Community | November 10, 2011 | 65 comments

"Solyndragate" Will the scandal sink the Obama re election campaign?

source: http://www.aei.org/article/104134?gclid=CNjAgYGnrKwCFQRShwod1Cyv-g

congoboy
One factor favoring President Obama's re-election, according to a recent article by political scientist Alan Lichtman, is the absence of scandal in his administration.

Lichtman may have spoken too soon.

The reason can be capsulized in a single word: Solyndra.

That's the name of a company that manufactured solar panels in Fremont, Calif. (which voted 71 percent for Obama in 2008).

Solyndra was the first company to receive a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy as part of the 2009 stimulus package. This wasn't small potatoes. The loan guarantee was for $535 million.
It was, Vice President Biden said, "exactly what the Recovery Act was all about." Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winner, said it would help "spark a new revolution that will put Americans to work." It was part of the Obama administration's program to create so-called "green jobs," which we were told were the key to future economic growth.

The beauty part is that a loan guarantee doesn't require the federal government to shell out cash unless and until the recipient defaults on the loan. If the company's business plan works out, the loan costs the government virtually nothing.

Obama paid a visit to Solyndra on a trip to California in May 2010. "It is here that companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter, more prosperous future," he said. Hailing the green jobs loan guarantee program, he went on, "We can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra."

The White House even prepared a video about the company. The Solyndra personnel sound articulate and intelligent and seem to be really nice guys.

Unfortunately, there were other things going on at Solyndra for those with eyes to see. As my Washington Examiner colleague David Freddoso reported, an audit of the company performed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers two months before Obama's visit noted that the firm had accumulated losses of $558 million in its five years of existence.

The auditor noted that Solyndra "has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders' deficit that, among other factors, raises substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern."
http://www.aei.org/article/104134?gclid=CNjAgYGnrKwCFQRShwod1Cyv-g
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    Joe Biden,  Scandal,  grasping at straws,  SolyndraGate. Obama administration
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65 comments // "Solyndragate" Will the scandal sink the Obama re election campaign? // Video

  • PressCore
    • -1
      PressCore  

    • Bozobama has scandles. Realy bad ones too. The sparse few that
      have surfaced have been ignored. And the evil ones covered up to
      keep his immage appearing clean. The shock value the Republican
      NeoCons have assaulted our sensabilities with has never ended. So
      the focus of fear has been centered on how bad things will get with
      them around. The ass media is so lame, they have regular blackouts
      on the most important news that needs to surface. Since they fawn
      over him, they have too much cognitive dissonance invested in con
      tinuing to believe in his election platform to expose anything counter
      productive to their phony aganda. What we're witnessing, though it
      might be subtle to notice is that things are so bad now, what's worse
      has less shock value. And what's bad comparitively looks amost good.

    • 7 months ago
  • lifestudentno83
  • congoboy
  • lifestudentno83
    • 0
      lifestudentno83  
    • congoboy:

      "This" does not equate to "all". Perhaps you should increase your reading comprehension and not jump to conclusions?

      That said, this is a far less grievous scandal than torture or waterboarding. It's even less of a scandal than sexual harassment or hunting at a place with a racist name.

    • 7 months ago
  • congoboy
  • lifestudentno83
    • +1
      lifestudentno83  
    • congoboy:

      So, instead of being upset over crimes against humanity, apparent racism, or sexual harassment you are pissed off about one bad investment? Right, THAT makes sense.

      By that logic, you should be angrier at the Fed and the Banks. They make worse investments and we have to pay for it.

    • 7 months ago
  • congoboy
    • 0
      congoboy  
    • lifestudentno83:

      no my friend. if you have followed my posts long enough you would know that this is just the latest in a long line of scandals and corruption by the current regime that the left ignores and i expose

    • 7 months ago
  • Paratus
    • -1
      Paratus  

    • The Obummer administration is ignoring Congressional subpoena for information in this case. It is nothing new that the boy king thinks he is above the people or the law. This loan never should have been made but due to political connections it was. The very things that libs whine about if a Republican does it is now dealt with as "big deal, shit happens" (thanks to Saladin for his truthful take of this which pretty much proves my point).
      This gangster administration needs to be gone. The sooner the better.

    • 7 months ago
  • Saladin
    • +2
      Saladin  
    • Paratus:

      It *isn't* a big deal, and plenty of Republicans were onboard with this idea too.

      Now, no bid contracts for companies like Halliburton who wasted in money in excess of 40 billion dollars, or 12 billion dollars in CASH gone missing from an AC-130 in Iraq, THAT is fucking criminal behavior.

      You losers just latch your claws onto whatever you can get because you're obligated to hate this president no matter what he does. Which is not to say he doesn't suck at various things, but that's not why you hate him.

      Hell, Republicans should love Obama. He's less left-leaning than Bill Clinton. He's practically Ronald Reagan in terms of actual policy decisions.

    • 7 months ago
  • mitekillem
    • 0
      mitekillem  
    • Paratus:

      -You guys really don't want to go there.
      Between Reagan, GHW Bush, and GWBush, Republican Congressmen, Reps, State Governors, etc, who've done so much worse than to invest money into an alternative energy company, to help our economy get off of foreign oil and compete with Germany and China in Green Energy technologies.

      I mean, it's like he Told the country that IRAQ had weapons of mass destruction, spent millions of dollars, destroyed a country, killed people in the process, lost billions of dollars, lost billions more in unpaid-for deficit spending to upkeep this war, and still turned up no WMDs of proof of such.

      And those are the skimpy details of one event.
      Imagine the field day I could have collecting facts and littering this board with pages, and pages of things that would shame anyone looking up to the current GOP criminals we have an office, and those whom recently served. -And that's leaving out the sex scandals.

      So before you go sinking you're cute little puppy teeth into a dead lion, you might want to take a look around. Because this is the lions den.

    • 7 months ago
  • congoboy
  • congoboy
    • -1
      congoboy  
    • Saladin:

      not too unlike the lefts obligation to hate bush, regardless. its perpetual and subjective my friend. bill clinton would be a breath of fresh air compared to obamas failed leadership and no one can be compared to reagan, americas last great leader and one of a kind

    • 7 months ago
  • Saladin
    • 0
      Saladin  
    • congoboy:

      Oh please, Reagan was blunder after blunder. So he made some funny jokes and people liked him, he was still a god damn idiot and a criminal. A 1/3 of our current debt level is directly a result of Reagan's policies, most of which did little or nothing to help the country. We won't even get into Iran/Contra or shady dealings with the hostage crisis.

      Moreover, I had no obligation to hate Bush. In fact, I would very much have liked for him to not have been a fuckup. As you'll notice, the entire left wing was fully behind him after 9/11. The same could *not* be said about he right-wing, who have openly admitted that if Gore was president during 9/11 they would have used it as an opportunity to slam him into the ground.

    • 7 months ago
  • congoboy
  • Saladin
    • 0
      Saladin  
    • congoboy:

      No, they *wouldn't* have, and that's the point I'm trying to make here.

      The Right Wing Political Machine is just that, a machine. It is not interested in pragmatism, circumstance or even politics it seems. If a Republican had not been in office that day, FOX News and Karl Rove and all those goons would *not* have stood behind their leader, they would have thrashed him to pieces.

      Liberals, by comparison, were astoundingly cooperative even as Bush bought Bin Laden's family plane tickets out of the country. We were willing to put aside our political differences to fight a common enemy.

      Compare that to modern Republicans, who threatened to default the fucking country if they didn't get what they wanted.

      There's a disconnect here you're not seeing. These parties are not the same. Even if you think they're equally bad or even that Democrats are worse, it's a matter of fact that Republican tactics are divisive, damaging and dangerous. Period.

    • 6 months ago
  • congoboy
    • 0
      congoboy  
    • Saladin:

      the tough part is deciding whats best for the country and who has the best ideas to bring that about. both the left and the right make the claim. so if thats the case whose to say that it wasnt democrats who were willing to allow the default to get their way. its so very subjective and really depends on your belief system. but i would agree that there are plenty detractors both left and right who are only out for their own personal best interests

    • 6 months ago
  • Saladin
    • 0
      Saladin  
    • congoboy:

      I'll agree that a lot of it is subjective, but plenty of it isn't either.

      The notion that Republicans would risk a default and, therefore, a global economic crisis to "cut the deficit" when they had just approved the Bush tax cuts again is not ideologically consistent behavior. That's insane, and that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about.

      There's always going to be disagreement about what the best direction for the country is. But certain things are factual, and there comes a point where if you don't realize that, you have no business running anything. Let alone the country.

    • 6 months ago
  • Saladin
    • +2
      Saladin  

    • If half a billion dollars is a scandal, then what do you call the half a trillion in bogus tax evasions Republicans have been advocating for.

      The company went down, big deal, shit happens.

    • 7 months ago
  • congoboy
  • Varex_Sythe
    • +2
      Varex_Sythe  

    • Given the post that wakeuppeople put on here with the debunking of a lot of the crap claims made about "Solyndragate," I don't think it should sink the Obama re election campaign.

      But before that, I still would have said no, only because the people who we currently have as the GOP runners are a joke. Given the people, and the behavior of said people during the GOP debates, who are currently running to run against Obama in 2012, Obama could probably kill a bus full of U.S. kids with a misguided cruise missile and he'd still have a pretty good shot.

    • 7 months ago
  • congoboy
    • -2
      congoboy  
    • Varex_Sythe:

      there are a lot of disgruntled former obama supporters out there, especially with the independents. sure theres a chance obama could win a second term but i think you are way too over confident.

    • 7 months ago
  • zoomy1
    • 0
      zoomy1  
    • congoboy:

      On this we agree. Overconfidence is the killer.
      The war between good and evil never ends.
      ( notice how I didn't say who was which. that's out of grudging respect to you.)
      Us Lefty Liberals aren't all monsters.=)

    • 7 months ago
  • congoboy
  • crabbyoldguy
  • zoomy1
    • +1
      zoomy1  

    • CONGOBOY! Hey dude I missed you last night. I thought for sure you'd be gloating over the big Teaparty upset at the polls......Oh, right, that was last year.
      Well, keep on muckraking, who knows you might find something that sticks.
      Solyndragate?...like the nice lady on CNN said,...Seriously??? (really?)

      Yes yes. I know, i'm the one gloating. I guess I'm only human. ..(really!)..Ok, mostly, kinda, sorta.

    • 7 months ago
  • congoboy
    • -2
      congoboy  
    • zoomy1:

      i dont gloat zoomz. i have my political persuasions and candidates that i support. but at the end of the day i realize that theres not much we can do and regardless to whos in office our lives change very little

    • 7 months ago
  • AJILIVIZION
  • congoboy
  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  

    • http://www.kansascity.com/2011/11/09/3256775/fossil-fuel-users-subsidies-six.htm...

      "Fossil-fuel consumers worldwide received about six times the government subsidies given to the renewable-energy industry, according to the chief adviser to oil-importing nations.

      State spending to cut retail prices of gasoline, coal and natural gas rose 36 percent to $409 billion as global energy costs increased, the Paris-based International Energy Agency said Wednesday in its World Energy Outlook. Aid for biofuels, wind power and solar energy rose 10 percent to $66 billion.

      The figures don’t include subsidies for nuclear power or to producers of fossil fuels.

      Fossil fuels meet about 80 percent of world energy demand, but their subsidies are “creating market distortions that encourage wasteful consumption,” the agency said. “The costs of subsidies to fossil fuels generally outweigh the benefits.”

      Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/11/09/3256775/fossil-fuel-users-subsidies-six.htm...

    • 7 months ago
  • congoboy
    • -3
      congoboy  
    • JanforGore:

      dont know about you but with the price per gallon i for one am not consuming wastefully. sure we need alternatives, most can agree. but we need to move forward wisely and methodically one baby step at a time

    • 7 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +3
      JanforGore  
    • Image

    • http://current.com/technology/93485795_tv-media-hypes-solyndra-while-ignoring-ke...

      More rhetoric thrown out by interests that are using this to try to sink renewable energy as a whole. BP is still in business after destroying the GULF and getting a free pass and you are whining about this? Obama is even allowing MORE drilling. No scandal there though, right? You show your true colors here. As if you give a damn about "scandals" after all we saw Bush and his vipers get away with. I may not agree with Obama and think the Keystone XL/State Dept.relationship is a bigger scandal which I notice you won't mention, but this is just diversionary BS.

      http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute

      "In August 2011, AEI President Arthur C. Brooks spoke at a "Leadership Dinner" sponsored by Reynolds American at the 38th Annual Meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).[2]

      ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) They fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. It might be right. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door. Learn more at ALECexposed.org.

      Iraq

      More recently, it has emerged as one of the leading architects of the Bush administration's foreign policy. AEI rents office space to the Project for the New American Century, one of the leading voices that pushed the Bush administration's plan for "regime change" through war in Iraq. AEI reps have also aggressively denied that the war has anything to do with oil."

    • 7 months ago
  • CreditFigaro
  • congoboy
  • JanforGore
  • congoboy
    • -1
      congoboy  
    • JanforGore:

      possibly, but it takes one to know one. recognizing and admitting our own faults is the first step. secondly it is our obligation as humans to become better through self realization and moving forward to improve ourselves.

    • 7 months ago
  • congoboy
  • CreditFigaro
  • congoboy
  • CreditFigaro
  • congoboy
    • 0
      congoboy  
    • CreditFigaro:

      i didnt say superior although since the worlds infrastructure and economy is based on fossil it makes the most sense as we improve technology and research in the alternatives. we cant just suddenly quit drilling and do away with our easiest resource and go totally green. the world would collapse even faster than it is

    • 6 months ago
  • CreditFigaro
    • 0
      CreditFigaro  
    • congoboy:

      Do you consider the environmental impacts to be inconsequential and without cost?

      Even if you do, what about the fact that the resource requires specific material? Why not pay the small premium for renewables in order to avoid volatility in fossil fuel markets?

      I'm not advocating a sudden stop to drilling, but the argument that we shouldn't move towards renewables as quickly as possible is groundless, as far as I can tell.

    • 6 months ago
  • WakeUpPeople
  • Varex_Sythe
  • wolfess
    • +2
      wolfess  
    • WakeUpPeople:

      Interesting article -- thank you. It appears poor fox-so-not-the-news and their paid troll (Congoboy) can't face the reality that Solyndra got its start with the shrub. Between fox-so-not-the-news, congo, and the koch[roaches] telling the truth is optional.

    • 7 months ago
  • congoboy
  • wolfess
  • congoboy
  • wolfess
  • timelord999
  • wolfess
  • congoboy
  • congoboy
  • wolfess
    • 0
      wolfess  
    • congoboy:

      That means nothing to me -- my husband is a disabled vet so we both get our healthcare for FREE! Thnx for paying taxes so I can live quite nicely off of YOURS!
      p.s -- we don't pay taxes b/c we don't have an 'official/taxable income' and even our property taxes are paid by the good people who do still pay taxes. Thnx ever so much :-)!!!

    • 7 months ago
  • congoboy
  • congoboy
  • tverdell
  • alovejoy
  • congoboy
    • -4
      congoboy  
    • alovejoy:

      well we're not talking about your blind love affair. this scandal goes well beyond that. but as is typical with the left there will be many who will remain supportive regardless of political realities. but fortunately they will not be large enough to re elect the loser in office

    • 7 months ago
  • tverdell
  • zoomy1
  • congoboy
  • congoboy
  • JohnA
  • CreditFigaro
    • +1
      CreditFigaro  

    • Half a bil is a decent thing to get concerned about.

      What this is is a mistake. No one would have wanted this company to go under.

      This isn't fraudulent.... but

      "The auditor noted that Solyndra "has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders' deficit that, among other factors, raises substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.""

      As an accountant, it bugs the snot out of me that the government would give a fat loan guarantee to a company with a qualified audit opinion.

      They could have given the money to me, and I'd have done a better job!

    • 7 months ago
  • congoboy
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