Solargate: The Albatross Around Obama's Neck

Among the many media squashed scandals surrounding this Administration, Solyndra is proving to be quite stubborn. Even the MSM - well at least ABC News - is finally getting in on the action.

Unlike Pigford, multiple DOJ scandals (including Operation Fast and Furious, the racial quota scandal, and the infamous voter intimidation case), ACORN funding scandal, a laundry list of improprieties surrounding the passage of Obamacare, or any one of numerous constitutional scandals where the Administration has ignored the Separation of Powers Act (such as the ones involving net neutrality, amnesty, and card check legislation) all of which have been successfully supressed, Solyndra is the symbol of corrupt green energy cronyism that just won't die. Had the company name been Haliburton or Exxon Mobil, and the party in the White House Republican, impeachment hearings would have been long started and the media skewering relentless. But alas, it is the Democrats and their money bundlers, therefore move on, there is nothing to see here.

Now, I would not deny the fact that any past administration has knowingly or unknowingly endorsed crony capitalism in its day. Usually, however, the relationship between the government and the corporate giants have been at an arms length and never to benefit the President or his party financially. That is until now.

Solyndra recently joined the long and sordid list of green energy companies that recieved billions of tax payer dollars from the Obama Administration and have already either declared bankruptcy or moved their operations to China. The FBI has been on the case since pretty much the beginning.

Here are the troubling details concerning Solyndra in summary format:

• Founder George Kaiser and green bundler and financier Steve Westley are big money bundlers (fund raisers) for Obama.
• Solyndra officials visited the White House (not the DOE) over 5 times in 2009.
• White House closely monitored the loan to Solyndra as internal e-mails show.
• The OMB auditors expressed serious concerns about backing Solyndra's faulty business model.
• Obama officials sat at Solyndra Board of Directors meetings for months
• Despite internal objections, Solyndra recieved $535 million in loan guarantees from the DOE
• About a year later, the company laid off its workers and declared bankruptcy, costing the tax payers over half a billion dollars.
• Congressman Cliff Stearns, who is investigating the scandal in the House of Representatives, has been stonewalled continuously by the Administration since the beginning of his investigation.

Just as troubling, but not yet being investigated, are similar allegations against two other solar companies whose founders are also Obama fund raisers. 

On September 7, the DOE announced its plan to guarantee 80 percent — or $275 million — of a $344 million private loan taken out by the firm SolarCity. The company installs rooftop solar systems that harvests electricity SolarCity then sells.  The Chairman of SolarCity, Elon Musk, is a major financial supporter of the president. On April 15 of this year, Musk donated $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund. He also gave an additional $5,000 to the Obama campaign.  Like Solyndra officials White House visitor logs show Musk has visited the Administration at least four times since 2009.

The second company is Solexel. On September 2, the solar energy company announced a $13 million award from the DOE as part of a program to make solar energy systems more affordable for homeowners.  Solexel is financially backed by venture capitalist Steve Westly - the same guy who was instrumental in financing the operations of Solyndra.

Aside from the above three cases, other Obama backed solar companies have been failures including Evergreen among others.  Is the madness over?  No, not when an ideologically driven, corrupt Administration is in power.  The evidence of that allegation can be found in the news that the Obama Administration is now backing another solar company, Mojave Solar, to the tune of $1.2 billion.  As the LA Times puts it: "Not all of those investments pan out".  The problem is when the investor is financially tied to the President of the country - an ocurrance that usually occurs in banana republics only - we hopefully still call it corruption.

On a related note, General Electric just announced that they are scaling back their wind turbine operations globally citing profitability reasons.  Solar and wind energy are nothing but pipe dreams with current technologies as the Europeans have been finding out the hard way. The energy that they provide is unreliable, insufficient, and extremely costly. Despite their unfeasibility, this Administration keeps on pouring money in to front companies that have been failing at an alarming rate.

The common thread among many of these green energy companies being their troubling financial connections to this administration, this is nothing short of a money laundering scheme just like much of the stimulus money that found its way back to the Democrat party via the unions. In my opinion, impeachment would be too good for this bunch - a nice prison cell is far more appropriate!