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.

Obama warned that green-tech bets would produce a “colossal failure” by Ed Morrissey

When the LA Times published this story late last night, it sounded as if they had discovered a smoking gun that tied Barack Obama directly to the decision to restructure the loan to Solyndra while being warned that the company was failing. The article instead reveals that Obama got personally briefed by his economic advisers on overall concerns about his plans to jump-start job creation in the green-tech sector through billions in loan guarantees. They warned, as one source told the reporters, that “a colossal failure” was completely predictable:

Long before the politically connected California solar firm Solyndra went bankrupt, President Obama was warned by his top economic advisors about the financial and political risks of the Energy Department loan guarantee program that boosted the company’s rapid ascent.

At a White House meeting in late October, Lawrence H. Summers, then director of the National Economic Council, and Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, expressed concerns that the selection process for federal loan guarantees wasn’t rigorous enough and raised the risk that funds could be going to the wrong companies, including ones that didn’t need the help.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, also at the meeting, had a different view. Under pressure from Congress to speed up the loans, he wanted less scrutiny from the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB.
Nothing in the article suggests that Obama was personally briefed at the time about Solyndra’s finances. Clearly, though, Summers and Geithner understood the financial and political risks associated with big loan guarantees for companies that couldn’t compete on their own, and argued from the beginning that loan guarantees were the wrong way to incentivize growth. Chu wanted to have even less oversight on loan issuance, and his Energy Department pushed hard to eliminate Treasury and OMB reviews of the individual deals — even though the Energy Department very obviously lacks the expertise to properly analyze the financial stability of loan recipients.

So why is this story significant? First, it shows that Obama had been told about the possibilities of failure in this program but decided to continue with it anyway, a reckless decision, in retrospect at least. And, maybe not just in retrospect:
The program that funded Solyndra is set to expire at the end of the month, and the White House is pushing to provide more green-energy loan guarantees through other initiatives and keep the U.S. competitive globally. The Chinese government, the Energy Department says, last year committed $30 billion to solar-panel manufacturers.

Despite consistent opposition within his own economic team and the “colossal failure” of Solyndra, Obama wants to throw billions of dollars more into risky loan guarantees to the green-tech industry. That’s not just reckless, it’s nearly insane, politically and economically. We gave $38 billion to this same sector in the stimulus package, and that wasn’t enough to make Solyndra competitive even after getting 3% of all the disbursed funds in that bloc.

Politicians don’t pick winners and losers with taxpayer cash. They pick losers, because winners don’t need subsidies in the first place. Government subsidies go to market losers in the hope that investment can turn them into winners, but that’s almost always a bad bet — and in Solyndra’s case, that was obvious from the start, which is why investor George Kaiser’s connection to Obama as a fundraiser seems to have been the most important factor in getting that bet placed.

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



http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=349101#ixzz1ZBTA0NtD 





Yeaaaaa! You gotta pay to play!

Posted 9/28/11 12:28 p.m.

WASHINGTON (WLS) - The Energy Department on Wednesday approved two loan guarantees worth more than $1 billion for solar energy projects in Nevada and Arizona, two days before the expiration date of a program that has become a rallying cry for Republican critics of the Obama administration's green energy program.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the department has completed a $737 million loan guarantee to Tonopah Solar Energy for a 110 megawatt solar tower on federal land near Tonopah, Nev., and a $337 million guarantee for Mesquite Solar 1 to develop a 150 megawatt solar plant near Phoenix.

The loans were approved under the same program that paid for a $528 million loan to Solyndra Inc., a California solar panel maker that went bankrupt after receiving the money and laid off 1,100 workers. Solyndra is under investigation by the FBI and is the focal point of House hearings on the program.

SolarReserve LLC, of Santa Monica, Calif., the parent company for Tonopah, is privately held. The Energy Department said its rules prevented it from discussing the company's financial information. Sempra Energy of San Diego, which owns Mesquite, is publicly held.

Spokesman Damien LaVera said the two projects had extensive reviews that included scrutiny of the parent companies' finances.

Chu said the Nevada project would produce enough electricity to power more than 43,000 homes, while the Arizona project would power nearly 31,000 homes. The two projects will create about 900 construction jobs and at least 52 permanent jobs, Chu said.

"If we want to be a player in the global clean energy race, we must continue to invest in innovative technologies that enable commercial-scale deployment of clean, renewable power like solar," Chu said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is a strong supporter of the Nevada project, which he says will help his state's economy recover.

The loan approvals came just two days before a renewable energy loan program approved under the 2009 economic stimulus law is set to expire. At least seven projects worth more than $5 billion are pending.

A government watchdog group said the Solyndra bankruptcy shows the need for greater oversight of all the department's loan guarantee programs.

"It is time for a full audit of their activities, their management, and their results," said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, Washington-based advocacy group.

"Candidly, it might be time for the federal government to rethink the whole idea of loan programs," Schatz added, calling the government's track record on loan guarantees "lousy."

Too often, the government either backs risky or failing ventures, resulting in a loss of taxpayer money, or subsidizes companies and industries that are mature and profitable and don't need the money, such as the oil and gas industry, Schatz said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

© Content Copyright 2011 WLS Radio 890AM and WLSAM.com. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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.




“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?

Body Count = 1


The director of the controversial loan program that cleared the way for a $535 million taxpayer guarantee to bankrupt solar firm Solyndra is stepping down, the Energy Department confirmed Thursday.

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.


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!

[frypan]

Second Energy Department-backed company goes bankrupt
By Ben Geman - 10/31/11 08:04 AM ET

A Massachusetts company that received a $43 million Energy Department loan guarantee last year filed for bankruptcy Sunday, a step certain to fuel criticism of federal green energy financing in the wake of the solar company Solyndra’s collapse.

Beacon Power Corp., which develops energy storage systems, filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

Beacon Power had received federal loan guarantee to help build an energy storage plant in Stephentown, New York that began operating in January. The Treasury Department’s Federal Financing Bank provided the loan.

Beacon sought bankruptcy protection two days after the White House ordered an independent 60-day evaluation of the Energy Department's loan programs aimed at ensuring effective management and monitoring.

The review, conducted by a former Treasury Department official, will include examination of how Beacon’s project is performing going forward, and whether there are additional steps that can be taken to protect taxpayers, according to the Obama administration.
The Beacon bankruptcy comes roughly two months after the California solar panel maker Solyndra, which had received a $535 million Energy Department (DOE) loan guarantee in 2009, went belly up and laid off 1,100 workers.

Solyndra’s collapse unleashed a torrent of GOP-led attacks on the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program.

Solyndra and the broader loan guarantee program are under investigation in the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

“This latest failure is a sharp reminder that DOE has fallen well short of delivering the stimulus jobs that were promised, and now taxpayers find themselves millions of more dollars in the hole,” said Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), the GOP’s point man on the Solyndra investigation and a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, in a statement to The Hill and other outlets.

“Unfortunately for the American taxpayers, I am deeply concerned that other DOE programs could follow which goes to the heart of the President's flawed economic program,” he said.

Stearns is chairman of the energy panel’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, which is expected to vote Thursday to subpoena internal White House communications about Solyndra.

Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said there are “many protections for the taxpayer” in the agreement with Beacon Power.

“The Department’s loan guarantee is for the project Stephentown Regulation Services, LLC, not the parent company, and the loan was set up in a way that ensures the Department is not directly exposed to the liabilities of the parent company,” he said in an email Monday.

The department also sought to contrast the Beacon Power project and Solyndra, noting that Solyndra stopped manufacturing operations when it went bankrupt, while Beacon Power intends to continue operating the New York energy storage plant.

“It is important to note that this plant itself, which is operational and generating revenue, is a valuable collateral asset. In addition, under the terms of our loan guarantee agreement, Stephentown Regulation Services, LLC currently has cash reserves and proceeds from the plant that it was required to hold as collateral on the loan,” LaVera said.

Beacon drew $39 million of the guaranteed loan to help finance the plant.

Beacon’s bankruptcy filing lists assets of $72 million and debt of $47 million, according to Bloomberg.

“The current economic and political climate, the financing terms mandated by DOE, and Beacon’s recent delisting notice from Nasdaq have together severely restricted Beacon’s access to additional investments through the equity markets,” CEO F. William Capp said in the bankruptcy filing, according to the financial news service.

The Energy Department has lauded Beacon’s flywheel energy storage technology as a way to improve power grid stability and help bring renewable power sources into the system.

“We will continue to support the development and deployment of innovative energy systems like this energy storage project that support our goal of expanding renewable energy generation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu said when announcing the finalization of the agreement in August of 2010.

The loan guarantee program was first authorized in a 2005 energy bill crafted under GOP control of Congress and signed into law by then-President Bush, and expanded under President Obama’s stimulus law.

The program was slow to get off the ground, and first loan guarantees were not issued until the Obama administration took power.

This story was updated at 8:36 a.m.

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.

those Bassard Republicans... 😠 they should just forget this ever happened.... 🤐

Solar Company Hired Biden Staffer to Help Secure $1.6 Billion Federal Loan


Internal emails show that BrightSource Energy, which received the largest federal loan for a solar energy project under President Obama’s stimulus package, leveraged its considerable political connections with top Democratic policymakers to secure its $1.6 billion in taxpayer backing.

BrightSource energy faced a “do-or-die moment,” according to a report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, as the Energy Department weighed a federal loan for its massive Ivanpah solar farm in the California Mojave Desert.
To spur the administration to approve the loan, BrightSource beefed up its lobbying presence, most notably by hiring Bernie Toon, former chief of staff for then-Senator Joe Biden, to lobby on its behalf. Toon was paid $40,000 for his efforts, according to disclosure forms.

Toon’s connections immediately paid dividends:

On March 9, 2011, just days after being hired, Mr. Toon went to the White House with three BrightSource executives, according to Senate and White House records. There he visited a former colleague, Alan Hoffman, now the top aide to Mr. Biden, whose office was working on green-energy programs, the records show. The White House didn’t make Mr. Hoffman available for comment.

Overall, BrightSource dropped half a million dollars on lobbyists in the run-up to DOE’s decision on the Ivanpah loan.

But its lobbyists were hardly the extent of BrightSource’s connections. Its chairman at the time, John Bryson, is now Obama’s Commerce Secretary. But even before his cabinet post, Bryson leveraged his considerable political clout to push Ivanpah approval.

And the company drew up plans to have its chairman, Mr. Bryson, lobby a friend, then-White House Chief of Staff William Daley. On March 7, the company sent the DOE’s loan-program director a proposed letter from Mr. Bryson to Mr. Daley requesting White House intervention, according to emails viewed by the Journal. It read, “We need a commitment from the WH to quarterback loan closure” by March 18.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has incoprporated some of these facts into its investigation into DOE’s green energy financing.

But regardless of whether there was any misconduct or inappropriate lobbying by BrightSource or its representatives, these facts underscore one of critics’ chief complaints about political involvement in the economy generally: when government holds the purse strings, those with the most political connections inevitably benefit.

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/06/06/solar-company-hired-biden-staffer-to-help-secure-1-6-billion-federal-loan/ 



Preach it Plugs O'Biden!

"These jobs are going to be permanent jobs"....until the trough goes dry!

See them for what they are!

Obama Energy Dept. awards $2 million grant to solar company linked with Van Jones


On Wednesday the Department of Energy began financing solar power installation research with a $2 million award to Solar Mosaic. The solar energy research company has former Obama “green jobs” czar Van Jones listed as an advisor. It also employed Rebuild the Dream, Jones’ firm, to do its public relations work.

The DOE’s grant money will be distributed to nine companies in four states. Solar Mosaic received the most money, four times the amount of most other grants.

Jones resigned his post in the Obama administration three years ago amid controversy stemming from his past remarks.

Before working in the Obama White House, Jones signed a petition alleging officials in the George W. Bush administration “may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

Jones later made crude remarks about Republicans in a public speech and expressed support for Mumia-Abu Jamal, a death row inmate convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer.

It’s unclear whether the Department of Energy knew of Jones’ position at Solar Mosaic. Agency spokeswoman Jen Strutsman told The Daily Caller that grantmaking was “decided solely on the merits of the project, assessed by career civil servants.”

“Each of the awards … was selected because of its technology and the project’s potential to reduce the cost of solar energy for American families and businesses,” she added.

Van Jones did not respond to requests for comment.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/14/obama-energy-dept-awards-2-million-grant-to-solar-company-linked-with-van-jones/ 


Watch what the other hand is doing all the time!

🤔
if I vote for Obama will I get a free solar panel company..?? 😕

If'n you helps him...he gonna helps you!:-$

This is obviously yet another thinly disguised scheme to discredit our Beloved President, and perpetrated by the slavish dupes of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

wing conspiracy..?? Is MO hoarding wings again..??? 😕

http://www.aim.org/special-report/the-case-of-ch2m-hill-2-billion-in-crony-stimulation/ 


ANOTHER reason NOT to vote for the Kenyan King!

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/another-subsidized-solar-company-goes-dark/ 


and ANOTHER!

[frypan]

While on Facebook today, I just noticed that I have a cousin that works for Abound (engineering equipment tech). 🤦 Probably a good time to polish up that resume.