It now appears that the Energy Department was something of a haven for Obama fundraisers who wanted to affect policy after the election.
ABC News is reporting that several Obama fundraisers found themselves helping out around the place. Some of them had ties to green energy projects that DOE ended up supporting.
Well known already is DOE’s precipitous and calamitous decision to fund Solyndra, which was backed by Obama fundraiser George Kaiser.
Also known is that another Obama fundraiser, Stephen Spinner, was involved in advising on the Energy Department’s loan program. His wife’s law firm represented Solyndra, but the firm claims she had recused herself from work with the company.
DOE is trying to minimize Stephen Spinner’s role, while Spinner tried to maximize it, ABC reports.
Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman, described Spinner as someone who had “no role” in evaluating loan applications or selecting recipients.
Spinner described his job differently. He wrote in an online bio for the Center for American Progress, the left-leaning think tank he joined after leaving the administration, that he “helped oversee the more than $100 billion of loan guarantee and direct lending authority” for the department’s green-energy loan program.
Meanwhile, yet another Obama fundraiser has popped into the mix, according to ABC.
California venture capitalist Steve Westly, who raised more than $500,000 for Obama, had Secretary Chu’s ear on green energy issues as a member of a high-level volunteer advisory panel. Mackey Dykes, who was a finance manager for the Obama campaign, was hired to be the liaison between the Energy Department and White House. Each declined interview requests.
Westly has held stakes in at least five companies that have won DOE support.
Fundraisers are often awarded by presidents with ambassadorships and ceremonial titles. But President Obama, who talked much about eliminating money from politics and halting the “revolving door” between the private and the public sector, and so forth, appears to have placed money people in positions in the government where they had a chance to . . . make more money.
Notice that Westly was the liaison between Energy and the White House. And it’s clear someone at the White House pressured OMB to reluctantly sign off on the Solyndra loan guarantee, which will cost taxpayers more than $500 million in the wake of Solyndra’s failure.
There is much more to come. More names will surface.
Who in the White House pressured OMB? What were this person’s ties to the Obama fundraisers?
If this were Dick Cheney energy policy, the Democrats would surely be screaming for a special prosecutor.
H/T to Doug Ross @ Journal, where I first learned of the ABC story. He has a good summary of the Energygate players.
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They need one now…this has been coming for months. Let us not forget Gun runner, that to will need a special prosecutor. Especially after the memo giving an avant authority to buy guns with federal funds and sell them to cartels.
There are so many things to look into. It’s a buffet.
Truly, just waiting for someone to start turning over the rocks…and then the mountain will collapse.
Dont count on the Obama sycophant, “Main Stream Media” to be turning over any rocks…
Tip of the iceberg I’m afraid. When will more of these types of ‘deals’ start hitting the fan? Every one of his bundlers should be investigated.
When the press starts investigating.
I won’t be holding my breath.
Sometimes I wonder if the press even remembers how to investigate a story? In the age of the internet they don’t remember what it was like to wear out some shoe leather hunting down a good story.
None of this suprises me : coming from the least transparent, most corrupt adminmistration to date, it is to be expected.
What I find shocking is that ABC reported it. Does this mean the MSM is waking up from their kool-aid snorting induced haze?
I don’t know, but I think now that Obama looks like a loser there’s more motivation than in the heady, early days.
“Obama looks like a loser” = Thats Racist! -LOL
sorry, just getting ready for the typical ‘media’ response to any critique of Obama in 2012
Sincerely hope you are right. You probably are.
Where are the Reps on this .. only Issa seems to have backbone,,
Boehner should be demanding accounting at every turn at the microphone..
Boehner, consumate dealmaker.
the longer they wait, the less chance hillary or someone else will jump in….i’d imagine the GOP will take their time…get it right…wait until the necessary legal prerequisites have been established… it might be in the democrat party’s best interest to push for the special counsel in the senate to hasten the process and give someone else a chance to primary obama…
the media swept the ‘disgruntled’ DOJ worker under the rug on the black panther case… the big three networks should really feed on these ‘scandals’ once they reach a threshold…who knows, though…they might just sit out these tantalizingly tasty morsels of real sketchy business practice coming straight out of the white house…
Ah, the mice at play and no sign of the cat–at first anyhow.
Nicely put, star.
The folks should be calling their representatives to let them know we are not asleep at the switch as the media has been and we expect them to start
doing something! Now is not the tme to stand on the sideline while this corrupt group in the WH continue to give our money to the hupighest bidder!
Enough already.
To go back to the beginning; what the heck is our government doing, and by what authority, lending money to select private industries? By itself, the lending of taxpayers dollars would be bound to favor special interests and be a magnet for corruption.
The Repubs are in no hurry to ask for a special proscecutor now. They’ll probably wait until late spring when the election is starting to get red-hot and then lower the boom. or…..they’ll use the Fast&Furious fiasco and this finacial boondoggel as leverage to keep MrO under control or even force him to withdraw from the Presidential race.
This is national industrial planning, pure and simple. Didn’t work for Brezhnev, won’t work for Obama.
We may have to have another Tea Party at the Capital soon, a few hundred thousand signs “Appoint a Special Prosecutor” may just do the trick.
Special Prosecutor? Nothing to see here, just move along.
Ironically, the Attorney General decides whether or not to appoint special prosecutors. My congressman, Lamar Smith, is chairman of the House Judicial Committee and he sent a letter to Holder asking him to appoint an independent investigator. Like that has a snowball’s chance in hell of happening.
http://biggovernment.com/publius/2011/09/20/smith-to-holder-investigate-solyndra/
Agree with lc southern. We can’t take our eyes off Fast and Furious. People lost their lives in the administration’s scheme to trump the second amendment. Issa is doing the right thing by gathering all the facts before he calls for a special investigator. My guess is he will hit the same stonewall from the DOJ as Smith, but he will have a lot more documentation.
Again–what happened to BASIC research–maybe proof of concept? Not soup to nuts building of a factory etc. Right down to the frills, trills, bells, whistles, game rooms and luxuries.
Holder will never appoint a special prosector. Ever.
Does not seem to be in his DNA, does it?
He would have to arrest himself to start!
And that’s what happens with an A-G who’s actually as politicized as Gonzalez was accused of being.
You know, they could make this whole thing go away if they just released previously unknown emails that showed the Solyndra funds were actually used to buy AK-47s for the ATF’s Fast & Furious “Guns To Mexican Drug Cartel” international assistance program (aka Gunwalker).
http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-national/a-journalist-s-guide-to-project-gunwalker
Obama and all of his brand, from Soros to Holder, believe that they will get away with this. I find it ultimately hilarious that everything the left accused GW of intending, they have now seen Obama’s administration proceed doing: it is they who were duped, spoon fed hatred for their own country, swallowing hook, line and sinker everything the dot org’s spewed about 911, GW as Hitler, ad nauseum – from the citizen army to attack watch, to crony capitalism to MOOch’s ten million of tax payer dollars on lavish vacations lobster and champagne, the democrat party has be utterly demoralized by this administration. And they felt betrayed by Watergate, the spark which lit the liberal torch!! Bring on that conservative tide: the wolves have been caught in their own trap.
Keith, FoxNew “Follow the Money” last evening exposed NPelosi’s brother-in-law as owner of two “green” energy companies directly connected to Solyndra money!
Another Pelosi “wind energy” venture is directly connected to the demise of one of the richest California agricultural valleys in the Nation! All water for irrigation was stopped by EPA to protect a so-called endangered darter fish several years ago. Now, the area is desolate, truck farmers bankrupt, towns devastated, food sources affected, and so on!
Pelosi has successfully blocked years of local and state efforts to “get the water turned on”! Why? The Pelosi family has invested multi-millions $’s in “Wind Energy” technology (GE & China) and, obviously, they are complicit in causing untold continuing human suffering to insure “readily available” acreage for future development. It is despicable! The Pelosi family first invested multi-millions in Texan Boone Pickens’ “Wind Energy” schemes in mid-2000′s.
While alternative energy development is important, “green” energy investment of tax-payers monies by BHO in Solyndra and other such unproven technology is criminal! Why? The Gulf Coast oil industries and thousands of “industry-related companies” have closed. Less than a fraction of the more than estimated 250,000+ jobs will most likely never be regained as rigs are bought and moved away from the Gulf!
The information above is not speculation! The facts about ther Pelosi family are accurate! Check them out! Plus, guess who was exempted from the “minimum wage” law passed 2008? San Fran Nan’s husband’s plantation farms in the Dominican Republic/Haiti!
Clean out DC’s “Corrupt-o-Crats” in 2012! Insist that investigations take place into the obstructionists tactics of Pelosi and Company who go to Congress for only personal gain! Disgusting!
Pelosi was going to “drain the swamp.” I guess it was for her to have more room to wallow around in it.
Michelle is about to put on her wakin shoes and get her bling on and start
trolling for money. Explains one of the most idiotic photo-ops of all time
Target they seem to think we are that stupid everyone talk about MO and pay no attention to the crimes being committed in the oh so transparent WH
I think she’s a decoy because she sure serves no other purpose.
Don’t forget other fun connections….. John Roos, a partner at the same firm as Stephen Spinner’s wife, was named ambassador to Japan. He raised a ton of money for Obama…
It all reminds me of the early NEA scandal that was ignored by most but Breitbart where they essentially used the promise of public funds to eh.. “entice” artists to make art that supported Obama’s health care reform plans.
Looks like a money laundering operation for the DNC!
Impreachment!
I have said for a long time that the Leftist Media will go down with the ship to protect their boy. The media projects onto Obama what it thinks of itself…that it is smart, worldly, cool, urban-hip. Things that we know they are not.
They will fight going after these stories as long as possible.
Remember how hard they went after Iran-Contra? The Fast & Furious is even worse because Americans have died….along with a bunch of Mexicans.
The Solyndra debacle is as close to money laundering as you can get….But they are resisting the coverage.
Sounds like the Chicago way.
Cronyism and corruption will lead to the demise of our nation if we don’t do something to curtail it.
Consider what just happened in a federal court in Texas. A Dallas business owner, who was involved in a civil dispute and paid millions of dollars to lawyers, and when he objected to their fees, they had a “friendly” judge seize all of his property, without any notice or hearing, and essentially ordered him to be an involuntary servant to the lawyers. The business owner has been under this “servant” order for 10 months and is prohibited from owning any possessions, prohibited from working, etc…
Here are some actual quotes, on the record, from the judge in this case:
THE COURT: “I’m telling you don’t screw with me. You are a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool to screw with a federal judge, and if you don’t understand that, I can make you understand it. I have the force of the Navy, Army, Marines and Navy behind me.”
THE COURT: “You realize that order is an order of the Court. So any failure to comply with that order is contempt, punishable by lots of dollars, punishable by possible jail, death”
http://www.lawinjustice.com has an explanation of this really disturbing case.. The frequency of instances like these seems to be increasing exponentially even though they get little media attention.
Van Jones has got to be in there somewhere.
So we have two scandals: green Solyn, baloney, and Fast and Furious. We have Obamacare and huge taxes-regs-spending. We have MSNBC lying with huge smears and extravagant charges. We have radical leftists like Piven talking about these loons in NYC and LA rioting to get us back to….what?? Oh, a new economy, a long good march like Mao. These commies are just sad but can damage America by brainwashing yutes as they did in the ’60′s. Will voters listen to this Liar in Chief and the MSM apologize for all his failed policies, scandals, and a foreign policy which disses our allies and loves our enemies like China and Iran?
Is this any different from what all administrations do to reward their money men and women? If so, is this the kind of issue that will stick to the President in what promises to be a campaign with no lack of bad news already attached to him?
Oh, and if anyone has a good paying Green Job for a moderate independent, let me know. I could use a big loan to fritter away before I file for bankruptcy.
boy, when ABC news is out front on a news story unflattering to the administration of dear leader, you can bet your arse there’s something big going on. combine that with the tireless efforts of liberal windbags in the press, to tell us all how “blown out of proportion” Solyndra is, I couldn’t be more certain that there is all sorts of malfeasance associated with this debacle. obama couldn’t be lamer, and progressives couldn’t be dumber, choosing simply to follow the most narcissistic candidate available, irrespective of experience, wisdom, skill, ethical compass, etc. can’t wait til the “green jobs” BS lands on this faux president’s roost. can’t wait to watch him continue to fall from grace.
Two Nobels, neither of them in Accounting or Finance. Whaddaya get?
THIS IS TYPICAL CHICAGO POLITICS, (I should know I live here), America should not be surprised. THIS is the machine that Barack Obama came from, and David Axelrod, and Rahm Emmanuel, Gibbs, Plouffe the rest of that whole gang; this scandal will only get bigger. THAT’S WHY I KNEW THE WHOLE HOPE AND CHANGE THING WAS WHALE SHT FROM THE START. Glad to see America wising up.
What happen to transparency, This Administration touted this when elected, although I did not vote for this man!!! It is frustrating to see my fellow Americans turn a blind eye to what Obama was linked to before he was elected let alone what we are now discovering! Makes what Nixon did seem very small by comparison. The main stream media has given Obama a pass for far too long and that is whom the public seems to gleen their info from.
Oh please stop. Bush and Cheney’s give aways to wealthy party supporters including the oil industry, Koch brothers, and agricultural tax cuts for millionaire and billionaire estates makes Solyndra look like a child’s piggy bank. Democrats did scream for special prosecutors against Dick Cheney and Bush but it never happened. How soon you forget.