Yet another Obama "Bundler" caught with his hand in the DOE Loan "Cookie Jar" - to the tune of $50 Million!http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/yet-another-obama-bundler-caught-with-his-hand-in-the-doe-loan-cookie-jar---to-the-tune-of-50-m/question-2252117Another Obama "bundler" is investor in car company that won federal loan
James A. Johnson, one of many un-indicted creators of the “housing bubble” and the failure of Fannie Mae which led to the financial collapse, and an Obama “insider,” is vice chairman of company winning $50
million in loans from Obama Department of Energy
An investment firm whose vice chairman has been an adviser and fundraiser for President Obama saw one of its portfolio companies win approval this year for $50 million in loans from the administration’s clean-energy loan program.
Washington-based Perseus says its affiliation with James A. Johnson, a major fundraiser for Obama’s campaign, played no role in persuading the Energy Department to award the loan to Vehicle
Production Group, a Miami start-up that is manufacturing wheelchair-accessible cars and taxis.
Johnson headed Obama’s vice presidential selection committee in 2008 and is the former chairman of housing mortgage giant Fannie Mae. He was listed as a campaign fundraising bundler for Obama in
the 2008 race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and committed to raising $200,000 to $500,000 for the upcoming
presidential race.
Johnson could not be reached for comment Thursday. Perseus
Chairman Frank Pearl said in an interview that it is an “absurd
idea” to think that Johnson’s political connections helped the
Miami company.
“I doubt there was anybody at DOE that even considered the fact
that Jim was part of this firm. We went straight through the proper
channels of the [loan] program,” he said.
Department spokesman Damien LaVera said in a statement Thursday
that “the decision to provide the Vehicle Production Group a loan
was made based on the merits after more than two years of review by
officials in the DOE loan program.”
Republicans have criticized the administration for what they say
is a pattern of loan assistance going to politically connected
clean-energy companies. Recently, they expanded their investigations
of loan guarantees to other companies whose investors include
Democratic contributors.
Both the White House and the Energy Department have said that no
such pattern exists and that all decisions were decided on merit.[How naive do they think the public is?]
A nine-month House investigation of the loan guarantee program
has largely focused on the Obama administration’s first
clean-energy loan: $535 million to solar start-up Solyndra, a
now-shuttered company whose lead investors were funds tied to George
Kaiser, an Obama fundraising bundler and Tulsa billionaire.
The Energy Department ignored numerous warnings that the
company’s finances were shaky and rushed to approve the Solyndra
loan; now taxpayers are obligated to repay the money. The head of
the loan program, Jonathan Silver, resigned this month, weeks after
the head of the House investigative committee called for him to be
fired.
In recent weeks, Republican lawmakers have widened their scope to
more deeply probe $1 billion in loans approved by the same
program to electric auto makers Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors.
On Wednesday, a congressional committee chairman asked the Energy
Department for documents concerning its decision to offer a
$730 million loan to a U.S. subsidiary of a steel-making
company run by the second-richest man in Russia.
The loan was for Severstal's North American operation to upgrade
a Dearborn, Mich., plant to supply the auto industry. Rep. Darrell
Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform, asked Energy Secretary Steven Chu to explain why
the firm merited taxpayer-backed financing considering the financial
mishaps and global standing of its parent company.
In the case of the Vehicle Production Group, the Energy
Department conditionally offered the start-up its low-cost,
government-backed financing last November. Chu announced the
agency’s formal approval in March.
Perseus has been the leading investor in VPG since 2008. Pearl
said he became interested in the company’s concept because of its
reliance on compressed natural gas and its unique niche — the
first vehicle designed for wheelchair accessibility. He was a
longtime friend of VPG’s president, Fred Drasner, a former owner
of the Washington Redskins and a former co-publisher of the New York
Daily News.
“It’s a fabulous car,” Pearl said, adding that the
department was looking for a compressed natural gas project to back.
“It’s the only one purpose-designed and purpose-built to serve
the needs of people in wheelchairs.”
Pearl said he took on the role of pursuing the loan for the
company while Drasner and his team focused on marketing and car
production.
Another investor was Clean Energy Fuels, a firm focused on using
natural gas for transportation led by longtime Republican T. Boone
Pickens.
Perseus’s vice chairman was Johnson, who joined the firm in
2001 but is better known as a fixture in Democratic politics for the
past three decades. He served as manager of Walter Mondale’s
unsuccessful 1984 presidential campaign and chaired the vice
presidential selection committee for John F. Kerry’s White House
campaign.
From 1991 to 1998, Johnson served as chairman and chief executive
officer of Fannie Mae, a well-compensated position that would tail
him as financial markets imploded in summer 2008 from the rise of
risky, subprime mortgages.[Johnson, as CEO of
Fannie Mae, started the practice of "subprime" loans. While Democrats
claim that subprimes provide "affordable housing", Johnson's motives
were to increase FM's volume, as his compensation was based upon
performance. As a result Johnson received over $100 million in pay and
bonuses during his time as CEO.]
Johnson had supported Obama as a young senator and, later, was
briefly part of a three-member team leading his vice presidential
search committee. But Johnson resigned in June 2008
amid revelations that he had received $7 million in deeply
discounted mortgage loans from the chief executive of Countrywide, a
company that had helped fuel the rise of subprime home mortgages. He
said the controversy was a distraction for Obama’s campaign.
Johnson has personally donated $55,400 to Obama’s two
presidential campaigns, federal donation records show, including a
$35,800 check listed on Aug. 29 to Obama’s reelection effort.
Pearl donated $1,500 to Obama’s campaign in 2008.
All told, Perseus officers have donated $120,700 to Obama and the
Democratic Party’s top three fundraising committees since the
2007-08 election cycle.[But, of course, that had nothing to do with their company receiving a $50 million loan from the DOE!!!]
Before Obama’s inauguration, Johnson served as a lead member of
Obama’s transition team, advising him on economic policies.[How did that advice work out?]
Pearl said he actively tried to avoid using politics to woo the
new administration. He said he met with a member of the White
House’s disabilities council, Kareem Dale, to discuss VPG’s
project while its application was pending “to make sure [the
company] was on their radar screen” but did not seek his help with
the Energy Department.
Pearl said that, to his knowledge, Johnson never asked the
administration to help VPG.
“It seemed to me, and it still does, that dealing forthrightly
with people at DOE and not putting them under pressure was the most
effective way to do this,” Pearl said. “That’s what we did.”
The compressed natural gas vehicle MV-1 is expected to use no
gasoline and produce lower emissions than gasoline-fueled vehicles.
The Vehicle Production Group estimates that it will, at full
capacity, produce more than 22,000 vehicles per year. The company
estimates that the project will generate more than 100 jobs in
Indiana, where the cars will be assembled, in addition to about 800
direct and indirect jobs across 17 states related to the assembly,
parts supplies, production and sale of the vehicle.
Research Editor Alice Crites contributed to this article.
Comment:
Amazingly,
despite his many defalcations, James A. Johnson is still known as a
"mover and shaker" in Democrat circles in Washington, D.C. Johnson,
probably more than any other single individual, with the possible
exception of Barney Frank, was responsible for the "subprime" mortgage
crisis. As CEO of Fannie Mae in the early '90s, he was the first to
ignore the normal "due diligence" lenders do when assessing the
riskiness of a home loan. While the motive was supposedly to achieve
Fannie Mae's mission of providing "affordable housing", Johnson's
motives were to increase his own compensation -- over $100,000,000
between 1991 and 1998! In 1994, Bill Clinton "federalized" Fannie Mae's
policies with rewritten regulations under the Community Reinvestment
Act (the Carter-era CRA), requiring lenders to meet quotas for loans to
low and middle income borrowers. These actions were the root cause of
the near-collapse of the U.S. financial system in 2008, requiring
astronomical "bail outs" of financial institutions.
