairman of the Pacific Council on International Policy, a globalist organization whose members can be found throughout the Obama administration.

The massive loan guarantee to BrightSource is meant to build an expensive California desert solar plant known as the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System.

The system will feature mirrors that reflect sun toward a massive central tower that is in turn heated to produce steam meant to spin turbines to produce electricity.

The size of the BrightSource plant is thought to produce enough power to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of Californians.

During a national address last October, Obama mentioned the possible benefits of BrightSource Energy's "revolutionary new type of solar power plant."

However, some have doubted that the massive solar plant will actually work.

The Bay Citizen quoted Michael Boyd, president of the nonprofit Californians for Renewable Energy, as saying there is "no evidence" BrightSource's project will succeed.

Boyd complained most of the equipment used at the plant would be manufactured in China and Germany.

"Stimulus money isn't going to jobs here in the U.S. It's going to jobs overseas," he said.

Boyd's group last year reportedly filed an administrative complaint seeking to block the U.S. loan guarantee, alleging in the complaint the solar project "could have the unintended consequences of killing innovation if these projects fail."

In a briefing last month, BrightSource CEO John Woolard was confident his plant would significantly lower the costs of energy.

"We were able to drop costs down significantly," he said. "Ivanpah is the culmination of two and a half decades of work and thinking around solar."

However, the entire solar energy enterprise is now being questioned as overseas manufacturers, particularly China and Taiwan, have produced similar products and services at much lower prices.

Already, the cost of generating power with panels plunged about 37 percent in the past year, Bloomberg reported yesterday, as Chinese factories cut prices. The price slashes pushed three U.S. makers, including Solyndra, into bankruptcy protection in the past quarter.

The news media and lawmaker focus on the Obama administration's use of funds for solar energy could draw focus to Bryson himself, since he chaired the company that received the largest amount of funds.

Globalist, CO2 activist

Besides his position at BrightSource, which he vacated when he was selected as Obama's Commerce pick, Bryson is the former chairman, chief executive officer and president of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison.

He serves on the U.N. secretary-general's advisory group on energy and climate change and as co-chairman of the globalist PCIP, a partner of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 1970, Bryson co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, with a $400,000 seed grant from the Ford Foundation.

The group is also funded by the Tides Foundation, to which philanthropist George Soros has donated more than $7 million over the years. Tides itself is a major funder of leftist causes, including ACORN, whose founder and former chief organizer, Wade Rathke, is a Tides board member.

The NRDC is a major proponent of fighting so-called global warming. It recently endorsed a document called the Earth Charter, which, Discover the Networks notes, blames capitalism for many of the world's environmental, social and economic problems.

The charter maintains that "the dominant patterns of production and consumption are causing environmental devastation, the depletion of resources, and a massive extinction of species. The benefits of development are not shared equitably and the gap between rich and poor is widening."

The NRDC is a member of the Apollo Alliance. NRDC's president, Frances Beinecke, is on Apollo's board. The NRDC is also listed by Apollo as a funder of the group, having donated between $1,200 to $2,999 to become an Apollo "clean energy benefactor."

The NRDC endorses many Apollo initiatives.

Apollo's New York office is run by Jeff Jones, who founded the Weather Underground with terrorists Bill Ayers and radical Mark Rudd when the three signed an infamous statement calling for a revolution against the American government inside and outside the country to fight and defeat what the group called U.S. imperialism.

Jones currently boasts on his personal website that he has done consulting work for the NRDC.

Apollo has been credited by the Obama administration with helping craft portions of the $787-billion "stimulus" bill signed into law.

The Apollo Alliance has boasted in promotional material that it was behind several of the Obama administration's "green" initiatives, in addition to crafting "green" sections of the stimulus bill.

Among Apollo's board members are a group of extremists including:

•Van Jones, President Obama's controversial former "green jobs czar" who resigned in September 2009 after it was exposed he founded a communist revolutionary organization and signed a statement that accused the Bush administration of possible involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Jones also called for "resistance" against the U.S.

Jones himself described the Apollo Alliance's mission as "sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive left causes."


•Joel Rogers, a founder of the socialist New Party. WND reported evidence indicating Obama was a New Party member. In an interview with WND, New Party co-founder and Marxist activist Carl Davidson previously recounted Obama's participation with the New Party.
Following publicity of Apollo's radicalism, including scores of articles by WND and investigations by the Fox News Channel, Apollo announced it will merge with the BlueGreen Alliance, a collaboration of large environmental groups and unions.

Globalism

Meanwhile, Bryson is co-chairman of the PCIP, which was founded in 1995 in partnership with the Council on Foreign Relations.

The group says it is the "premier international affairs organization focused on policy issues of special resonance to the West Coast."

Its goals include "building our network of globally oriented business, civic, and government leaders." Also, the group aims to convene exchanges with global policy makers and opinion leaders while partnering with organizations around the world to "promote mutual understanding and coordinated action."

The PCIP is funded by the Ford Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Obama's ambassador to France, Charles Rivkin, is a member of the PCIP. Last October, he invited a 29-member delegation from the PCIP to a conference in France for the stated purpose of discussing Arab and Islamic relations in the country.

Rivkin was at the center of a scandal when WikiLeaks released a cable in which he proposed the U.S. Embassy in France initiate a multipronged effort to "engage" and help to "empower" France's Muslim minorities.

Rivkin called the effort a "Minority Engagement Strategy," which was largely directed at Muslims in France.

Other PCIP members abound through the Obama administration, WND has learned.

James B. Steinberg, deputy secretary of state, serves on the PICP board of directors. He also serves on the science and security board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a journal that argued during the Cold War for the U.S. to hand its nuclear weapons to an international organization.

The Bulletin, as WND reported, was founded by scientists who were long accused of spying for the Soviets and passing along vital nuclear secrets.

Vilma S. Martinez, U.S. ambassador to Argentina, is the chairman of the PCIP's Mexico Study Group.

Former Utah Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr., a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, was appointed by Obama as ambassador to China in August 2009. He is a PCIP founding director.

Jeffrey L. Bleich, Obama's appointment for U.S. ambassador to Australia, is a PCIP member.

Diana Farrell, deputy director of the National Economic Council, is a member of the PCIP as well as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bretton Woods Committee. She is a frequent speaker on U.S. global engagement.

Byron Auguste, a member of Obama's White House Council for Community Solutions, serves on the PCIP board. He is also on the board of trustees of the Center for American Progress, which is funded by Soros and led by John Podesta, who served as co-chairman of Obama's transition team.

Last year, PCIP member Steven Myers joined the State Department's advisory committee on international economic policy.

John B. Emerson, appointee for Obama's advisory committee for trade policy and negotiations, is a member of both the PCIP and CFR.

In April, Obama nominated PCIP member Janet Yellen to serve as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve.

PCIP member Alan D. Bersin was appointed commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Last March, Obama appointed PCIP member Michael Camuñez to the position of assistant secretary for market access and compliance in the Department of Commerce.

Ernest James Wilson, a member of the PCIP board, was elected chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in September 2009. He served as a policy advisor on Obama's presidential transition team on matters of communication technology and public diplomacy.

Also on Obama's transition team was Jonathan Greenblat, chairman of the PCIP's energy and environment committee.

The PCIP has some ties to billionaire activist George Soros. Among PCIP fellows is Ahmed Rashid , a Pakistani journalist and writer who is a member of the advisory board of Eurasia Net of the Soros Foundation. He is also a scholar of the Davos World Economic Forum and a consultant for Human Rights Watch.

At the invitation of the then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he became the first journalist to address the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September 2002 and the first journalist to address NATO ambassadors in Brussels in September 2003.

With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott



Read more: Thought it couldn't get any worse than Solyndra? http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=349101#ixzz1ZBTA0NtD





Yeaaaaa! You gotta pay to play!

Every now and then you run across a website that NAILS it.

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/322021.php

I was laughing so loud at his biting sarcasm and comments that people walking past my office walked in and wanted to know what was so funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDpgDxxYQgs


“Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us."


We cannot WAIT for this Hope and Change to be GONE.


What do you call 2 Nobel Peace Prize winners reading a teleprompter?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQDwNOtf6g4

But wait..there's more!


With the Solyndra scandal still swirling, the Obama administration is under pressure to reveal the financial condition of the solar companies that received $4.75 billion in similar federal loan guarantees on the last day of the program.

Republican lawmakers on two House committees are seeking details about the loans given to First Solar, SunPower Corp. and ProLogis. Of those three companies, troubling financial revelations have emerged about SunPower, which received a $1.2 billion loan, more than twice the money approved for Solyndra, which filed for bankruptcy last month after receiving a $528 million loan.

The Energy Department says on its website that the $1.2 billion loan to help build the California Valley Solar Ranch in San Luis Obispo County, a project that will help create 15 permanent jobs, which adds up to the equivalent of $80 million in taxpayer money for each job.

But the Energy Department stands by the project.

“This project underwent many months of rigorous technical, financial and legal due diligence by career employees in the DOE loan program,” Energy spokesman Damien LaVera said in a statement to FoxNews.com. “It was approved for one reason only: because it meets all the requirements of the program – helping America win the clean energy race and create entire new industries for American workers.”

In April, the Energy Department gave SunPower a conditional loan guarantee, even though the company was receiving financing in the capital markets. Shortly after the conditional guarantee, French energy giant Total bought a majority ownership in SunPower and extended a $1 billion credit line to the company.

But SunPower posted $150 million in losses during the first half of this year and its debt is nearly 80 percent higher than the market value of all its outstanding shares. The company is also facing class action lawsuits for misstating its earnings.

SunPower sold the solar ranch that received the federal loan to NRG, an energy company based in New Jersey. But SunPower is still developing the project and stands to profit if it succeeds.

The Energy Department told FoxNews.com that the ranch was sold to NRG “as a means for increasing equity in the project.”

“DOE was aware of that arrangement, which was outlined in the term sheet negotiated before the conditional commitment was signed,” the official said.

The company is also politically connected. Rep. George Miller's son is SunPower's top lobbyist. The elder Miller, a powerful California Democrat, toured the plant last October with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and reportedly said, "We've worked hard to make renewable energy a priority because it represents America's future economic growth. Today, businesses like SunPower are moving forward, hiring 200 people for good clean energy jobs in the Easy Bay."

It’s not clear what role, if any, either of them played in securing the loan. Miller’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

An Energy Department official denied crony capitalism was a factor in the loan guarantee.
“The notion that political connections played any role in this application is simply false,” the official said. “This application was approved based on the exhaustive due diligence of the career professionals in the loan program, and nothing else.”

Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week seeking information on the three companies.

“The committee is committed to protecting taxpayers from further loses from ill-fated ‘investments’ in companies whose viability is far from certain,” he wrote.

Issa told “Fox News Sunday” that the Solyndra debacle isn’t an isolated event.

“We’re finding it’s not just Solyndra. It’s a pattern of these sorts of investments,” he said. “One of the questions we have for Secretary Chu is, tell us why that last day, somehow, you had everything you needed and you didn’t have it over a period of time before?”

An oversight committee aide told FoxNews.com that the Energy Department has yet to respond.

The Energy and Commerce Committee also sent a letter to Chu last week after the Energy secretary didn’t respond to its first letter Sept. 20 requesting documents on the financial condition of the companies receiving loan guarantees.

The committee noted in its letter that President Obama defended the program last week, saying the overall portfolio “is doing well.”

“We sincerely hope that this is true and that no further taxpayer dollars are at risk,” the committee wrote. “However, as Solyndra executives and numerous members of the administration repeatedly told us the same thing about Solyndra during the last seven months, we have a responsibility to inquire further.”

A committee aide told FoxNews.com that the committee is still awaiting a response.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/12/solar-firm-that-received-12-billion-federal-loan-plagued-by-financial-problems-702546811/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fpolitics+%28Internal+-+Politics+-+Text%29#ixzz1af2dMLIF



Damn that Issa...1st FnF...now this...he's a relentless bulldog. Once he gets his teeth set in he just keeps chomping. It's a bloodlust!

Remember when the Kenyan King was telling us how smart Chu was because he had a Nobel Peace Prize award? That **** doesn't know how to do basic math!

House Republicans vote to subpoena White House for Solyndra documents
By Andrew Restuccia - 11/03/11 10:50 AM ET

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted Thursday to subpoena the White House for all internal communications related to the failed solar company Solyndra.

The subpoena escalates the ongoing battle between the White House and Republicans over a $535 million Energy Department loan guarantee to Solyndra, the California solar panel maker that filed for bankruptcy in early September, setting off a firestorm in Washington.

Republicans have pummeled the White House over the loan guarantee for weeks, using Solyndra’s bankruptcy to challenge the administration’s green-energy agenda.


The committee’s investigative panel voted 14-9, along party lines, to subpoena the internal communications a day after the White House offered to provide documents if Republicans narrowed their request. Every Republican on the panel voted in favor of the subpoena and every Democrat voted against it.

“I regret that we have reached this point,” Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), the chairman of the committee’s Oversight and Investigations subcommittee and the GOP’s point man on the Solyndra investigation, said Thursday. “At this point in time, I am not confident that we will have a good faith response from the White House without issuing a subpoena.”

“Sometimes, in the course of an investigation, we find ourselves unable to secure necessary evidence,” full committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said. “House Rules expressly give us the power of subpoena to compel cooperation in these instances. It is a tool we use sparingly and only as a last resort. Today, it is our last resort.”

In a statement, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said that the administration had "cooperated extensively" with the committee's request for documents.


"All of the materials that have been disclosed affirm what we said on day one: this was a merit based decision made by the Department of Energy," he said.

"We'd like to see as much passion in House Republicans for creating jobs as we see in this investigation," Schultz added.

The subpoena comes a week after the White House launched a 60-day review of the Energy Department’s loan program amid news that other companies backed by the administration are facing financial troubles. Beacon Power, an energy storage company that received a $43 million loan guarantee last year, filed for bankruptcy late last month.

Republicans also voted Thursday to block a motion offered by Democrats to delay the subpoena vote until Nov. 15 in an effort to work with the White House to obtain the documents.

Democrats on the committee blasted Republicans for issuing the subpoena, arguing that talks with the White House to secure the documents were making progress.

Top Republicans and Democrats on the panel met with White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler Wednesday in an effort to come to an agreement that would avoid a subpoena vote.

“The White House repeatedly said that they had turned over documents and they were willing to turn over more documents,” Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette, the top Democrat on the investigative panel, said at Thursday’s hearing, calling the subpoena “an act of irresponsible partisanship.”

The White House offered to provide Solyndra documents if lawmakers narrowed their request, arguing it was too broad. But Republicans said the compromise was insufficient.

“The White House has refused to produce them and we have no choice but to authorize the issuance of a subpoena to compel them,” Upton said at the hearing. “I will say it again; I wish it has not come to this.”

Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.), the top Democrat on the full committee, said Thursday that the subpoena is an effort to orchestrate a high-profile clash with the White House.

“Apparently, what the committee really wants is a confrontation with the president, not information for the investigation,” Waxman said.

Both Waxman and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), who both formerly chaired the committee, said they never issued a subpoena to the White House and were always able to negotiate a compromise.

Republicans are hoping to uncover evidence that politics played a role in the approval of the loan guarantee and the decision to restructure the loan in February, an allegation the White House strongly denies.

The investigation has not found evidence of political favoritism.

But emails released by Republicans show that the White House pressed administration officials to make a swift decision on helping Solyndra. They also show that there was disagreement within the administration on the wisdom of approving the loan guarantee.

Republicans scheduled the subpoena vote after the White House rejected last month a request for all internal White House communications on Solyndra.

Ruemmler, in a letter to the committee last month, said the documents that have already been provided by the administration “should satisfy the committee’s stated objective.”

“Your most recent request for internal White House communications from the first day of the current administration to the present implicates longstanding and institutional executive-branch confidentiality interests,” she said.

The administration says it is cooperating fully with the Solyndra investigation, noting that the White House, its Office of Management and Budget, the Treasury Department and the Energy Department have provided more than 80,000 pages of documents to Republicans in recent months. The documents provided include communications between the White House and Solyndra.

On the eve of the subpoena vote, the Energy Department provided about 15,000 pages of documents to the committee.

Thursday’s vote mark the second time that the committee has subpoenaed the Obama administration for Solyndra documents.

The subcommittee voted in July to subpoena OMB for documents related to the 2009 Energy Department loan guarantee to the company. The July subpoena was issued before Solyndra filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers.