Financier Obama Goes Belly Up In Second Marxist Managed ‘Capitalism’ Plot…..at Tax Payer Expense

Crony Capitalism: More Solyndras

from Richmond Times-Dispatch:

“Second Energy Department-Backed Company Goes Bankrupt,” reported the Hill the other day. Beacon Power of Massachusetts got a $43 million loan guarantee from the Energy Department before it went belly-up trying to make a buck in the energy-storage business.

You can add that to the half-billion-and-change the Solyndra flop has left taxpayers on the hook for. Solyndra was supposed to be a one-off, according to administration supporters who blame the unique economics of the solar industry and Solydra’s approach to it, rather than the folly of corporate welfare, for the flop. Wonder what excuse they’ll come up with for Beacon.

Then there’s Nevada Geothermal Power, whose auditor fears for its continued existence despite more than $60 million in federal grants and an Energy Department loan guarantee of $79 million. No doubt this is yet another totally unique situation, just like the others.

One of Solyndra’s backers was the Kaiser Family Foundation. Billionaire George Kaiser gave heavily to the Obama campaign and conferred with Obama aides more than a dozen times. Now comes word that “the Obama administration restructured a half-billion-dollar federal loan to [Solyndra] in such a way that private investors — including [Argonaut Ventures LLC] — moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of a default, government records show. . . . Argonaut is an investment firm of the George Kaiser Family Foundation.”

But don’t throw anything across the room in disgust just yet — because it gets worse. Comes now word that another “green” company with cozy campaign ties has enjoyed special treatment at the hands of the Obama administration.

Vehicle Production Group makes wheelchair-accessible cars that run on compressed natural gas. This year it received a $50 million loan through the administration’s clean-energy loan program. Another backer? The Perseus investment firm, whose vice chairman, James Johnson, was (a) an Obama campaign-finance “bundler,” (b) the head of Obama’s vice presidential selection committee, and (c) the former chairman of Fannie Mae. Gretchen Mortgensen, author of “Reckless Endangerment,” has called him the “founding father of regulation manipulation.”

What’s more, the chairman of Perseus, Frank Pearl, met with a member of the White House’s disabilities council to make sure Vehicle Production Group “was on their radar screen.” Yet he insists that politics played absolutely no role in the federal loan.

It’s entirely true that the previous administration also played similar games, and that Republicans in Washington didn’t seem to mind at the time. But that’s hardly an excuse for the Obama administration’s own crony capitalism. Principled conservatives should have spoken up loudly, regardless of party affiliations, against the political allocation of economic resources, which has contributed greatly to much of the nation’s economic misery. Principled liberals should do so now.”

“Financier” Obama Digs $14,300,000 Deeper into Taxpayer Pocket to Cover Solyndra Scandal

Ex-Solyndra Staff Eligible for Federal Aid

From the National Center for Policy Analysis:

The Labor Department announced on November 21 that it had approved Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) for the former employees of the bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra, says Investors.com.

• That means all of the firm’s 1,100 ex-employees are eligible for federal aid packages, including job retraining and income assistance.
• The department has valued packages at about $13,000 a head.
• Taxpayers will have to cough up yet another $14.3 million as a result of Solyndra’s bankruptcy.
• They are already on the hook for $528 million in federal loan guarantees to the company that are unlikely to ever be paid back.

The TAA program offers help to domestic workers who have lost their jobs due to the trade practices of foreign countries.  The assistance includes job retraining, allowances for job searching, health benefits and up to 130 weeks of income support.

Solyndra was given a $535 million federal loan guarantee in 2009 by the Obama administration as part of a program to boost green jobs.  Behind the scenes, the company was bleeding cash and seeking a second Department of Energy (DOE) loan to stay afloat.  By late 2010 it had defaulted on the original loan and DOE agreed to a restructuring to allow the company to survive.

The renegotiation included giving private investors first crack at the first $75 million recovered in the event of liquidation.  The decision was in apparent violation of DOE loan rules.  It all but ensures that taxpayers will recover none of the original loan.

Source: Sean Higgins, “Ex-Solyndra Staff Eligible for TAA Federal Aid; Packages Worth Average $13,000 Each,” Investors.com, November 21, 2011.

For text:

http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/index.php/home/35-politicsinvesting/6645-solyndra-staff-get-13000-taa-federal-aid

For more on Government Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=33

Charles Krauthammer: Democrats Sunk Obama’s Simpson-Bowles Tax Reform Committee

by   Charles Krauthammer  at the Washington Post:

“Democrats are unanimous in charging that the debt-reduction supercommittee collapsed because Republicans refused to raise taxes. Apparently, Republicans are in the thrall of one Grover Norquist, the anti-tax campaigner, whom Sen. John Kerry called “the 13th member of this committee without being there.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid helpfully suggested “maybe they should impeach Grover Norquist.”

With that, Norquist officially replaces the Koch brothers as the great malevolent manipulator that controls the republic by pulling unseen strings on behalf of the plutocracy.

Nice theory. Except for the following facts:

●Sen. Tom Coburn last year signed on to the Simpson-Bowles tax reform that would have increased tax revenue by $1 trillion over a decade.

●During the debt-ceiling talks, House Speaker John Boehner agreed to an $800 billion revenue increase as part of a Grand Bargain.

●Supercommittee member Pat Toomey, a Club for Growth Republican, proposed increasing tax revenue by $300 billion as part of $1.2 trillion in debt reduction.

Leading, very conservative Republicans proposing tax increases. So why does the myth of the Norquist-controlled anti-tax monolith persist? You might suggest cynicism and perversity. Let me offer a more benign explanation: thickheadedness — the inability to tell the difference between tax revenue and tax rates.

In deficit reduction, all that matters is tax revenue. The holders of our national debt care not a whit what tax rates yield the money to pay them back. They care about the sum.

The Republican proposals raise revenue, despite lowering rates, by opening a gusher of new income for the Treasury in the form of loophole elimination. For example, the Toomey plan eliminates deductions by $300 billion more than the reduction in tax rates “cost.” Result: $300 billion in new revenue.

The Simpson-Bowles commission — appointed by President Obama and endorsed by Coburn — used the same formula. Its tax reform would lower tax rates at a “cost” of $1 trillion a year while eliminating loopholes that deprive the Treasury of $1.1 trillion a year. This would leave the Treasury with an excess — i.e., new tax revenue — of $100 billion a year, or $1 trillion over a decade.

Raising revenue through tax reform is better than simply raising rates, which Democrats insist upon with near religious fervor. It is more economically efficient because it eliminates credits, carve-outs and deductions that grossly misallocate capital. And it is more fair because it is the rich who can afford not only the sharp lawyers and accountants who exploit loopholes but the lobbyists who create them in the first place.

Yet the Democrats, who flatter themselves as the party of fairness, are instead obsessed with raising tax rates on the rich as a sign of civic virtue. This is perverse in three ways:

(1) Raising rates gratuitously slows economic growth, i.e., expansion of the economic pie for everyone, by penalizing work and by retaining inefficiency-inducing loopholes.

(2) We’re talking pennies on the dollar. Obama’s coveted repeal of the Bush tax cuts would yield the Treasury, at the very most, $80 billion a year — offsetting 2 cents on the dollar of government spending ($3.6 trillion).

(3) Hiking tax rates ignores the real drivers of debt, which, as Obama himself has acknowledged, are entitlements.

Has the president ever publicly proposed a single significant structural change in any entitlement? After Simpson-Bowles reported? No. In his February budget? No. In his April 13 budget “framework”? No. During the debt-ceiling crisis? No. During or after the supercommittee deliberations? No.

Indeed, Obama was AWOL from the supercommittee — then immediately pounced on its failure by going on TV to repeat his incessantly repeated campaign theme of the do-nothing (Republican) Congress.

A swell slogan that fits nicely with the Norquist myth. Except for another inconvenient fact: It is the Republicans who passed — through the House, the only branch of government they control — a real budget that cut $5.8 trillion of spending over the next 10 years. Obama’s February budget, which would have increased spending, was laughed out of the Senate, voted down 97 to 0. As for the Democratic Senate, it has submitted no budget at all for 2 ¹ / ₂ years.

Who, then, is do-nothing? Republicans should happily take on this absurd, and central, Democratic campaign plank. Bring Simpson-Bowles to the House floor and pass the most radical of its three deficit-reduction alternatives.

Dare the Senate Democrats to vote down the grandest of all bargains. Dare Obama to veto his own debt commission. Dare the Democrats to actually do something about debt.”

letters@charleskrauthammer.com