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To: one_less who wrote (696364)	1/31/2013 1:25:10 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1573430

White House Gave $1 Million To Battery Maker A123 The Day It Filed For Bankruptcy Ayesha Rascoe, Reuters \| Nov. 16, 2012 WASHINGTON, Nov 16 ( Reuters) - The Obama administration provided struggling battery maker A123 Systems Inc with nearly $1 million on the day it filed for bankruptcy, the company told lawmakers investigating its government grant. The company, which makes lithium ion batteries for electric cars, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month after a rescue deal with Chinese auto parts supplier Wanxiang Group fell apart. That same day, Oct. 16, A123 received a $946,830 payment as part of its $249 million clean energy grant from the Energy Department, the company said in a letter obtained by Reuters to Republican Senators John Thune and Chuck Grassley. Read more: businessinsider.com

To: one_less who wrote (696364)	1/31/2013 1:26:02 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1573430

Insiders get rich on Obama's green energy stimulus "I had a friend who said, 'You don't just pick the winners and losers,' " Mitt Romney told President Obama in the first presidential debate. "You pick the losers." Romney's assessment of the billions that Obama has wasted on green energies is dead on. And unfortunately, it only tells half of the story. According to a Washington Examiner analysis of publicly available data, corporate insiders at the 15 publicly traded green energy companies that received federal stimulus subsidies pocketed tens of millions by selling their stock after the government's money poured in and before their companies' values plummeted. The Obama administration gave more than $700 million in grants and guaranteed an additional $500 million in loans to publicly traded green energy companies through its 2009 stimulus package. If Obama had invested all that money in a Standard & Poors index fund of the top 500 publicly traded companies, his investment would have seen a 73 percent return since he took office. In contrast, the Obama "green energy" stimulus portfolio has fallen by 78 percent -- performing about five points worse than green energy companies that didn't get subsidies. The insider trades by officers and directors of these companies tell us still more. They cashed out a net $63.9 million in stock gains before their companies' stock prices collapsed. Biofuel manufacturer Amyris Inc., for example, was given $24.3 million in taxpayer money to turn plant sugars into diesel fuel. At one point, this helped push its stock price above $30 a share. Today, Amyris has closed two of its three plants, and its stock sells for less than $3. Amyris' insiders got rich first, though, netting $21 million in stock sales after the firm went public in September 2010. Solazyme, another biofuel manufacturer, received $21.8 million from Obama's Energy Department. Its stock once traded at more than $25 a share but now is worth less than $9. Its corporate insiders realized $18.4 million in capital gains before the stock price collapsed. Corporate insiders at A123 Systems were not as quick to cash out as their biofuel colleagues. The Massachusetts electric-car battery manufacturer received a $249 million grant from Obama's Energy Department in 2009, before going bankrupt last month. Its stock was worth more than $25 a share when it first went public in September 2009. A123 officers and directors still made more than $11 million in stock sales. This analysis does not include some of the best-known Obama energy failures. Solyndra, for example, blew through more than $500 million in taxpayer-guaranteed loans before it could even go public. Another high-profile failure, First Solar, is not included because it sold off much of its $3 billion in federal loan guarantees to third parties before it laid off 30 percent of its workforce and its stock price declined by more than 90 percent from its 2011 high. The company's head, Michael Ahearn, has extracted more than $329 million in stock sales since 2009 all by himself. One would hope that Obama would have learned some lessons from the epic failures of his green energy investments. But Americans are not that lucky. Campaigning early this year in Florida, Obama promised to "double-down on a clean energy industry that's never been more promising." The federal government has a role to play in funding basic scientific research. It has done so for decades, through universities and through the national academies. But Obama crossed the line by investing in specific companies and their business models. As a result, the American people have lost billions in tax dollars, corporate insiders have pocketed millions in gains and we are no closer to a green energy economy. http://washingtonexaminer.com/examiner-editorial-insiders-get-rich-on-obamas-green-energy-stimulus/article/2512237

To: one_less who wrote (696364)	1/31/2013 1:26:50 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1573430

Obama fundraisers got 80% of green energy loans ($16.4 billion) Obama Economic Record November 2011 From the Daily Beast, an article that explains how Obama rewarded many of his campaign fundraisers with green energy loans backed by taxpayer dollars. Excerpt: It would take an entire book to analyze every single grant and government-backed loan doled out since Barack Obama became president. But an examination of grants and guaranteed loans offered by just one stimulus program run by the Department of Energy, for alternative-energy projects, is stunning. The so-called 1705 Loan Guarantee Program and the 1603 Grant Program channeled billions of dollars to all sorts of energy companies. The grants were earmarked for alternative-fuel and green-power projects, so it would not be a surprise to learn that those industries were led by liberals. Furthermore, these were highly competitive grant and loan programs—not usually a hallmark of cronyism. Often fewer than 10 percent of applicants were deemed worthy. Nevertheless, a large proportion of the winners were companies with Obama-campaign connections. Indeed, at least 10 members of Obama’s finance committee and more than a dozen of his campaign bundlers were big winners in getting your money. At the same time, several politicians who supported Obama managed to strike gold by launching alternative-energy companies and obtaining grants. How much did they get? According to the Department of Energy’s own numbers … a lot. In the 1705 government-backed-loan program, for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party. The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008. Their political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy. It brought them returns many times over. Think of it as a welfare program paid by the middle class to enrich the secular leftist millionaires and billionaires. Taxing the poor to pay for the rich. That’s what the Democrats mean by stimulus spending. And that’s why we have been running trillion-dollar deficits for 3 years with an unemployment rate of 9% or more. They got elected in order to enrich themselves, because they are motivated by greed. Related posts Obama gave $443 million no-bid contract to drug firm run by Democrat fundraiser E-mails reveal that Obama fundraiser discussed Solyndra loan with White House Another green energy firm goes bankrupt after getting $43 million loan from taxpayers E-mails show that Democrats were about to approve a second loan to Solyndra Report finds Labor Department’s green jobs program failing $737 million green jobs loan given to Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law This one graph should end the debate on wind and solar energy Obama to conduct campaign fundraiser with wind power stimulus recipient How well did Obama’s green jobs spending work out for taxpayers? Obama administration knew $535 million Solyndra loan was too risky Obama administration reworked Solyndra loan to favor private donors Solyndra CEO and CFO will refuse to answer questions in Congressional hearing Marsha Blackburn beats up Al Gore on cap and trade corruption

To: one_less who wrote (696364)	1/31/2013 1:29:47 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1573430

Solyndra-Gate Opens Into A Large Den Of Corruption ........................................................ 12/20/2011 news.investors.com The Obama administration promised a green energy future. What it delivered, though, is a present filled with rancid politics, aching failure and tawdry scandal. At the top of the list is the Solyndra collapse. President Obama himself visited the California solar panel maker, lauding it for "leading the way toward a brighter, more prosperous future." His administration poured $535 million in taxpayer dollars into the business, and wanted to add another $469 million even after it was known the company was going to fail. Solyndra, though, is only one of many companies that have dined sumptuously at taxpayers' expense. Several other businesses have been selected by the White House to waste other people's money simply because they fit in with the Obama vision of a green energy future. Merit, it seems, isn't considered when the money is passed out. "Obama's green-technology program was infused with politics at every level," the Washington Post reported on Christmas Day after it had analyzed "thousands of memos, company records and internal e-mails." "The records, some previously unreported," said the Post, "show that when warned that financial disaster might lie ahead, the administration remained steadfast in its support for Solyndra." Going where few mainstream media outlets dare to tread because they don't want to hurt the president's re-election chances, the Post actually took a realistic look at the White House's $80 billion clean-technology program. It found that "as Solyndra tottered, officials discussed the political fallout from its troubles, the 'optics' in Washington and the impact that the company's failure could have on" a second term for Obama. "Rarely, if ever, was there discussion of the impact that Solyndra's collapse would have on laid-off workers or on the development of clean-energy technology." The Post also learned that many "venture capitalists with stakes in some of the companies backed by the administration" were contributors to Obama's 2008 campaign, while others "took jobs in the administration and helped manage the clean-energy program." While the Post took a hard line, it was not the first left-leaning newspaper to do so. The New York Times provided similar coverage in August, reporting that "the green economy is not proving to be the job-creation engine that many politicians envisioned." But all this came out in 2011. Let's see how much these newspapers mention Solyndra and the green scandal when the 2012 campaign heats up.