The White House’s Solyndra game plan and that of its talking head and media enablers is now apparent and requires correction.
First, the notion that Solyndra failed because China subsidized their own solar companies is absurd: these companies only exist where their host governments are propping them up. Period.
Next, it is clear from administration emails that the White House’s message was not, as Dem talking heads and other apologists are now offering, ‘since you are approving this, we will schedule the visit’; it is instead, ‘since we are scheduling the visit, this will be approved.’
Although this is apparent throughout, one message particularly captures it:
“We have ended up with a situation of having to do rushed approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end of the week). We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews and have the approval set the date for the announcement rather than the other way around.” August 31, 2009, email between OMB and Terrell McSweeny of the Office of the Vice President, regarding “DOE Announcement.
This running governmental contracting scam makes the $600 toilet seat of the 1980s — which was bad, because, uh, it was the military — look pathetic. Obama’s green temporary jobs, by its own varying estimates, range in cost to the taxpayer from $355,555 (overall) to $479,000 (Solyndra) to $4.8 million if you remove the really temporary installation gigs. But that’s, um, ‘green’, so it’s not like the $600 toilet seat, at all.
Worse, after having shown the due diligence of the average Bernie Madoff investor desperate to leap on to a trendy ride their associates assured them was hot, the Obama administration is now rushing to emulate Madoff himself. The only twist on the analogy is that they are using you, the scheme’s old entrants — who in this version of Mr. Ponzi’s construct, never actually get paid off, but only his non-contributing buddies do — as its new, involuntary entrants .
In ignorance of the reality of their so-called ‘investment’ in companies that would not exist but-for politically directed wealth transfers, and which companies therefore will not exist once they burn through the transfer, leaving them bust or back for more, Team Obama are driving hard to rush out “the program’s remaining $9.3 billion“, and thereby beat a deadline in two weeks when their spigot is turned off as a matter of law (WaPo’s print headline, “Amid Solyndra probe, Energy Dept. moving millions in loans”, is more honest than the on-line “During Solyndra probe, Energy Dept. has to move billions in loans”. Has to? Nonsense?) . This is after rushing out another billion post-exposure of Solyndra in the past two weeks.
Finally, this informed recklessness is par for the course, and begs Congress to grasp how the Solyndra scandal calls for their (and possibly law enforcement’s) consideration of the larger disgrace. Eight times as candidate and president, Barack Obama cited Spain’s ‘green jobs’ policies as his model for redesigning the American economy. Yet, despite the developed world’s highest unemployment Spain was incurring crushing debt while chasing away investment, both through these very same ‘clean energy’ programs. For example, Spanish steel jobs ended up in Carroll County, Kentucky.
Follow the timeline. On March 20, 2009, Solyndra was offered its $535 million sweetheart deal . That same month the economic havoc caused by Spain’s energy schemes was detailed by academic researchers at King Juan Carlos University. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed the work as inaccurate, but President Obama promptly substituted Denmark, population five million, in his stump speech as the model for the American energy economy. Meanwhile he continued to promote Spanish-style programs.
In April 2010, a leaked Spanish government report confirmed the researchers’ findings. On May 12, 2010, Obama called Prime Minister Zapatero demanding Spain stem the risk of contagion by curbing its debt spree, materially driven by the same ‘clean energy’ policies. On May 21, Spain’s La Gacetta published a full-page story headlined “Spain admits the green economy sold to Obama is a disaster” (“es una ruina”). Knowing his model was collapsing, on May 26 Obama appeared at Solyndra hailing it as “the future”.
Ignoring disastrous results from a model Obama no longer instructed us to examine, he continues to this day to shovel ‘green stimulus’ millions out to similar ventures. Now, the administration is raiding the Pentagon’s budget to underwrite the schemes. We are witnessing a possibly unprecedented era of crony capitalism and squandering of taxpayer money, incurring massive debt to create known economic black holes.
That is the scandal. It is time to call the cops.
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