Solargate: $1.4 billion in stimulus money sent to a “green” company owned by Robert Kennedy Jr
Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before; the Obama regime granted a $1.4 billion stimulus bailout to a “green” energy company with ties to Democrats. But this is not the same story, this is just the latest in a string of questionable loan guarantees made by the Obama regime to push his unsustainable “green” energy initiative.
This latest example of crony capitalism at taxpayer expense involves a company named BrightSource whose largest shareholder is none other than Robert Kennedy Jr. But the ties to the Democrat party do not end there. One of Robert Kennedy’s employees was a person named Sanjay Wagle.
Sanjay Wagle was a top fundraiser for Barack Obama in 2008 and he was rewarded for his efforts with a position in the energy Department. Care to guess what his job was in the department? He was an adviser on energy grants. Perfect!
There are few details at this point, but it looks to me like the fix was in on this one from the very beginning, even before Barack Obama won the election it appears as if these three were scheming behind the scenes in the event that a stimulus bill was passed.
There is some good news in regards to BrightSource however, at least this company is still in business so the money wasn’t totally wasted in this case. But here is the bad news:
BrightSource touted the Ivanpah project as a green jobs creator. Yet as its own website reveals, the thermal solar plant will only create 1,400 jobs at its peak construction and 650 jobs annually thereafter. Even using the peak estimate of 1,400 jobs, that works out to a cost to taxpayers of $1 million per job created.
What a bargain!
Video: Allen West calls for Eric Holder’s resignation
Here is a video of Allen West’s call for Eric Holder’s resignation; he also calls out Barack Obama. There is nothing I need to add to what Representative West said, he nailed it.
Solargate: The Department of Energy urged Solyndra to hold off a layoff announcement until after the 2010 midterm election
As regular readers of this blog already know, Barack Obama–in the interest of giving Joe Biden a backdrop for announcing the Obama regime’s “green initiative” policy–fast tracked a $500 million stimulus loan to the troubled “green” company Solyndra. It was well known within the regime that this was a very risky proposition, and President Bush had rejected a similar request from Solyndra because of these risks, so the Obama regime promptly changed the stimulus loan guidelines to protect investors in the company–who happened to be Democrat donors–instead of the taxpayers who were footing the bill in the event that Solyndra went bankrupt.
To the amazement of nobody, Solyndra did in fact file for bankruptcy earlier this year and if there wasn’t enough proof that the Obama regime was putting politics–in the form of its “green initiatives” policies–ahead of the American taxpayers when it agreed to restructure the loan, this story should provide the necessary proof that Barack Obama cared more about achieving political success than ensuring the taxpayers money went to good use.
Why did Barack Obama award Siga with a $400 million no bid contract for a smallpox vaccine?
This is all the background you need about the story I am going to write about:
A company controlled by a longtime political donor gets a no-bid contract to supply an experimental remedy for a threat that may not exist.
Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.
Siga Technologies Inc. is a company which was trying to secure a $400 million contract with the United States government to supply an experimental smallpox vaccine in the event of a biological attack on the nation, but the company met resistance from the Department of Health and Human Services.
When Barack Obama heard about this resistance from within his own regime, he took steps to ensure that Siga would receive the contract: Read more…
Obamacare: Stryker announces layoffs due to healthcare reform
Stryker is a company that manufactures artificial hips and knees and today they announced today the company will be laying off 5% of its workforce:
These actions are part of our ongoing focus on quality, innovation and cost, and position the company to continue to provide strong, consistent growth in a changing environment
What does the CEO of Stryker mean when he talks about a “changing environment” in the medical devices field? Obamacare of course:
Stryker, the Kalamazoo-based maker of artificial hips and knees, will cut 5% of its global workforce by the end of next year to reduce costs in the face of new fees on device makers required by the U.S. health care law
Obamacare raises taxes in order to pay for itself and one of those taxes is a tax on medical devices–including artificial hips and knees. A tax increase on a business is nothing more than a cost increase and companies make up for that increase in the cost of doing business in two ways; they raise the price of the product and they cut workforce. In both cases the people that are most hurt by tax increases on “big business” are the people who can least afford to take the hit–the middle to lower classes–not the companies themselves.
The only way healthcare costs will come down for the people who may need a new hip or a new knee is to send them home with a pain pill to cope with their struggle instead of the new hip or knee they actually need, and this sounds an awful lot like rationing to me.
When Barack Obama sold this bill of goods to the American people he promised that this legislation would help to reduce the cost of healthcare and would actually create jobs, but as we can see in this example Obamacare is actually going to raise the price of certain healthcare expenditures as well as cost people their jobs. Exactly the opposite of what Barack Obama claimed would happen.
And this is only the beginning; most of the healthcare law hasn’t even been implemented at this time. This is as good as it is going to get, it is only going to get worse from here.
Happy Veterans Day to all who have served
At eleven o’clock in the morning on November 11th in 1918, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, bringing the Great War, the war to end all wars, WWI to an end. November 11th is known throughout most of the world as Armistice or Remembrance Day, but after WWII there was growing sentiment in the United States that November 11th should be a time to honor all veterans. In 1954 President Eisenhower signed a bill that turned Armistice Day into Veterans Day, declaring it a national holiday.
To borrow a phrase from President Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, “it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”
Today is a day for honoring all of our veterans: those that fought and died, those that fought and lived, those who did not fight, those that have served during war and those that served during peace, those that have served in the past and those that are serving now, whether in combat or at home, whether near or far.
Everyone who has ever put on the uniform of the United States and those that are wearing the uniform of the United States are all my heroes. I love you all and I respect everything that you do to secure my freedom and the freedom of my family and of my friends.
You will never know how much I appreciate what you do and have done for the greatest country in the world and there is no way that I can possibly thank you for all that you do and for everything you have given up to serve the country.
Gunrunner: Eric Holder is refusing to let “Justice” Department witnesses testify on Fast and Furious
It seems like ages ago that Barack Obama promised to run the most open, honest, and transparent administration in history doesn’t it? In the latest example of the Obama regime not being willing to be open, honest, or transparent with the American people it has come to light that Eric Holder has only provided the Oversight Committee with one out of the twelve witnesses that the committee has requested regarding the deadly and scandalous Fast and Furious debacle.
Here is what Chuck Grassley had to say about Eric Holder’s latest stonewalling tactics on Fast and Furious:
We have requested 12 Justice Department witnesses be made available for transcribed interviews,” Grassley said in a Thursday Senate Judiciary Committee executive business meeting. “Despite the department’s promises of good faith cooperation, only one witness has been provided so far — former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke. The department has refused to schedule interviews with any of the other 11 witnesses. That’s not the good faith cooperation I was promised, and it is unacceptable.
Solargate: $2.8 billion in stimulus money went to a “green” company based in Spain
Forgive me if I am wrong, in my naiveté I assumed that the stimulus bill was designed to stimulate the American economy, but as we have learned in the Solyndra, SunPower, LightSquared, Fisker, and Tesla scandals it certainly does not hurt to be a major donor to Democrat campaigns.
All of the aforementioned companies received stimulus money even though there were questions surrounding the companies and their viability, and it just so happens that investors and lobbyists for these companies have ties to Democrat campaigns. In the case of Fisker; that company was awarded $500 million even though the company moved its operation to Finland because it would have been unprofitable to remain in the United States.
The Obama regime is defending the Fisker decision by claiming that some of the money will be used to build a plant in Delaware, which just happens to be Joe Biden’s home state, and that will likely be the regime’s defense in the latest scandal to erupt onto the scene–Abengoa.
Gunrunner: Eric Holder uses Fast and Furious to promote gun control at Senate hearing
Yesterday Eric Holder testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious and once again me made the claim that he knew nothing about the deadly and scandalous operation. He said that while it was his responsibility to know what was happening in the “Justice” Department that he couldn’t possibly be expected to know every detail of every operation in the department. That certainly sounds like a contradiction on his part; on one hand he admits it is his responsibility to know what is happening in his department, and on the other hand he is claiming that it is impossible for him to know what is happening in his department. It sounds as if he isn’t up to the task he agreed to undertake when he accepted the role as head of the “Justice” Department.
We know that this is a lie based on Janet Napolitano’s testimony in which she admitted that Operation Fast and Furious was an OCDETF which would have required Eric Holder to sign off on before it was implemented.
But that is not what I wanted to focus on today because I wanted to focus on this statement that Eric Holder also made during yesterday’s testimony:
Unfortunately, earlier this year the House of Representatives actually voted to keep law enforcement in the dark when individuals purchase multiple semi-automatic rifles and shotguns in Southwest border gun shops,” Holder’s written testimony declares. “Providing law enforcement with the tools to detect and disrupt illegal gun trafficking is entirely consistent with the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens and it is critical to addressing the public safety crisis on the Southwest border
Gunrunner: Eric Holder testifies in front of the Senate, changes his story and refuses to apologize to Brian Terry’s family
In an attempt at a pre-emptive strike before he testifies in what will surely be a less friendly environment in front of the House Oversight Committee, Eric Holder today testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Democrat controlled Judiciary Committee was seen to be more or less friendly ground for Eric Holder and, predictably, Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer tried to lay the blame for Fast and Furious at the feet of former President Bush by claiming that the deadly operation was merely an extension of the Bush era Operation Wide Receiver. I have already debunked that myth here, and this is what I wrote in that post:
But this does argument simply does not hold water as there was a huge difference between the two operations which the Department of “Justice” is ignoring. Under President Bush’s Operation Wide Receiver 500 weapons were sold to straw purchasers who then turned around and sold the weapons to drug lords, but that is where the similarities end.
Under Operation Wide Receiver the weapons were fitted with tracking devices–the weapons sold under Fast and Furious were not–but the tracking devices failed, and once this became known the program was immediately halted. Under Fast and Furious the weapons were never equipped with tracking devices and were untraceable from the beginning and in fact there whereabouts were only learned of after the fact when the weapons turned up at the scenes of violent crimes, such as the murder sight of Brian Terry, and that is exactly the way the Obama regime planned it to work from the failed operation’s inception.
But I still found his testimony interesting for a couple of reasons:
America's Watchtower 