The solution to sleazy politicians is: less government

The Solyndra scandal, TARP, bailouts for the zombie banks, bailouts for the auto makers, money for big unions -- it's all coming down hard on Americans, we pay for it all. While the politicians, bankers, CEO's, investors, and thugs cover their losses at tax payer expense and move on to the next game.

The reasons why Solyndra will hit the Obama administration very hard are two fold, first; because it should, and second; because the American people are sick of it.

But if you want a withering indictment of the sleaziness of the whole Obama gangster government enterprise, a trip to Chicago is very illuminating.

Here’s some of what John Kass of the Chicago Tribune wrote about the “Chicago smell” of this issue.

Excerpts below ;

The Solyndra scandal cost at least a half-billion public dollars. It is plaguing PresidentBarack Obama. And it’s being billed as a Washington story. But back in Obama’s political hometown, those of us familiar with the Chicago Way can see something else in Solyndra — something that the Washington crowd calls “optics.” In fact, it’s not just a Washington saga — it has all the elements of a Chicago City Hall story, except with more zeros. …did you really believe it when the White House mouthpieces — who are also Chicago City Hall mouthpieces — promised they were bringing a new kind of politics to Washington? This is not a new kind of politics. It’s the old kind. The Chicago kind. And now the Tribune Washington Bureau has reported that the U.S. Department of Energyemployee who helped monitor the Solyndra loan guarantee was one of Obama’s top fundraisers. Fundraising? Contracts? Imagine that. …it’s the same old politics, the same kind practiced in Washington and Chicago and anywhere else where appetites are satisfied by politicians. When the government picks winners and losers, who’s the loser? Just look in the mirror, hold that thought, and tell me later.

Kass does a great job of describing how these legal forms of corruption take place.

    In Solyndra, like any proper City Hall political scandal, there are similar archetypes. There are the guys who count. The guys who bring the cash. They count because they do the counting. They have leverage. They’re always there at the fundraisers. And so they’re the ones who are allowed to gorge at the public trough. The bureaucrats are the fulcrum so the guys with the leverage can lift great weight without too much effort. And while they might whine privately among themselves, they don’t hold news conferences to blow the whistle. They keep their mouths shut until the deal is done. If anyone gets caught and the problem becomes public, at least they’ve got email to cover their behinds. And they’re doing a good job covering. But there’s one group that doesn’t get their behinds covered. Instead, their behinds are right out there, suspended foolishly, and waiting to get kicked. We’re the taxpayers — in Illinois we call ourselves chumbolones because we’re the ones who stupidly end up covering all the losses. As in the Solyndra mess.

His last point hits right to the heart of the matter. Taxpayers always wind up with the short end of the stick. Meanwhile, all the politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and interest groups simply shrug their shoulders and move on to the next scam.

Solyndra-Gate will take Obama down

I sat out the circus on the reelection speech that Obama gave to a Joint Session of Congress - I was really disgusted by the whole pitiful thing to be bothered. Most of what was going to be said was already leaked, and it was nothing new, even the lies were rehashed from the first Stimulus.

Yesterday I watched the speech for the first time. I lost count on how many lies Obama told at about 8 - 10, and couldn't be sure any longer if I should count them as new lie, or just a spin on a old lie. Then I was literally floored when I heard this :

The American Jobs Act will repair and modernize at least 35,000 schools. It will put people to work right now fixing roofs and windows; installing science labs and high-speed internet in classrooms all across this country.

Excuse me, but wasn't this what we were paying for in the first Stimulus ? Incredibly Obama stood in frot of Congress and the American people and white washed over the fact that stimulus one was a pork and patronage bill that was completely squandered -- then with almost a sarcastic glance toward Congress he added :

The White House could be trusted to be good stewards of the money; "And to make sure the money is properly spent, we're building on reforms we've already put in place. No more earmarks. No more boondoggles."

Apparently Obama believes that it is pork only when somebody else does it, and seemed completely oblivious to scandalous failures like Solyndra and other claims of cronyism from the first Stimulus hanging over the White House.

The demise of Solyndra has already sparked an FBI investigation, congressional hearings, have raised numerous questions of political cronyism and corruption connected to the highest levels of the Obama Administration. Let's see how far it gets -- and if the Obama administration is as successful in covering this one up, as they have been with the others  such as; gunrunner, stimulus spending, trading political favors for jobs etc ,. Maybe not this time, this one is bad.

The Solyndra debacle is rapidly becoming a "big" White House scandal. It is far too symptomatic of an Administration that is founded not on principle, but on Chicago-style cronyism and political corruption in the worst sense of the term. Obama learned his lesson well coming up through the "Chicago Mob" he rarely gets caught, having been mentored by radical terrorists, slum lords, Acorn activists, and gangsters -- most of his bidding is done by others, however as often happens with gangsters they get too much power, become too confident and screw up, Solyandra is the screw up that will take this "gangster government " down

Obama doesn't hate millionaires and billionaires, quite to the contrary, he loves them. He only hates the ones that do not pay up to his campaign fund, and do not support his political policies. George B. Kaiser of Tulsa, a billionaire with banking and oil and gas interests that rank him among the wealthiest people in the world, reportedly contributed $53,500 personally and bundled large amounts more for Obama in 2008, and is also one of the largest investor in Solyndra. Kaiser also visited the White House 16 times between 2009 and 2011. The White House public records indicate that three of Kaiser's visits were on March 12, 2009 and one the following day in which he met with "a Senior Adviser, the former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, the Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council, and the Deputy Director of the National Economic Council." The $535 million loan was officially approved one week later.

That loan guarantee agreement negotiated on behalf of Solyndra was fast-tracked through approval by Obama Administration officials at the Department of Energy and "included the lowest interest of all the green projects" benefiting from DoE funding, according to ABC News.

The guarantee also subordinated the taxpayer's credit position to private investors, like George Kaiser, should the company go bust.  Republicans warned that the deal "put taxpayers at unnecessary risk" but their warning went unheeded.   This means Kaiser will be at the front of the distribution line when Solyndra assets are liquidated.  Chances of any recovery for the taxpayers is somewhere between slim and none.

The Obama administration even ignored an audit released  just weeks before his visit to Solyndra by PricewaterhouseCoopers that the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 16, 2010 that should have given the President and the White House considerable pause.   Noting that in the first five years of operation the company had sustained $558 million in losses, the audit report said Solyndra "has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders' deficit that, among other factors, raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern."


Undaunted, Obama arrived on May 26 and praised the solar energy company as the poster child of the $25 billion green energy grants and subsidies doled out through his pork and patronage Economic Stimulus.   Less than two months ago, Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison visited Capitol Hill "trumpeting the company's successes and praising the government loan."  According to Henry Waxman (CA) and Diana DeGette (CO), Harrison assured them that Solyndra was in a "strong financial position."  Apparently, Harrison's verbal reassurance was enough due diligence oversight on behalf of the taxpayers to satisfy the two leading Democrat green energy evangelists.   They now feign surprise that Harrison "did not convey to us the perilous condition of the company."

House Republicans began pressing the Administration for more disclosure about the loan earlier this year—an effort that the White House budget office did not seem to welcome. In July, the Energy and Commerce Committee issued a subpoena to force the White House to answer its queries, which it finally started to do in August.

It will be interesting to see whether or not this investigation gets thrown behind a file cabinet somewhere with the rest of the investigations into the "gangster government" -- Maybe not this time.

Read more here  -- Wall Street Journal  Solyndra Scandal