Reportar MensajeAnalysis: Energy Secretary Chu likely to survive Solyndra
(Even after stealing billions from taxpayers)
By Roberta Rampton and Ayesha Rascoe
Attribution: Eric Allie, Caglecartoons.com
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Energy Secretary Steven Chu is taking the heat for government decisions on Solyndra, but he is unlikely to take the fall for taxpayer losses on a $535 million loan guarantee to the failed solar company.
Chu will likely keep his job, unless damning new details come to light in several parallel investigations into Solyndra.
Chu faced about five hours of grilling on Thursday from Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce committee about Solyndra. By most accounts, he held his own.
Chu took responsibility for Solyndra but stood firm that his staff did their homework on the loan. He said falling prices for solar panels drove the company into bankruptcy and were to blame for taxpayer losses.
He unequivocally said he was not influenced by Solyndra investor George Kaiser, a donor to President Barack Obama's campaign.
Some lawmakers, who described the loan as rushed and poorly monitored, have questioned whether Chu should step down.
But quitting now would hand Republicans a political victory before the 2012 presidential elections while doing little to end the controversy over Solyndra, once held up by Obama as a model for creating jobs through green energy.
"I don't think there was any kind of 'smoking-gun' type question-and-answer that came out of the session," said Salo Zelermyer, who was a senior counsel at the Energy Department during President George W. Bush's administration.
Chu's testimony does not end the scrutiny. If new information emerges that casts a poor light on Energy Department decisions it could create a political scenario where he could be asked to fall on his sword, said Zelermyer.
The Energy Department's Inspector General -- an internal but independent watchdog -- is investigating Solyndra in tandem with the FBI, which raided the company in September.
The timing of that review is unknown, but if it holds the Energy Department responsible for poor decisions, that could add to pressure on Chu to depart, said Zelermyer, now with Bracewell & Giuliani, a lobbying and law firm.
The White House commissioned an independent report from Herb Allison, a former investment banker, on the department's entire loan portfolio of $35.9 billion, due in late December.
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Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not.~Jeremiah 5:21
A negative report also could weigh on Chu.
Republican lawmakers eager to keep an Obama embarrassment in the headlines have also promised to continue their probe.
"I don't know if anyone's job should be at risk over Solyndra, but in this political environment that's always an issue," said Dan Kammen, an energy professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
"BLAST" E-MAILS
Solyndra is a regular feature in "blast" e-mails sent to reporters covering the 2012 presidential campaign. Republicans are using it to criticize Obama's energy and jobs politics, and highlight it as a waste of taxpayer money.
If Chu leaves now, it could feed that criticism.
"I don't think Secretary Chu will be leaving. Doing so would not stop Solyndra from being a part of the election," said Andrew Holland, an energy policy analyst at the American Security Project, a Washington think-tank.
Caving to Republican criticism over green energy would not play well with environmentalist Democrat voters, who have already turned up the heat on Obama on a decision to postpone new smog rules for coal plants, and a pending decision on the Keystone XL pipeline for crude oil from the Canadian oilsands.
Obama and Chu have so far given no quarter to their critics. Chu toured a Colorado solar plant owned by General Electric -- a plant that was not a recipient of an Energy Department loan guarantee.
"The public and private sectors can, and should, work together to make sure clean energy technologies are invented in America, made in America and sold around the world," Chu said.
"Secretary Chu has the President's full confidence and we are all proud of his tenure as Secretary of Energy," White House Spokesman Eric Schultz said in a statement.
Fans of Chu, a Nobel laureate, say he has added scientific heft to Washington politics.
"It brings credibility to an agency that is first and foremost a science agency," said Elgie Holstein, an Energy Department official during the Clinton administration.
"He's a compelling spokesman for the energy revolution that's needed," said David Victor, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego.
If Chu survives scrutiny about the Solyndra loan, he may still step down if Obama wins a second term in 2012.
It is not unusual for energy secretaries to stay for only one term. Some observers say Chu lacks the political and financial acumen needed to advance Obama's clean energy agenda, particularly the use of renewable energy, which has been hurt by the Solyndra fallout.
"Secretary Chu is a wonderful and brilliant man, but he is not perfect for the other critical DOE mission: deploying existing technologies at scale and creating jobs," said Dan Carol, a former Democratic campaign adviser, whose private concerns became public last week in an e-mail the White House released to Republican investigators.
Top 10 Green Job Fiascoes
by Human Events
09/24/2011
President Obama pledged he would start a clean-energy revolution that would create 5 million green jobs over 10 years. Of course, when the government tries to intrude in the marketplace, bad things happen. Such as these: the Top 10 Green Job Fiascoes.
1. Solar debacle: Solyndra Inc., which manufactured solar panels at its plant in Fremont, Calif., received $535 million in Energy Department loans, and President Obama talked glowingly about how the company was “leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.” Instead of creating work for Americans after receiving taxpayer money, the company shipped half its manufacturing jobs to China. In August, Solyndra declared bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers.
2. Government Motors: The bailout that General Motors; received from the government came with a price: The carmaker was tasked to create the ultimate green vehicle. The result—the Chevy Volt—is a product with an exorbitant price tag that nobody wants to buy. Despite vast government subsidies, GM only sold 3,200 cars in the first eight months since the electric plug-in vehicles hit the marketplace.
3. Spanish windmills: Spain’s quixotic quest to create a green-jobs economy should have been a lesson for the United States. After Spain went crazy subsidizing windmills and solar farms, the result was higher utility bills for consumers, with a loss of 2.2 jobs in other industries for every green job created. And each green job came at a cost of $774,000 to Spanish taxpayers.
4. Solar debacle II: Evergreen Solar Inc., of Massachusetts, which received $58 million in stimulus money and other government largesse, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August and closed its plant in Midland, Mich. Not being able to compete against the Chinese and their low-wage workers, the company racked up $485 million in debt and cut 800 jobs, with more cuts to come as the company restructures.
OBAMA’S BIG TIME SCANDALS: Fast and Furious, Solyndra, LightSquared
Big Time Scandals by Obama Administration Too Small for Investigation by Mainstream Media? By Jerry McConnell CANADA FREE PRESS October 1, 2011 Since Obama’s inauguration in January 2009 there have been several major scandals in which his Administration has been involved, principally, Operation Fast and Furious the government sponsored sale of guns to small time gun sellers along our border with Mexico; the failed ‘Stimulus’ loan of multi-millions to Solyndra and LightSquared, two small businesses that were Obama preferred for loans. All three of these Obama Administration ventures were major failures involving scandalous behavior.
Is that what our country’s communications are becoming; a non-existent, undependable, one-sided bunch of slugs who won’t get off their duffs to report thoroughly and clearly on major government scandals? Is the entire communications arm of our country becoming beholden to Obama and his scandal ridden administration peopled by socialist, communists who break our laws with impunity and without fear of prosecution in our mainstream media or courts? Where will that take us if allowed to continue?
To cite a statistic on how seriously flawed this Obama-led government is becoming, the Heritage Foundation on September 25, 2011 reported that except for “some recent reports from CBS News and the Los Angeles Times, and earlier reporting by ABC News, the mainstream media has largely ignored the stories.” That is an extreme negative attitude for the media and unprecedented for our country’s information sources.
Obama, the Pied Piper, and His News Media
The Heritage also reported that “the White House press corps has not bothered to ask the President or press secretary Jay Carney about the scandal since July 5 - that’s 78 days, and over 40 press briefings, without one single related question.” (Emphasis added.) Does that sound like the major media has the interests of the people of the United States at heart or the continuing efforts of covering up for Obama? You decide.
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The gun-handling fiasco known as Operation Fast and Furious, saw that well over one thousand of the guns went missing and ultimately wound up in Mexico where one of our border patrol agents was shot and killed, later investigation of which proved the weapon used was one of the guns that was part of the failed government gun deal.
Around 1,500 of the guns went unaccounted for, about two-thirds of those guns ended up in Mexico, with which our border patrol agent was shot and killed and 57 Fast and Furious weapons have been connected to at least 11 violent crimes in the U.S. In Mexico an unconfirmed toll of at least 200 people have been killed or wounded with other weapons linked to the botched effort, Heritage reports.
The other Obama Administration scandals involve his efforts to provide “stimulus” spending to create more jobs in 2009 with an $800 billion upwards to $1 trillion tax dollars spent. Well, the money was spent but the jobs didn’t materialize due to the possibly illegal handling of the money to sources for purposes other than jobs creation such as political “payback” gifts to corrupt union leader bosses.
Solyndra is a company that did get money, a $535 million loan guarantee to create ‘green’ jobs; today it is bankrupt and plans on the layoffs of over 1,000 employees. The FBI is conducting an investigation of that company. Then, as Heritage continues, “there’s the story of LightSquared, a wireless start-up company backed by billionaire Democratic donor Philip Falcone. The Daily Beast reports that military officials fear that the company’s technology could interfere with GPS signals-and that two U.S. officials allege the White House tried to influence their [congressional] testimony to rush key testing, to LightSquare’s benefit.”
Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that his committee plans to investigate government loans to private companies made by the Obama Administration, according to The Hill. Now, Solyndra’s chief executive and chief financial officer have invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to answer questions at the hearings.
Also in the Heritage Foundation report it was stated that “A cross-border gun-running scandal, deaths in the United States and Mexico, staff removals and resignations, secret audio recordings, complaints from foreign officials, hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, bankruptcy, an FBI raid, campaign donors, and allegations of inappropriate White House influence in congressional testimony; and the just reported suicide of ATF agent Jeff Ryan of the LA Field Division. There are serious questions coming out of Washington. It’s time for the media to start demanding answers.”
The mainstream media was very quick to investigate and demand the resignation of a GOP politician for simply sending emails to an underage Congressional Page with no evidence of any contact whatsoever; but a full-fledged taxpayer rip-off scandal by a liberal Democrat president’s administration doesn’t even rate a second thought for investigative purposes. Double standards anyone?
The end of this Administration can’t come soon enough.
