Category Archives: Pay to Play

2012 Primary, Alarmism, Energy Policy, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

Obama Green Energy Program Cost $9.8 million Per Job…

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After almost a dozen solar companies who got large sums of taxpayer dollars have gone bankrupt after the CEO donors paid themselves and donated back to the party news of this program came as no surprise, but still manages to turn stomachs.

CNS News:

The Obama administration distributed $9 billion in economic “stimulus” funds to solar and wind projects in 2009-11 that created, as the end result, 910 “direct” jobs — annual operation and maintenance positions — meaning that it cost about $9.8 million to establish each of those long-term jobs.

At the same time, those green energy projects also created, in the end, about 4,600 “indirect” jobs – positions indirectly supported by the annual operation and maintenance jobs — which means they cost about $1.9 million each ($9 billion divided by 4,600).

Combined (910 + 4,600 = 5,510), the direct and indirect jobs cost, on average, about $1.63 million each to produce.

As explained in a report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (“economic stimulus”) of 2009 included Section 1603, a grant program run through the Treasury Department.

The 1603 program offered “renewable energy project developers a one-time cash payment” to reduce the need for green energy companies “to secure tax equity partners” and also help them to achieve  “ ‘the near term goal of creating and retaining jobs’ in the renewable energy sector.”

2012 Primary, Mortgage Crisis, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

Former ACORN Director Gets $445M from Taxpayers

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More scandal plagued Obama allies get your money…

Judicial Watch:

The Obama Administration has given a former director at the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) nearly half a billion dollars to offer “struggling” Illinois homeowners mortgage assistance, a Judicial Watch investigation has found.

It means the ACORN official (Joe McGavin) will go from operating a corrupt leftist community group that’s banned by Congress from receiving federal funding to controlling over $445 million in U.S. taxpayer funds.  The money is part of a $7.6 billion Treasury Department program to help the “unemployed or substantially underemployed” make their mortgage payments.

In this case, JW found that a subcomponent of the state-run Illinois Housing Development Authority, known as the Illinois Hardest Hit Program, has just received a generous $445,603,557 Treasury infusion. The Obama Administration established Hardest Hit in 2010 to provide targeted aid to families in states hit hardest by the economic and housing market downturn, according to its website.

In early 2011 McGavin was appointed as director of Hardest Hit. Before that he was director of counseling for ACORN Housing in Chicago and operations manager for a Chicago ACORN offshoot called Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA). His strong ties to ACORN make him a suspect candidate to handle such a huge amount of taxpayer dollars.

The Obama-tied community organization supposedly shut down after a series of exposés about its illegal activities, including fraudulent voter registration drives and involvement in the housing market meltdown. Read all about it in Judicial Watch’s special report, “The Rebranding of ACORN.” The legal scandals led Congress to pass a 2009 law banning federal funding for ACORN, which for years enjoyed a huge flow of taxpayer dollars to promote its various leftwing causes.

The Obama Administration has violated the congressional ACORN funding ban, however. Last summer Judicial Watch uncovered records that show ACORN got tens of thousands of dollars in grants to “combat housing and lending discrimination.” The money came via Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which awarded a $79,819 grant to AHCOA.

In addition to violating the ACORN funding ban, the grant was astounding because federal investigators had previously exposed fraud by the same Florida-based ACORN/AHCOA affiliate. HUD’s inspector general found that the group “inappropriately” spent more than $3.2 million in grants that were supposed to be used to eliminate lead poisoning in its housing program.

2012 Primary, Academic Misconduct, Alarmism, Gangsta Govt, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

“Zero Tolerance Policy” Used to Turn the EPA Into a National Economic Planning Agency

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To those of us who have been paying attention to the antics of the EPA under this administration this is no surprise. By the rational currently being used by the EPA they could ban all cars and justify it by saying that if cars put just one life at risk they must be strictly regulated or banned. The same can be said of anything. Of course, just like health care and other  regs, Obama donors get a waiver.

By Kathleen Hartnett White via The Daily Caller:

For the last three years, the Environmental Protection Agency has justified new air quality regulations — unprecedented in stringency and cost — on the assumption that even trace levels of particulate matter can cause early death.

A recent EPA report states that by 2020, the EPA’s rules “will prevent 230,000 early deaths.” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has gone so far as to testify before Congress that the new regulations would provide health benefits as valuable as a cure for cancer. If true, this is compelling. Unfortunately, such rhetoric is built on implausible assumptions, biased models, statistical manipulations and two cherry-picked studies.

Unwinding this tangled web is tedious but necessary to prevent the EPA from becoming a national economic planning agency that transforms our economy and undermines our form of democratic government, in which elected representatives — not federal technocrats — have the authority to make the country’s major policy decisions.

On Wednesday, a U.S. House subcommittee will conduct a hearing to examine the real costs and benefits of the EPA’s environmental regulations, with invited testimony from one of my former colleagues at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

As I noted in my latest report for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, “EPA’s Pretense of Science,” the EPA now justifies almost every major new air quality rule on the basis of models indicating implausibly exaggerated health risks from fine particulate matter, rarely considered a killer by physicians or toxicologists.

Extrapolating from assumptions, the EPA in 2009 decided that no risk is too low, improbable or uncertain that it is not worth responding to with regulation. With a straight face, the EPA’s leadership now maintains that there is no safe level of ambient fine particulate matter — however near to zero — at which risk of “early” death ceases. Statisticians call this analytic approach a “no threshold linear regression to zero.”

The Clean Air Act requires that national air quality standards be set at levels adequate to protect human health with a margin of safety and regardless of cost. That’s a very cautious rubric. But through the no-safe-threshold assumption, the current EPA goes further: to zero risk. This methodological change leads the EPA to the implausible finding that mortal risks increase to the extent that ambient levels of fine particulates exceed natural background levels of 1 microgram per cubic meter. The current federal standard is 15 micrograms per cubic meter.

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Lies, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

CNN: Obama Attacking Private Equity At 6am, Fundraising With Private Equity At 6pm (video)

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Keep in mind that Anderson Cooper calls Republicans “teabaggers”….

The Weekly Standard has more details – LINK.

This reminds me of when Obama gave the speech at Google, who paid 2.4% federal tax on 3.1 billion in income, trashing the Chamber of Commerce who fought raising the tax on most small businesses from 35.5% to 39.9% .

RELATED:

Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: Taxes on ‘Small Business’ Must Rise So Government Doesn’t ‘Shrink’ (video) – LINK

Wall St. Made More Money In 2.5 Years Of Obama Than 8 Years Of Bush – LINK

Obama: Largest Wall Street Money Recipient, Hands Out Jobs to Contributors – LINK

Under Obama: Family Income Down. Jobless Claims High. Government Spending Up. Super Rich Getting Richer. – LINK

2012 Primary, Gangsta Govt, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

Obama Buddy Gets $5.9 Million from the Department of HHS

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Via PJ Media:

What are the odds that the president’s golfing buddy can secure a government grant? About 26 in 3000, or thereabouts.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has awarded a $5.9 million grant to a University of Chicago Medical Center program run by one of President Barack Obama’s closest friends.

Obama’s longtime friend, Eric Whitaker, runs the Urban Health Initiative (UHI), which was founded as a means of connecting low-income patients with health clinics in their own communities.

The UHI was one of only 26 programs — out of 3,000 applications — to receive a slice of the $1 billion in taxpayer money from the executive’s “We Can’t Wait” initiative, which is aimed at spurring job growth via executive action, reported Keith Koffler at White House Dossier.

HHS has denied any White House involvement in the decision, but the president will have a tough time feigning surprise given his deep ties to the UHI:

  • Eric Whitaker runs the UHI, has known the president since his days at Harvard Law and occasionally vacations with the Obamas.
  • Michelle Obama launched the UHI while working as an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center, which runs the program.
  • Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior adviser, was the chairman of the University of Chicago Medical Center board of trustees until she resigned her post to join the White House.
  • David Axelrod, now-communications director for the Obama campaign, provided public relations services to the UHI after Michelle Obama recommended that he be hired in 2006.

Despite those deep ties, HHS stands by its process, describing the decision making as free from White House influence.

And they’ve got a bridge to sell ya too. More at White House Dossier.

2012 Primary, Gangsta Govt, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

Video: Obama’s Lobbyist Lie

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This is exactly what Barack Obama ran against, and instead he relaxed lobbying rules in the administration and hired them to work in the White House – LINKS – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,

And more…..

The Lobbying Boom – The numbers are in

More Journalistic Malpractice at the NYT: NYT does hit piece on GOP Leader for taking lobbyist donations, but ignores that the Democratic Leadership has taken much much more…

Reminder: Big Business Loves Big Government (especially Democrats)

Big Business Buying Influence With Democrats: Google Pays 2.4% Federal Taxes

Judicial Watch: Obama Administration Channeling Tax Dollars to La Raza

Obama refuses Congressional request on Obama meetings with lobbyists, mega corporations, interest groups and drug companies

Obama Administration Hiding Meetings with Lobbyists

Powerful Democrats help Chinese energy firm get $450 million in stimulus money

 

2012 Primary, Budget, Obama, Pay to Play, Soros, True Talking Points

Obama Stimulus Dollars Funded George Soros Empire

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While Obama rails against the “rich” his administration funnels money to some of the wealthiest people in the world, provided of course that they are campaign donors.

George Soros
George Soros

See our George Soros category HERE.

See the report HERE (excerpt):

Newly recently released tax documents reveal how billionaire “philanthropist” George Soros expanded his U.S.-based empire by using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the Obama stimulus. Soros and Obama worked hand-in-glove through the stimulus, which has been called the largest single partisan wealth transfer in American history.

In 2010, tax records show that Soros, a convicted inside trader with extensive knowledge of the American financial system and government policies under Obama, deployed grantees from his Open Society Foundations1 to lobby for and acquire federal contracts for job training, green energy, and community redevelopment programs.  By gaining control over those resources, Soros advanced his agenda for “green economics,” open borders, and increased government handouts. In short, he grew his empire, which includes much of the “progressive” movement in the U.S., as the federal government and Obama’s political constituencies grew in power and influence.

This report analyzes George Soros’s grants to organizations in 2010.  The records show massive coordination of non-profit networks in the states and nationally.  Four powerful organizations and coalitions — The STAR Coalition, The Gamaliel Foundation, the Apollo Alliance, and Green for All — are given detailed scrutiny in this regard, with the involvement of Van Jones getting special mention. Jones is the former Obama “Green Jobs Czar” fired after information about his communist past surfaced through the work of anti-communist blogger Trevor Loudon and then-Fox News personality Glenn Beck.  The lobbying power of such efforts ensured that stimulus funds flowed from taxpayers into union coffers and into the hands of other activists who had been instrumental in putting President Obama into office.

This report, “Obama Stimulus Dollars Funded Soros Empire,” includes an analysis of how Soros-funded organizations and networks operate, the strategies used to steer stimulus money to special interest lobbies, and an explanation of how taxpayers were forced to subsidize the “progressive” movement in the U.S. However, only Congress, with its investigative powers, can get to the bottom of how this money was spent and into whose coffers it ultimately ended up.
Read more: Obama Stimulus Dollars Funded Soros Empire | The Soros Files http://sorosfiles.com/soros/2012/04/obama-stimulus-dollars-funded-soros-empire.html#ixzz1sK89NdUu

2012 Primary, Budget, Dirty Tricks, Econ, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

Foreign Companies Flying In Foreign Workers For Stimulus Projects You Paid For…..(video)

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American firms could’t win these contracts or was someone paid? Instead of using American workers, just fly in Koreans…

I have seen this before. In the IT industry companies such as Peoplesoft and Hewlett Packard are flying in temps from India to do jobs Americans can do, but these foreign workers will work for much less.

2012 Primary, Budget, Corporatism, Energy Policy, Obama, Pay to Play

Another Department of Energy funded solar energy company goes bankrupt…

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It is the same story over and over and over… a contributor or bundler for Obama asks for a loan from the taxpayers. He gets the loan, starts or gets involved with a solar panel company, they pay themselves big money, give money to the Obama campaign or a campaign group – and then go out of business.

The story isn’t always exactly like this, but generally this is how it has worked.

Breitbart News:

On Monday, yet another Department of Energy funded solar energy company –the world’s largest solar power plant—filed for bankruptcy. Reuters reports:

Solar Trust of America LLC, which holds the development rights for the world’s largest solar power project, on Monday filed for bankruptcy protection after its majority owner began insolvency proceedings in Germany.

The Oakland-based company has held rights for the 1,000-megawatt Blythe Solar Power Project in the Southern California desert, which last April won $2.1 billion of conditional loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy. It is unclear how the bankruptcy will affect that project.

The Reuters story states that the company won the loan, but as the Washington Post reported that the company turned down the loan in late September of 2011. The CEO of Solar Trust, Uwe T. Schmidt thought that the loan was “too risky”. The Obama administration was willing to loan more than two billion taxpayer dollars to a company who was unwilling to take that kind of risk. The company’s bankruptcy filings indicate they employed only nine people.

This $2.1 billion loan guarantee would have been equivalent to more than three Solyndra sized loans. Solar Trust is one of the companies Peter Schweizer mentioned in his book Throw Them All Out who were offered or received large Department of Energy loans or grants and also have ties to President Obama. Schweizer notes in his book that Citigroup Global Partners and Deutsche Bank have invested $6 billion in this project.

Until recently, the vice chair of Citigroup Global Partners was Louis Susman who sat on the National Finance Committee for Obama’s campaign in 2008. In return, Susman left Citigroup to become President Obama’s ambassador to Britain.Another partner in this project is Chevron, who favored candidate Obamaover his 2008 rival Senator McCain in campaign donations.

In addition to the offer of financial benefits this politically tied company received, Solar Trust also received regulatory benefits. The Bylthe Solar Power Project is located on federal land. While the Obama administration is decreasing development of proven energy sources like oil on federal lands, they actually fast tracked thisproject’s permitting process:

Solar Trust partnered with Chevron (NYSE: CVX) to develop the Blythe project, which is located on federal land. It and eight other projects were selected by the Bureau of Land Management for a fast-track program that reduced the time it took to get land permits.

Read more HERE.

Corporatism, Energy Policy, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

Corporatism in Action: Why an oil company backs Jerry Brown’s tax plan

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By our good friend Chuck DeVore:

Why would Occidental Petroleum, America’s fourth-largest oil company, donate $250,000 to a tax-hiking ballot initiative in California?

California’s expansive state government has found itself chronically short of funds as much due to a 31 percent boost in state spending from 2003-07 as to the economic slowdown. As a consequence, it may seem that tax-increase proposals have outnumbered jobs created in recent years.

Many big corporations backed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s $24 billion tax increase in 2009, reasoning that the taxes proposed beat the alternative: hiking taxes on business or the state’s oil industry.

California has the third-largest proven U.S. oil reserves, with the highest gas tax and the fifth-highest overall tax on the oil industry. But, taking more from California’s oil producers is a perennial favorite as it satisfies two important constituencies: environmentalists and consumers of government services.

Squeezing tax revenue out of oil isn’t that simple, however. California crude is heavy and sulfur-laden, making it more costly to refine and thus discounting its value by about 10 percent. A California oil “extraction tax” would act to destroy oil reserves by making locally produced oil more costly to recover, inadvertently boosting foreign oil, which California can’t tax. As a result, the value of Occidental’s California oil reserves drop to the extent taxed.
The power to tax is the power to destroy. What you tax, you get less of.

With this in mind, Occidental’s $250,000 contribution to Gov. Jerry Brown’s $9 billion tax hike initiative for the November ballot looks less like civic-minded corporate charity and more like a prudent investment. Especially since higher oil taxes would reduce the value of Occidental’s California oil reserves by hundreds of millions of dollars.
But there’s another rationale for Occidental’s assistance to the governor.

Last October, Occidental Petroleum’s CEO cited the snail’s pace of drilling-permit approvals in California as the reason for a slowdown in Occidental’s oil and natural-gas production. California granted 14 drilling permits out of 199 applications received through October 2011, a 7 percent rate. In 2009, 37 of 52 were granted, 71 percent.

Read more HERE.

2012 Primary, Culture War, Flashback!, Health Law, Lies, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

Another Broken Promise: ObamaCare’s Abortion Funding Rule Finalized

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Remember Bart Stupak? He was head of the Democrats for Life Caucus in the House. President Obama promised him an executive order, in exchange for the votes of his group of congressmen, to strip public funding of abortion so ObamaCare would never use tax dollars to kill babies? Well guess how well that worked out? And Stupak’s constituents were not fooled as he sold out the values he ran on and sacrificed his political career to advance the cause of government power.

Related:

The Myth of the Pro-Life Democrat in Congress – LINK

Stupak’s “Pro-Life” Caucus Gets $4.7 Billion in Earmark Funds after Voting for Public Funding of Abortion – LINK

ACLJ:

Despite President Obama’s empty rhetoric to the contrary, a recently finalized Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rule makes clear that ObamaCare will use tax dollars to fund abortion.

Remember when President Obama told us that the Pitts/Stupak Amendment should be rejected because his Executive Order would prevent abortion from being a part of ObamaCare? We told you then that not only was an Executive Order insufficient to replace a strong statutory protection like the Pitts/Stupak Amendment, but also that the language of the Executive Order itself did nothing more than set up an accounting scheme to hide the federal subsidies that would flow to abortions.

Sadly, these facts have now come to fruition. HHS, under the direction of President Obama and Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has issued its final rule for implementing the state exchanges created by the ObamaCare law. These final rules include requirements for how abortion funding must be handled.

First off, when we consider that the President told us that his Executive Order made it clear that abortion was not a part of this law, it is reasonable to ask why the final rule references ‘abortion’ 30 times? If abortion funding was not to be a part of this law, the statute needed only a short, clear prohibition of such funding – a prohibition offered in the Pitts/Stupak Amendment, which was initially approved by the House of Representatives, and later stripped out by the President and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Because the law does indeed contradict the President by allowing abortion funding, this final rule goes to great lengths to devise a scheme that attempts to hide that funding. The result is a complicated web of regulations that reference ‘abortion’ 30 times.

Everyone concerned about government promotion and funding of abortions should read this rule for themselves, but allow me to outline a couple of the basic components with regard to the abortion requirements.

First, beginning on page 453, this rule describes and reaffirms the “segregation of funds for abortion services” as required under ObamaCare. Essentially, insurance plans may include abortion services in a plan subsidized by federal taxpayer dollars. To justify this inclusion, the plan will collect a $1 “surcharge” from all policy holders. Of course this surcharge will be collected as part of a larger premium payment, and not as a part of a separate collection. Additionally, plans are entirely free to advertise the total cost of these plans without mentioning that $1 of the premium is specifically intended to subsidize the abortion coverage. Further, the surcharge is only to be disclosed when the policyholder first enrolls.

In short, the $1 surcharge does not even attempt to resemble an actual offset of the abortion coverage cost, is virtually undetectable by the policy holder, and serves the singular purpose of providing a flimsy defense for inserting the federal government into the business of providing coverage for elective abortions.

Additionally, on pages 364-365, the final rule makes it entirely plausible that States that have passed laws prohibiting abortion coverage will be forced to provide that coverage anyway. This would occur through the multi-state plans administered by the Federal Government. The final rule simply says that rules governing these plans will be issued at a later date, so it’s entirely feasible (I’d say likely) that these plans will be permitted to cover abortion, even when one of the States within the multi-State area prohibits it.

2012 Primary, Budget, Econ, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

Obama: Largest Wall Street Money Recipient, Hands Out Jobs to Contributors

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There are two sources for today’s story, one is a devastating piece from the normally Obama friendly Washington Post, the other is from an Iowa PAC called the American Future Fund. President Obama was the largest recipient of Wall Street cash of any presidential candidate in 20 years. While Obama was a Senator he took more money from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae than anyone in the Senate with the exception of who many call the architect of the financial collapse Christopher Dodd.

Washington Post:

The Influence Industry: Obama gives administration jobs to some big fundraisers

Big donors considering whether to work the phones raising money for President Obama’s reelection campaign might consider the fate of his 2008 bundlers. Many of them, it turns out, won plum jobs in his administration.

Obama campaigned on what he called “the most sweeping ethics reform in history” and has frequently criticized the role of money in politics. That hasn’t stopped him from offering government jobs to some of his biggest bundlers, volunteer fundraisers who gather political contributions from other rich donors.

More than half of Obama’s 47 biggest fundraisers, those who collected at least $500,000 for his campaign, have been given administration jobs. Nine more have been appointed to presidential boards and committees.

At least 24 Obama bundlers were given posts as foreign ambassadors, including in Finland, Australia, Portugal and Luxembourg. Among them is Don Beyer, a former Virginia lieutenant governor who serves as ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

The list goes on HERE.

 

Related:

Top 20 Industry Money Recipients This Election Cycle – Who is in the back pocket of Wall Street? – LINK.

Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2012 – Hint: Most goes to Democrats – LINK.

Wall St. Made More Money In 2.5 Years Of Obama Than 8 Years Of Bush – LINK.

Corruption You Can Believe In: Failed Sub Primes and Mortgage Fraud Lenders Funneled Money to Dodd & Obama the Most. Fannie & Freddie Gave $200 Million to Partisans-Most Went to Democrats! Dodd, Obama Among Top Recipients. Republicans Attempted to Pass Reforms-Blocked by Democrat Leadership! – LINK.

Hypocrite! Elizabeth Warren Takes Wall Street Cash! – LINK.

Corruption: Most Stimulus Funds Spent in Democrat Districts – LINK.

The taxes Democrats propose to “soak the rich” always seem to miss those who they demagogue for not paying their fair share. They have been “soaking the rich” for decades and keep missing the target. Why? – LINK.

2012 Primary, Budget, Health Law, Obama, Pay to Play, Thugs, True Talking Points

Alinsky-tied group awarded $56 million federal loan…

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…to start a non-profit health insurance company, but the group is has no experience in the insurance industry. What the group does have experience in is far left radical activism. Saul Alinsky was a 1960’s revolutionary communist activist.

More Obama pals get your money.

Like many of the “green jobs” projects that the Obama Administration has given huge loans to, this is yet another big taxpayer investment that will likely never be paid back and is instead taxpayer dollars used for Democrats political activism.  Many “green jobs” government loan recipients went out of business soon after receiving the loans, but the CEO’s of the companies were large political contributors who paid themselves large salaries and bonuses before ceasing operations.

Fox News:

A Saul Alinsky-tied group has been awarded a $56 million federal loan to start up a nonprofit health insurance company — one of several organizations across the country this week tapped to launch a new network of insurers under the sponsorship of the federal health care overhaul.

The Wisconsin group, Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative, was awarded the funding on Tuesday. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the group is expected to provide coverage statewide within five years after starting on a smaller scale in early 2014.

But Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson questioned the group’s credentials — given its affiliation and lack of experience in the insurance field. 

“The indisputable fact is that Common Ground was an outgrowth of the Alinsky operation in Chicago,” Wilson said. “We’re not giving money to a group with experience in health care issues or in setting up exchanges. … We’re handing the money to people who have been trained by arguably the single most expert individual on community organizing in the last 100 years.”

Common Ground, a Milwaukee group that dates back to 2004, is an affiliate of the Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation.

2012 Primary, Corporatism, Energy Policy, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

Taxpayer dollars flow to firms with top Obama donors

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Welcome to Chicago, but in DC it is so much more of the same and YOU are paying the bill.

Washington Post:

Sanjay Wagle was a venture capitalist and Barack Obama fundraiser in 2008, rallying support through a group he headed known as Clean Tech for Obama.

Shortly after Obama’s election, he left his California firm to join the Energy Department, just as the administration embarked on a massive program to stimulate the economy with federal investments in clean-technology firms.

Following an enduring Washington tradition, Wagle shifted from the private sector, where his firm hoped to profit from federal investments, to an insider’s seat in the administration’s $80 billion clean-energy investment program.

He was one of several players in venture capital, which was providing financial backing to start-up clean-tech companies, who moved into the Energy Department at a time when the agency was seeking outside expertise in the field. At the same time, their industry had a huge stake in decisions about which companies would receive government loans, grants and support.

During the next three years, the department provided $2.4 billion in public funding to clean-energy companies in which Wagle’s former firm, Vantage Point Venture Partners, had invested, a Washington Post analysis found. Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers.

Obama’s program to invest federal funds in start-up companies — and the failure of some of those companies — is becoming a rallying cry for opponents in the presidential race. Mitt Romney has promised to focus on Obama’s “record” as a “venture capitalist.” And in ads and speeches, conservative groups and the Republican candidates are zeroing in on the administration’s decision to extend $535 million to the now-shuttered solar firm Solyndra and billions of dollars more to clean-tech start-ups backed by the president’s political allies.

White House officials stress that staffers and advisers with venture capital ties did not make funding decisions related to these companies. But e-mails released in a congressional probe of Obama’s clean-tech program show that staff and advisers with links to venture firms informally advocated for some of those companies.

David Gold, a venture capitalist and critic of Obama’s investments in clean tech, said that even if staffers had been removed from the final decision-making, they had the kind of inside access to exert subtle influence.

“To believe those quiet conversations don’t happen in the hallways — about a project being in a certain congressman’s district or being associated with a significant presidential donor, is naive,” said Gold, who once worked at the Office of Management and Budget. “When you’re putting this kind of pressure on an organization to make decisions on very big dollars, there’s increased likelihood that political connections will influence things.”

Read more HERE.

Budget, Education, Pay to Play, True Talking Points, Unions

New Jersey Teachers Union on Kids in Failing Union Schools: Life’s Not Fair

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In some failing unionized schools in New Jersey the kids have only a 17% proficiency rate in literature and math.

Via Real Clear Politics:

“An outrageous statement. I cannot express how disgusted I am by that statement by the head of the largest teachers union in our state. But I also have to tell you I’m not the least bit surprised, because I think it so succinctly captures what their real position is,” Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) said about a union boss who makes 500K a year telling the poor “life’s not fair.”

“It’s an immoral position, and it continues to prop up abject failure in districts across our state,” Christie also said.

2012 Primary, Budget, Corporatism, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

Wall St. Made More Money In 2.5 Years Of Obama Than 8 Years Of Bush

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Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”: “New government data shows profits for America’s largest financial firms are once again reaching record highs not seen sense before the financial crisis of 2008. In fact, Wall Street firms have earned more in the first two and a half years of the Obama presidency than all 8 years of the Bush presidency. Over 85 billion dollars in profits compared to 77 billion.”

Joe Scarborough: “Wait — you mean in the first two years they made more than in eight years than in the Bush administration?”

Brzezinski: “That’s correct.”

The facts are that while Obama claims to be against Wall Street and is a champion of the poor against the rich, he is in Wall Street’s back pocket. The Dodd-Frank bill and these other regulations passed in the name of defending the poor, actually tilt the playing field to his donors, expend the power of the federal government to pick winners and losers and Lord help you if you are a part of the smaller competition. I explored this subject for years in great detail on my old college blog.

Related:

Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2012 – Hint: Most goes to Democrats – LINK.

Top 20 Industry Money Recipients This Election Cycle – Who is in the back pocket of Wall Street? – LINK.

Corruption You Can Believe In: Failed Sub Primes and Mortgage Fraud Lenders Funneled Money to Dodd & Obama the Most. Fannie & Freddie Gave $200 Million to Partisans-Most Went to Democrats! Dodd, Obama Among Top Recipients. Republicans Attempted to Pass Reforms-Blocked by Democrat Leadership! – LINK.

Hypocrite! Elizabeth Warren Takes Wall Street Cash! – LINK.

Corruption: Most Stimulus Funds Spent in Democrat Districts – LINK.

The taxes Democrats propose to “soak the rich” always seem to miss those who they demagogue for not paying their fair share. They have been “soaking the rich” for decades and keep missing the target. Why? – LINK.

2012 Primary, Budget, Corporatism, Dirty Tricks, Jobs, Obama, Pay to Play

Obama Administration Gave Electric Car Battery Maker $118 Million, Company Now Bankrupt

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Via Big Government:

The latest taxpayer-funded boondoggle to emerge from the Obama Administration’s infamous Energy Department grant and loan program has cost taxpayers $118.5 million, new bankruptcy filings by electric battery maker Ener1 reveal.

From Bloomberg News:

The company listed assets of $73.9 million and debt of $90.5 million as of Dec. 31 in Chapter 11 papers filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Ener1 has been affected by competing battery developers in China and South Korea, “which generally have a lower cost manufacturing base” and lower labor and raw material costs, interim Chief Executive Officer Alex Sorokin said in the petition.

Like Solyndra, Ener1 was a company touted by President Obama as being a shining example of his vision for taxpayer-subsidized clean energy.

The day following President Barack Obama’s 2011 State of the Union Address, Vice President Joe Biden toured Ener1’s lithium-ion battery system manufacturing facility in Greenfield, Indiana and said:

As you heard President Obama say last night, this Administration is forging a new path forward by making sure America doesn’t just lead in the 21st Century, but dominates in the 21st Century. We’re not just creating new jobs-but sparking whole new industries that will ensure our competitiveness for decades to come-industries like electric vehicle manufacturing.

Ener1’s EnerDel unit, which is based in Indianapolis, Indiana, likewise received a Solyndra-style shout out from Mr. Obama during a 2009 swing through Indiana. During his remarks, Mr. Obama said:

See, I’m committed to a strategy that ensures America leads in the design and the deployment of the next generation of clean-energy vehicles.  This is not just an investment to produce vehicles today; this is an investment in our capacity to develop new technologies tomorrow.  This is about creating the infrastructure of innovation.

Indiana is the second largest recipient of grant funding, and it’s a perfect example of what this will mean.  You’ve got Purdue University, Notre Dame, Indiana University, and Ivy Tech, and they’re all going to be receiving grant funding to develop degree and training programs for electric vehicles.  That’s number one.  We’ve got EnerDel, a small business in Indianapolis that will develop batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles.

Now, in the wake of the Dec. 31st bankruptcy filing, Mr. Obama used his 2012 State of the Union Address to make it clear he intends to double down, not reverse course, from his decision to use taxpayer dollars to prop up clean energy companies that are too weak to compete and thrive on their own:

Payoffs on these public investments don’t always come right away.  Some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail.  But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy.

As Newsweek and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer have reported, Mr. Obama’s green energy loan and grant program have funneled 80% of the Energy Department’s $20.5 billion to companies owned by or associated with Mr. Obama’s top campaign fundraisers and bundlers.

Read on HERE!

2012 Primary, 2016, Corporatism, Energy Policy, Obama, Pay to Play, Soros

George Soros and Warren Buffet benefited from Obama Keystone Pipeline Veto

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The Democratic Party’s largest single contributors will make money off of the country losing hundreds of thousands of jobs with President Obama killing the Keystone Oil Pipeline from Canada.

Investors Business Daily:

Energy Policy: Killing the Keystone XL pipeline may help one of the world’s richest men get richer. North Dakota’s booming oil fields will now grow more dependent on a railroad the president’s economic guru just bought.

Stop us if you see a pattern here. About the time George Soros — Hungarian billionaire and key donor to leftist groups and the Democratic Party — invested heavily in the stock of the state-run Brazilian oil company Petrobras, President Obama was curbing U.S. offshore oil production and the U.S. Export-Import Bank announced a $2 billion loan to Petrobras to finance deep-water drilling off the pristine beaches of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

As he was imposing curbs and moratoria on U.S. offshore drillers, President Obama wished the Brazilians well in the hope we would someday be Brazil’s best oil customer.

Apparently, oil tankers coming from Brazil are better and safer than a pipeline from Canada, whose best customer we will not be if they ship their tar sands oil to China instead.

Interestingly, another billionaire, Obama economic inspiration Warren Buffett, stands to benefit from the Keystone XL pipeline delay.

As oil production ramps up in the Bakken fields of North Dakota, plans to use the pipeline to transport it have been dashed.

As a result, North Dakota’s booming oil producers will have to rely even more on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad, which Buffett just bought, to ship it to refineries.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe in a deal valuing the railroad at $34 billion. Berkshire Hathaway already owns about 22% of Burlington Northern, and will pay $100 a share in cash and stock for the rest of the company.

2012 Primary, Budget, Corporatism, Dirty Tricks, Pay to Play, Soros, True Talking Points

Democrat’s Sugar-Daddy George Soros Helped Craft Stimulus Then Invested in Companies Benefiting

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George Soros
George Soros

Via Big Government:

Billionaire George Soros gave advice and direction on how President Obama should allocate so-called “stimulus” money in a series of regular private meetings and consultations with White House senior advisers even as Soros was making investments in areas affected by the stimulus program.

It’s just one more revelation featured in the blockbuster new book that continues to rock Washington,Throw Them All Out, authored by Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer.

Mr. Soros met with Mr. Obama’s top economist on February 25, 2009 and twice more with senior officials in the Old Executive Office Building on March 24th and 25th as the stimulus plan was being crafted.  Later, Mr. Soros also participated in discussions on financial reform.

Then, in the first quarter of 2009, Mr. Soros went on a stock buying spree in companies that ultimately benefited from the federal stimulus.

  • Soros doubled his holdings in medical manufacturer Hologic, a company that benefited from stimulus spending on medical systems
  • Soros tripled his holdings in fiber channel and software maker Emulus, a company that wound up scoring a large amount of federal funds going to infrastructure spending
  • Soros bought 210,000 shares in Cisco Systems, which came up big in the stimulus lottery
  • Soros also bought Extreme Networks, which, months later, said it was expanding broadband to rural America “as part of President Obama’s broadband strategy”
  • Soros bought 1.5 million shares in American Electric Power, a company Mr. Obama gave $1 billion to in June 2009
  • Soros bought shares in utility company Ameren, which bagged a $540 million Department of Energy loan
  • Soros bought 250,000 shares of Public Service Enterprise Group, 500,000 shares of NRG Energy, and almost a million shares of Entergy—all companies that  came up winners in the Department of Energy taxpayer giveaway that produced the Solyndra debacle
  • Soros bought into BioFuel Energy, a company that benefitted when the EPA announced a regulation on ethanol
  • Soros bought Powerspan in April 2009.  Just weeks later, the clean-energy company landed $100 million from the Department of Energy
  • In the second quarter of 2009, Soros bought education technology giant Blackboard, which became a big recipient of education stimulus money
  • Soros also bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe and CSX, both beneficiaries of Mr. Obama’s plans for revitalizing the railroads
  • Soros bought Cognizant Technology Solutions, which scored stimulus funds in education and health care technology
  • Soros also bought 300,000 shares of Constellation Energy Group and 4.6 million shares of Covanta, both of which landed taxpayers’ money through the stimulus, the former of which bagged $200 million

In Throw Them All Out, Schweizer catalogs several more of Mr. Soros’s trades and says that, while “it is not necessarily the case that Soros had specific insider tips about any government grants,” nevertheless, Soros’s “investment decisions aligned remarkably closely with government grants and transfers.”

2012 Primary, Corporatism, Dirty Tricks, Health Law, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

20 Percent of ObamaCare Waivers in Nancy Pelosi’s District…

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And most of the rest went to labor unions…

Daily Caller:

Labor unions continued to receive the overwhelming majority of waivers from the president’s health care reform law since the Obama administration tightened application rules last summer.

Documents released in a classic Friday afternoon news dump show that labor unions representing 543,812 workers received waivers from President Barack Obama‘s signature legislation since June 17, 2011.

By contrast, private employers with a total of 69,813 employees, many of whom work for small businesses, were granted waivers.

The Department of Health and Human Services revised the rules governing applications for health reform waivers June 17, 2011, amid a steady stream of controversial news reports, including The Daily Caller’s story that nearly 20 percent of last May’s waivers went to businesses in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s district in California.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/06/labor-unions-primary-recipients-of-obamacare-waivers/#ixzz1ivgoOuEQ

 

2012 Primary, Corporatism, Obama, Pay to Play

Another Obama Donor Convicted of Fraud: Engineered a $21 Million Bank Fraud Scheme

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Welcome to Chicago…
New York Daily News:

A Democratic fundraiser was found guilty Friday of engineering a $21 million bank fraud scheme.

Courtney Dupree was convicted of vastly overstating the billings of his Long Island City-based lighting company GDC Acquisitions in order to fraudulently obtain a loan from Amalgamated Bank.

Dupree, 42, sat stone-faced as the verdict was read in Brooklyn Federal Court. He faces up to 30 years in prison and has to pay back at least $18 million.

2012 Primary, Corporatism, Gangsta Govt, Obama, Pay to Play

Gen. William Shelton: Obama Administration pressured me to change testimony to favor donor

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Welcome to yet another episode if Chicago style machine politics brought to DC by the Daley Machine Obama Administration. Lately we have seen one “Solyndra” after another.

General William Shelton
General William Shelton

Fox News (video at the link):

Gen. William Shelton, commander of the Air Force Space Command,

told House members in a classified briefing earlier this month that he was pressured to change prepared congressional testimony in a way that would favor a large company funded by Philip Falcone, a major Democratic donor, congressional sources told Fox News.

Republicans have raised questions about whether the project pursued by the company, LightSquared, is being unduly expedited by the Obama administration, which has pushed for national wireless network upgrades.

 

Mediaite:

Solyndra II? At a classified briefing, head of the Air Force Space Command Gen. William Shelton informed House members that he had been pressured to change prepared congressional testimony in order to better compliment a Virginia-based satellite and communications company funded by major Democratic donor Philip Falcone. The GOP has been wondering for some time now whether work done by that company, LightSquared, has been “unduly expedited” by the Obama administration in its push for nation-wide wireless network upgrades.

As Shelton sees it, the company’s plans for its national 4G phone network would seriously compromise the effectiveness of high-precision GPS receiver systems used by the military, given that its spectrum would be about 5 billion times stronger than the military’s GPS system.

Appearing before the House Armed Services subcommittee yesterday, Shelton alleged that he’d repeatedly been pressured to say that “the interference problems could be mitigated” and that he’d been “asked to say things I didn’t agree with.”

 

Many cases of more of the same. Of course another aspect of this story is that it is the view of this editor that the military’s reliance on GPS is a mistake. GPS jamming technology is cheap and easy to make or buy. In fact. most anyone with a little electronics and ham radio training could make one with ease. It is almost a certainty that potential targets of US missiles and smart bombs such as Iran have installed these jamming devices around their country.

Budget, Dirty Tricks, Econ, Flashback!, Obama, Pay to Play

Corruption: Most Stimulus Funds Spent in Democrat Districts…

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[Originally posted on my old college blog in April 2010 – Editor]

Via George Mason University, National Review, and HotAir.

The stimulus bill, as ill conceived as it is, gives is a fantastic opportunity to test Keynesian economic policy and models in comparison to actual results.

According to the law, districts with the highest unemployment were supposed to get the bulk of the stimulus money. Did that actually happen?

First: The idea behind the $787 billion stimulus bill is that, if the government spends money where it is the most needed, it will create jobs and trigger economic growth. Hence, we should expect the government to invest more money in districts with higher unemployment rates.

Controlling for the percentage of the district employed in the construction industry, a proxy for the vulnerability to recession of a district, I find no statistical correlation for all relevant unemployment indicators and the allocation of funds. This suggests that unemployment is not the factor leading the awards. Also, I found no correlation between other economic indicators, such as income, and stimulus funding.

Second: On average, Democratic districts received one-and-a-half times as many awards as Republican ones. Democratic districts also received two-and-a-half times more stimulus dollars than Republican districts ($122,127,186,509 vs. $46,139,592,268). Republican districts also received smaller awards on average. (The average dollars awarded per Republican district is $260,675,663, while the average dollars awarded per Democratic district is $471,533,539.)

The exact same thing happend under the “new deal” where much of the spending went to swing districts to buy votes. Massive amounts of money spent and non-farm unemployment never dropped below 20% during the New Deal.

The fact remains and it might as well be considered a Law of Economics: Politicians spend money with a political result in mind, not an economic one. Pictorial logarithm proof:

As you can see the log shows no correlation, but look at this….

Well would you look at that. Oh the news gets better…

In the report from Dr. Veronique de Rugy from George Mason University:

I found that an average cost of $286,000 was awarded per job created, a 16.3 percent increase over the previous period.

See the full report HERE.

Now in case you are thinking to yourself, /whiney voice on “Well wait, that economist you quoted doesn’t count cause she is French and she wrote a note about her findings to Natioal Review which means she is a nazi and only twice removed from Hitler’s third cousin!”

Well USA Today hired some econo-geeks and they came up with the same result:

Counties that supported Obama last year have reaped twice as much money per person from the administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus package as those that voted for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, a USA TODAY analysis of government disclosure and accounting records shows. That money includes aid to repair military bases, improve public housing and help students pay for college…

More crony capitalism and corruption.

Alarmism, Dirty Tricks, Obama, Pay to Play

CPI: Big Polluters Freed from Environmental Oversight by Stimulus Bill (government picking winners and losers)

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Before we begin it should be clear that the “Center for Public Integrity” CPI is a far left outfit complete with all the spin and trimmings. And while the story they tell is spun I find it to be directionally accurate. While it is rather obvious that environmental regulations go way beyond science and are in fact used to pick winners and losers for purposes of corruption, influence and donations, this article demonstrates that fact with detail. Unknowingly and in it’s own way, the CPI has made the case against leviathan government and the kind of “Chicago Style” regulations that always result from it as well as this web log ever could.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2565/ :

In the name of job creation and clean energy, the Obama administration has doled out billions of dollars in stimulus money to some of the nation’s biggest polluters and granted them sweeping exemptions from the most basic form of environmental oversight, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found.

The administration has awarded more than 179,000 “categorical exclusions” to stimulus projects funded by federal agencies, freeing those projects from review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Coal-burning utilities like Westar Energy and Duke Energy, chemical manufacturer DuPont, and ethanol maker Didion Milling are among the firms with histories of serious environmental violations that have won blanket NEPA exemptions.

Even a project at BP’s maligned refinery in Texas City, Tex. — owner of the oil industry’s worst safety record and site of a deadly 2005 explosion, as well as a benzene leak earlier this year — secured a waiver for the preliminary phase of a carbon capture and sequestration experiment involving two companies with past compliance problems. The primary firm has since dropped out of the project before it could advance to the second phase.

Agency officials who granted the exemptions told the Center that they do not have time in most cases to review the environmental compliance records of stimulus recipients, and do not believe past violations should affect polluters’ chances of winning stimulus money or the NEPA exclusions.

The so-called “stimulus” funding came from the $787-billion legislation officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in February 2009.

Documents obtained by the Center show the administration has devised a speedy review process that relies on voluntary disclosures by companies to determine whether stimulus projects pose environmental harm. Corporate polluters often omitted mention of health, safety, and environmental violations from their applications. In fact, administration officials told the Center they chose to ignore companies’ environmental compliance records in making grant decisions and issuing NEPA exemptions, saying they considered such information irrelevant.

Some polluters reported their stimulus projects might cause “unknown environmental risks” or could “adversely affect” sensitive resources, the documents show. Others acknowledged they would produce hazardous air pollutants or toxic metals. Still others won stimulus money just weeks after settling major pollution cases. Yet nearly all got exemptions from full environmental analyses, the documents show.

Econ, Gangsta Govt, Obama, Pay to Play

ABC’s Jake Tapper Blasts Obama’s Double Standard on Jobs and Outsourcing

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ABC’s Jake Tapper on the double standard: “What would candidate Obama have said if Bush’s jobs adviser ran a company which outsourced thousands of jobs and paid no taxes on $14 billion in profits?

Jeffery Immelt with Obama

Politico (and Politico is very left friendly folks):

The results of GE’s tight relationship with the Obama administration are starting to show.

The company’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, went from being an Obama ally on green energy to being one of his top outside advisers on the economy in the last two years.

In the process, The New York Times reports, GE had one of its best years in 2010, in part by getting a huge tax benefit from Uncle Sam.

Last year, the company paid nothing to the government. Instead, the government paid GE $3.2 billion in tax breaks.

“Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore,” according to The Times.

Some combination of aggressive lobbying for green energy tax incentives — for which the administration had pushed aggressively in the Recovery Act and in President Obama’s budgets to Congress over the last two year — and strategies run out of its in-house tax department have made GE one of the leading companies in reducing its corporate tax burden.

When Immelt was named the chairman of Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in January, he acknowledged that his company has a reputation for running most of its business overseas, the result of more than three decades of reducing its domestic operations to minimize costs.

“I know that despite the fact that 60 percent of GE’s revenues are outside of the United States, I personally and this company share in the responsibly and the accountability to make sure that this is the most competitive and productive country in the world,” Immelt said in January.

But he neglected to mention that GE’s offshore operation also allows it to avoid paying most of its taxes to the federal government.

GE’s spokesman told the Times that reducing its tax burden is part of the company’s “responsibility” to its shareholders.

But it also appears to run contrary to Obama’s rhetoric about slowing the rapid offshoring of American jobs.