Solyndra was a client of Goldman Sachs, and is credited as the “exclusive financial adviser,” Bloomberg notes. Goldman Sachs, as I discovered long ago, has their DNA all over this green-energy crony-corruption scandal. Goldman Sachs was the number two top Obama Donor that gave more than $1 million dollars to his 2008 campaign. Furthermore, two Goldman executives sat on Obama's 2008 finance committee and two were bundlers for his 2008 campaign.
In addition to Spinner, Kaiser, Solyndra executives, and Goldman Sachs, we can add David Mann, a lobbyist and Obama Super Pac donor, who lobbied for Solyndra, to this saga. Recently The Washington Free Beacon (a great source for this scandal) uncovered that Mann was granted significant access to the White House, “He met with White House officials four times in under two years between 2010 and 2012.” The Beacon goes on, “Solyndra is the most prominent of Mann’s failed clients, but it is far from the only one.”
Moreover, GOP substantiated research informs us that, "every Obama Chief Of Staff, staffers across numerous agencies, government watchdogs, even Solyndra investors knew that the risks were too high for taxpayers."
Solyndra, which came from humble junk beginnings, now has its place in history: an art exhibit at the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley, at the price tag of half a billion taxpayer dollars.
Steve Westly, Founder and Managing Partner of The Westly Group: Obama Bundler Serving on Energy Secretary Chu's Advisory Board
Now, it's unclear why former Vice President Al Gore's presence was missed at the DNC (climate change drama possibly), especially since he was a strong Obama supporter in 2008. Also, Gore's firm, Kleiner Perkins, along with his friend and partner, billionaire John Doerr, considered "a very big-ticket Obama donor" by New York Magazine, who in February 2011 hosted a star-studded billionaire Silicon Valley dinner for the president, raked in billions of stimulus money for their clean-energy investments. The conflict runs deeper, as Doerr sits on the president's job council, and early on ultimately shaped what went into the energy section of the 2009 Obama stimulus package.
Kleiner Perkins is a firm that I began to unravel in 2010, stressing that over fifty percent of their Greentech Portfolio secured all kinds of loans, grants, and special tax breaks; yet it’s a firm to eventually revisit, because since 2010, they have tripled their green investments and there is much more to expose.
Article comments
1 - Dr. Joseph S. Maresca
I'm sure that voters will hear a debate on Green Energy. More importantly, how does all of the above contrast with Mitt Romney's ideas on Green Energy. The Green Party itself will be in the mix on the November Ballot. Also, The voters will have to weigh whatever negations there are in the current Green Energy policies as against spending more money on national defense under a Romney Administration.
For sure, huge amounts of money will be spent and perhaps even wasted. The question is this. Which candidate will provide the voters with a better outcome. Ultimately, the goal is to stimulate demand so that more consumers make purchases, industry rebuilds, people are hired in greater numbers and unemployment subsides. Which candidate will accomplish this better?
2 - Igor
Green energy is inevitable. We can either plan for it now and start building systems, or we can wait for more crises to develop. Either way will result in some waste and fraud, it's just a matter of how huge and when. We're probably better off planning early and as well as we can.