Obama Corruption & Scandal Thread - Solyndra and other crimes.

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Weapons recovered from suspects accused of trafficking illegal firearms to Mexican drug cartels. (Joshua Lott, Reuters / September 28, 2011)
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By Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau
September 28, 2011
Reporting from Washington—
An FBI/DEA confidential informant helped smuggle firearms from the ATF's Fast and Furious gun-trafficking surveillance operation to drug cartels in Mexico, according to evidence compiled by congressional investigators.

The investigators said the informant obtained the weapons from Manuel Celis-Acosta, considered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to be the "biggest fish" of 20 individuals indicted in Fast and Furious. At the same time the informant was receiving large amounts of "official law enforcement funds as payment" for his services, they said.

Congressional investigators believe the informant was working with U.S. law enforcement over a two-year period, beginning in early 2009, and often contacted DEA agents such as Jim Roberts, the resident agent-in-charge in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, to "pass on information to these agents about Mexican drug cartels."

The revelations were contained in a letter Tuesday from Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. They contend that had the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration told the ATF about the informant, Fast and Furious would have been shut down much earlier.

Holder has said he learned of Fast and Furious after it was shut down, and did not know that ATF agents allowed more than 2,000 weapons to be illegally purchased in the Phoenix area. Many turned up at violent crime scenes in Mexico; two were recovered in December after a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed in Arizona.

The letter signals that the congressional investigation is looking beyond the ATF operation and into the possibility of a major breakdown in law enforcement cooperation on the border.

Fast and Furious ran for 15 months, from fall 2009 to last January, and culminated in indictments in Phoenix. Among them was Celis-Acosta. Documents show that when Fast and Furious was first proposed, the ATF targeted Celis-Acosta because they said he was "believed to be supplying firearms" to a drug cartel.

Congressional investigators have learned that the DEA was aware of Celis-Acosta's alleged drug trafficking activity as early as late 2009, just when Fast and Furious was getting underway, and that he was "providing hundreds of firearms to members of Mexican drug cartels." In fact, they knew Celis-Acosta allegedly was moving guns to Ciudad Juarez, south of El Paso, "but that he was uneasy about taking the guns across the border himself."

The FBI and DEA also knew that the informant, identified as "CI#1," was ordering weapons from Celis-Acosta and smuggling them into Mexico. That informant, "apparently the financier for Celia-Acosta's firearms trafficking ring, later began cooperating with the FBI and may have received additional government payments as a confidential informant."

In one payment, the investigators learned, the U.S. government gave the informant $3,500 for his services.

richard.serrano@latimes.com







WOW!!!!   so now FBI £ DEA are in on this crazy shit?   

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GOP lawmaker demands independent probe into Solyndra
The Hill ^ | 9/27/11 | Andrew Restuccia

GOP lawmaker demands independent probe into Solyndra
By Andrew Restuccia - 09/27/11 07:50 PM ET


A Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee is calling on the White House to appoint an independent investigator to examine the administration’s decision to approve a $535 million loan guarantee for a now-bankrupt solar company.


Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) said the Obama administration should have quickly appointed a special investigator to look into Solyndra, the failed California-based solar-panel manufacturer, after the company announced late last month it would file for bankruptcy and lay off 1,100 workers.


“My opinion is that it should have already happened. It hasn’t,” Burgess said Monday on Fox Business Network. “We’ll see where that goes, but clearly there needs to be a special master involved in the investigation.”


Burgess and other Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee have launched an investigation into the Solyndra bankruptcy, alleging that the administration missed a series of red flags that hinted at the company’s financial troubles.


In addition, Republicans on the panel have released a series of emails they say show that the White House tried to rush a final decision on the company’s financing so that Vice President Biden could announce approval of the loan guarantee at the September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s new factory.


The Solyndra debacle has ignited a firestorm in Washington, offering Republicans a new opportunity to bash the White House going into an election year.


The Justice Department has launched its own investigation into the Solyndra incident, but Burgess suggested Monday that the DOJ probe might not be adequate.


Asked by anchor David Asman if the Justice Department investigation would be impartial, Burgess laughed, then added, “I probably should not speculate on that.”


The White House has denied any wrongdoing related to Solyndra, arguing that the emails released by Republicans were a “scheduling matter,” not an attempt to influence the final decision on the loan guarantee.


The Energy Department has vowed to continue investing in clean-energy technology. Such investments, officials say, are necessary to compete with countries such as China, which has put billions into solar energy.


The department is in the process of finalizing a slew of loan guarantees for solar, wind and other projects during the next few days. The loan guarantee program expires Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.



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Solyndra Said to Have Violated Terms of Its U.S. Loan
Wall Street Journal ^ | September 28, 2011 | By DEBORAH SOLOMON



Solyndra LLC had such steep financial problems in late 2010 that the company violated terms of its loan-guarantee agreement with the Department of Energy and technically defaulted on its $535 million loan, according to people familiar with the matter.

The failed solar-panel maker ran so short of cash in December 2010 that it was unable to satisfy certain terms of its U.S. loan agreement, these people said. The agreement required Solyndra to provide $5 million in equity to a subsidiary building its factory but cash-flow problems prevented those payments.

The Energy Department ultimately restructured the loan agreement to help keep the company afloat and Solyndra continued to draw money from its loan.

Solyndra's cash-flow problems in late 2010 had previously come to light but it was not known that the company technically defaulted on its loan and violated its agreement with the U.S. government.


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


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Sen. Chuck Grassley: Government Sold Guns to "Underworld"
opposingviews.com ^ | 27 September, 2011 | Mark Berman



A Senator is accusing the United States government of selling guns to the "underworld," and that he is being "stonewalled" in his investigation.

Newsmax reports that Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said this operation was similar to the "Fast and Furious" scheme in which the government sent guns to Mexico, and then tracked them to determine which ones were used in crimes.

“It’s hard to distinguish between the two, but evidence has come out that the orders came down from Justice that our agents were supposed to take taxpayers money, buy guns that shouldn’t have been sold, get them to the underworld,” Grassley told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “The sale was made to the underworld. It happens to be that in this particular case, the federal government made a little bit of money, but that’s not the main issue.

“The main issue is that you would think they would arrest the people that bought them illegally -- no, they were told to just follow the guns -- they followed the guns to a storehouse. They would not have 24-hour surveillance except for one of the agents decided to stay there six days,” Grassley said. “A truck came along to load up the guns. They called for help to arrest them in the process of transferring the guns, but they wouldn’t send anybody to arrest them, so the guns got over -- got some place, maybe over the border -- and they were never traced, which was the purpose of the operation in the first place.”

Grassley said he is trying to investigate, but the Justice Department is not cooperating.

“There’s something sinister going on -- they’re doing everything they can to avoid the issue -- they want to stonewall us and string us along,” Grassley said.

Van Susteren said she had a letter from the Justice Department to Grassley saying that allegations are false.

“It is a false statement from the Department of Justice -- they knew about this -- I made reference to this in my first letter as they indicated, and the order came directly to an ATF agent to make the sale,” Grassley said.



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Weird science: EPA Inspector General calls greenhouse-gas regulatory process flawed
Published: 9:54 AM 09/28/2011 | Updated: 12:01 PM 09/28/2011
 By Caroline May - The Daily Caller
Bio | Archive | Email Caroline May  Follow Caroline May




In response to a report that could lead to questions about the credibility of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) , Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is calling for hearings to investigate. The report — from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the EPA — reveals that the scientific basis, on which the administration’s endangerment finding for greenhouse gases hinged, violated the EPA’s own peer review procedure.

In a report released Wednesday (at Sen. Inhofe’s request, dating back to April) the inspector general found that the EPA failed to follow the Data Quality Act and its own peer review process when it issued the determination that greenhouse gases cause harm to “pubic health and welfare.”

“I appreciate the inspector general conducting a thorough investigation into the Obama-EPA’s handling of the endangerment finding for greenhouse gases,” Inhofe said. “This report confirms that the endangerment finding, the very foundation of President Obama’s job-destroying regulatory agenda, was rushed, biased, and flawed. It calls the scientific integrity of EPA’s decision-making process into question and undermines the credibility of the endangerment finding.”

Inhofe lambasted the EPA for its failure to adhere to its own rules, outsourcing the science to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — and refusing to conduct its own analysis of the science — in the period leading up to its final endangerment finding.

“The endangerment finding is no small matter: Global warming regulations imposed by the Obama-EPA under the Clean Air Act will cost American consumers $300 to $400 billion a year, significantly raise energy prices, and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs. This is not to mention the ‘absurd result’ that EPA will need to hire 230,000 additional employees and spend an additional $21 billion to implement its [green house gas] regime. And all of this economic pain is for nothing: As EPA Administrator [Lisa] Jackson also admitted before the Environmental and Public Works] committee, these regulations will have no affect on the climate.”

According to Inhofe, Jackson has failed in her 2009 vow to commit the Agency to high transparency standards. The senator will instruct the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to hold hearings to investigate the EPA’s failings.

“Given what has come to light in this report, it appears that Obama-EPA cannot be trusted on the most consequential decision the agency has ever made,” Inhofe added.“I am calling for the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, the committee of jurisdiction over the EPA, to hold immediate hearings to address EPA’s failure to provide the required documentation and have the science impartially reviewed. EPA needs to explain to the American people why it blatantly circumvented its own procedures to make what appears to be a predetermined endangerment finding.”

The inspector general’s full report can be viewed here here.

Follow Caroline on Twitter



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/28/weird-science-epas-own-inspector-general-calls-green-house-gas-science-flawed/#ixzz1ZGvDmcnP

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Solyndra: What the President Knew and When He Knew It
Big Government ^ | 9/28/11 | Larry O'Connor


Until now the Solyndra scandal only reached the White House in the guise of e-mails from staffers fretting about the political implications of the disastrous bankruptcy and how it would reflect on the President’s “Winning the Future” rhetoric.

Until now, the Solyndra scandal was a circumstantial log of White house visits by a big Obama donor who also was the failed solar company’s chief investor (those visits occurring right before a half-billion dollar loan guarantee was awarded by Obama’s Dept. of Energy).

Until now, the White House’s direct involvement in the Solyndra scandal appeared to be over-zealous operatives looking to speed-up the loan so Vice President Biden could have a nice photo-op at the doomed solar firm.

Now, we know much more.

According to an investigation by the Los Angeles Times, President Obama was warned nearly a year ago that Energy Secretary Stephen Chu’s department was not rigorous enough in vetting loan recipients and they ran the risk of funneling federal money to companies that shouldn’t receive it, or didn’t need it. And the warnings came from the President’s top economic advisers Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner.

Summers and Geithner also warned about the overall risks involved in relying so heavily on pumping federal stimulus money into unproven programs and technologies which would not have any lasting positive effect on the moribund economy and the stagnant job picture in America.

The divisions foreshadowed a question that has emerged since Solyndra’s bankruptcy: Was the program’s vetting process thorough enough? The disagreements also spotlighted an issue that has confronted Obama since he took office: What is the appropriate role of the government in stimulating the private marketplace?


(Excerpt) Read more at biggovernment.com ...


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Solyndra’s $733M Plant Had Robots, Spa Showers

Solyndra’s ‘Taj Mahal’ Factory Raised Eyebrows As Sales Wane 




“That’s a lot of money that went into that factory and I just don’t get how that factory is going to make this company successful,” said Barry Cinnamon, chief executive officer at Westinghouse Solar, a Solyndra LLC competitor. “It’s one of those neck-snapping things every time you drove down the highway." Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

“That’s a lot of money that went into that factory and I just don’t get how that factory is going to make this company successful,” said Barry Cinnamon, chief executive officer at Westinghouse Solar, a Solyndra LLC competitor. “It’s one of those neck-snapping things every time you drove down the highway." Photo:

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

.The glass-and-metal building that Solyndra LLC began erecting alongside Interstate 880 in Fremont, California, in September 2009 was something the Silicon Valley area hadn’t seen in years: a new factory.

It wasn’t just any factory. When it was completed at an estimated cost of $733 million, including proceeds from a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee, it covered 300,000 square feet, the equivalent of five football fields. It had robots that whistled Disney tunes, spa-like showers with liquid-crystal displays of the water temperature, and glass-walled conference rooms.

“The new building is like the Taj Mahal,” John Pierce, 54, a San Jose resident who worked as a facilities manager at Solyndra, said in an interview.

The building, designed to make far more solar panels than Solyndra got orders for, is now shuttered, and U.S. taxpayers may be stuck with it. Solyndra filed for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 6, leaving in its wake investigations by Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a Republican-fueled political embarrassment for the Obama administration, which issued the loan guarantee. About 1,100 workers lost their jobs.

Amid the still-unfolding postmortems, the factory stands as emblematic of money misspent and the Field of Dreams ethos that seemed to drive the venture, said Ramesh Misra, a solar-industry analyst in Los Angeles for Brigantine Advisors.

Cylindrical Modules
“When you don’t have the demand, you can’t go into something with the attitude, ‘Build it and they will come,’” Misra said. “You have to make sure the customers are already there when you build it.”

He is skeptical of the company’s statement, in a press release on the groundbreaking for the plant, that it had a backlog of $2 billion in orders for its cylindrical solar modules for commercial rooftops, which it touted as cheaper to install and more efficient than competing flat panels. “Backlog” is a term sometimes used loosely in the industry and may not represent firm orders at all, he said.

David Miller, a Solyndra spokesman, didn’t respond to a phone call and e-mail seeking comment.

Solyndra was the dream of founder Chris Gronet, who received a Ph.D. in semiconductor processing at Stanford University and had spent 11 years as an executive at Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT) He adopted as the company’s motto, “What we do here will someday change the world.” Gronet didn’t return a phone call seeking comment.

Prices Plunge
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger attended the 2009 groundbreaking for the plant. At the event, Chu said the U.S. solar-energy industry was losing out to countries like China and the loan guarantee, the first awarded by the department under President Barack Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus plan, would ensure the company’s orders would be filled by U.S. workers.

Even as Chu, Gronet and Schwarzenegger were thrusting their shovels into the dirt, market forces were working against Solyndra. The price of polysilicon, the main ingredient in competing traditional solar panels, had plunged. By the time the plant opened last January, the price would be down about 40 percent from when Solyndra got the loan guarantee. Chinese companies were ramping up production of their ever-cheaper competing flat panels.

Solyndra executives rushed construction in a race to fill orders, putting some work on a 24-hour, seven-day schedule. The factory was up and ready for equipment installation in 10 months. The project employed more than 3,000 union construction workers, according to a Solyndra background sheet.

‘First Class’
“They were anticipating large production,” Juancho Suntay, 51, a former Solyndra equipment maintenance technician, said in an interview. “That’s why they wanted to have a state- of-the-art factory.”

The plant features 19 loading docks, four electric car charging stations in the parking lot and landscaping of wild grass and a rock garden. An automated rail system moved parts through the assembly process.

Robots that resembled “a big freezer with wheels” maneuvered around the factory transporting panels from one machine to another, said George Garma, 49, a former Solyndra equipment maintenance technician from Fremont. The Disney tunes alerted workers to the robots’ presence.

“It was first class,” David Chan, 51, who was an information-technology contractor for Solyndra, said in an interview. “I’ve been in the business for 25 years and have seen some elaborate buildings. I’ve never seen a facility like it.”

Costly Real Estate
The plant caught the attention of competitors. “Everybody I know in the solar industry would remark on it and say ‘Boy, that’s a really, really big factory,’” said Barry Cinnamon, chief executive officer at Westinghouse Solar Inc., a Campbell, California-based solar-panel company that manufactures in China.

“That’s a lot of money that went into that factory,” Cinnamon said in an interview. “It’s one of those neck-snapping things every time you drove down the highway.”

Commercial real-estate agents in the region wondered why a new factory was being built in the Silicon Valley region, the epicenter of some of the priciest real estate in the country, where most new construction consists of office space.

“There hasn’t been a factory or warehouse building built in Silicon Valley in well over 10 years,” Jeff Fredericks, managing partner at Colliers International in San Jose, said in an e-mail.

The asking rate for industrial properties in Silicon Valley is the fourth-most expensive in the U.S., according to Jack DePuy, Bay Area research manager at CB Richard Ellis in Foster City, California.

Machinery Breakdowns
About 11.4 percent, or 950,801 square feet, of industrial space was vacant in Fremont in September 2009, according to data from Colliers.

“There was available space that we talked about with them,” Bob Wasserman, Fremont’s mayor, said in an interview. “It was their decision that they needed a new building. Was that a good decision? It didn’t turn out to be.”

John Olenchalk, senior vice president at Kidder Mathews, a commercial real-estate firm in Redwood City, said Solyndra executives considered existing space, including a former Sun Microsystems Inc. facility in nearby Newark that had 218,000 square feet of production space. The company wanted more space and to be near its existing operations, he said.

Solyndra used the new plant for the first phase of panel production. An older facility nearby finished and assembled the panels, former employees said. Problems developed at the old plant, when machinery wouldn’t work properly and needed constant repair, workers said.

“Everybody was talking about it,” said Edward Santos, 44, a former warehouse worker in Solyndra’s logistics department.

Advantage Lost
“A significant percentage of the product we built went into a dumpster because it was defective,” said Craig Ewing, 55, a former maintenance technician. “It seemed like the company accepted that,” he said.

Even if the old plant hadn’t had problems, by the time the company opened the new facility it was clear that Solyndra had lost whatever cost advantage it might have had, said Michael Butler, chairman and CEO of Cascadia Capital LLC, a Seattle- based investment-banking firm that advises renewable-energy companies.

“I’m sure there was a lot of panic at that point, because I’m sure that everyone saw the writing on the wall,” Butler said.

Workers noticed inventory piling up. “The drivers would tell us that the warehouses are getting full,” Santos said. “Sometimes, they’d stay there one or two days before the material was unloaded.”

About two weeks before the company closed, Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison gave an upbeat speech at the new factory, said Romie Sumera, 58, a former equipment-maintenance technician.

Solyndra was getting leads on new orders from companies including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Harrison told them.

To contact the reporters on this story: Alison Vekshin in San Francisco at avekshin@bloomberg.net; Mark Chediak in San Francisco at mchediak@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net; Susan Warren at susanwarren@bloomberg.net.

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The Secret Government Bank That's Financing More Solyndras
Fox Business ^ | September 28, 2011 | Elizabeth MacDonald



Sitting at the center of the Solyndra scandal is an off-balance-sheet bank at the Treasury Department that dates back to 1973.

This little-known government bank, the Federal Financing Bank [FFB], had a zero balance in 2008 for green energy projects, but now, with little Congressional oversight, it is giving out billions of dollars in loans to White House pet projects often at dirt-cheap interest rates below 1%.

In July alone, the government bank, which had $61 billion in assets, lent nearly three quarters of a billion dollars in taxpayer funds with no Congressional checks and balances.

Plus the bank is funding the insolvent U.S. Post Office; the White House’s expensive green car projects at Ford Motor, Nissan and Tesla Motors; a $485 million loan to an expensive solar project that’s lost $160 million over the last three years that’s backed by Google, BP and Chevron; plus the FFB is funding the teetering HOPE housing bailout program, which gives delinquent mortgage borrowers breaks on their loans.

And according to KPMG’s audit report of the bank, the FFB is losing billions of dollars in taxpayer money because it is forgoing collecting interest costs on already inexpensive loans that are financing projects at agencies like the Agriculture Dept.

What’s scary for taxpayers is this: The FFB can borrow unlimited amounts of taxpayer money from the Treasury for these kinds of political pet projects. Under the 1973 “FFB Act, the bank may, with the approval of the Secretary, borrow without limit from the Treasury,” says the bank’s audited statements from KPMG.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general is now investigating the bank over its $528 million loan to Solyndra. FFB’s chairman of the board is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and the bank’s board executives are Treasury officials.


(Excerpt) Read more at foxbusiness.com ...

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DOJ: ‘Mexican-Based Trafficking Organizations Control Access to the U.S.–Mexico Border’
Cybercast News Service ^ | 9/28 | Edwin Mora



Mexican drug-trafficking organizations “control access to the U.S.-Mexico border” and the “smuggling routes across” it, “resulting in unprecedented levels of violence in Mexico” and allowing those drug trafficking organizations and their associates to “dominate the supply and wholesale distribution of most illicit drugs in the United States,” according to the Justice Department's newly published 2011 National Drug Threat Assessment. “Mexican-based trafficking organizations control access to the U.S.–Mexico border, the primary gateway for moving the bulk of illicit drugs into the United States,” says the assessment published by DOJ’s National Drug Intelligence Center. “The organizations control,


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...

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Brian Terry’s Family Prepares For Funeral, Rips Obama Admin.

Issa Grills Attorney General Holder on Operation Fast and Furious

Obstruction Of Justice: Does The Justice Dept Have To Respond To A Congressional Subpoena?

Who in Justice Department is Responsible for Operation Fast and Furious?

“Operation Fast and Furious”: Reckless Decisions, Tragic

***One of the whistleblower’s- ATF Agent Vince Cefalu, (testifying in the video below has been fired since the hearng.***
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/27/

“Operation Fast and Furious: Reckless Decisions, Tragic Outcomes.” Panel 2

&NR=1

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CNN doing great story n this now! 

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ATF Fast and Furious guns turned up in El Paso
Los Angeles Times ^ | September 29, 2011 | Richard A. Serrano
Posted on September 28, 2011 9:48:33 PM EDT by george76

They were being stored for shipment to Mexico, documents show. It's the first case of vanished weapons from the surveillance program showing up on this side of the border outside the Phoenix area.

A cache of assault weapons lost in the ATF's gun-trafficking surveillance operation in Phoenix turned up in El Paso, where it was being stored for shipment to Mexico, according to new internal agency emails and federal court records.

...

Under the program, dubbed Fast and Furious, agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the Phoenix field office allowed licensed firearm dealers to sell weapons to illegal "straw" buyers in the hope that the agents could track the weapons and arrest Mexican drug cartel leaders.

Instead, more than 2,000 weapons were trafficked along the U.S.-Mexico border, and many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. In addition, two AK-47 semi-automatics involved in the program were recovered after a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed south of Tucson, and two others were found after a violent confrontation with state police officers in Maricopa, Ariz.

The El Paso case is the first example of Fast and Furious weapons turning up on this side of the border outside the Phoenix area.

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...

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http://www.cnn.com/video/standard.html#/video/bestoftv/2011/09/28/ac-babeu-fast-and-furious.cnn?iref=allsearch


Wow!   Cant believe CNN aired this.   

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Operation Fast and Furious: Ariz. Lawmakers Want Answers Now
Babeu: "Mexican drug cartels. This is outrageous."

Updated: Tuesday, 27 Sep 2011, 6:15 PM MST
Published : Tuesday, 27 Sep 2011, 7:22 AM MST

TUCSON, Ariz. - At a town hall meeting in Tucson, the local government admitted they had no idea about Operation Fast and Furious - they found out by watching the news.

"Did anybody on the police force or law enforcement know this was going on or were you kept in the dark too?"

People in Tucson want answers and on Monday night, Tea Party supporters went to a public meeting in hopes of trying to understand what went wrong in the Fast and Furious gun operation.

It started in October 2009. Federal agents from the ATF approved, allowed and assisted in selling guns to illegal Mexican drug cartels in order to watch and investigate gun trafficking into Mexico.

But here's where things took a dangerous twist -- officials in Arizona say some of the guns were found at crime scenes in the United States, including the murder of Arizona Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010.

"Low and behold we now find out it's our own government that has been facilitating a strong purchase of weapons being placed into the hands of the most violent criminals in North America. Mexican drug cartels. This is outrageous," said Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu.

Law enforcement on the local level, like Babeu, say they had no idea the operation was going on -- they found out about it on the news.

The Department of Justice admits it was a botched operation where agents simply lost track of the weapons as they were transferred from one illegal buyer to another.

Several top Justice and ATF officials have already stepped down from their posts because of the controversy. There's also a Congressional probe into the operation.

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A 'Furious' revelation
By MICHAEL A. WALSH
Last Updated: 5:10 AM, September 29, 2011




This just might be the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for to break the festering “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.

Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.

Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy four Draco pistols for cash and even got a letter from his supervisor, David Voth, authorizing a federally licensed gun dealer to sell him the guns without bothering about the necessary paperwork.

“Please accept this letter in lieu of completing an ATF Form 4473 for the purchase of four (4) CAI, Model Draco, 7.62x39 mm pistols, by Special Agent John Dodson,” read the June 1, 2010, letter. “These aforementioned pistols will be used by Special Agent Dodson in furtherance of performance of his official duties.”

On orders, Dodson then sold the guns to known criminals, who first stashed them away and then -- deliberately unhindered by the ATF or any other agency -- whisked them off to Mexico.

People were killed with Fast and Furious weapons, including at least two American agents and hundreds of Mexicans. And the taxpayers picked up the bill.

So where’s the outrage?

There’s none from the feds. Attorney General Eric Holder has consistently stonewalled Rep. Darrell Issa, Sen. Chuck Grassley and other congressional investigators.

In a constantly evolving set of lies, Holder has denied knowing anything about Fast and Furious while at the same time withholding documents from the House and Senate committees looking into the mess while muzzling some witnesses and transferring others.

Justice calls the allegations about Dodson’s operation “false.” But Grassley says that’s “a lie,” as he told Greta van Susteren the other day. “The ATF ordered this ATF agent to purchase these guns and in turn sell them, and supposedly track them,” he said. “But he was a lone wolf in the operation -- they wouldn’t give him any help for 24-hour surveillance.”

So now the wheels have come off the official explanation for Fast and Furious. Of course, that explanation never made much sense in the first place.

For one thing, the ATF had no authority to track the guns once they were in Mexico; for another, nobody bothered to inform the Mexicans of this intrusion on their national sovereignty.

Further, we now know that a host of federal agencies (including the ATF, the FBI and IRS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration and, very probably, top officials at the Department of Homeland Security) were all in the loop at various levels, as was the White House.

So calling “Fast and Furious” a cockamamie operation gone wrong just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

There are two possible explanations. The first is that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners. The operation was manufacturing “evidence” for the president’s false claim that we’re to blame for the appalling levels of Mexican drug-war violence.

If this is true, then Holder & Co. have got to go -- and the trail needs to be followed no matter where it leads. For the federal government to seek to frame its own citizens is unconscionable.

A second notion is that the CIA was behind the whole thing, which accounts for all the desperate wagon-circling. Under this theory, the Agency feared the los Zetas drug cartel was becoming too powerful and might even mount a coup against the Mexican government. So some 2,000 weapons costing more than $1.25 million were deliberately channeled to the rival Sinaloa cartel, which operates along the American border, to keep the Zetas in check.

Of course, there’s a third explanation -- that both scenarios are true, and that those in charge of Fast and Furious saw an opportunity to shoot two birds with one Romanian-made AK Draco pistol.

Time for a special prosecutor, who’s both fast and furious.

Michael Walsh’s new spy thriller, “Shock Warning,” hits stores this week.



Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/furious_revelation_OhK6TBqPlEpRglHjsSbiBI#ixzz1ZLKR0DYx

[Soul Crusher]

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2011/09/21/tsr-todd-fast-furious-dnt.cnn?iref=videosearch


Can't believe CNN is running this. 

Obama and Holder need a jail cell. 

[Soul Crusher]

More solar companies led by Democratic donors received federal loan guarantees
12:51 AM 09/29/2011



A Daily Caller investigation has found that in addition to the failed company Solyndra, at least four other solar panel manufacturing companies receiving in excess of $500 million in loan guarantees from the Obama administration employ executives or board members who have donated large sums of money to Democratic campaigns.

And as questions swirl around possible connections between political donations and these preferential financing arrangements, the Obama White House suddenly began deflecting The Daily Caller’s questions on Wednesday to the Democratic National Committee.

Asked Wednesday to comment on the connection between large Democratic donors and Obama administration loan guarantees to the companies they represent, the White House responded to TheDC with a single sentence: “We refer your question to the Democratic National Committee.”

Concerns about the long-term viability of Solyndra, first made public by The Daily Caller back in February, have now expanded to include the financial health of other loan-guarantee recipient firms as well.

These companies have suffered from declining stock prices despite their favored status in the White House. Yet as the end of the federal government’s fiscal year looms on Friday, a new series of loans could be finalized amounting to more than nine times what taxpayers have already lost on the failed company Solyndra.

“Who was visiting the White House during this period of time?” Texas GOP Rep. Joe Barton asked when contacted by TheDC. Barton is a former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “Who were they talking to and what were they talking about? Are there more loans at risk of not being paid back? Are these good investments or political favors?”

“The American people just lost a half billion dollars and they deserve answers to these questions before more money is wasted. Until we know exactly what happened, I think we should slow down this loan program and take a closer look at each case.”

“It is becoming more clear with each revelation that warning signs were ignored in the Solyndra case,” Barton continued. “Yet in the next 48 hours — because of a deadline that can still be changed — the Department of Energy is going to hand out another $5 billion in loans.”

Companies like First Solar, SolarReserve, SunPower Corporation and Abengoa SA have already, collectively, received billions in loans through Obama administration stimulus programs to build solar power plants in the southwestern United States.

Yet each, with the exception of the privately held SolarReserve, has seen its stock price hammered at the same time it was lobbying the Obama administration and Congress for billions in loan guarantees.

The Hill newspaper reported Wednesday that the Santa Monica, Calif.-based SolarReserve has secured a $737 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy for a Nevada solar project.

That company has ties to George Kaiser, the Oklahoma billionaire who raised $53,500 for President Obama’s campaign in 2008. Through his Argonaut Private Equity firm, Kaiser holds a majority stake in Solyndra.

Argonaut has a voting stake on SolarReserve’s board of directors in the person of Steve Mitchell, who also serves on Solyndra’s board of directors.

Additionally, Federal Election Commission records made available by the Center for Responsive Politics show that SolarReserve board member James McDermott has contributed $61,500 to various Democratic campaigns since 2008, including $30,800 to Obama’s presidential election campaign.

McDermott’s U.S. Renewable Energy Group has a significant financial stake in SolarReserve, and has drawn scrutiny for its ties with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — and for reportedly driving green jobs to China.

And Lee Bailey, a fellow SolarReserve board member and U.S. Renewables Group investor, has donated $21,850 since 2008 to Democratic candidates including President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, California Sen. Barbara Boxer and then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

SolarReserve’s board of directors also includes Jasandra Nyker of Pacific Corporate Group Asset Management, where former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law, Ronald Pelosi, holds a leadership position.

Other data from the Center for Responsive Politics show that SolarReserve paid $100,000 in lobbying fees in 2009 to the Podesta Group. That firm’s principal, Tony Podesta, is the brother of John Podesta — who ran Barack Obama’s presidential transition team.

SolarReserve’s financials are not public since it’s a privately held company, but First Solar provides a more transparent example. That solar energy firm’s stock has lost more than $100 in value since it peaked at $170.80 on Feb. 17, 2011. The company was trading at $65.77 per share Wednesday afternoon.

This market tumble came despite First Solar’s success in winning approximately $2.1 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy. The company announced Wednesday that it would not be able to qualify for a further $1.5 billion loan guarantee before the Sept. 30 deadline.

First Solar founder and Chairman Michael Ahearn, whom Reuters reported cashed in $68.9 million of his company’s stock last month, has donated $123,650, along with his wife, to the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates during the three most recent cycles, mostly in Arizona.

The solar energy giant, the nation’s biggest, also spent more than $1.5 million lobbying Congress and the Obama administration since 2009 on the stimulus and subsequent green-jobs plans. This included approximately $400,000 paid to the Washington Tax Group, which also represented Solyndra.

Investment website The Motley Fool reported Wednesday that First Solar faces a potentially bleak future as its technology increasingly is becoming eclipsed by its competitors.

“As [solar] panel costs fall the balance of system costs becomes more important, highlighting First Solar’s current conundrum,” Motley Fool contributor Travis Hoium writes. “A less efficient panel requires more land, more labor to install, and more auxiliary components than higher efficiency panels. And with feed-in tariffs now leaning on rooftop installations in Europe, First Solar is now behind the curve.”

First Solar’s competitor SunPower has similarly received a $1.3 billion loan guarantee for a solar project in California, but Wall Street has been less than optimistic about the company’s financial health.

SunPower’s stock, like First Solar’s has lost enormous value in recent months. The stock peaked at $21.40 on April 29, 2011, and now trades at $8.36 per share. Morningstar forecasts the company “will post losses in both 2011 and 2012.” SunPower’s technology, Morningstar warns, is likely to remain “too costly compared to its peers” and it expects “mediocre” returns from the stock in the foreseeable future.

SunPower has paid lobbyist Patrick Murphy, a close confidant of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, at least $290,000 in lobbying fees since 2009.

SunPower’s political action committee gave $15,650 to Democratic congressional candidates in 2010 and only $500 to a single Republican candidate. Reid received the largest slice of that pie, a $4,000 campaign contribution.

The Spanish firm Abengoa Solar received a $1.45 billion loan guarantee for an Arizona solar project, yet it has similar financial woes. Abengoa also recently reached an agreement for a second loan guarantee, $1.2 billion for another Arizona project.

Yet despite its success appealing to the Obama administration for financing, the company has consistently lost value since March. Its stock fell from a high of $16.50 six months ago to just $10.45 per share on Wednesday.

Abengoa Solar’s lobbying efforts are spearheaded internally by Fred Morse, a veteran of the Department of Energy from the Carter and Reagan administrations. Since 2009, the company has paid Ernst and Young $330,000 in lobbying fees, according to information made available by the Center for Responsible Politics.

Abengoa also enlisted the help of California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, according to the Institute for Energy Research, to pressure the Department of Energy to expedite the loan guarantees.

“It is wrong when we let the country pick the winners and the losers,” said Mark Kramer, a project faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. “If they can’t get funding privately, they probably shouldn’t exist.”

In an interview with TheDC, Kramer described these companies as bad investments whose collapse taxpayers shouldn’t be bankrolling.

But Rhone Resch, CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, defends the loan guarantee program as an investment in clean technologies that has created thousands of jobs and has spurred innovation.

He contends the United States needs to invest in solar to allow it to thrive in the face of Chinese competition, which has made it difficult for American companies.

This stiff competition was described as a key factor when Massachusetts-based Evergreen Solar and New York-based SpectraWatt filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year.



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/29/more-solar-companies-led-by-democratic-donors-received-federal-loan-guarantees/#ixzz1ZLOGpgDe

[Soul Crusher]

By MATTHEW MOSK and RONNIE GREENE
ABC NEWS and iWATCH NEWS
Sept. 29, 2011


Several of Barack Obama's top campaign supporters went from soliciting political contributions to working from within the Energy Department as it showered billions in taxpayer-backed stimulus money on alternative energy firms, ABC News and iWatch News have learned.

One of them was Steven J. Spinner, a high-tech consultant and energy investor who raised at least $500,000 for the candidate. He became one of Energy Secretary Steven Chu's key loan program advisors while his wife's law firm represented a number of companies that had applied for loans.

Recovery Act records show Allison Spinner's law firm, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, received $2.4 million in federal funds for legal fees related to the $535 million Energy Department loan guarantee to Solyndra, a solar company whose financial meltdown has prompted multiple investigations. She pledged to take no portion of the money and did not work on the loan applications.

As House Republicans step up their probe of the Obama administration's green-energy loan program in the wake of Solyndra's bankruptcy, a key focus -- and open question -- is whether the president's political supporters had any hand in influencing which companies received the taxpayer support.

"There is great concern over political influence contaminating the DOE loan guarantee program," said Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. "The prevalence of fundraisers and bundlers scattered throughout DOE is cause for alarm and is a subject our investigation does not take lightly -- we are looking into this and will see where it leads us."

The administration has repeatedly said that politics has played no role in deciding which companies received federal loans.

 ABC NewsSteve Spinner, loan programs advisor at the... View Full Size ABC NewsSteve Spinner, loan programs advisor at the Department of Energy, talks about green energy grants and loans in this YouTube video of the Bryan Cave Clean Tech Roundtable in Santa Monica, California on June 2, 2010.
 White House Dodges Energy Company Questions Watch Video
  White House Warned About Collapsed Energy Company Watch Video
  Obama-Backed 'Green' Company Goes Bankrupt Watch Video
 Spinner declined requests to be interviewed. But representatives for Spinner, his wife, and for the Energy Department all told ABC News and iWatch News that Spinner and his wife took elaborate steps to avoid conflicts between his government work and her legal work. Spinner obtained a waiver that promised he would not work on cases involving clients of his wife's firm. And she pledged not to take proceeds from her firm's work with companies that had applied for loans.

Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman, described Spinner as someone who had "no role" in evaluating loan applications or selecting recipients.

Spinner described his job differently. He wrote in an online bio for the Center for American Progress, the left-leaning think tank he joined after leaving the administration, that he "helped oversee the more than $100 billion of loan guarantee and direct lending authority" for the department's green-energy loan program. And in a speech at a "Green Tech" conference in June 2010, Spinner described how he "worked very, very closely with all the various organizations, the various offices, in trying to streamline operations and … move the funding opportunity announcements out, get the solicitations out on the street."

"What the Secretary really cared about was he wanted us to get the money out fast, he wanted us to pick and select fantastic projects," Spinner said.

 

 

Spinner was not the only Obama political supporter to play a role at the Energy Department. California venture capitalist Steve Westly, who raised more than $500,000 for Obama, had Secretary Chu's ear on green energy issues as a member of a high-level volunteer advisory panel. Mackey Dykes, who was a finance manager for the Obama campaign, was hired to be the liaison between the Energy Department and White House. Each declined interview requests.

Obama's political supporters were also investors in companies that had applied for loans. Westly has held stakes in at least five companies that have won DOE support. Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, another Obama bundler, was the biggest private backer of Solyndra. Westly, Spinner and the CEO of Allison Spinner's law firm, John V. Roos, (now Obama's ambassador to Japan), each raised more than $500,000 for Obama's 2008 campaign.


Watchdog: Unusual for Donor To Get Federal Loan Job
While it is common for presidents to reward top donors with ambassadorships or other political posts, the Sunlight Foundation's Bill Allison said it is unusual to see a major donor such as Spinner given a position inside a relatively obscure government loan program.

"For an administration that won't hire lobbyists to be hiring fundraisers for that role, that seems to be a bit of a contradiction," Allison said. "Obviously you want to keep all people who are involved in political influence out of positions of responsibility." As a presidential candidate, Obama had said lobbyists "won't find a job in my White House," but then dialed that back to "won't dominate [my White House]."

The Energy Department said Spinner brought experience working with startup companies -- the type of firms lining up for green-energy funding intended to aid the environment and economy.

"Spinner is a Harvard MBA and an experienced business executive with more than 15 years advising innovative start-up companies in the technology, media and retail industries. He advised over 50 start-up companies over the last 10 years," DOE's LaVera wrote.

Both Spinner and Westly were among a California contingent of green-energy executives who put their money, and energy, behind Obama.

When President Obama won the White House in 2008, Spinner was one of several Silicon Valley executives to help vault him to victory. Spinner was one of just 52 fundraisers to raise more than half a million dollars for the president. He served the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team, focused on technology innovation and government reform.

In February 2009, San Francisco Magazine quoted several local Obama backers reflecting on the campaign.

"In May, about 120 of us had an Entrepreneurs for Obama video teleconference with Barack. Afterward, Steve Westly and some other senior Silicon Valley executives stayed and put forth their ideas on tech issues and initiatives and the campaign," Spinner was quoted as saying. "I really loved that I could help differentiate this campaign's technology from any others in history. I knew most of the venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, and if there was something good, I could bubble it up to the campaign."

In April 2009, Spinner joined a Department of Energy poised to unleash billions of dollars, becoming a "small business loan guarantee advisor," a title that later shifted to "loan program advisor," focused on financing start-up green energy firms and cutting-edge car makers. He held the job for 17 months.

The move turned a hearty presidential supporter and frequent energy investor into a DOE insider.

Spinner's financial disclosure forms showed that he was an active investor in energy-related companies. On his final disclosure report signed Oct. 15, 2010, Spinner listed at least 15 purchases and 14 stock sales of energy-related stock earlier that year.

An initial review of financial disclosure records by iWatch News and ABC News showed one investment in an energy firm whose subsidiary received funds from the Energy Department while he was working there, and investments in three others that landed Energy Department support after he sold his stakes. Energy officials said they considered his portfolio small enough to fall "within the Executive Branch-wide de minimis exception for interests in securities."

Spinner reported making $12,155 from a 2008 investment in Atheros Communications. In June 2010, Atheros announced it would receive up to $4.5 million in DOE grant funding. DOE said Spinner sold his Atheros stock before joining the department.

On another form, Spinner reported selling off his $1,001-$15,000 investment in Air Products & Chemicals Inc. in February of 2010, four months before Air Products announced it landed $253 million in stimulus funding. "To the best of our knowledge, he had no involvement" with the award, a company official said.

Spinner invested $1,001-$15,000 in Exelon. A subsidiary of Exelon was awarded a $200 million DOE grant in late 2009. A spokeswoman said the company never dealt with Spinner as their grant was being considered.

His wife's role in a law firm representing corporate clients seeking federal funds prompted Energy Department ethics officials to take a close look, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The law firm, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, has represented several companies that had applied for Energy Department loans and loan guarantees.

On August 18, 2009, four months into his tenure at DOE, Spinner received an ethics opinion involving that connection. Matt Rogers, then the senior advisor to the Energy Secretary, wrote that Spinner could continue in his duties, but "not participate in any discussion regarding any application involving Wilson [Sonsini]." The opinion said his wife would forgo pay "earned as a result of its representation of applicants in programs within your official duties."

Rogers said Spinner's conflict was minimized because his role at DOE was supervisory -- "to embrace strategic objectives, inquire on overall progress of applications to the program staff, anticipate and help senior management clear any institutional roadblocks to accomplishment of the program's objectives."


Spinner's Wife's Firm Worked for Solyndra
Courtney Dorman, a spokeswoman for Allison Spinner's law firm, Wilson Sonsini, said the firm also took strides to avoid conflicts, establishing a wall between her and client matters involving the Energy Department while Spinner was in office.

One of those law-firm clients, SEC records show, was Solyndra -- the California solar panel firm whose collapse put half a billion dollars of taxpayer money at risk and prompted an investigation by the FBI and other agencies.

WATCH the Original ABC News Report on Solyndra

READ the Original ABC News Report on Solyndra

The law firm worked on the solar company's failed public offering, the records show. And it also provided Solyndra with outside counsel on the DOE loan guarantee transaction. The company was paid $2.44 million for its Solyndra work, records show -- money generated by the Energy Department's stimulus loan guarantee to the solar panel firm.

Allison Spinner "was not involved with that transaction, nor has she ever worked with Solyndra in any capacity," Dorman said.

The law firm's website cites Allison Spinner's work with other clean-tech firms -- including Amyris Inc. and HCL CleanTech. Both companies had engaged in the time-consuming process of applying for green energy grants. Amyris Biotechnologies won $25 million from DOE in late 2009 to develop a diesel substitute and went public the next year -- with Spinner's wife helping handle the IPO. After Spinner left the department, HCL CleanTech landed a $9 million Energy Department grant to convert biomass feedstocks into fuel and chemical products.

Dorman, the firm spokeswoman, said in an email that Wilson Sonsini "established an ethical wall around Allison with respect to [Wilson Sonsini] representation of clients in matters involving DOE loan programs." Dorman added that Allison Spinner represented "clients who had DOE loans or grants that fell outside of Steve's jurisdiction."

Steven Spinner was not with the department when Solyndra won a conditional commitment for the loan guarantee in March 2009. But he was on board when the loan closed that September. A few days later, at a clean-tech forum in Boston in September 2009, Spinner spoke of the virtue of the DOE's support.

"We liked the taste of it," he said, telling the Boston group the company would bring thousands of jobs.

After leaving the department last September, Spinner has continued to cheerlead for its mission. This July, he co-authored an article for the Center for American Progress titled "Don't Let Clean Energy Funding Die on the Vine." The House committee's investigation of the Solyndra financing was just heating up.

Click Here to Sign Up for Breaking News and Investigation Alerts From The Brian Ross Investigative Unit

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/obama-fundraisers-ties-green-firms-federal-cash/story?id=14592626&singlePage=true

[Soul Crusher]

GOP's Solyndra probe threatens to ensnare Energy Secretary Chu
By Andrew Restuccia - 09/29/11 05:00 AM ET    


The controversy over a $535 million loan guarantee to the now-bankrupt California solar firm Solyndra is threatening to dim the star of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a physicist and Nobel Prize winner who has rarely been thrust into the political spotlight. 

Republican lawmakers have set their sites on Chu, who for three years has managed to avoid being dragged into a litany of political battles waged by Republicans and the White House on energy and environmental issues. 

The GOP has for weeks lobbed a slew of allegations at the administration, arguing officials rushed a final decision on the loan guarantee and missed a series of red flags that hinted at the company’s financial troubles. Solyndra declared bankruptcy two years after receiving the Energy Department loan, resulting in layoffs for 1,100 workers.


Now, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are increasingly turning their attention to the role that Chu played in overseeing the loan guarantee program. 

The ongoing fight over Solyndra could put Chu, who is not known as a political brawler, in uncharted waters. 

Republicans are pointing to a recent Los Angeles Times story that says Chu disagreed with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and others when they raised concerns about the loan guarantee program during a meeting last October. 

“We need to hear from Secretary Chu and [White House Office of Management and Budget Director Jack] Lew to fill in some of the blanks,” Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), who sits on the Energy panel’s investigative subcommittee, told The Hill in a phone interview Wednesday. “The buck has to stop someplace and presumably it stops with the heads of those agencies.” 

RELATED ARTICLESPoll: Solyndra not catching voters' attention in swing stateDOE approves $1B in solar loan guarantees
Burgess and other Republicans on the subcommittee have called on Chu to testify on the Solyndra loan guarantee. 

Republicans on the panel wrote to Chu last week to request all communications between the Energy Department and the White House on the Solyndra loan guarantee. 

The document request is part of a broader effort by Republicans to determine if the White House rushed consideration of the loan guarantee. 

The committee, which launched its investigation into Solyndra in February, has already received more than 35,000 documents and has released select emails that Republicans say show that the White House tried to rush a decision on the company’s financing so that the loan guarantee could be announced at the Sept. 2009 groundbreaking of the company’s factory.

The administration has insisted that it thoroughly reviewed the project and has strongly denied any wrondoing.

Though Republicans say they want to hear from Chu, Sean Bonyun, spokesman for committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), said the panel has not yet formalized plans for the secretary to testify. 

Democrats and clean energy advocates have criticized Republicans for their investigation, arguing it is a transparent attempt to score political points. 

"This is not about Solyndra, this is not about the loan guarantee program, this is about Republicans going after the president," Marchant Wentworth, who focuses on clean energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said. 

Before Obama chose him as his Energy secretary, Chu had little experience running a massive bureaucracy like a federal agency. In 2004, Chu became the director of the Energy Department's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. The laboratory employs about 4,000 people. By contrast, the Energy Department employs about four times that number. 

Chu represents an unfamiliar target for the GOP, which has frequently sparred with top administration officials on energy policy. 

Republicans bashed Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for imposing a series of more stringent offshore drilling regulations in the aftermath of last year’s oil spill that Republicans and some drill-state Democrats said unfairly slowed down the pace of drilling. 

And Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson has testified before Congress so many times one congressman even joked that she should have her own parking space.  Jackson has borne the brunt of more criticism than any other top administration official for moving forward with a series of air regulations that Republicans say will place a massive burden on the economy. 

Though Chu has largely avoided controversy, he came under fire from Republicans before he was confirmed by the Senate for calling coal his "worst nightmare" during a 2008 speech.. Chu walked back those comments slightly during a Senate hearing in 2009, after he was confirmed, calling over-reliance on coal a "bad dream," but stressing that it will remain a major part of the country's energy portfolio. 

Chu has won the praise of clean energy advocates and is generally well respected by Republicans too. 

"He’s been public about renewable energy and energy efficiency and knowledgeable in a way that we have not seen in an Energy secretary for a long time," Wentworth said. 

Chu is best known for offering detailed and nuanced analyses of the energy landscape. 

He has been a staunch advocate of making large and consistent investments in clean energy, arguing that it’s the only way that the United States can compete with countries like China, which have put billions into solar and wind. 

Even amid growing criticism from Republicans, Chu has said the Energy Department will continue making such investments. The department, for example, announced the finalization of two loan guarantees for solar companies Wednesday totaling more than $1 billion 

At an event in Washington this week, Chu delighted a crowd of energy industry officials with a rough history of the automobile – an anecdote he used to encourage long-term investment in low-carbon technology to ensure the United States wins what he calls the “clean energy race.” 

“So, lesson number one,” Chu told the crowd. “The United States didn’t invent the automobile, it actually became the dominant automobile manufacturing force in the 20th Century by becoming the low-cost producer.” 

After the meeting, Chu huddled in the corner with a group of scientists and listened intently for about ten minutes. 

“These are his people. He’d stay here all day if he could,” one of Chu’s aides remarked.

Source:

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/184515-gops-solyndra-probe-threatens-to-ensnare-energy-sec-chu

[Soul Crusher]

Senate Judiciary Committee staffer corroborates ATF gunwalking purchases
Gun Rights Examiner ^ | 28 September, 2011 | David Codrea



As a follow up to a special joint exclusive report on a letter implicating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives committing straw purchases for “Project Gunwalker,” this correspondent on Monday approached media staffers working for Rep. Darrell Issa and the House Oversight Committee on Government Reform and Sen. Chuck Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the following email:


Good morning all.
In case you haven't seen the latest reports Mike Vanderboegh and I have filed, or if you have and are digesting them, please note:

http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/09/vanderboegh-codrea-exclusive-us-govt.html and http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-national/breaking-letter-implicates-atf-committing-straw-purchases-for-gunwalker

Mike and I would appreciate whatever for-the-record comments on this development you could obtain for us--we'd prefer sourced but we can forgo individual attribution if the statement is conditional on that.

Here is the reply from the Judiciary Committee media spokesperson:


In a March 3 letter to Attorney General Holder and Acting ATF Director Melson, Senator Grassley released Reports of Investigation (Attachment 1 to the letter linked below) in relation to the same case to which Mr. Voth’s letter pertains. There is more detailed information about this non-Fast and Furious case in those previously released ROIs than in Mr. Voth’s letter. The Voth letter was not obtained until later and merely corroborates the information already in the ROIs.
http://grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upload/ATF-03-03-11-letter-to-Holder-with-redactions.pdf

The relevant report from Attachment 1 of the Grassley letter is presented in this column’s sidebar slideshow. It demonstrates an undercover agent (per the letter referenced in the Gun Rights Examiner/Sipsey Street Irregulars joint report, whistleblower John Dodson) utilizing Agent Cashier Funds to conduct the purchases.


(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[GigantorX]

The Solyndra Scandal was FINALLY covered on MSNBC.....

Maddow blamed it on Bush and then quickly moved on.

What a pathetic "news" channel.

[Soul Crusher]

The Solyndra Scandal was FINALLY covered on MSNBC.....

Maddow blamed it on Bush and then quickly moved on.

What a pathetic "news" channel.

Did she mention that Bush Admn - TURNED DOWN THE APPLICATION BECAUSE IT WAS SO FLAWED? 

[Soul Crusher]

$737 million in green-tech loan to company connected to Pelosi family?
Hot Air ^ | 9/28/2011 | Ed Morrisey


________________________ ______________________


As Tina wrote yesterday, Americans still favor government subsidies to companies unable to otherwise compete in the green-tech industry. That may be especially true of Nancy Pelosi and her family, but not exactly for reasons of environmental improvement. Let’s start with this report from The Hill, via Gateway Pundit and Instapundit, on the latest approved green-tech loan from the Department of Energy:

DOE announced a $737 million loan guarantee to help finance construction of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 110-megawatt solar-power-generating facility in Nye County, Nev. The project is sponsored by Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve.

The Energy Department said the project will result in 600 construction jobs and 45 permanent jobs.

Forty-five permanent jobs? That puts the cost per permanent job at over $16 million, a figure that could employ perhaps a hundred people had the capital remained in the hands of the private sector that produced it. Whatever else these green-tech loans are, they certainly are not job-creation stimulus.

But that’s not the best part. As both Gateway Pundit and American Glob discover, one of SolarReserve’s “investment partners” is Pacific Corporate Group, through its Clean Energy and Technology Fund. And PCG’s executive director is Ron Pelosi — brother of Nancy Pelosi’s husband. Suddenly, this deal makes a lot more sense than spending $737 million for forty-five jobs.

This surely is just a coincidence … in the same way that the push by the Obama administration to approve a loan to a failing Solyndra backed by one of his big campaign bundlers was just a coincidence. Recall Reason TV’s excellent video yesterday on the urban-renewal movement, in which governments seized property ostensibly to improve neighborhoods but parsed out the spoils to the politically connected ? That’s exactly what’s going on with this program, and with Barack Obama’s demands for more blank checks for stimulus. The only thing Obama’s stimulating is the pockets of his cronies.

[Soul Crusher]

Grassley puts it bluntly: ‘It’s a lie’(gunwalker)
Seattle Gun Rights Examiner ^ | 28 September, 2011 | Dave Workman



When Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley was told in February that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was not allowing guns to cross the border, it wasn’t true and the Justice Department knew it, and he said so in a Monday night interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren.


“It’s a lie.”—Sen. Charles Grassley
In a typically candid eight minute interview, Grassley told Van Sustern that the Justice Department has been “misleading to me,” and that the agency has known all along that Operation Fast and Furious had done exactly what Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich insisted they weren’t doing in his Feb. 4, 2011 letter to the senator.


“At the outset, the allegation described in your January 27 letter – that ATF “sanctioned” or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico – is false.”—Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general
Grassley, who was interviewed by this column last week, is growing more upset every day. According to congressional sources close to the senator’s investigation of Fast and Furious, investigators have interviewed ATF Special Agent David Voth, former supervisor of Group VII in Phoenix, who was discussed by this column on Monday. His name is prominently featured in a new revelation about a separate gun trafficking case involving whistleblower agent John Dodson.

Whether Voth will be asked to appear before Congressman Darrell Issa’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform remains to be seen. Voth now appears to be a central figure in the Fast and Furious fiasco, which critics insist can no longer be referred to as a “botched operation” because it now appears the ATF’s plan all along was to let hundreds, if not thousands of guns to flow across the border into Mexico,


(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Soul Crusher]

MSM Sheep: Ignoring the Scandal of the Century(gunwalker)
pajamasmedia.com ^ | 28 September, 2011 | Bob Owens



Monday’s revelations by Mike Vanderboegh at Sipsey Street Irregulars and David Codrea at the Gun Rights Examiner, corroborated here at PJMedia and expounded upon at Fox News, comprise a “smoking gun” of the one of the most stunning political scandals in U.S. history.

As William Lajeunesse writes at Fox:

Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel — the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.

I don’t wish to understate it: elements of the U.S. Departments of Justice, State, Homeland Security, and Treasury are responsible for supplying an arsenal to narco-terrorists waging a civil war against an American ally. Our federal government may bear responsibility for at least 200 murders committed with “walked” firearms, in what Mexican Attorney General Marisela Morales describes as a “betrayal” of her country by the Obama administration.



Are there legal ramifications? Perhaps. According to Title 18, 2331 of the U.S. Code, Operation Fast and Furious may amount to international terrorism, which carries with it stiff penalties for conspiracies that result in homicide. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act — which was originally used to prosecute the mafia — and the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) may also fit, as may assorted state and federal charges. Charges may also result from two investigations launched by Mexican authorities, and Mexico could conceivably file charges with the International Criminal Court.

This is objectively the most important political and legal story in America right now.

But despite the revelations from of documents and testimony obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and repeated calls for full disclosure from senators and congressmen, mainstream media organizations have done everything in their power to bury the scandal. This can only be viewed as a partisan media’s attempt to protect a criminal executive branch.

Let’s play “if Bush did it.”

If thousands of firearms had been provided to the Sinaloa cocaine cartel by the Justice Department; and if those guns had been blamed for not one or two, but hundreds of murders by Mexico’s lead prosecutor, would there not be wall-to-wall front page coverage every day on the pages of the New York Times … if Bush were still president?

Under Bush, the MSM did provide blanket coverage for the warrantless wiretapping program — which was deemed legal by the courts and caused no deaths.

If circumstantial evidence, political speeches, and talking points from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and President Bush all suggested that the solitary goal of a gunwalking conspiracy was to put American weapons in the hands of criminals in hopes they would commit violent crimes in order to undermine the Constitution and Bill of Rights … the Washington Post columnists would call for impeachment and criminal prosecution each day.

Recall how they breathlessly reported the minute details and speculations of the Valerie Plame affair, which had much smaller stakes.

Instead, both the New York Times and Washington Post have responded to Gunwalker with attempted character assassinations of Congressman Darrell Issa, the lead investigator.

The Post ran a desperate hit piece on Issa, a story turned down by at least two other news organizations and left-wing blog Talking Points Memo for being too thinly sourced. They gave the byline to a reporter returning from a plagiarism suspension.

After that failed to stop Issa, the New York Times produced a hit piece so rife with errors that it amounted to fiction.

Among the MSM, only Richard Serrano of the Los Angeles Times, Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, and William Lajeunesse of Fox News have faithfully reported on the story.

Nobody died in the Watergate break-ins, but the Washington Post’s dogged coverage of the story created a reputation that the now clearly partisan newsletter coasts upon to this day. The New York Times spent untold man-hours and and money exposing the FISA warrantless wiretapping program — to the detriment of the nation’s national security — even though no laws were broken by the wiretaps.

Yet perhaps hundreds have died as a result of this administration’s conspiracy to supply weapons to a narco-terrorist organization, and the crack ABC News investigative team at the Blotter can’t be bothered. 60 Minutes is more enthralled by the murder of an American Nazi than the Obama adminstration’s Reichstag fire. CNN may as well be protecting Saddam again. Need we mention PBS or MSNBC?

The Gunwalker conspiracy is the kind of story that journalists dream of breaking their entire careers. It is now in the palms of their hands: a story in which they can make a difference, take down the evil and corrupt, and ensure justice is served.

Instead of reporting, however, they are complicit. They have chosen to acquiesce to a clear and obvious evil, an aberration of our most basic values. They are no longer watchdogs, but docile sheep.

More news organizations are shrinking, merging, and consolidating as they face a decrease in circulation and credibility. When they die, point back to this moment in time, and write as their epitaph:

The could have lived, but chose death.

Unlike those they allow this government to terrorize and murder with impunity.