Crush Liberalism

Solyndra scandal beginning to enlarge

Despite many in the MSM’s attempts to wish the scandal away, a number of media outlets are engaging in random acts of journalism.

Today, the House will engage the hopelessly corrupt administration’s Energy Dept. head, Stephen Chu, about why the taxpayers are on the hook for a half a billion when the signs were there that this was a money pit.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu is prepared to say he made the final decisions on a half-billion-dollar loan to a California solar company that later went bankrupt, essentially taking responsibility for a debacle that has embarrassed the Obama administration.

Chu, in testimony prepared for delivery Thursday to a House committee, claimed he made all decisions on Solyndra Inc. with the best interests of the taxpayer in mind.

“I want to be clear: Over the course of Solyndra’s loan guarantee, I did not make any decision based on political considerations,” Chu said in testimony prepared for the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Yeah, where would you get the crazy idea that there were any “political considerations” involved?  Oh, I dunno…

The Obama administration, which gave the solar company Solyndra a half-billion-dollar loan to help create jobs, asked the company to delay announcing it would lay off workers until after the hotly contested November 2010 midterm elections that imperiled Democratic control of Congress, newly released e-mails show.

The announcement could have been politically damaging because President Obama and others in the administration had held up Solyndra as a poster child of its clean-energy initiative, saying the company’s new factory, built with the help of stimulus money, could create 1,000 jobs. Six months before the midterm elections, Obama visited Solyndra’s California plant to praise its success, even though outside auditors had questioned whether the operation might collapse in debt.

As the contentious 2010 elections approached, Solyndra found itself foundering, and it warned the Energy Department that it would need an emergency cash infusion. A Solyndra investment adviser wrote in an Oct. 30, 2010, e-mail — without explaining the reason — that Energy Department officials were pushing “very hard” to delay making the layoffs public until the day after the elections.

The announcement ultimately was made on Nov. 3, 2010 — immediately following the Nov. 2 vote.

Yeah, well, I’m just some wingnut who always reads political motives into every Chicagoland thug politician’s decisions!  I mean, no one else thinks there were any “political considerations” involved, right?  Yeah, right:

In the two years preceding its collapse, Solyndra and its biggest investor aggressively asserted themselves in dealings with the Obama administration, pushing Energy Secretary Steven Chu to visit the company’s headquarters to help it raise private money and later suggesting it would file for bankruptcy if the Energy Department rejected its proposed rescue plan.

Executives associated with the California solar panel company also privately described Energy Department officials as more concerned with appearances than with sound business decisions.  (Considering the Marxists in this administration have never run so much as a hot dog stand, how in the Sam Hill would they know a sound business decision if it bit them in their leftist backsides? – CL)

“The DOE really thinks politically before it thinks economically,” a Solyndra board member wrote in December to George Kaiser, an Obama fundraiser whose family funds owned a third of the company.

At another point, an investment adviser to Kaiser wrote in an e-mail: “DOE is willing to accommodate Solyndra . . . but they appear to be concerned about ‘looking bad.’ ”

So even Solyndra knew that this regime placed politics and appearance before practicality and propriety.

Let’s face it: this was another boneheaded AND corrupt example of crony capitalism by the administration.  There isn’t a single honest official in this administration, and it starts at the top.  The sooner we repeal Obama in November of 2012, the sooner this nation can begin to heal from the deep wounds he has intentionally inflicted on a country he regards so very little.

November 17, 2011 - Posted by crushliberalism | corruption, environuts, Obama, Solyndra