Let's start with cronyism and corruption. We have previously discussed the Obama administration's relentless use of cronyism to further Obama's political fortunes at the expense of the American taxpayer.
The administration approved a half billion dollar loan to solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, even though PriceWaterhouse, the Office Of Budget Management, White House officials, the Treasury Secretary, the head of the President's Economic Council, and other informed sources warned, ahead of granting the loan, that the company was unlikely to survive or flourish.
Within two years after granting the loan, the company went under and the FBI, Congress, and other government organizations are investigating potentially criminal behavior. Solyndra's top executives have claimed their fifth amendment rights in front of Congressional hearings in order to protect themselves in any subsequent criminal actions.
Specific disgraces from the Solyndra disaster include:
* The Department of Energy likely broke the law by subordinating the Federal loan to the investments of private investors, a clear violation of the loan program. This subordination included putting the interests of a foundation with strong ties to a major Obama fundraiser, George Kaiser, ahead those of the American taxpayer. This cronyism subordination will make it impossible for the government to recoup any of its loan since the assets of the bankrupt company will likely fall short of satisfying even the private investors that were moved ahead of the taxpayer.
* In a circular conflict of interest twist, an Obama appointed advisor to the Energy Department, Steven Spinner, was a major driver of approving the Solyndra Federal loan even though his wife worked for Solyndra's law firm. A New York Times article from early October discussed Solyndra-related emails: "The emails show Spinner discussed the pending final decision often with Solyndra officials, Energy Department colleagues, and the White House budget office.
*An LA Times article from September 26, 2011 quoted a person who was involved with these discussions as saying, "It was completely predictable that there would be a colossal failure among the bets." I assume the bets included giving a half a billion dollar loan guarantee to Solyndra without doing proper due diligence.
* Numerous news sources have reported that California-based Solyndra donated $7,500 to the California Democratic Party and company employees had also contributed more than $20,000 to Democratic candidates.
But solar panels are not the only source of Obama's alternative energy capitalism cronyism. Comparable cronyism, waste, and stench is also prevalent in the Obama administration's support of alternative auto technology.
According to an ABC News report, Fisker Motors is a Finland based automotive company that is working to develop electric cars. Unfortunately, two years ago the Obama administration approved a taxpayer backed loan for $529 million for this Finnish company to help with their technology development.
Why U.S. taxpayer dollars went to back a government loan to a Finnish auto company should have every American up in arms, especially considering how fragile and desperate our domestic car industry was. However, since then, the following distressing situations have arisen:
* The first line of cars from Fisker is being assembled in a rural Finland auto plant owned by a another Finish company, Valmet.
* The reason given for building the U.S. financed cars in the Finland boondocks, according to the Fisker owner and founder, Henrik Fisker, is that: “There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle. They don’t exist here.”
* This situation arose despite the fact that Vice President Joe Biden hyped the loan as a way to create thousands of American manufacturing jobs. Two years after the half billion dollar loan and risk, no U.S. Jobs have been created beyond some preliminary engineering work but no manufacturing jobs.
* Fisker went on to say: "We're not in the business of failing; we're in the business of winning. So we make the right decision for the business. That's why we went to Finland."
* According to ABC News, Fisker is more than a year behind in rolling out its $97,000 luxury electric vehicle. Only forty units of this luxury model have been made and only two of the forty have actually been sold.
* The ultimate objective of the Federal loan to the Finnish company was to get a viable, low cost electric car developed but two years after the loan was approved, no one outside of the company has even said an artist's conception of what this car might look like.
* Joe Biden still believes that the company will eventually build tens of thousands of electric cars at a closed down GM factory. However, a General Accounting Office review found: "DOE cannot be assured that the projects are on track to deliver the vehicles as agreed. It also means that U.S. taxpayers do not know whether they are getting what they paid for through the loans."
*The Department of Energy has also invested almost another half a billion taxpayer dollars with a loan to another electric car manufacturer, Tesla Motors. SEC filings show that Tesla has never had a profitable quarter and has no experience in mass auto production. It eventually wants to “mass produce” an electric car that costs about $57,000.
Seems like another Solyndra. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, if not billions, put at risk with start up companies that could not raise enough capital from the private investment market, an investment market that is run by people who actually know what they are doing from a venture capital perspective. Why would the Federal government be so careless with our money? Easy question to answer if you delve into the ABC report:
* One of Fisker's biggest financial supporters, records show, is the California venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr, a California billionaire, hosted President Obama at a February dinner for high-tech executives at his secluded estate south of San Francisco.
* Doerr and Kleiner Perkins executives have contributed more than $1 million to Federal political causes and campaigns over the last two decades, primarily supporting Democrats.
* Doerr serves on Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
* Former Democratic Vice President Al Gore is another Kleiner Perkins senior partner.
* A former Tesla board member, Steve Westly, is an Obama campaign donation bundler who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the President in 2008 and for his 2012 re-election campaign.
* The Westly Group was also a financial supporter of Tesla Motors until Tesla went public in 2010, and Westly continues to back the company.
* Tesla's founder and CEO, Elon Musk, is a major political contributor who has primarily backed Democrats, including Obama.
* According to published reports, another Tesla investor is Nick Pritzker, a donor to Obama and a cousin of Penny Pritzker, the national finance chair of Obama's 2008 campaign.
What a surprise, just like Solyndra, Obama cronies and supporters get free use of taxpayer money. In return, Obama and Biden and other Democrats get campaign re-election funds and support. Billons of taxpayer dollars doled out to political buddies in return for thousands of dollars in campaign donations. Not a good deal for the country, especially since the companies getting the taxpayer wealth have proven incapable of providing products to the market that benefit Americans.
But the cronyism and favoritism in alternative energy does not end with these car companies and Solyndra. Consider just a sampling of other Obama administration conflicts of interest:
* In late September, the Department of Energy approved a $737 million loan guarantee to a company Solarserve that is working on a solar plant in Nevada. Given Obama's history of cronyism with Solyndra, Fisker, and Telsa, it should come as no surprise that this project was also infected with cronyism. Turns out that the brother-in-law of Democrat Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Ronald Pelosi, is second in command at the primary energy investment fund that backs the Solarserve effort. Surprise, surprise.
* The Department of Energy also recently granted a $135 million loan guarantee to a wind power company, Brookfield Asset Management. For the past two years, the company has been represented by the lobbying firm called Heather Podesta and Partners, LLC. If the name Podesta sounds familiar, it should be. Heather Podesta, a top election campaign fundraiser for Obama, is married to Tony Podesta who is the brother of John Podesta who has served long and loyally in Obama's past political efforts. Disgusting conflict of interest.
* It seems to never end. News reports indicate that the Department of Energy handed out another Federal loan guarantee to another solar company in September, this one worth $1.37 billion, to BrightSource energy. This company wants to build the largest solar power plant in the world. A former board member of the company, John Bruson, is Obama's nominee for Commerce Department secretary.
Cronyism and corruption go hand in hand. Cronyism corrupts the decision making process of government which is supposed to use taxpayer wealth in the most efficient way possible. By misdirecting taxpayer wealth to favored political and campaign friends via cronyism decision making, that efficiency is lost and waste ensues. It is not only the wasting of taxpayer dollars but also the lost opportunity for either better government decisions or taxpayers themselves to use those dollars in more economically beneficial ways.
But corruption can exist without cronyism. Consider a recent Associated Press report:
* A major election campaign donor to President Barack Obama has been accused of defrauding a businessman and impersonating a bank official, creating new headaches for Obama's re-election campaign as it deals with the questionable history of another top supporter.
* The New York donor, Abake Assongba, and her husband, have given more than $50,000 to Obama's re-election effort this year alone, according to government tracking records.
* Assongba is also defending herself in a civil court case in Florida, where she's accused of scamming more than $650,000 to help build a multimillion-dollar home in Florida for herself.
When potential criminals are donating to your election campaign, the stench of conflict of interest and the potential for lenient prosecution is always present.
This instance of corruption comes on the heels of the Obama administration returning tens of thousands of dollars from Jon Corzine, a former Democratic U.S. Senator and former governor of New Jersey. Corzine may have been involved in embezzling over $1 billion of client funds when he was in charge of the bankrupt financial services firm, MF Global.
But corruption can take many forms including unnecessarily hiding secrets from voters. In a major slip of the tongue, speaking to outgoing Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Seoul, South Korea, on March 26, and not realizing he was in front of a live microphone, President Obama made it clear that he will exhibit more “flexibility” in accommodating Russian objections to the U.S. expanding its missile defense capabilities after he is re-elected.
What does that mean? Does it mean he has a secret plan that will be conducive to the Russian leadership but not to the American voting public? Is that why he needs to postpone his plans until after the election? A non-corrupt leader in a democracy would be upfront with his constituents with all of his plans, he should not be saying one thing and planning another because of negative political fallout. That corrupts the voting and democracy principles of this country.
A different type of corruption raised its ugly head last week when it was widely reported that the General Services Administration (GSA) entity of the Federal government had blown well over $800,000 of taxpayer money on a lavish Las Vegas conference, a conference at which some members made jokes about wasting taxpayer money. Later reports include the following, more detailed parts of this corruption of taxpayer wealth:
* The GSA developed an employee awards program that spent more than $438,000 over three years, far exceeding the agency's per-gift limit of $99 per gift, according Congressional investigators.
* Investigators for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said the "Hats Off Program" initially gave out items of nominal value. Over time, the awards became much more expensive iPods, digital cameras, GPS devices and other electronics.
* The GSA inspector general found that about 40 iPods with an estimated value of $8,000 were reported stolen. Further investigation revealed some 115 of the devices valued at more than $20,000 were unaccounted for and may have also been stolen.
* In a corruption within a corruption, it appears that the top valued awards went to the people involved in administering the program.
* As a result of the lavish, $820,000 conference in Las Vegas conference in 2010, the head of the agency resigned, two deputies were fired and other employees were suspended. The Transportation panel and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are just starting investigations of the agency's potential other wasteful spending.
*Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the Transportation panel, said, "The Hats Off award program degenerated into a taxpayer funded giveaway where employees handed out iPods to their office buddies for almost any reason. Not surprisingly, the inspector general's report identified the supervisors who ran the Hats Off store as the biggest winners of taxpayer swag."
* The Congressman added that the GSA awarded a regional commissioner responsible for the Las Vegas conference and the excessive awards a $9,000 cash bonus AFTER the commissioner received inspector general briefings on both the conference and the Hats Off Program.
Cronyism and corruption. Government employees wasting taxpayer money for their own rewards and parties. Campaign donors getting free taxpayer grants and loans for their own failed projects and companies. Campaign donors that are very possibly white collar criminals. Taxpayer money wasted on ill-planned, ill-managed, and just ill alternative energy efforts of the President's friends and supporters.
But the taxpayer insults do not end there, just at cronyism and corruption. Consider a perfect "Come on, man" instance of government idiocy. Late February, news articles reported that the U.S. taxpayer is funding the construction of a new soccer field at the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The cost of one soccer field: $750,000.
This is a facility that the President campaigned to close in 2008 but three and a half years later we are no closer to that objective. Rather than shut down the facility and give the detainees their day in court, we are now investing hundreds of thousands of dollars to make their life easier and more pleasant, in addition to the daily expense of keeping the facility open.
Come on, man. Close the entire prison facility and save the millions of annual expense dollars for the taxpayers. Continuing to imprison people without their day in court and building what has to be a lavish soccer facility at a cost of $750,000 (a soccer field construction should consist of a bulldozer leveling some soil, planting some grass, adding some paint lines, and putting up two nets, certainly not worth $750,000) is worthy of a "come on, man."
And while they are shutting down the Guantanamo facility, maybe the President and the rest of the political class should also shut down the corruption and cronyism that pervades and erodes our democracy every day.
"We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:
http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/
The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.
The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/
No comments:
Post a Comment