Just-revealed emails confirm that the Obama administration, and the president himself, have misled Americans about the White House's role in fast-tracking a $400 million "stimulus" loan guarantee to a politically-connected "green energy" firm. If you followed the Solyndra saga, this will come as no surprise to you -- nor will the fact that Obama has been spreading misinformation about his White House's culpability in the matter. Revealing Politics boils this scandal down into a digestible one minute clip, the crux of which is the smoking-gun email that directly contradicts Obama's smirking denial that "politics" had anything to do with Abound Solar's taxpayer-funded windfall:
"These are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy; they have nothing to do with politics."
In emails unearthed by Colorado-based reporter Todd Shepard, one DOE official overseeing the loan program warns another that they'd better get the ball rolling on the Abound Solar taxpayer cash infusion: "You better let him know the WH wants to move Abound forward." The "him" appears to be a Treasury Department advisor connected to the process. The same initial DOE Senior Credit Advisor later refers to the White House's meddling as the "transaction pressure under which we are all now operating." See the raw emails here and here. Mary Katharine Ham puts this story into further context:
Abound Solar, which counts major Obama bundler Pat Stryker among its early backers, is now under criminal investigation for misleading investors. It went bankrupt in mid-2012, leaving employees out of work and taxpayers with the bill. The company had gone through $70 million of a federal loan guarantee worth $400 million. It was supposed to create 1,500 permanent jobs, according to the president’s 2010 announcement of the loan.
Say, were this company's balance sheets packed with red flags prior to taxpayer cash being doled out? You bet. Replace "Solyndra" with "Abound," and "George Kaiser" with "Pat Styker," and it looks as though we have another Washington-engineered, utterly corrupt "green jobs" failure. It doesn't take a great leap to suggest that this loan was all about politics. But at the very least, we know that Obama's contention on Denver television last week that the deal had "nothing to do" with political considerations is patently, verifably false. Parting thought: Guess what's one of the central elements of Obama's cobbled-together, last-minute second term "agenda." You guessed it -- more taxpayer-funded "green energy" adventurism. Which deep-pocketed Democrat donors would stand to benefit next time?
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