Buried in the avalanche of Cuba and North Korea news was this revealing tidbit about the Obama administration's environmental priorities:
First there was Solyndra. The company was going to deliver cutting edge solar technology. It didn't happen and the company is now defunct after running through half a billion or so of government money.
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu is leaving and in parting, writes this about his time in office and the green energy investments his department made:
When solar panel maker Solyndra declared bankruptcy in September 2011, the Obama administration defended its $535 million loan guarantee to the company by touting the need to compete with China. At a congressional hearing, Jonathan Silver, then executive director of the Energy Department’s Loan…
President Obama, who is in California for campaign events, fundraised from key Solyndra figures last night. Via the pool report:
Lis Smith, a spokesman for President Barack Obama's reelection campaign, touted Solyndra by saying the failed energy company that received federally backed loans has been "widely praised as successful and innovative."
Mitt Romney's latest web ad targets President Obama's inability to create jobs, the failures of the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program, and "contracts steered to ‘friends & family.'" Watch here:
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics, takes to Facebook today to review the Avengers, a movie about a bunch of superheroes banding together to save the world, “which focuses on a new, limitless clean energy source called ‘The Tesseract,’” according to Chu.
President Obama's reelection team released a campaign ad this morning that features this graphic, touting the supposed "jobs created by President Obama's clean energy initiatives."
The 411,618 square foot Solyndra building in Fremont, California has been put on the market:
President Obama's secretary of energy, Steven Chu, is a smart guy. But in these two clips, from a hearing on the Hill yesterday, Rep. Jim Jordan seems to get the better of the cabinet member:
Solyndra, the bankrupt solar panel firm at the center of the Obama administration's green energy loan program scandal, still owes U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. So why is it destroying millions of dollars in saleable assets? CBS San Francisco reports:
Politico: "Romney preps Gingrich attack"
Thankfully, most Americans were probably too busy with the holiday to read the preposterous editorial yesterday in the New York Times. The Grey Lady examined the Solyndra scandal and concluded Republicans are really off base for having the temerity to complain about throwing taxpayer dollars down a…
The Washington Post reports on newly released emails that reveal "the Obama administration urged officers of the struggling solar company Solyndra to postpone announcing planned layoffs until after the November 2010 midterm elections"
Associated Press: "Obama donor discussed solar loan with White House"
Earlier this week it was reported that the White House considered a last-minute taxpayer bailout of Solyndra, the failed solar panel maker that received a $529 million loan guarantee. One of the more interesting aspects of that deal—which would have had taxpayers purchasing as much as 40 percent of…
Politico reports:
Washington Post: "Obama administration considered bailout for Solyndra days before bankruptcy"
Beacon Power Corporation, which filed for bankruptcy late last week, was the recipient of a $43 million loan guarantee from the Energy Department. Campaign contribution information from Open Secrets shows that Beacon Power's CEO F. William Capp donated to both Barack Obama and two Massachusetts…
Well, now we know the reason for the Friday night news dump. When the Obama administration finally announced that they would be launching an independent review of Department of Energy loan guarantees, they were likely trying to get out ahead of this:
About 24 hours after he recited the oath of office, Barack Obama addressed senior executive branch officials and cabinet secretaries at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The new president promised that his administration would bring a new openness to Washington, with strict ethics…
The White House is just now getting around to seriously addressing the Solyndra scandal:
This is starting to become a familiar refrain:
Foreign Policy: "How the Obama administration bungled the Iraq withdrawal negotiations"
Financial Times: "Greece approves austerity bill on first reading"
Politico: "Geithner: Action against Wall St. coming"
Conn Carroll: "Will Friday clean-up end Occupy Wall Street?"
Will it turn out worse than Solyndra?:
In happier times, the firm had been celebrated as a harbinger of the future. The political connections it enjoyed were the fruit not only of well-placed contributions but of a self-imposed ideological mission: It was going to deliver cheap energy in amazing ways. Top executives had dismissed…
Department of Energy loan program director resigns.
The spectacular collapse of Solyndra has all of the trappings of an epic Washington scandal, with serial revelations of embarrassing and potentially improper White House machinations to secure a $535 million federal loan guarantee for a startup company with dubious prospects of success. The sudden…
Steve Hayes, with A. B. Stoddard and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:
iWatchNews: Solyndra and "Bundlers on the inside"
Talking Points Memo: "FBI Arrests Man For Plotting To Attack Capitol, Pentagon With C-4 Loaded Remote Controlled Planes"
The Wall Street Journal reports today that the Department of Energy has approved loan guarantees for two solar energy projects:
Despite the repeated attempts to wish away the Solyndra scandal, it appears to be getting bigger. Today, the Los Angeles Times informs us key White House personnel raised concerns the Department of Energy loan program that gave Solyndra $535 million was poorly conceived and managed long before the…
To find a metaphor for the failed Obama presidency, look no further than Solyndra. Before it went bankrupt, the solar panel manufacturer was more than the recipient of a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government. It was the model for the White House effort to put the American economy…
The Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon kicked off today in Washington on the National Mall, under inauspiciously dark rainy skies. In a press release announcing the competition, Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu is quoted as saying, "The Solar Decathlon collegiate teams are showing how…
Phil Klein: "House investigators rip Solyndra execs"
Sometimes in politics appearing guilty can have more consequences that actually being guilty (though the two frequently are related). And this latest development in the Solyndra scandal certainly looks bad:
Phil Klein: "Obama reaches out to liberals with budget plan"
Over at Reason, Tim Cavanaugh observes that the few defenses being mounted for loaning failed solar company Solyndra $535 million in stimulus funds are really, really wanting. "Democrats appear to be backing into a strategy of vilifying the company (previous efforts to blame perfidious China and…
The Los Angeles Times opened up a new front in the Solyndra scandal on Friday (and there are too many fronts to count at this point), reporting that Steve Spinner, another prominent Obama donor, served as a top official in the Energy Department program that made the half-billion dollar loan to the…
Jon Stewart skewers the Obama administration on Solyndra.
We may be witnessing a perfect Washington moment. For most of the workweek, attention has been focused on the collapse of a solar energy company that had received economically dubious–and politically motivated–subsidies of some $500 million. On Sunday, the city’s football franchise, the Redskins,…
The Washington Post reports that the stimulus-backed Department of Energy loan guarantee program, which financed green energy companies like the failed solar energy start-up Solyndra and three projects for the Abengoa corporation, has created far fewer jobs than the Obama administration projected:
The Obama administration is now pushing a rather dubious defense for handing out $535 million in stimulus funds to the now-bankrupt solar panel manufacturer Solyndra. They're blaming Bush:
Even as problems grow for Solyndra, the solar energy manufacturing firm that got a hefty stimulus-backed loan before going bankrupt earlier this month, the Department of Energy continues to issue large loans to companies. The Los Angeles Times reports on a newly approved loan of $1.2 billion to the…
Two big stories are out tonight on the blossoming scandal involving failed solar panel company and stimulus funds recipient Solyndra. First, the Washington Post reports that the White House pressured the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to speed up the approval process for Solyndra's $535…
Well, this is awkward. Despite $535 million in government loans and the White House touting Solyndra as an example of how the $800 billion stimulus bill was helping create jobs, everyone in the following video is now unemployed:
In her speech to a Tea Party gathering in Indianola, Iowa on Saturday, Sarah Palin criticized what she called "crony capitalism:"
And the hits just keep on coming. This is not the kind of news that is going to help the Obama administration in the midst of a jobs crisis: