| | It's a good article. There are a few things that should have been emphasized a bit more. That illegal, last minute restructuring of an investment loan from the Obama money-bundler let him get his money back ahead of the taxpayer money, and it should have mentioned that the Department of Energy people on the Solyndra board - are they going to testify? Will they take the fifth? And there were a number of other shareholders and company executives that had made sizable donations to Obama. Another thing that I noticed is how there is no change in the plans to continue backing the other green energy loans since this has occurred - the DOE has 9.3 billion dollars in loans lined up and ready to go. And, it should be pointed out that ordinarily there would be NO visits to the White House regarding DOE loans - only visits by the principals to DOE. And that other companies applying for DOE loans were told that it would be very wrong to engage in large scale lobbying, the way Solyndra did, while loan requests were pending. And that publicly available security filings from 2009 showed the business plan to be unsustainable.
There may be a lot more to come from this scandal. Here are some accusations from a highly partisan conservative blog:
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"In 2009, the same year Solyndra received its $535 million federal loan guarantee, the George Kaiser Family Foundation made a $10,000 donation to the Urban Health Initiative at the University of Chicago Medical Center. The foundation controls 35.7 percent of Solyndra.
"Just months before Kaiser’s foundation poured tax-exempt cash into its coffers, Valerie Jarrett served as the medical center’s chairwoman. The initiative was created by none other than future First Larcenist Michelle Obama. In an earlier act of cronyism, Michelle “recommended” the center hire David Axelrod’s firm to provide PR in 2006. Indeed, the project employed a bevy of Obama’s Chicago cronies. In a 2008 story, The Washington Post reported:
"One of Barack’s best friends, Eric Whitaker, is executive vice president at the center and is now in charge of the Urban Health Initiative. Hospital board member Kelly R. Welsh is executive vice president at Northern Trust Co., which extended the couple a $1.3 million home mortgage shortly after Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate. Dan Shomon, Barack Obama’s former campaign manager, is a university lobbyist. Jarrett, Whitaker, Welsh and Shomon all declined to be interviewed or did not respond to requests."
"George Kaiser visited the White House 16 times, holding at least one friendly chat with Jarrett. Kaiser insists the loan never came up.
"Perhaps it did not. Perhaps he merely cooed into Jarrett’s ear that his foundation made a $10,000 donation to the Urban Health Initiative and Kaiser personally bundled more than $50,000 for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. She would have known what to do."
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For those not following all of these things at a detail level, Jarrett is considered a top Obama advisor and perhaps closer to him than anyone else in the White House, and Axlerod was his senior political advisor, ran his election campaign and is now running his reelection campaign.
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If the blog is correct, it was the GOVERNMENT that restructured the loans to favor private investors over taxpayer money in the event of a bankruptcy!
"This February the government restructured Solyndra’s loan to assure new investors would be repaid before taxpayers in the event of bankruptcy, violating the Energy Policy Act of 2005."
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A Chicago Tribune columnist says this is just the "Chicago Way." He points out that Steve Spinner, the Obama official that was in charge of handing out billions of tax dollars to "green" energy deals was in Chicago a few days ago, addressing Obama's reelection campaign's finance committee. The topic was "Technology for Obama" and the columnist pointed out this is just old school back room politics where politicians pick the winners and the losers and the winners are those at the head of the political donation line and the losers are us taxpayers.
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(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 9/24, 9:12pm)
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