Michelle Malkin

Solyndra, Green Jobs, Tax Loopholes = OBAMA MUST GO! (word of the day: Hubris)

Published by Papa Giorgio

From the Washington Times:

….The committee also raised questions about whether the loan deal came about because of political influence, highlighting an email that they said showed how the White House was trying to hurry a loan approval so Vice President Joseph R. Biden could announce the deal in 2009.

The largest private investor in Solyndra is a venture-capital firm tied to Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, a fundraiser for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

….Solyndra became the first company to get a Department of Energy loan guarantee through the stimulus program, and it was hailed as an example of job creation and clean-energy technology by the White House. ….

….But in a report released by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, officials said documents show that OMB staff working on the loan approval felt pressure from the White House to finish their work in time for the groundbreaking, which also was attended by Mr. Chu and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who was California’s governor at the time. Mr. Biden appeared via a satellite feed.

“And out there at Solyndra, you guys have figured it out,” Mr. Biden said. “You figured out how to harness the sun’s power for a better, more efficient, more prosperous future for all of America, and you’re creating more jobs.”

In his remarks, Mr. Schwarzenegger said the project would create thousands of jobs, and he applauded the Obama administration.

“So let’s give a big hand to President Obama and the Obama administration for this great job,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said….

….Mr. Waxman said the loan deal deserves scrutiny, and he raised questions about whether there was proper vetting and whether the company misled federal officials about its finances. He said the company even briefed him personally on its finances and assured him it was in solid shape. Still, he said, the company’s collapse shouldn’t keep the government from backing solar-energy initiatives.

But Rep. Mike Pompeo, Kansas Republican, said the collapse wasn’t surprising. He said that’s what happens when the government tries to pick winners and losers.

Ed Morrisy makes a great point:

Despite President Barack Obama’s steep decline in job approval, especially this summer, the president has commanded a remarkable reserve of high personal regard from voters. Even as the polls show him approaching the kind of job support last seen with his predecessor George W. Bush in the post-Katrina era, Obama has not had to deal with significant levels of personal dislike in national surveys….

….It takes more than a bad bet to make a scandal — but Solyndra has connections all the way to Obama himself. When Solyndra initially applied for taxpayer subsidies, auditors at the Department of Energy questioned Solyndra’s stability. So why did the Obama administration fast-track Solyndra’s application? One reason might be that one of the chief investors in Solyndra is George Kaiser — who also was one of Obama’s campaign bundlers in 2008, raising more than $50,000. Solyndra executives made more than 20 visits to the White House between March 2009 and April 2011. Was it a coincidence that Solyndra ended up with an interest rate from the feds at one-fourth the going rate for green-jobs projects?….

….There have been other controversies in the Obama administration, such as Operation Fast and Furious in the ATF office in Phoenix and the Department of Justice. But Solyndra is the first controversy that has the potential to directly stain Barack Obama himself. Indeed, Obama might find that his well of personal favorability could run dry if investigations discover quid pro quos in Solyndra’s collapse and the vaporization of over a half-billion dollars in taxpayer funds.

Gateway Starts with this:

The Obama Administration spent nearly half of the $38.6 billion funds ($17.2 billion) set aside for his green energy programs and was only able to create 3,545 permanent green jobs. This comes out to a staggering $4,853,000 per job.

The Obama Administration has blown billions of taxpayer dollars on green energy and has only succeeded in producing a few thousand jobs. The Washington Post reported:

[….]

“There are good reasons to create green jobs, but they have more to do with green than with jobs,” Princeton University economics professor and former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alan Blinder has said.

Gateway Pundit Posts the following:

Barack Obama’s gleaming example of green technology – Solyndra – filed for bankruptcy last week. The solar panel manufacturer squandered $535 millionof stimulus money in a little over a year.

But, there’s more…
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.

[….]

There’s more…
It has now been confirmed that White House officials sat in on the Solyndra meetings this past year before the company went under. The White House monitored the huge loans. And before the loan guarantees were granted officials knew the company would fail.

Colbert Not Too Funny!

Published by Papa Giorgio
…to read it all, go to the Colorado Gazette…

Primetime liberal comedians have it made. All they need to do is spend a few hours with a politically correct minority and — voila! — they’re transformed into instant congressional experts. Democrats invited Stephen Colbert to drape himself in the more-compassionate-than-thou mantle last week on behalf of illegal alien migrant workers. But not all “people of color” are equal.

[….]

Althea Rae Shaw, of Los Angeles, wrote an outraged open letter to Colbert after last week’s Capitol Hill circus. She is the aunt of 17-year-old Jamiel Andre’ Shaw II, a young black high-school student who was gunned down by an illegal alien gang member in 2008 amid brown-on-black violence in southern California. The Shaw family has spearheaded efforts to repeal dangerous sanctuary policies in Los Angeles that protect criminal illegal aliens and handcuff local law enforcement. “It truly breaks my heart that so many people in positions of power and authority continue to make light of illegal immigration,” Shaw wrote to Colbert.

“Are you aware of, and/or concerned with, the fact that American citizens and legal immigrants are murdered every day by illegal aliens? Have you ever spent one second thinking about that?” the grieving aunt asked the smirky comic. “What if your mother was shot in the head by an illegal alien? Do you think you could make that funny? What about your children? ”

In her letter, Shaw recounted the horrific case of Cheryl Green for Colbert. She was a 14-year-old Los Angeles girl murdered by illegal alien gang members in 2006, along with another young resident who had witnessed the gang’s violence. Cheryl’s crime? Being black. Her killers were Latino gangbangers Jonathan Fajardo and Daniel Aguilar. Recently, they were convicted of first-degree murder in a hate-crime trial where one of the Hispanic gang members testified bluntly: “Basically, we’re against all black people.”

No, not all illegal aliens are murderers. But neither are all illegal alien migrants harmless workers. And as too many families who will never get Colbert’s attention or sympathy have come to understand.

In Houston, 14-year-old Shatavia Anderson was gunned down last month by a twice-deported illegal alien from El Salvador who simply waltzed back into the country. Shatavia’s grieving uncle, Joe Lambert, lambasted open-borders policies that send a signal that illegal aliens “can do whatever they want. What you’re doing is giving them a green light telling them, ‘Hey, you can do whatever you want.’” Lambert is lobbying for tougher immigration enforcement. “I would like to see what they’re doing in Arizona done here.”….