dangers of investing in your greens

[sirs]

You're already aware that Solyndra -- a California manufacturer of solar panels -- has filed for bankruptcy and laid off all of its workers, despite half-a-billion dollars in federal (read: taxpayer) "stimulus" loans.  Prior to its demise, President Obama had touted Solyndra as a successful monument to his "green jobs" agenda.  These simple facts alone are embarrassing enough for the administration.  But as the week has worn on, the news continues to spiral.  Yesterday, the feds raided Solyndra's headquarters for unspecified reasons, although it's reasonable to assume they were seeking evidence of financial impropriety:

FBI agents on Thursday executed search warrants at the California headquarters of Solyndra LLC, which was awarded more than $500 million in federal stimulus loans in 2009 to make solar panels in what the Obama administration called part of an aggressive effort to put more Americans to work and end U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

But the firm filed a bankruptcy petition Tuesday in Delaware, shedding more than 900 full-time employees and leaving just a “core group” of 113 employees, according to bankruptcy records.  FBI spokesman Peter D. Lee said multiple search warrants were served at the company’s Fremont headquarters in what he called a joint investigation by the FBI and the Energy Department’s office of inspector general. But he said he could not provide any details about the ongoing probe.

Today, ABC News reports that Obama administration officials were intimately involved in the company's day-to-day business activities; dealing another question-raising black eye to the White House:

Officials from the Department of Energy have for months been sitting in on board meetings as "observers" at Solyndra, getting an up-close view as the solar energy company careened towards bankruptcy after spending more than $500 million in federal loan money.

Word of the Energy Department's unusual arrangement came as federal agents on Thursday converged on the California headquarters of the failed solar company, focusing fresh attention on the first corporate beneficiary of President Obama's stimulus program to create new clean energy jobs.  The company, which closed its doors last week and laid off 1,100 workers, has been a subject of an ongoing series of stories by the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News in collaboration with ABC News.

Great. Administration flacks had front-row seats to this mess, and now US taxpayers may be on the hook for hundreds of millions in losses:

Questions about the loan have been simmering for months. In 2009, the Energy Department put Solyndra's application on a fast-track for approval, and announced the award with great fanfare. The generous terms of the government loan included the lowest interest of all the green projects benefitting from Energy Department help, iWatch News and ABC News found.

And as part of the deal, the Energy Department agreed that if the company went bust, private investors could recoup their losses before the government. Republicans in Congress called the investment "a bad bet" and said it "put taxpayers at unnecessary risk."  In Washington, the crash of the politically-connected firm has unleashed a barrage of fresh questions from House and Senate investigators, who want to know what can be done to recover the losses for the taxpayers.

Is the White House the least bit repentant for making a reckless "stimulus" loan to a company that just happened to fit their unrealistic and failing green energy/jobs agenda?  Nah:

Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera on Thursday still defended the decision to give Solyndra federal backing, saying the department "conducted exhaustive reviews of Solyndra's technology and business model prior to approving their loan guarantee application."

Hey, they did their (fast-tracked) due diligence; sometimes these things just don't work out.  What's half a billion dollars among friends?  The best news is that President Obama has just proposed a new $450 Billion re-election strategy jobs plan that will push even more money out the door in a desperate big government attempt to boost demand.  What could go wrong?  The media is already in hacktastic cheerleader mode.  Get a load of this gloriously biased headline:



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[Christians4LessGvt]

more fluff & fraud the true defintion of liberalism

[kimba1]

This makes sense since this tech would be vulnerable to overseas competition. A ultility based version would be much harder to beat. So maybe they should of tried that. Also thiers no gaurantee of purchase with the present plan anyway.

[sirs]

Shhhhhhhhh......can't have the MSM looking into this.  They'd be referred to as racists

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Pay attention, folks -- this is getting big.  For months, Katie has been faithfully covering another simmering White House scandal that has slowly intensified with each passing revelation.  The Solyndra case, by contrast, has blown up in less than a week.  Here's the cliffsnotes version: A solar panel manufacturing company that received over half-a-billion taxpayer dollars in federal "stimulus" loan guarantees from the Obama administration in 2009 has filed for bankruptcy and laid off all of its employees.  One of the principal investors in Solyndra was a major Obama donor.  He and various Solyndra officials visited the White House repeatedly before and after the controversial loan was approved.  The president toured the company's California headquarters in 2010, using the setting to tout his green energy agenda and the Recovery Act.  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Solyndra imploded last month.

Last week, the FBI raided Solyndra's offices, seeking undisclosed evidence of impropriety.  We also learned that Obama Energy Department representatives sat in on numerous Solyndra board meetings in the months leading up to the company's failure.  They knew it was coming.  Oh well, the White House argues, there are always risks in these sorts of things -- and besides, the Solyndra loan process began during the Bush administration.  That house of cards is now collapsing.  Yesterday, ABC News dropped the bombshell that Bush era Energy auditors actually nixed the loan as unsound, and that Obama OMB staffers raised similar concerns upon their own evaluation.  The White House's political team seemed to disagree, putting the deal on a "fast track." Mere days later, the massive government loan to the unstable "green" poster-child -- backed by major Obama donor cash -- was fortuitously approved.  Here's investigative reporter Brian Ross' excellent report on his findings:
 



Be sure to watch, and rewatch, this report to help digest this story's myriad complexities.  Pay special attention to the tail end of the clip, when Ross repeats the administration's assurances that no political pressure was brought to bear on behalf of this terrible deal, which may cost taxpayers hundreds of millions.  All of the evidence suggests this is a lie.  More from ABC News' website:

Newly uncovered emails show the White House closely monitored the Energy Department's deliberations over a $535 million government loan to Solyndra, the politically-connected solar energy firm that recently went bankrupt and is now the subject of a criminal investigation.

The company's solar panel factory was heralded as a centerpiece of the president's green energy plan -- billed as a way to jump start a promising new industry. And internal emails uncovered by investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee that were shared exclusively with ABC News show the Obama administration was keenly monitoring the progress of the loan, even as analysts were voicing serious concerns about the risk involved. "This deal is NOT ready for prime time," one White House budget analyst wrote in a March 10, 2009 email, nine days before the administration formally announced the loan.

"If you guys think this is a bad idea, I need to unwind the W[est] W[ing] QUICKLY," wrote Ronald A. Klain, who was chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, in another email sent March 7, 2009. The "West Wing" is the portion of the White House complex that holds the offices of the president and his top staffers. Klain declined comment to ABC News.

I realize I'm retreading some old ground here, but this is an absolutely crucial bit from the same story:
 
The White House also noted to ABC News that the Bush administration was the first to consider Solyndra's application and that some executives at the company have a history of donating to Republicans.

Blame Bush!  The gall and predictability of these people is incredible.  But wait...

The results of the Congressional probe shared Tuesday with ABC News show that less than two weeks before President Bush left office, on January 9, 2009, the Energy Department's credit committee had voted against offering a loan commitment to Solyndra.  Even after Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, analysts in the Energy Department and in the Office of Management and Budget were repeatedly questioning the wisdom of the loan. In one exchange, an Energy official wrote of "a major outstanding issue" -- namely, that Solyndra's numbers showed it would run out of cash in September 2011.  There was also concern about the high-risk nature of the project. Internally, the Office of Management and Budget wrote that "the risk rating for the project sponsor [Solyndra] … seems high." Outside analysts had warned for months that the company might not be a sound investment.

So, again, Solyndra's Bush-era application was denied because of concerns over the company's balance sheets and business model.  Obama's own OMB staffers were waving bright red flags, essentially shouting "no!"  One even presciently predicted that Solyndra could run out of money....right about now.  Funny, that.  And yet, the irresponsible loan was fast-tracked for approval, apparently at the behest of Obama's "West Wing" (ie, political) aides.  Remember, these aides were regularly conferring with one of the company's primary investors, George Kaiser, -- who just happened to be a top Obama campaign fundraising "bundler" during the last campaign. 

After misleading the public about the Bush administration's role in this mess, the Obama White House now tells us all of those meetings with Kaiser had nothing to do with the risky loan in question. Does anyone believe that?  Anyone?  This is far from over.

Incidentally, kudos to Brian Ross and his team for fearlessly chasing this scoop.  You'll recall that Ross was the first MSM journalist to touch the Rev. Wright story in 2008.  His piece for ABC News blew that story up, and forced the rest of the press to cover it.

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[sirs]

Just Imagine if this were Bush & Exxon

With the scandalous bankruptcy of Solyndra (a shady California solar power company that received $535 million in stimulus funds and is now under investigation by the FBI) hanging overhead, President Obama wisely whitewashed any mention of "green jobs" out of his latest address to Congress.

(sirs adds, that's right, I now realize that he didn't)

But buried in the details of his latest government jobs bill released this week -- Spawn of the Spendulus, Porky's II, Night of the Keynesian Dead -- are yet more big green boondoggles that will reward cronies, waste taxpayer dollars and make no dent in the jobless rate.

After pouring half a billion bucks into Solyndra, the company filed for Chapter 11 last month and laid off 1,110 employees. Obama administration officials met with Solyndra execs at least 20 times; the green cheerleader-in-chief personally visited and promoted the company in 2009 before his administration fast-tracked approval for the loans.

Solyndra is now the third solar company to go belly-up this year. Yet the Energy Department is doubling down on failure.

As the FBI and House GOP investigators launch a probe into Enron-style accounting problems with Solyndra's books, DOE is doling out more than $850 million in new loan guarantees for another California solar firm sponsored by NextEra Energy, along with nearly $200 million more for separate solar manufacturing facilities on the West Coast.

Obama claims new "investments" in environmentally friendly school construction projects will put thousands of Americans back to work immediately. (Never mind that Big Labor-backed rules and executive orders will raise the cost of the projects, slow their implementation and freeze out the vast majority of non-union contractors.) Among the new green pork initiatives: $25 billion for green roofs, green cleaning, installation of renewable energy generation and heating systems, and "modernization, renovation, or repair activities related to energy efficiency and renewable energy."

But how are existing green construction spending programs working in practice?

A brand-new report from Texas Watchdog, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative group, sheds inconvenient light on Obama's $5 billion stimulus-funded Weatherization Assistance Program. In Texas alone, the $327 million program has spent more than $226,000 on each of the 1,041 jobs the program is claimed to have created or saved.

Intended to "green" low-income homes, at least three of the original participating organizations have been shut down due to chronic mismanagement, fraud allegations and shoddy workmanship. Baylor University economist Earl Grinols summed up:
"First, it is not an appropriate government function to provide weatherization of private homes."
"Second, even viewed as a stimulus measure, it is not very effective as a stimulus based on cost-per-job", and
"third, it appears not to be well-managed."

Nearly 31 months after Porkulus One was signed, the Texas housing agency still hasn't spent $91.6 million in allocated weatherization/green construction funds. Millions cannot be accounted for by auditors and inspectors.

Now, multiply that by 49 other states.

A review of the weatherization boondoggle last year revealed state-trained workers were flubbing insulation jobs in Indiana, according to the Associated Press. In "Alaska, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, the program (had) yet to produce a single job or retrofit one home. And in California, a state with nearly 37 million residents, the program at last count had created 84 jobs."

(that's right....a whopping 84 jobs)

The Washington Examiner's Tim Carney, a vigilant chronicler of green subsidies, notes that time and again, it's Obama insiders and Democratic operatives pocketing all the green while the unemployment hovers at double-digits.

To wit: "Al Gore acolyte Cathy Zoi was Obama's assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy while her husband was an executive at a company that received direct subsidies from the Obama administration and profited from the Cash-for-Caulkers bill Zoi's division implemented."
Treasury Department Chief of Staff Mark Patterson lobbied for Goldman Sachs on ethanol subsidies while holding down his job in the administration.
And last year, another Obama pet project -- Illinois-based FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant -- received a $1 billion stimulus earmark despite having been previously defunded over doubts about the feasibility and efficiency of the project.

An Obama green job trainee with seven certificates, Carlos Arandia, spoke for all non-crony Americans when he asked last fall: "What is the point of giving somebody the tools to do something but to have nowhere to use them?" Perhaps the White House can find a way to weatherize all the Grand Canyon-sized taxpayer sinkholes that "green job" spending has created.

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