"Backers urged Obama not to visit, talk up solar start-up" by Carol D. Leonnig and Joe Stephens Washington Post / October 4, 2011
WASHINGTON - A Silicon Valley investor and senior administration officials warned the White House to reconsider having President Obama visit a solar start-up company because of its mounting financial problems, saying he might be embarrassed later.
“A number of us are concerned that the president is visiting Solyndra,’’ Steve Westly, a California investor and Obama fund-raiser, wrote to Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s senior adviser, in May 2010. “Many of us believe the company’s cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term. . . . I just want to help protect the president from anything that could result in negative or unfair press.’’
The memo was among several copies of e-mails released yesterday by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating a government loan to the now-shuttered company.
Obama’s Energy Department had provided Solyndra with a $535 million government-backed loan in 2009 and wanted to highlight the investment to show taxpayers how their stimulus dollars had been put to work.
See: Administration Telling the Truth About Stimuloot
That's what they called creating jobs.
Westly said that if Obama proceeded with the visit, he should be careful about touting the company’s future: “If it’s too late to change/postpone the meeting, the president should be careful about unrealistic/optimistic forecasts that could haunt him in the next 18 months if Solyndra hits the wall, files for bankruptcy, etc.’’
Westly’s concern, which proved to be prescient, was that the company had been cautioned the previous month by its outside auditors that it was burning through cash rapidly and that its future as a “going concern’’ was in doubt. The solar-panel manufacturer closed its doors Aug. 31, then filed for bankruptcy protection and laid off 1,100 workers. Its closure has left taxpayers obligated to repay the loan.
But Obama did visit Solyndra in May 2010, touting it in a national news conference as an “engine of economic growth’’ and a model of his administration’s $80 billion stimulus-funded investment in clean-energy technologies and companies.
What was once a showcase of the Obama administration’s clean-energy initiative is now a political scandal for the White House. Federal investigators have launched a criminal probe into whether the company misled the government and engaged in accounting fraud....
Also see: US Taxpayers Burned by Solar Stimuloot
FBI investigating Solyndra for possible fraud
The Energy Department, which had pushed to give Solyndra the government-backed loan, officials counseled the White House not to worry.
Yesterday, Obama said he does not regret backing the loan guarantee, saying officials always knew a clean energy loan program would not back winners 100 percent of the time. “There are going to be some failures, and Solyndra’s an example,’’ Obama said in an ABC News interview.
Hell of an attitude when it's not his money.
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"Obama energy adviser pressed for loan for solar company" October 08, 2011
WASHINGTON - An Energy Department adviser and former fund-raiser for President Obama pushed to make sure that a California solar company got a half-billion federal loan, despite pledging to recuse himself because his wife’s law firm represented the company, according to newly released e-mails.
The correspondence shows that Steve Spinner, who helped monitor a clean energy loan guarantee program, was more actively involved in a loan for Solyndra LLC than administration officials have admitted.
The e-mails, released by the administration in response to congressional investigators, show that Spinner was actively involved in a planned September 2009 trip by Vice President Joe Biden to Solyndra’s Fremont, Calif., headquarters for a groundbreaking ceremony. Biden did not go on the trip but spoke via satellite. Solyndra declared bankruptcy last month despite receiving a $528 million federal loan.
Related: Biden's Moment in the Sun
In the e-mails, Spinner repeatedly pushes Energy Department and White House budget officials to ensure that the loan was finalized before Biden’s planned trip....
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