Barack Obama’s Solyndra Spending Spree Scandal

As the details spill out concerning the now widening Obama-Solyndra scandal, even the pro-Obama mainstream media is finding it difficult to bury the story.  Americans will forgive a great many mistakes from their elected officials - but stealing taxpayer dollars to pad the pockets of campaign supporters is not among them.  And that is what the Solyndra scandal is – the blatant theft of a half billion dollars of taxpayer dollars going to an already failing solar panel company that happened to be owned in part by some of the largest political donors to Barack Obama.  Solyndra was the very first company to receive federal loan dollars, and its factory seen as an example of the future for green energy jobs in speeches by both President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, even though the company’s financial situation had long been plagued by year over year financial losses of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Not only did the Obama administration rush to give the half billion dollar loans to failing Solyndra, it also went to great lengths to restructure the loan in such a way as to protect capital investors like Argonaut Ventures so that they would be paid back first before U.S. taxpayers, even though it was taxpayers who had ponied up the majority of the Solyndra funding.  Why would the Obama administration make such an arrangement that was tilted so favorably toward Argonaut Ventures?  The answer is likely found with Argonaut’s ownership by multi-billionaire George Kaiser, one of the single most significant single donors to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, and a frequent visitor to the White House throughout 2009 and 2010. White House logs are now indicating Kaiser visited the White House a total of 16 times in the weeks prior to Solyndra being given the half billion dollar taxpayer funded loan.  Kaiser insists he did not play any direct role in the White House decision to fastrack and ultimately approve the loan to the failed solar panel company.  What then was his purpose for the multiple White House visits just prior to the loan being issued?

Perhaps the scandal was best summed up recently by Republican Congressman Cliff Stearns:

“…Obamanomics, essentially, would divert taxpayer dollars to the Green Lobby – and then into the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party. This is what crony capitalism is really all about: politicians enriching favored businesses, who then return the favor…And Obama almost pulled it off. The Great Recession conveniently allowed the president to start the spendathon under the guise of economic stimulus…As it turns out, the $38.6 billion loan program for clean energy firms that Solyndra benefited from has created just 3,545 permanent new jobs after parceling out half its dough. That works out to around $5 million a job…The takers, not the makers. That’s whose side Obamanomics is on.”