On May 26, 2011, the White House posted this video praising Solyndra as a Recovery Act success story.
In August, Barack Obama’s gleaming example of green technology – Solyndra – filed for bankruptcy. The solar panel manufacturer squandered $535 million of stimulus money in a little over a year.
Why Solyndra?
Top Obama bundler George Kaiser made multiple visits to the White House in the months before the company was granted a $535 million loan from the government. And top Solyndra officials also made numerous visits — 20 — to the White House, according to logs and reporting by The Daily Caller. Solyndra officials in the logs included chairman and founder Christian Gronet and board members Thomas Baruch and David Prend. The company secured the $535 million loan despite the fact that it was widely known Solyndra was in deep economic trouble and had negative cash flows since its inception.
Kaiser said he did not use political influence or talk to administration officials about a massive government loan to Solyndra. However, the Solyndra investor made multiple visits to the White House in the week before the Department of Energy approved a $535 million guaranteed loan to Solyndra on March 20, 2009
(Solyndra)
But, Barack Obama had no regrets.
In fact, Barack Obama was so impressed with the failed solar company that the administration wanted to give it another $469 million on top of the $535 million to make it an even billion dollars in taxpayer cash.
Now we find out that the Solyndra decisions were infused with politics at every level.
The New York Post reported:
President Obama’s got some ‘splainin to do. According to The Washington Post the administration entire green energy/clean energy program was about politics not good policy:
“Meant to create jobs and cut reliance on foreign oil, Obama’s green-technology program was infused with politics at every level, The Washington Post found in an analysis of thousands of memos, company records and internal e-mails. Political considerations were raised repeatedly by company investors, Energy Department bureaucrats and White House officials.”The White House of course denies this is the case and claims about Solyndra in particular that only the Obama administration only meant for the best: “This administration is one that will fiercely fight to protect jobs even when it’s not the popular thing to do.”
Only trouble is that with Solyndra, as with the Keystone XL pipeline, as with natural gas development, as with the payroll tax holiday, as with EPA regulations of every industry, this kind of claim is so false it is laughable.
Just listen to one person involved in the Solyndra debacle after Obama had already done his photo-op at the company’s plant and the business was clearly failing: “Its investors pitched bailout plans, seeking help from what a Solyndra executive referred to as the “Bank of Washington” — his apparent term for U.S. taxpayers. The Energy Department rebuffed the plans, at least initially.
If we had a responsible media they would be all over this. Sadly, we don’t.
