PrairiePundit

Washington Free Beacon: A years-long investigation into the Department of Energy’s support for the bankrupt solar company Solyndra faults DOE officials, contractors, and the company itself for the department’s eventual loss of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars steered to the firm. The DOE’s inspector general on Wednesday released the results of the investigation. It was undertaken in conjunction with the Department of Justice, which, the report reveals, decided early this year not to pursue any criminal charges in the matter. Solyndra received a $535 million stimulus-backed DOE loan guarantee as part of the Obama administration’s early push for renewable energy subsidies. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and laid off 1,100 employees, eventually costing taxpayers more than $500 million. The company became a symbol of opposition to the administration’s green energy subsidy programs. Critics said its investors’ political connections had helped it to obtain taxpayer...

Washington Free Beacon: The new Ebola czar has ties to a secret liberal dark money group and once worked as a lobbyist for a prescription drug company that denied experimental drugs to dying cancer patients. Ron Klain, a former adviser to former Vice President Al Gore, Vice President Joe Biden, and President Barack Obama, currently is president of Case Holdings and is general counsel to the investment firm Revolution LLC. Klain is also a trustee for Third Way. Claiming to be the voice for the “vital center,” Third Way is a progressive think tank that advocates for immigration reform, gun control, and a “credible alternative to neoconservative security policy.” Third Way is also listed on the Democracy Alliance’s “Progressive Infrastructure Map.” The map, which is detailed in a report by Politico’s Kenneth Vogel, includes organizations that are “politically active and progressive” and “strategically significant.” Third Way is one of the groups listed with a note of special a...

Conn Carroll: Obama donor gained nearly $1 billion in tax credits in Solyndra bankruptcy It is a good pice that walks you through the mess created by the Obama administration when it changed the terms of the loan despite a prohibition in the law.  What is not said is that Kaiser who benefited from the change  is the head of a foundation that has been pumping out Obamacare polling and studies.

WSJ: Perhaps you thought the Solyndra scandal amounted to a $535 million government loan that will never be repaid. No such luck. In the latest twist, Solyndra's investors could be rewarded for their failure, thanks to a tax benefit the Administration handed out in a bid to evade political accountability. The Internal Revenue Service exposed this double Solyndra debacle last week in the U.S. bankruptcy court for the district of Delaware, which is unwinding the defunct solar-panel maker. The IRS formally objected to Solyndra's Chapter 11 reorganization plan, claiming its "principal purpose is tax avoidance." *** Having sold off its manufacturing plant, fired nearly 1,000 workers and proven the non-viability of its business model, Solyndra's only real assets are what the IRS calls "tax attributes." These are between $875 million and $975 million in net operating losses that can reduce future taxable income, which the IRS values as high as $350 million. B...

James Capretta: It’s a pattern of course. At critical moments in the campaign, a reliably liberal research organization releases a faux “study” that is quickly picked up by the Obama campaign and turned into negative attack ads. In the last two months we have seen “studies” of this type from the Brookings–Urban Institute Tax Policy Center, the Commonwealth Fund, and researchers at Harvard. All magically found their way into Obama campaign talking points, ads, and other material. And all accused the Romney campaign of harboring secret plans to pile thousands of dollars in new costs onto America’s struggling middle class. Today’s in-kind donation to the Obama campaign came from the supposedly nonpartisan, but reliably liberal, Kaiser Foundation. The Kaiser study claims that a Medicare “premium support” plan — that the authors claim resembles the plan offered by Representative Paul Ryan and Democratic senator Ron Wyden — would drive up costs on seniors by hundreds of dollars per month....

Conn Carroll: What if the President of the United States flagrantly broke federal law to the financial benefit of his campaign contributors, ultimately costing U.S. taxpayers millions, but there was no way to hold him accountable? That is exactly what happened when California solar panel manufacture Solyndra threatened bankruptcy in late 2010 and the Obama Energy Department agreed to illegally restructure their loan. But unless he is defeated at the ballot box this November, President Obama will get away with it. Solyndra first sought a loan guarantee pursuant to the 2005 Energy Policy Act in 2008, but they were rejected by the Bush Energy Department. Solyndra then reapplied for another loan from the Obama administration and was awarded a $535 million guarantee in September 2009. Solyndra was the first company ever to get a loan guarantee pursuant to the Energy Policy Act and Obama made the company the signature showcase of his green energy economic stimulus plan. But by Decem...

Andrew Malcolm: Obama hails NASA's Mars rover program as he's cutting it 40% It is a reflection or where his priorities and cronies lie.

Washington Post: As the Obama administration moved last year to bail out Solyndra, the embattled flagship of the president’s initiative to promote alternative energy, a White House budget analyst calculated that millions of taxpayer dollars might be saved by cutting the government’s losses, shuttering the company immediately and selling its assets, according to a congressional investigation.  Even so, senior officials in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget did not discourage the Energy Department from proceeding with its plan to restructure a federal loan to  Solyndra  — a move that put private investors ahead of taxpayers for repayment if the company closed, the investigation by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee found.  The restructuring went forward, but within months Solyndra failed anyway, leaving federal taxpayers on the hook for much of the half-billion-dollar federal loan. Now, a year after  the company’s collapse ...

Steve Maley: In a move that they’ll surely regret, the Obama campaign has called attention to a “green energy” loan to Konarka Power Plastic of Lowell, MA while Mitt Romney was governor. They have accused Romney of hypocrisy in his criticism of the Obama Administration’s DOE loan guarantee to Solyndra and other “green energy” firms. Here’s how the two loans panned out: Obama Romney Failed Green Company Solyndra Konarka “Investment” $535,000,000 $1,500,000 Taxpayer Money Lost $528,000,000 $0 Years to Bankruptcy 2 9 Source of Funds Federal State Loan Repaid? No Yes Tied to Wealthy Campaign Donors? Yes No You’ve gotta wonder about someone who can draw any kind of equivalence between these two programs. Maybe that’s the difference between a community organizer and a businessman. [Update: Note also that there have been several other failures in Obama's DoE LAN guarantee program, notably Beacon Power Corp., a failure of similar scale to Solyndra. - Ed.] ... My headli...

The facts seem pretty clear.  Obama's plan to create green energy jobs has been a costly failure.  It should be enough to get him fired.

I think we will see a lot of these ads this campaign.  They make a sharp contrast to Obama's rhetoric about Romney's old company.  They show his poor judgment and poor management of the risks contained in this type of investment.

Jennifer Rubin: The Obama team seems determined to go unprepared and perform unimpressively on topics that obviously were going to come their way. Yesterday, to the delight of the Romney crew, there was  Jay Carney attempt to explain why Bain is different from Solyndra: That’s sad — not to mention entirely unintelligible. Let’s see if we can help out Carney. Bain was  successfu l. Solyndra  was not . Bain used money from voluntary investors who were at risk for losses. Solyndra shifted the risk from the private sector to the taxpayers. Bain had expertise in selecting winners and in investing wisely. Obama’s political appointees  did not . Bain didn’t give “friends and family” a better deal than strangers. Solyndra and the  Energy Department  sure did. ... The attacks on Bain continue to backfire on the administration.  These guys would be wise to pivot to the economy and jobs, but that has not been a winning issue for them either, ...

I think we will see more such ads.  Obama's investment portfolio would get most managers fired.

Rep. Morgan Griffith: ... By law Secretary Chu wasn’t allowed to subordinate the taxpayers’ money.  The Energy Policy Act of 2005 specifically states that the loan guarantee “shall be subject to the condition that the obligation is not subordinate to other financing.”  It was the clear intention of Congress that taxpayers should be reimbursed first.   For a company that had already been declared in default and had a collapsed business model because the Chinese were selling their solar panels for less, one might question the sanity of private investors who gambled on Solyndra in December of 2010.  Were they after Solyndra’s intellectual property (IP) rights?  As a private investor and the dominant financier, could Argonaut’s support of President Obama have helped them secure Solyndra’s IP assets?   By December of 2010, these private investors were placed in first position to get the choice parts of the business – intellectual property, including propr...

The Hill: ... "This is not just about fairness, this is also about growth,” he added.  “It’s about being able to make the investments we need to strengthen our economy and create jobs.  And it’s about whether we as a country are willing to pay for those investments. ... This argument does not pass the giggle test.  Obama wants to take the few billion raised by real job creators and waste on his idea of investments like, Solyndra and other Big Green boondoggles.  His investment portfolio  is so bad that no one would ever hire him for managing their money.

Washington Post: Obama’s Solyndra shuffle Obama tries to shift blame for Solyndra to congress and President Bush, but the Bush administration refused to approve the loans to Solyndra and Obama did so with stimulus money. One of Obama's worst character flaws is a refusal to take responsibility.  This is another example.

Washington Times: Fast running out of money, solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC  last summer sold off nearly $60 million worth of inventory for less than $20 million in cash to a newly formed corporate entity closely tied to the company’s biggest investors, records show. Backed by $535 million in federal loan guarantees but burning through the little cash it had left, Solyndra  made its first sale in late July to a corporate entity that had been formed just a day earlier. Three more transactions followed over the next few weeks with the same buyer,  Solyndra Solar II . By the time the last sale took place on Aug. 29 — two days before the company announced plans to file for bankruptcy —  Solyndra  had sold off a total of $58.1 million worth of inventory for $17.5 million, according to documents  Solyndra  attorneys filed last month in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. The sales began at a time when  Solyndra  officials were trying hard t...

Solyndra was just one of his many "clean tech" screw ups."

Bankrupt Solyndra Caught Destroying Brand New Parts : After filing for bankruptcy last year, Fremont solar company Solyndra still owes American taxpayers half a billion dollars. But CBS 5 caught them destroying millions of dollars worth of parts. Elizabeth Cook reports. It is not going over well in congress either: Congressman irked by Solyndra bonuses, equipment destruction There evidently was the buyer for the destroyed glass rods.

Washington Times: Obama’s first ad defends failed Solyndra deal He was responding to an AFP ad.  Hopefully, they will run more such ads so Obama can keep defending his mistakes.   The more he is talking about Solyndra, the better for those who oppose his agenda.