Forget Bain: Obama?????s equity record is the real scandal

[_bcspace]

[Partial list of failed Obama admin investments of taxpayer dollars]
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This is just the tip of the iceberg. A company called SunPower got a $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, and as of January, the company owed more than it was worth. Brightsource got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee and posted a string of net losses totaling $177 million. And, of course, let’s not forget Solyndra — the solar panel manufacturer that received $535 million in taxpayer-funded loan guarantees and went bankrupt, leaving taxpayers on the hook.

Amazingly, Obama has declared that all the projects received funding “based solely on their merits.” But as Hoover Institution scholar Peter Schweizer reported in his book, “Throw Them All Out,” fully 71 percent of the Obama Energy Department’s grants and loans went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.” Collectively, these Obama cronies raised $457,834 for his campaign, and they were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.35 billion. Obama said this week it’s not the president’s job “to make a lot of money for investors.” Well, he sure seems to have made a lot of (taxpayer) money for investors in his political machine.

All that cronyism and corruption is catching up with the administration. According to Politico, “The Energy Department’s inspector general has launched more than 100 criminal investigations” related to the department’s green-energy programs.

Now the man who made Solyndra a household name says Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital “is what this campaign is going to be about.” Good luck with that, Mr. President. If Obama wants to attack Romney’s alleged private equity failures as chief executive of Bain, he’d better be ready to defend his own massive public equity failures as chief executive of the United States.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/forget-bain-obamas-public-equity-record-is-the-real-scandal/2012/05/24/gJQAXnXCnU_story.html

[_Brackite]

Great News Article! Thanks For Posting this Article here, Bcspace. Solyndra was supposed to have created several thousands of ‘Green Jobs' within California. However, The State of California is still in an economic mess. Solyndra and California are two topics that the liberals are going to try as hard as possible not to discuss this Presidential election.

[_moksha]

Yes, you feel relaxed. Your eyelids are getting heavy... heavy. You are relaxing even further... feel the peace and relaxation. Forget Bain, Forget Bain.

Now when you wake up you will forget Bain Capital and put all thoughts of a leveraged buyout of the United States of America out of your mind.

[_ajax18]

fully 71 percent of the Obama Energy Department’s grants and loans went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party

I guess that's how socialism takes care of everyone equally, at least according to the Democrats here in Obamagrad.

[_Kevin Graham]

What this moron doesn't understand is that Romney's experience as a corporate man means he is only experienced in working for the interests of a specific group of people: share holders. That is not the job of the President of the United States. Romney's job was to increase the value of a company's stock by whatever means, and rarely does that happen by hiring people. The President's job is to work in the interests of all Americans, not just those who have invested stock options. Why is this so hard to understand? Romney's so-called experience as a job creator is pure myth. He's fired more people than he ever hired. Why in the hell would we want someone like that running a nation that is struggling to put people to work? He has a history of making profits for his company and himself, by firing workers.

This idiot who wrote this piece just runs through common hit points designed by bored Right Wing bloggers who like to create mountains from molehills; pointing out where public investment didn't quite pan out the way they had hoped. But they all ignore the fact that the bulk of the money used to save GM, the banks and ultimately the economy, turned out to be a massive success. Quibbling about 3 million in waste here or another one billion in waste there is stupid when we're talking about hundreds of billions in public investment. Think of it like mutual funds. If your overall yield is success, then why focus on those stocks that dropped in value? There are no guarantees in this business. But the point is stimuls funding has worked and served its intended purpose. There can be no argument that we were on the brink of depression and that was circumvented by the stimulus. Unemployment was reaching levels not seen since Reagan, and that has turned around. So yes, I think Obama can proudly tout his experience handling the economy and creating jobs.

The criticism against Romney and Bain has nothing to do with the question of profitability. It has everything to do with the question of relevance. The fact is the job of a CEO of a private company is nothing comparable to the job of a President. This silly Right Wing notion that billionaires are in the business of creating jobs is just a myth. It is something more and more billionaires are coming to admit: http://ed.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/2 ... eator?lite

[_Kevin Graham]

Amazingly, Obama has declared that all the projects received funding “based solely on their merits.” But as Hoover Institution scholar Peter Schweizer reported in his book, “Throw Them All Out,” fully 71 percent of the Obama Energy Department’s grants and loans went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.” Collectively, these Obama cronies raised $457,834 for his campaign, and they were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.35 billion. Obama said this week it’s not the president’s job “to make a lot of money for investors.” Well, he sure seems to have made a lot of (taxpayer) money for investors in his political machine.

How did they make money if, as the author claims, all these things went bankrupt? Eleven billion in government "loans and grants"? Well how much of that was grant and how much of it was loan? The author doesn't say. Unlike grants, loans aren't free ya know. This guy wants to paint this picture as if Obama was just rewarding his donors but the fact is those wealthy democrats who donated to Obama's campaign are precisely the kind of people who are going to be investing in things Obama supports, hence the investment in Green energy. To say they only donated to his campaign because they knew they'd receive some kind of pay off is just dishonest and idiotic. If the government lost in these investments, then so did these donors. If Rush Limbaugh wanted to start his own solar panel factory, he would have been entitled to the same kinds of government loans/grants. The Obama administration didn't discriminate here, it just so happens that only wealthy democrats tend to invest in alternative energy, whereas Obama's Right Wing opponents want to keep us dependent on foreign oil.

[_Kevin Graham]

This guy was quickly refuted, I see:

Marc Thiessen Distorts Success Rate Of Clean Energy Investments
May 25, 2012 5:25 pm ET by Jill Fitzsimmons

In his latest Washington Post column, Marc Thiessen of the American Enterprise Institute suggested that President Obama is being hypocritical when he points out Mitt Romney's jobs record at Bain Capital because some clean energy companies have struggled after receiving government loans or grants from the Obama administration. In fact, the failure rate for federal green energy investments is far lower than that of private venture capital investments in clean energy, and the majority of the loan guarantees are low-risk.

As evidence of President Obama's "massive public equity failures," Thiessen cherry-picked clean energy companies that have faced any sort of financial difficulty after receiving Department of Energy loan guarantees or other federal support. But these companies represent a small fraction of loan guarantee recipients, many of which are paying back the loans ahead of schedule.

With just 1.4% of its Recovery Act clean tech investments in "losers", it looks like the Obama administration is batting a much better average in "picking winners and losers" than the private Venture Capital (VC) market itself.

The US government guarantee of a private loan to Solyndra, at $535 million, represented a minuscule 1.4% of the Department of Energy investment in all renewable technologies. By contrast - VCs (who were out $1 billion to Solyndra, for example) expect much higher failure rates. Richard Stuebi, who advises VCs on expected green energy failure rates, says that just 3 in 10 successes represents a successful VC investment strategy. That is 70% losers - not 1.4%.

Since then, another loan recipient, Beacon Power, went bankrupt, but while Thiessen implied that Beacon's bankruptcy is costing taxpayers $43 million, it was actually sold to a private equity firm that will repay most of the loan. Even though only 2 out of 26 loan guarantee recipients have filed for bankruptcy, Rush Limbaugh seized on Thiessen's column to claim that "the vast majority" of clean energy companies that received federal support have "gone bankrupt."

In addition to misrepresenting the success rate of the loan guarantee program, Theissen also got his facts wrong on some of the loan recipients. He reported:

A company called SunPower got a $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, and as of January, the company owed more than it was worth.

But as we have previously pointed out, NRG Energy bought the project -- the California Valley Solar Ranch -- shortly before the DOE loan guarantee was finalized and is responsible for paying back the loan. Furthermore, the loan is considered very low-risk because Pacific, Gas and Electric Co. has already signed a long-term contract to buy the power generated by the project.

Thiessen made a similar omission regarding First Solar:

The Obama administration provided First Solar with more than $3 billion in loan guarantees for power plants in Arizona and California. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek report last week, the company "fell to a record low in Nasdaq Stock Market trading May 4 after reporting $401 million in restructuring costs tied to firing 30 percent of its workforce."

Like SunPower, First Solar has sold its DOE-backed projects, which means that "the utilities are on the hook to repay the loans." And all of its projects have power purchase agreements with California utilities, which significantly decreases the risk to taxpayers.

Thiessen concludes by accusing the Obama administration of "cronyism and corruption," citing debunked claims by the Hoover Institution's Peter Schweizer that DOE awarded grants and loans guarantees almost solely to Obama campaign donors. In fact, several of the companies on Schweizer's list did not even receive federal funding, and many of those that did employed both Democratic and Republican donors.

[_ajax18]

Unemployment was reaching levels not seen since Reagan, and that has turned around. So yes, I think Obama can proudly tout his experience handling the economy and creating jobs.

And how many immigrants did we allow in during this time of such high unemployment? I guess we don't even know since we're not willing to secure the border. How much money in foreign aid do we continue to dole out during our own economic crisis?

I don't think politicians really care to help reduce unemployment. What needs to be done to help unemployment is not what one needs to do to win an election.

[_Kevin Graham]

Unemployment was reaching levels not seen since Reagan, and that has turned around. So yes, I think Obama can proudly tout his experience handling the economy and creating jobs.

And how many immigrants did we allow in during this time of such high unemployment? I guess we don't even know since we're not willing to secure the border. How much money in foreign aid do we continue to dole out during our own economic crisis?

I don't think politicians really care to help reduce unemployment. What needs to be done to help unemployment is not what one needs to do to win an election.

Immigration has nothing to do with this. That's an idiot's argument which the Right Wing has adopted because they figured out that even racists and bigots can vote, and so they'll take them. Every racist I know, and I know a lot of them, couldn't tell you the first thing about Republican domestic, economic, or foreign policy, but they absolutely hate Mexicans and so they vote accordingly, knowing full well that the Right wing media (FOX News and the talk radio morons) fires them up with misinformation about those dirty immigrants are destroying the country, bla bla bla.

[_Kevin Graham]

High unemployment has nothing to do with increased immigration. Immigration was just the same when the unemployment rate was at 4% a decade ago.

High unemployment has everything to do with globalization, automation in technology and the nature of a corporation. Every day corporations are thinking of ways to make manual labor jobs obsolete. And those jobs requiring low skilled workers are now demanding more production for less pay. That's our capitalistic system at work.

This is why most people who are not upper-middle to upper class, are generally miserable and needing to work multiple jobs just to stay afloat:



But we have Reaganomics to thank for that.