Everyone here is by now well aware of the Solyndra scandal, where the deadly combination of campaign cash influence and the Warmist ideology of Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, led the White House to give over half a billion dollars to a solar energy company, owned by a top Democrat money man, which they knew was going to fail. Several people (DB, John Anderson, and Cassandara King, to name a few off the top of my head) have posted comments about it over the last few months as the damning facts keep coming out, and I think it’s worthy of a full post.
The BBC has done exactly five reports on it (plus one brief mention during a Daily Politics segment on how government behavior might possibly drive up energy costs, and one even briefer mention in a story on Republican complaints about government spending). Can’t say they’re censoring the Solyndra story, but it’s pretty poor reporting considering what they’ve left out. As far as I’m aware, the story has never made it to any of the flagship news-oriented programmes, and even these news briefs never seem to stay on the front US & Canada page very long, or get noticed in the Features & Analysis section. In short, BBC News Online whips up a news brief every couple of weeks, and that’s about it. Mark Mardell, the BBC US President editor, has never blogged about it, nor have any of the other correspondents dared bring it up.
But this problem is much more than just the one company. The ideologically twisted Chu has thrown money at several failed or failing green energy companies, nearly all of which are connected to Democrats or Democrat campaign cash. None of the battalion of Beeboids working on US stories has reported on any of them. So now I’m going to tell you what the BBC doesn’t want you to know.
First, the money thrown down the Solyndra toilet was $535 million. Even the BBC was forced to admit that the White House gave them the money even though they knew the firm wasn’t viable. But notice that they censored the fact that the majority owner was the Kaiser Foundation, owned by one of the President’s top money men. Since the subpoenas and Congressional investigation started, emails have come out showing that Kaiser was pressing the Administration for the money, even though they all knew the company was doomed from the start. The best the BBC could do was admit that “a Democratic fundraiser warned that investors did not rate the chances of survival for the firm.” They don’t want you to know – or, as difficult as this is to believe, felt that it was unimportant – that this particular Democratic fundraiser owned the company, and was the one pushing for the cash.
The House investigation is ongoing, and the most recent BBC report on it framed it as a strictly partisan affair, reporting that voting to subpoena the White House records on the loans was “along party lines”. Pathetic. So the BBC has massively played down any possibility of cronyism or political reasons for the loans, and tried to paint the investigation into this fraud as partisan behavior by Republicans. The BBC’s coverage is mostly from the White House perspective. The BBC has also censored news that the White House told Solyndra to postpone layoffs until after the November mid-term elections.
But as I said, this is just the tip of the Green Iceberg.
SolarReserve got $737 million. That company part-owned by a firm run by Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law. Oh, and partners with another Kaiser Foundation company. Cronier and cronier. The company hasn’t gone bankrupt yet, but surely it’s only a matter of time.
SunPower, also in California, got $1.2 billion, thanks to lobbying from the son of a Democrat Congressman. The company is now $820 million in debt, and rapidly heading down the green toilet.
Abound Solar, mostly owned by Democrat donor billionaire Pat Stryker, got $400 million. So far, it seems the company hasn’t done much more than count the money.
Granite Reliable Wind Generation got $169 million. That company is owned by CCMP Capital (NB: pdf file, pg. 29). A former Managing Director of CCMP is none other than White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Nancy-Ann DeParle. She was also head of the ObamaCare communications department back when the President was pushing for it.
The National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado got $200 million from Steven Chu. A top Democrat Congressman from Colorado works with them (whatever that actually means). It’s now failing.
Beacon Power in Massachusetts, who were supposed to be building storage devices to make the highly inefficient wind turbines more viable, has gone bust. They got $43 million of taxpayer cash, now down the green toilet. Beacon was first brought to the government’s attention by Democrats: Sen. John Kerry and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Beacon is a spinoff of Satcon Technologies, who are cozy enough with the Democrats that they provided a fuel cell power plant for the 2004 Democrat National Convention. That’s the one where John Kerry was the nominee. Say no more.
Evergreen Solar got $5.3 million and SpecraWatt got $500,000 of that Stimulus money the BBC was so enthusiastic about. That cash wasn’t directly from the Dept. of Energy, although it was from local authorities handing out Stimulus money allocated to them. Both firms are now bankrupt.
Last, but certainly not least, is BrightSource, which got a whopping $1.4 billion in bailout funds from the Dept. of Energy. The principal investor is co-owned by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., co-conspiritor of Newsnight-trusted investigative advocate, Greg Palast. BrightSource was in deep financial trouble at the time, and the Dept. of Energy bailed them out. The project for which it got the money is being led by NRG,
UPDATE: I forgot to add that, while the NRG Political Action Committee sends campaign cash to both political parties, the majority of their cash goes to the Democrats. Worse, the two top NRG bosses themselves seem to donate exclusively to Democrats.
To sum up:
Apparently something like 80% of the taxpayer cash doled out by The Obamessiah Adminstration to allegedly promote Green Energy and “green jobs” went to firms heavily involved with Democrats or Obamessiah campaign donors. This adds up to nearly $4.7 billion thrown down the Green toilet, all for ideological and partisan reasons. It’s a combination of irresponsible ideology and old-fashioned corruption. Some may call it Venture Socialism, but I call it Crony Corporatism. This is all hidden from you because it makes the President look bad.
As the Solyndra investigation goes on, we’ll start hearing a lot more about this stuff, and the BBC will continue to hide it from you. I think the end result will be calls for Chu to step down. As the 2012 election looms and we approach next November, the President just might throw him under the bus. It’s not like this has been ignored by the press, either. The BBC figures this isn’t as important as Natalie Wood’s death or sexual abuse scandals in college football, or celebrity gossip. But they won an award for their online coverage of the US, so what do I know? Your license fee hard at work, I guess. Still, one can only imagine what the BBC editorial decisions would be had this stuff happened while Bush was in charge.