Video: Newt's Declaration of Energy Independence

As high gas prices are becoming a central issue these days, the content of this ad is timed very well. From Winning Our Future, here's a montage of Newt's finer moments when it comes to talking about energy policy. It also contains a smack down of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). It's an ad that clearly highlights Newt's stronger points. As you watch, imagine what a debate between Newt and Obama on energy policy might look like.



h/t Free Republic

Solyndra: Rahm Emanuel, Emails, and Energy Secretary on Hot Seat

For those who are eagerly awaiting the December 8th grilling of Attorney General Eric Holder by members of the House Judiciary Committee - of which Rep. Darrell Issa is one - there is another hearing tomorrow that may tide you over a bit. Energy Secretary Steven Chu will be testifying in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on November 18th about his role in the Solyndra scandal. Two days before the scheduled hearing, the White House released emails that show Solyndra was pressured by the Energy Department to delay layoff announcements until after the 2010 elections and the committee is combing through them.

Via Washington Post:

The Obama administration, which gave the solar company Solyndra a half-billion-dollar loan to help create jobs, asked the company to delay announcing it would lay off workers until after the hotly contested November 2010 midterm elections that imperiled Democratic control of Congress, newly released e-mails show.

The announcement could have been politically damaging because President Obama and others in the administration had held up Solyndra as a poster child of its clean-energy initiative, saying the company’s new factory, built with the help of stimulus money, could create 1,000 jobs. Six months before the midterm elections, Obama visited Solyndra’s California plant to praise its success, even though outside auditors had questioned whether the operation might collapse in debt.

As the contentious 2010 elections approached, Solyndra found itself foundering, and it warned the Energy Department that it would need an emergency cash infusion. A Solyndra investment adviser wrote in an Oct. 30, 2010, e-mail — without explaining the reason — that Energy Department officials were pushing “very hard” to delay making the layoffs public until the day after the elections.

The announcement ultimately was made on Nov. 3, 2010 — immediately following the Nov. 2 vote.

E-mails describing the events were released Tuesday as part of a House Energy and Commerce Committee memo, provided in advance of Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s scheduled testimony before the committee’s investigative panel on Thursday. As a result of the 2010 elections, that committee is now controlled by Republicans, whose aggressive nine-month investigation into Solyndra has focused partly on whether politics played a role in the company’s selection to receive a federal loan.

It isn't just Chu's Department that is implicated in these emails either. Former Obama Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel is as well. In fact, he should be called to testify about what he knew at some point because his lack of memory relative to Solyndra may be more suspicious than Eric Holder denying any knowledge of Fast and Furious until a "few weeks" before May 3rd.

Unlike Holder, there are emails that apparently implicate Emanuel directly in the decision to press the president into publicly announcing the Solyndra loan. What makes this even more explosive is Emanuel repeatedly pleading ignorance when it comes to his role.

Click HERE to hear Emanuel say in September of this year that he doesn't "know" or "remember" the Solyndra deal. WLS confronted Emanuel again relative to these new revelations in emails that named him. Click HERE.

h/t Michelle Malkin

SunPower: Is this Solyndra on Steroids?

The SunPower deal is really starting to reek. In addition to shady dealings, it smacks of a disgusting level of crony capitalism involving the son of Rep. George Miller (D-CA). As Solyndra was in the process of declaring bankruptcy last month, another company in the same line of work - SunPower - was in the process of securing a loan more than twice that of what Solyndra received. Though the company that bought SunPower, which was reportedly sold right before the Obama administration signed the loan guarantee that wasn't supposed to put taxpayer dollars at risk, hasn't declared bankruptcy, it appears to be headed for triage. SunPower and the company that had purchased a 60% interest and was exposed to the most risk - Total S.A. - both sold SunPower to NRG Energy right before the Obama administration signed the deal that put taxpayers on the hook.

Via Daily Caller:

In April of this year, Chu offered SunPower a conditional commitment for the loan guarantee. At that point, there was no taxpayer money on the line per se.

Less than a month after SunPower received the conditional commitment from the Obama administration, a French oil giant, Total S.A., bought majority ownership — 60 percent — of the company. SunPower investors backed the move. A Total S.A. executive told the New York Times the company believed in solar energy, and its move was an attempt to capitalize on it.

“We believe the winners in the solar industry will be fully integrated, financially solid, advanced technology and worldwide,” Total Gas & Power President Philippe Boisseau said. “SunPower has the technology. We already have some of the technology, but we’ve also got the market and the finance. It’s a full industrial combination.”

The Obama administration — which says it was continuing to vet SunPower after it granted the company a conditional commitment for the $1.2 billion loan guarantee — saw the company as promising and continued to move forward.

Then, right before the Obama administration signed the deal giving SunPower its $1.2 billion loan guarantee, SunPower and Total S.A. sold the project — which taxpayers are now responsible for — to NRG Energy, Inc. The loan guarantee still went through, despite the sudden pullout from Total S.A.

Sure looks like a shell game with $1.2 Billion of your money at stake, doesn't it? Why did SunPower and Total S.A. pull out right before getting a huge infusion? Who is NRG Energy? Is it a company of suckers or hucksters?

How about that crony capitalism involving the son of a US Congressman?

How the company got the loan guarantee, and the players involved paint a picture of what at least appears to a combination of political favoritism and crony capitalism.

Last October, President Barack Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and California Democratic Rep. George Miller toured SunPower’s plant in California. Both touted the company. Miller said SunPower was an example for “renewable energy” production and “America’s future economic growth.”

But, Miller failed to mention how his son, George Miller IV, is SunPower’s top lobbyist in California. Miller’s son was pushing for the $1.2 billion loan guarantee taxpayers are on the hook for now. Miller is a powerful Democratic congressman, and currently serves as the ranking minority member of the House Education and Workforce Committee.

Miller’s congressional office has not returned TheDC’s requests for comment on what role he and his son had in securing the loan guarantee. SunPower has not returned TheDC’s requests for comment on that revelation or any others.

The tour of SunPower by Miller and Salazar was only the beginning.

While the company formerly known as SunPower hasn't yet declared bankruptcy, the circumstances surrounding its deteriorating state should anger taxpayers far more than what happened with Solyndra. This administration continues to sham and scam the American people, whose anger still doesn't match the level of anger that's warranted.

Neil McCabe at Human Events has even more.

BrightSource: Is this Solyndra X's Three?

One of the things that makes the Solyndra scandal so potentially explosive is the likely probability that there were other very similar deals. After getting $535 Million in federal loan guarantees, the solar panel company went bankrupt in two years - and even required additional funding to prevent bankruptcy sooner. What if Solyndra is jus the warm-up act to a much bigger scandal? Aaron Klein is reporting that, like Solyndra, BrightSource is a solar panel company that received guaranteed federal loans. Unlike Solyndra, however, BrightSource received guarantees totaling $1.37 Billion, nearly three times more than Solyndra.

Via WND:

President Obama's nominee for Commerce secretary served as chairman of the board of a solar energy company that recently received a $1.37 billion federal loan guarantee – the largest the Department of Energy has ever given for a solar power project.

Now that company, BrightSource Energy, is attempting to build the world's largest solar power plant amid concerns such ventures may be too risky an investment for the federal government.

In June, BrightSource Chairman John Bryson was nominated by Obama to head the Commerce Department.

WND reported in June that Bryson co-founded an environmental activist group that is a member and funder of the controversial Apollo Alliance.

Apollo is run by a slew of socialists and radicals, including Jeff Jones, a founder of the Weather Underground domestic terrorist organization. Jones himself boasts of doing work for the environmental group founded by Bryson, the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Bryson served until June as co-chairman of the Pacific Council on International Policy, a globalist organization whose members can be found throughout the Obama administration.

The massive loan guarantee to BrightSource is meant to build an expensive California desert solar plant known as the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System.

So Obama's nominee for head of the Commerce Department was a Chairman with the solar panel company that received the largest federal loan guarantee from DOE; and the Apollo Alliance, which helped to write the stimulus bill, consists of a group that Chairman founded.

What are the odds that BrightSource is heading down a road identical to the one Solyndra is on? Is BrightSource simply taking longer to run out of money because it had more to begin with? If and when the BrightSource shoe drops, it will shake the Obama administration to the core. We could look at the entire Democratic Party go into survival mode for 2012.

On another note, Bryson has not yet been confirmed so anyone on the committee responsible for confirming him should be digging into this.

Read it all.

Rahm Emanuel Pleads Ignorance on Solyndra

At some point, plausible deniability becomes undeniably implausible. If ever there was a case in point, it's with former Obama Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel who is now denying any recollection of Solyndra's $535 million government loan. There are some denials that leave one wondering but this isn't one of them. The Obama administration's mantra as it pushed the stimulus bill was green energy. Now, Emanuel would have us believe he doesn't remember giving half a million to Solyndra, despite a groundbreaking ceremony that included vice president Joe Biden, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Via Daily Caller:

Chicago mayor and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said he doesn’t recall anything about the Obama administration’s $535 million loan to the recently bankrupt solar company Solyndra.

Speaking to Chicago radio station WLS 890AM at a news conference about a new wellness initiative, Emanuel said he didn’t remember anything about the failed investment loan by the Department of Energy, which critics say was fast-tracked to fit the White House’s political agenda.

“Ya know, I’m focusing on a major announcement today for the City Of Chicago,” Emanuel said. “I don’t actually remember that or know about it. So, what I’m dealing is with what I’m dealing with here today.”

Emanuel was Obama’s chief of staff during the administration’s green energy initiative in 2009, when the Solyndra loan was finalized.

E-mail communications from the White House obtained by the House Energy and Commerce Committee point to more involvement in the deal than perhaps Emanuel would care to remember.

There comes a point when claims of plausible deniability should be met with charges that you should have known. This is a quintessential example.

Until people like Emanuel face a greater backlash when claiming ignorance than when they accept responsibility, people like Emanuel will continue to pretend we're stupid.

DC

Solyndra Scandal: Will Democrats throw Obama Under the Bus?

The Solyndra scandal seems to be heating up quite a bit but I find myself wondering why it's doing so this quickly. If the head of the Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, Eric Holder is as beholden to the Obama administration as he's demonstrated, why was the FBI permitted to raid a company covered with so many Obama fingerprints? Is it because of another coverup? Is it serving as a distraction away from the Fast and Furious investigation, which has been setting the hook for several months now? As bad as the Solyndra scandal is, Fast and Furious would be much worse if both reach to Obama.

The Democratic Party is becoming quite disgruntled with Obama, especially in the wake of the special election in which Anthony Weiner's old seat went Republican for the first time since the 1920's.

Two sayings come to mind. The first is, 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall.' The second is, 'if you live by the sword, you die by the sword.' One of Obama's political swords has been throwing people under the bus to protect his own skin. As the Tea Party rises and the Democrats continue to experience political earthquakes like the one in Weiner's old district, we may begin to see them less willing to defend Obama.

By all accounts, the Solyndra scandal is huge. So why is the far left media establishment, including ABC News and Washington Post, reporting on it so thoroughly?

Via Washington Post:

EXCLUSIVE | The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.

The Silicon Valley company, a centerpiece in President Obama’s initiative to develop clean energy technologies, had been tentatively approved for the loan by the Energy Department but was awaiting a final financial review by the Office of Management and Budget.

The August 2009 e-mails, released exclusively to The Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators.

Solyndra collapsed two weeks ago, leaving taxpayers liable for the $535 million loan.

One e-mail from an OMB official referred to “the time pressure we are under to sign-off on Solyndra.” Another complained, “There isn’t time to negotiate.”

Here is the video of Joe Biden and Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu at the Solyndra groundbreaking ceremony in 2009.

Via Verum Serum:

DEPT OF ENERGY SQUASHING CLIMATEGATE TALK?

This one is pretty amazing. A division of the Department of Energy in South Carolin apparently has an employee that's been taking notice of Climategate since the emails from East Anglia University were released on November 19th. It also seems that the DOE has taken a bit of interest in this employee's interest in making it a topic of conversation in the office.

WATTS UP WITH THAT received an email from an alleged employee of the Savannah River Site (SRS), which is under the Department of Energy. Here is an excerpt from the inter-office letter sent to approximately 8000 employees at the SRS:

“December 14, 2009

DOE Litigation Hold Notice

DOE-SR has received a “Litigation Hold Notice” from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) General Council and the DOE Office of Inspector General regarding the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. Accordingly, they are requesting that SRNS, SRR and other Site contractors locate and preserve all documents, records, data, correspondence, notes, and other materials, whether official or unofficial, original or duplicative, drafts or final versions, partial or complete that may relate to the global warming, including, but not limited to, the contract files, any related correspondence files, and any records, including emails or other correspondence, notes, documents, or other material related to this contract, regardless of its location or medium on which it is stored. In other words, please preserve any and all documents relevant to “global warming, the Climate Research Unit at he University of East Anglia In England, and/or climate change science.”

This is extremely interesting. Why would the DOE take such an interest in squashing climategate talk?

Interestingly, it might be quite simple. WUWT puts forth an extremely viable possibility at the end of his post.

Steve McIntyre points out that Dr. Jones got funding from DOE (of which SRS is part of). The different pieces connect pretty well and I don’t have a reason to doubt this memo sent via email today. – Anthony

McIntyre is one of the unsung heroes in this whole scandal. Truly an underdog story.

Read the WHOLE POST