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Darrell Issa is a happy man. After flailing around for a while, he finally thinks he has a product to push, an example of Obama corruption, with the Solyndra story. There’s even another piece of it that has popped up in the form of LightSquared, a wireless startup which, according to allegations, was the subject of unfavorable testimony to Congress by Air Force Gen. William Shelton until the White House intimidated him into changing his view. Issa is ready to widen his investigation. Loan guarantee programs for clean energy have actually migrated to the subject of a potential government shutdown, with Republicans trying to cancel a program for hybrid vehicles to pay for disaster relief.
Republicans definitely think they have a winning hand by criticizing corruption in the clean energy realm. It’s a tailor-made Glenn Beck conspiracist rant where the corruption lines up with a philosophical view against climate change and a lucrative view in support of wealthy oil and gas company contributors over the clean energy industry. The government, you see, cannot “pick winners and losers” in the energy space. Can’t do it.
Unless those winners happen to be in Republican districts and states.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, supports loan guarantees as a step to build 100 new nuclear reactors [...]
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell … pressed Energy Secretary Steven Chu to save a uranium enrichment facility in western Kentucky run by USEC Inc. that does contract work for the federal government. USEC is looking to expand its business with the agency through a $2 billion loan guarantee for a new facility in Piketon, Ohio, but its application stalled before the DOE [...]
Mr. McConnell made two personal appeals in 2009, asking Energy Secretary Steven Chu to approve as much as $235 million in federal loans for a plant to build electric vehicles in Franklin, Ky.
“I hope you will realize the importance of such job creation to Kentucky,” Mr. McConnell said in a July 2009 memo supporting an application from Zap Motor Manufacturing.
Federal lobbying disclosure records show that Mr. McConnell’s support for the project came after Zap Motor hired a Kentucky-based lobbyist, Robert Babbage, who has been a frequent contributor to Mr. McConnell’s campaigns and boasts on his own Internet site about his close ties to Mr. McConnell.
And there’s plenty more where that came from, across the GOP. As it turns out, the entire energy sector is riddled with subsidies. Republicans have no opposition to these subsidies of any kind, as long as they benefit their districts or their donors. They may favor nuclear loan guarantees to electric car guarantees, but if it adds jobs in Kentucky, I think Mitch McConnell would drive a Tesla around Capitol Hill.
It so happens that more of the subsidies for oil and gas are prevalent today in these areas, so they are favored above the nascent renewable space. Removing all energy subsidies entirely may actually lead to a better future on net for greentech and renewables, considering how entrenched the fossil fuel industry is. But just one piece of the renewable space, the solar industry, is maturing rapidly, with over 100,000 jobs. Republicans will excoriate clean energy right up until someone tells them it can create thousands of jobs for their constituents.
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I couldn’t believe Issa went on TV and used the phrase, “The president and his cronies.”
That’s right down there with “You lie!”
Oh OK. I get it. Bad Republicans. Thanks. Would never have known that if it were not for the continual stories being front pages on firedoglake.
Oh, wait a minute. Getting played?
Why are the Solyndra execs asserting the 5th Amendment?
I read somewhere that the Solyndra loan was approved in 2007, the Bush administration, for those with short memories. Yves Smith has some interesting comments on Solyndra. Her take is basically, hey, where’s the fire, it was a valid loan and some of these attempts fail. That’s the way it goes in VC land. When you’re throwing seed money on the fields, some of it takes and some doesn’t. There was a really fascinating piece on just this subject in the bio-med field comparing the NHS research funding with the Hughes foundation research funding: http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2293699
Wow David we can expect the repubs to use this as a way to go at obama, but all you show is that they are both corrupt. That said Obama has a lot to answer about this and the executives at solyndra pleading the 5th does not bode well for him. Add in fast and furious, lightsquared, rezko etc, and what we have is more proof that O is just another crook
Here we have another example of how we fuck ourselves: Republicans (Democrats) do the same shitty things as Democrats (Republicans) so stop bitching!
Well, fuck that!. People, it’s OUR FUCKING MONEY they’re pissing away. What the hell difference does it make which party does it? And for that matter, do we really have 2 parties?
The program for providing loans was started under Bush. These loans were suppose to go through scrutiny for probability of success and Solyndra was initially turned down. Obama later pressured the loan through in 2009 and they went bankrupt in 2011. So the Solyndra fiasco is owned by Obama.
Do you have a source for that or, like me, going from memory?
Exactly! This should be investigated.
Along with about a gazillion other things.
I’m going off memory but here goes:
Now this timeline has a clear bent against republicans
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/09/13/317594/timeline-bush-administration-solyndra-loan-guarantee/
But, anyways, here are the relevant facts:
The loan guarantee program was initiated under GWB.
“January 2009: In an effort to show it has done something to support renewable energy, the Bush Administration tries to take Solyndra before a DOE credit review committee before President Obama is inaugurated. The committee, consisting of career civil servants with financial expertise, remands the loan back to DOE “without prejudice” because it wasn’t ready for conditional commitment.”
Interestingly enough, this whole statement is loaded with political messaging yet has no links to any evidence. Whether GWB tried to push the loan through or not, the site claims (again anti GWB bent) but provides no evidence for. Regardless, the loan gets turned down for whatever reason also not provided. Later in 2009 when Obama assumed presidency, the loan is approved for reasons which are not stated. At this point, it could be simple reevaluation or political pressuring. We’ll never really know, but Obama was certainly touting his horn about the whole deal.
The whole green jobs thing is so phony baloney. Obama’s yada yada kept upping the numbers of jobs, till I was joking that it was actually an auction, “Do I hear 600,000, 650,000?” The best thing most people, myself included, could do is properly seal up our homes. Old technology, to say the least, but extremely effective. There’s so many ways already well known to cut waste, in almost any field you can think of, but we’re seduced by the magic bullet fantasy spinning of politicians on the make. We have the means in hand to make enormous differences, but we’re mostly not doing it; we’re content to imagine there’s some wonderful modern marvel just around the corner that’s going to save us. With small effort on our parts. Easy, I think, is the appealing fantasy.
Do you know, I would guess you do, how much energy is spent on the empire? My god!
But there is NO help what-so-ever for clean energy like Bruce DePalma’s machine, or Edwin Gray’s machine, or Stan Myers’ machine. That’s because once you get em up and running, there is no more money to be made by Wall Street and the Big Oil, Gas and Coal industries. We have to just look at history and what J.P.Morgan, George Westinghouse, and the Rockefellers did to Nikola Tesla just when he was about to deliver FREE ENERGY to the people of the world. There is no push for FREE ENERGY. Why? I can understand why big oil and gas/coal doesn’t want free energy, but why aren’t the people out here who are trying to pay the light bill, or fill up the gasoline tank in their cars, or power their shop and keep falling behind, why aren’t WE asking about these FREE ENERGY technologies. These machines WORK! And the news has been suppressed. They don’t want you to know. But one day Dylan Rattigan said the words FREE ENERGY on MSNBC and you should have seen the look on the face of his guest. It was like he was saying with his eyes, “We aren’t supposed to talk about THAT!”
Oh, DR. Steven Greer briefed the Clinton administration on some of these technologies and was told that the President couldn’t take that on because he would “end up like Jack Kennedy.” I understand that Dr. Greer has also briefed the Obama administration. Still nothing but silence. But I’m not surprised, after all Obama is a Wall Streeter thru and thru.
Let’s not forget the $308 million for House Whip Kevin McCarthy’s “clean coal” project west of Bakersfield. The project, originally led by a consortium of GE, BP and Rio Tinto, involves construction of the Elk Hills Hydrogen Energy California Project (HECA), a mid-sized 250MW plant to demonstrate capture and sequestering of 2 million tons of carbon a year. (Note: What the plant is supposed to run on is not exactly clear “Petcoke to Hydrogen (flexible fuel)” and the HECA site doesn’t seem to work, so they may have just taken the money and ran. Thank you, America!)