November 1, 2011

By John Ransom

10/31/2011

A financially-troubled Canadian alternative energy company with ties to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid paid a director the lion’s share of $758,828 (CAD) in reported consulting fees, according to an analysis of the filings made by the company. The fee was a part of a consulting agreement in order to successfully arrange a loan guarantee by the Department of Energy.

The loan, made by insurance powerhouse John Hancock, could put taxpayers at risk for 80 percent of both interest and principal due to the insurance company under the terms of the agreement amidst signs that the energy company may be bankrupt by the end of the year.

In the June filings for Canadian-based Nevada Geothermal, which according to the New York Times employs only 22 people in Nevada, the company’s auditors issued “going-concern” warnings that without additional investment or revenues, the company could cease operations.

At stake is about $135 million in financing by the federal government including loan guarantees and grants, says the Times. (more…)

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

FBI agents stand guard outside the headquarters of Solyndra, a solar firm in Fremont, Calif., on Sept. 8, 2011. The FBI executed search warrants at the headquarters of the firm, which received a $535 million loan from the federal government. (Associated Press)

The O Force has been running up America’s credit card by doling out cash to energy firms claiming to be green. Bosses at solar panel manufacturer Solyndra are busy taking the Fifth, and Obama administration officials are pleading ignorance over how an unsustainable enterprise was able to bag $535 million in taxpayer loot. In the coming days, Congress is likely to get to the bottom of exactly who knew what and when. There’s more to come with this scandal, but for now, one conclusion is clear already: You can’t outsmart the market.

At the outset of his presidency, Barack Obama thought he could do just that. His agenda was designed to drive up the cost of efficient, carbon-based energy to match the price of expensive power wearing the trendy “renewable” label. The rationale: When artificially inflated prices for oil, natural gas and coal begin to bleed consumers dry, they’ll have no choice but to turn to politically correct forms of energy like sunlight, wind and biofuels. The “greenhouse gas” menace would end, according to liberal belief, purported global warming would be remedied, and we finally would “get ourselves back to the Garden,” as the iconic Woodstock-era song urged. (more…)

WASHINGTON POST

Infrastructure projects to fix the economy?

Don’t bank on it.

By Chris Edwards, Published: October 21

In a recent television ad for her network, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow stands below the Hoover Dam and asks whether we are still a country that can “think this big” — Hoover Dam big. The commercial is built on the assumption that American greatness is advanced by federal spending on major infrastructure projects.

If I had my own television commercial, I’d stand in front of the wreckage of Idaho’s Teton Dam,which, like the Hoover Dam, was built by the federal Bureau of Reclamation. The Teton Dam was based on shoddy engineering and a flawed economic analysis. It collapsed catastrophically in 1976, just a year after it was built.

Increased infrastructure spending has significant support in Washington these days. President Obama wants a new federal infrastructure bank, and some members of both parties want to pass big highway and air-traffic-control funding bills. The politicians think these bills will create desperately needed jobs, but the cost of that perceived benefit is too high: Federal infrastructure spending has a long and painful history of pork-barrel politics and bureaucratic bungling, with money often going to wasteful and environmentally damaging projects.

For plenty of examples of the downside of federal infrastructure, look at the two oldest infrastructure agencies — the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation. Their histories show that the federal government shouldn’t be in the infrastructure business. Rather, state governments and the private sector are best equipped to provide it.

The Corps of Engineers has been building levees, canals and other civilian water infrastructure for more than 200 years — and it has made missteps the entire time. In the post-Civil War era, for example, there were widespread complaints about the Corps’ wastefulness and mismanagement. A 1971 book by Arthur Morgan, a distinguished engineer and former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, concluded: “There have been over the past 100 years consistent and disastrous failures by the Corps in public works areas . . . resulting in enormous and unnecessary costs to ecology [and] the taxpayer.” (more…)

By Sen. Jim DeMint

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The demise of Solyndra, the bankrupt solar panel company showered with more than a half-billion dollars in stimulus loans, exposes the fatal flaw of President Obama’s jobs plans.

Government officials rushed $535 million to Solyndra because the Obama administration was determined to make the company the centerpiece of its green agenda regardless of the law of supply and demand. Billions more have been wasted by politicians betting on favored companies and making Washington bigger, using the brute force of government to force liberal preferences into the economy. Mr. Obama calls them “investments,” but this is really venture socialism.

The entire purpose of the $825 billion stimulus bill was to sink government money into politically advantageous projects. Once the federal coffers were opened, the venture vultures eagerly descended. Obama bundler and major Solyndra backer George Kaiser, who splits his time between Oklahoma and California, explained it this way in a July 2009 speech in Tulsa: “There has never been more money shoved out of the government’s door in world history and probably never will be again than in the last few months and the next 18 months. And our selfish, parochial goal is to get as much of it for Tulsa and Oklahoma as we possibly can.”

Mr. Kaiser was right: The government was shoveling money to various projects faster than the country had ever seen. The Department of Energy issued loans or loan guarantees or offered conditional support for loan guarantees totaling $38.6 billion for green energy projects, one of which was Solyndra. The program was supposed to “create or save” 65,000 jobs. But as taxpayers learned in recent weeks, this type of financial support carries substantial risk for the taxpayer. If the project fails, as Solyndra did, government foots the bill. And those promised jobs? They haven’t materialized. The Department of Energy (optimistically) says just 3,545 permanent jobs have been created as a result of the program. Still, the money keeps getting shoveled to high-risk startups. The Department of Energy is expected to finalize $9 billion more in green loans by the end of the month. (more…)

By Jim McElhatton–

The Washington Times

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

In the fallout of the collapse of solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC — a company awarded more than a half-billion dollars in federal loans before it went bankrupt late last month — members of Congress are demanding to know how all that money was spent.

The answer, in part, can be found in a review of public federal contracting records, which detail payments to dozens of vendors and contractors that received funds reported through the $535 million in loan guarantees awarded to Solyndra to build a solar plant in Fremont, Calif.

Before Solyndra went bankrupt and its headquarters were raided by the FBI, law firms that highlighted their work on the loan-guarantee package received millions of dollars in legal fees, according to payments disclosed through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Morrison Foerster, which represented the Department of Energy as the loan guarantor, received more than $1.9 million for legal services. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, which represented Solyndra, received more than $2.4 million. (more…)