AND THE THIRD ANGEL FOLLOWED THEM, SAYING WITH A LOUD VOICE, IF ANY MAN WORSHIP THE BEAST AND HIS IMAGE, AND RECEIVE HIS MARK IN HIS FOREHEAD, OR IN HIS HAND.
*** REVELATION 14:9
Officials discuss the Solyndra collapse after a raid on the Fremont company in September. Agents from the FBI and the Energy Department served search warrants and collected company records.
The White House on Friday strongly rebuffed a subpoena from House Republicans seeking all communications about Solyndra, the failed Fremont solar-panel manufacturer that received a half-billion dollar federal loan guarantee.
In a letter to two top Republicans on the House energy panel, White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler said the request "was driven more by partisan politics than a legitimate effort to conduct a responsible investigation."
The White House and the Energy Department already have turned over 85,000 pages of documents on Solyndra Inc. The company filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers after receiving $528 million in federal backing.
Ruemmler said those documents show no wrongdoing or political favoritism by the administration. She added that curiosity alone is not a justification to encroach on the executive branch's long-standing confidentiality interests.
House Republicans have used Solyndra to highlight what they see as President Obama's failure to create clean-energy jobs. The company was the first to receive a federal loan guarantee under the 2009 stimulus law, which greatly expanded the program. Obama visited the company last year to praise it publicly.
Documents already obtained by the committee show that the administration knew the firm had problems, yet continued to support it.
On Thursday, a subcommittee of the energy panel voted on party lines to issue the subpoena, calling the White House "obstructionist."
House Energy and Commerce chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in a statement issued Friday that he was disappointed that the White House and House Democrats were continuing to put up "partisan roadblocks to hide the truth from taxpayers," when, he said, the investigation so far has shown that the GOP is on the right track.
"Solyndra was a jobs program gone bad, and we must learn the lesson of Solyndra as we work to turn our economy around and put folks back to work," he said.
The White House announced last week it had ordered an independent review of similar loans made by the Energy Department. The review by former Treasury official Herb Allison will assess the status of more than two dozen other renewable-energy loans and loan guarantees made by the Energy Department program that supported Solyndra.
This article appeared on page A - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Solyndra Execs Stonewall Congress - 1 hour ago told the Solyndra executives. "We're not done. No we're not." The decision of Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison and Chief Financial Officer WG Stover to ...ABC News - 1608 related articles
The “cronygate” scandal over stimulus billions that were sunk into dubious green-energy initiatives -- which appeared to benefit donors with close political ties to the Obama White House -- widened on Tuesday with the announcement that executives of the failed Solyndra solar-panel firm will refuse to answer questions put to them by a House investigative committee.
Attorneys for Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison and the company’s CFO, W.G. “Bill” Stover, submitted correspondence to the oversight subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday, stating the two will seek 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination. Solyndra received $528 million in federal loan guarantees taxpayers must pay for.
“I have advised Mr. Harrison that he should decline to answer questions put to him by this subcommittee based on his rights under the Fifth Amendment,” attorney Walter F. Brown Jr., wrote to committee chairman Rep. Clifford B. Stearns, R-Fla.
That Harrison won’t testify is sure to irk Democratic members of the oversight subcommittee, who said they wanted Harrison to explain optimistic assurances he provided assuring them, indicating the company was doing just fine shortly before it declared bankruptcy.
Two days after the company declared bankruptcy earlier this month, the FBI executed a search warrant and removed materials from Solyndra’s Fremont, Calif., headquarters.
Solyndra’s demise is especially embarrassing to the Obama administration because the president toured its plant and touted it as a model for an influx of high-paying, green-energy jobs that he promised as part of his stimulus program. So far, those jobs have not materialized, and unemployment remains 9.1 percent. Eleven hundred workers lost their jobs when Solyndra ceased operations.
Also Tuesday, Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, confirmed reports during a media conference call that his committee will launch a second, separate probe into a series of green-energy deals involving Obama “bundlers” who made major contributions, and who later may have had insider knowledge or influence related to energy-related decisions.
“You have multiple entities, Solyndra is just one of them, in which political appointees are able to pick winners, often winners that are … very easy to check as major supporters of the president,” Chairman Issa said Tuesday in response to a Newsmax question. “So there’s an ideological bent, there’s a campaign finance bent, and then there’s the actual ‘felony stupid-investment.’
“That last one,” he added, “we’re going to leave mostly to Energy & Commerce. We’re not going to try and deal with the efficacy of the investment, but rather with whether or not this pattern of spending your money, whether it’s in stimulus funds or others, should be modified or eliminated… I think any time you give political appointees billions of dollars to put in a piggy bank, you’re going to have this kind of misconduct.”
The refusal by Solyndra executives to answer the oversight’s subcommittee’s questions is likely to raise additional questions about what top Obama administration officials knew about Solyndra’s imminent collapse, and when they knew it. The oversight subcommittee had to resort to issuing subpoenas after the Energy Department refused to respond to its requests for information, according to Stearns.
An attorney for CFO Stover also advised the subcommittee Tuesday that his client would not be testifying. “Under these circumstances, Mr. Stover must invoke his rights under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” wrote Little. “It would be irresponsible for anyone in his position not to do so.”
In related news, leaders of the Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, expressing concern that in light of the Solyndra scandal, the department may be rushing its distribution of an additional $9 billion in alternative-energy grants and loan guarantees that it must approved by Sept. 30. The letter asks Chu for additional information and requests a briefing by a member of his staff.
Two of Solyndra’s top executives will skip Wednesday's House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the solar company's financial failures but have agreed to appear the week of Sept. 19, according to oversight subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns.
Brian Harrison, Solyndra's president and CEO and Chief Financial Officer Wilbur Stover requested the delay and told House GOP aides late Monday they’re not planning to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights when they appear next week.
"That's what we understand. But that could change," Stearns told POLITICO.
FBI agents searched Harrison’s home earlier this month as part of an investigation with the Energy Department’s inspector general regarding Solyndra’s handling of $535 million in federal loan guarantees.
Last month, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and laid off 1,100 workers.
House Republicans envisioned the Solyndra officials as their star witnesses in an investigation aimed at exposing one of the poster children for the Obama administration's "green jobs" agenda. Stearns, a Florida Republican, said he was willing to give the officials more time in light of the other investigations.
"They're in the middle of a bankruptcy. They're snowed under. I respect that," Stearns said. "A little bit of leniency here to get the truth I'm willing to do if they give us the truth."
Stearns added that he’s hopeful the company officials will still testify. "I think their lawyers might say we're going to think this over,” he said.
In a statement, Solyndra cited “legal complexities arising from last week’s activities and the urgency of the bankruptcy proceedings,” as the reason for the postponement.
“The company is in direct communication with the committee staff and working with them on a future date for Mr. Harrison and Mr. Stover to voluntarily appear,” Solyndra added. “Given that it is in the best interest of all creditors, including the U.S. government, to attempt to gain maximum value for the Solyndra assets, either via sale of the whole company or in parts, including its intellectual property, it is in the best interest of all interested parties for them to remain in California to engage with potential purchasers.”
Two senior Obama administration officials are still on the agenda for Wednesday's hearing: Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Jeffrey Zients and Jonathan Silver, the executive director of the Energy Department's loans programs office.
Rep. Diana DeGette, the ranking member of the oversight panel, said that she's also anxious to hear from Solyndra officials as well.
"I think it's important that they do come and testify and I look forward to hearing what they have to say," she said. "I think having Solyndra in there to talk about their perspective of the loan and what happened to their company would add to our examination of this whole issue.” This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 3:49 p.m. on September 13, 2011.
President Obama, center, is given a tour of Solyndra by Executive Vice President Ben Bierman, right, as Chief Executive Officer Chris Gronet, left, walks along at Solyndra Inc. in Fremont, Calif. FBI spokesman Peter Lee says agents executed multiple search warrants on Thursday morning as part of an investigation with the Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General. (AP Photo/Paul Chinn, Pool, File)
By Jim Snyder and Christopher Martin - Sep 12, 2011 12:59 PM ET
Solyndra LLC’s workers making solar-power panels in a California factory subsidized by U.S. taxpayers showed “the promise of clean energy isn’t just an article of faith,” President Barack Obama said on a visit to the company in May 2010.
Two months before Obama’s visit, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP warned that Solyndra, the recipient of $535 million in federal loan guarantees, had financial troubles deep enough to “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”
The Obama administration stood by Solyndra through the auditor’s warning, the abandonment of a planned initial public offering and a last-ditch refinancing where taxpayers took a back seat to new investors. That unwavering commitment has come under increasing scrutiny since the company’s travails culminated in its filing for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 6 and a raid on its headquarters by the Federal Bureau of Investigation two days later.
“People including our government put blinders on and did not want to believe in the obvious,” Jonathan Dorsheimer, an analyst in Boston for Canaccord Genuity Inc. of Vancouver, said in an interview with Bloomberg Government. “The fact that the government chose Solyndra as their white horse is mind- boggling.”
‘Merit-Based Decision’
Selection of companies to receive U.S. backing are “merit- based decisions made by career staffers at the Department of Energy, and the process for this particular loan guarantee began under President George W. Bush,” Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement Sept. 1. “Every project that receives financing through the Energy Department goes through a rigorous financial, legal and technical review process.”
The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has been investigating the Solyndra award since February, has scheduled a hearing on the loan guarantees for Sept. 14.
“We smelled a rat from the onset,” Representatives Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican and the committee chairman, and Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican and chairman of the investigation subpanel, said in a statement Aug. 31 when the company announced it had dismissed 1,100 employees and planned to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.
A day before Solyndra ceased operations, the Energy Department turned down the company’s request to renegotiate the U.S. loan agreement, saying “a second restructuring was not feasible,” according to a memo from committee Republicans.
Stimulus Legislation
Originally authorized by Congress in a 2005 energy law, the loan guarantee program to encourage the development of clean- energy sources didn’t choose its first recipient until it was revamped under Obama’s 2009 stimulus legislation. Trade groups such as the Solar Energy Industries Association and the American Wind Energy Association lobbied Obama, urging in a letter that he prevent “further delay.”
Energy Secretary Steven Chu pledged during his Senate confirmation hearing to speed the approval of applications for the federal backing.
Solyndra, identified during Bush’s administration as a promising applicant, received the Energy Department’s first loan guarantee after Obama took office. Solyndra was given conditional approval in March 2009 and the award became final that September.
Easier, Lighter
The goal was to help the Fremont, California-based company develop its cylinder-shaped solar devices, which convert sunlight into electricity using a thin film made mainly of copper, indium, gallium and selenium. Standard solar panels are flat and made from silicon.
The company said its product was easier to install and lighter, giving it an edge over conventional panels, especially for large rooftops that can’t handle the weight of flat panels.
Solyndra used the U.S. backing to build the manufacturing plant Obama visited, shutting an older facility executives said couldn’t produce panels efficiently enough to compete in a market increasingly dominated by cheaper Chinese imports.
The company disclosed the “going concern” warning by PricewaterhouseCoopers, its accounting firm, in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on March 16, 2010.
“The company has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders’ deficit,” PricewaterhouseCoopers said.
In June 2010, the month after Obama’s visit, Solyndra executives withdrew a planned $300 million initial public offering.
Value ‘Evaporated’
The challenge facing Solyndra only increased as prices of the silicon used in conventional solar panels from China fell, declining 30 percent this year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
“When polysilicon prices dropped Solyndra’s value proposition evaporated,” Joseph Berwind, managing partner of Alternative Energy Investing LLC in Summit, New Jersey, and the author of “Investing in Solar Stocks,” said in an interview.
By December 2010, Solyndra was a month away from running out of cash, according to a government document obtained by Bloomberg News.
In what turned out to be a final effort to save the company, the Energy Department agreed to take a back seat to funds from new investors to keep the solar plant operating.
Public, Private Investors
Under the terms, $75 million in private financing will be paid ahead of all but $150 million of the federal government’s stake from any revenue from the sale of the company or its assets if Solyndra is liquidated, according to the January document. The government loaned about $527 million to the company by the time it shut down.
Solyndra also put up more collateral to the government, including intellectual property.
After “a due-diligence effort” to “determine if the company still had a viable business” the Energy Department concluded it “believes that the restructuring plan represents the best possible course of action to achieve the highest return on its invested capital,” according to the document.
House Republicans noted Solyndra’s financial troubles in a February 17 letter to Energy Secretary Chu announcing their investigation into the loan-guarantee program.
Kaiser Investment
Since then, Republicans have pointed to connections between Solyndra and billionaire George Kaiser, an Obama campaign fundraiser. The George Kaiser Family Foundation, a charitable organization based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, holds about 36.7 percent of the company, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Kaiser made 16 visits to the president’s aides since 2009, according to White House visitor logs.
“George Kaiser is not an investor in Solyndra and did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan,” the foundation said in an e-mailed statement on Sept. 1.
As Solyndra struggled to stay afloat, it worked to reassure lawmakers. The company spent $480,000 this year to lobby Congress, according to Senate records.
In July, days after Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee subpoenaed the White House for documents related to the loan guarantee, Solyndra retained Glover Park Group LLC, a public relations and lobbying firm of former congressional and White House aides based in Washington, to introduce executives to members of the committee, according to Senate records.
Solyndra Forecasts
A July 13 letter from Solyndra to the Energy committee said revenue had increased to $140 million from $6 million in 2008 and was projected to almost double again in 2011.
On July 21, at a news conference at Glover Park’s offices, Solyndra Chief Executive Officer Brian Harrison said policy makers should “separate Solyndra and its business results from the political process that is ongoing.”
Democratic Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Diana DeGette of Colorado said in a letter Sept. 8 that Harrison assured them in a meeting less than two months ago that the company was in a “strong financial position.”
The House Energy panel has asked Harrison to testify at this week’s hearing along with Jonathan Silver, who heads the Energy Department’s loan program, and Jeffrey Zients, deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Solyndra LLC, a California solar-panel maker once hailed by President Barack Obama as "the future" of clean energy, is the target of a criminal investigation into whether its executives knowingly misled the government to secure more than $500 million in loan guarantees, said people familiar with the matter.
Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Thursday raided the company's headquarters in Fremont, Calif., seeking documents and records in the previously undisclosed federal probe.
The raids were conducted at the behest of the Department of Energy, and agents from the department's inspector general's office also took part, officials said. Solyndra filed for bankruptcy protection this week, leaving U.S. taxpayers on the hook for as much as $527 million.
The raids jolted Washington, where Republicans had this week criticized the White House's support for the financially stricken company. Some Democratic lawmakers also called for company executives to answer questions before Congress.
The FBI raids the offices of solar-panel company Solyndra, days after it declared bankruptcy and left U.S. taxpayers holding the bag for some $535 million in federal loans. Peter Landers has details on The News Hub. (Photo: AP.)
"The FBI raid further underscores that Solyndra was a bad bet from the beginning and put taxpayers at unnecessary risk," said Reps. Fred Upton (R., Mich.) and Cliff Stearns (R., Fla.) of the House Energy and Commerce Commitee.
A Solyndra spokesman called the raid a "total surprise" and said he didn't know what the FBI was looking for. "We are cooperating and giving them access to whatever they want," said the spokesman, David Miller.
The agencies involved in the raid declined to say what the investigation was centered on. The people familiar with the matter said the company's actions in securing federal loan guarantees were the focus of thecriminal probe.
On Thursday, a lone FBI agent stood in the driveway of Solyndra's stylish new main building, keeping nonemployees from entering. It was eerily quiet on the sunny campus as a handful of company security guards stood by the front doors and the only sound came from the whir of the freeway nearby. Solyndra has laid off more than 1,000 people and just 100 or so remain.
The collapse of Solyndra is a pockmark for a government loan-guarantee program that was created in 2005 and received billions of dollars in funding under the 2009 economic-stimulus law. The Obama administration, which pushed the program as a way of promoting renewable energy, has moved forward with it even as Solyndra, the first deal executed under the stimulus, has collapsed.
A DOE spokesman said Thursday the program has "supported a robust, diverse portfolio of more than 40 projects that are investing in pioneering companies as we work to regain American leadership in the global race for clean energy jobs."
The White House declined to comment and referred to the DOE statement. Solyndra, which shut down its plant last week and laid off around 1,100 employees, is racing to find a buyer to prevent a liquidation of its assets. The company found it couldn't survive the economic slowdown and competition from well-financed Chinese rivals, which pushed down solar-panel prices world-wide.
Starting in 2009, Solyndra received $527 million in loans from a federal financing agency that were guaranteed by the Energy Department. But signs of trouble emerged shortly thereafter.
In March 2010, the company disclosed that its external auditor had questioned whether it could survive.
In a special note, PricewaterhouseCoopers said the company "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."
Even so, Mr. Obama visited the company in May 2010, hailing it as a model investment by the government and a "testament to American ingenuity and dynamism."
House Republicans have questioned whether the White House interfered improperly with the Solyndra deal. The family foundation of billionaire George Kaiser, who was a bundler for the president's 2008 campaign, invested in Solyndra.
On Sept. 1, two House Republicans investigating the Solyndra deal said they had evidence the White House monitored the loan deal and communicated with the Energy Department as it was being reviewed. The White House has denied any impropriety.
The House Energy Committee has scheduled a hearing on the Solyndra bankruptcy next week, and two top Democrats called for Solyndra Chief Executive Brian Harrison to testify.
Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Diana DeGette of Colorado said Mr. Harrison had told them just two months ago that the company was in a strong financial position and at little risk of failing.
"At that time, he said the company was projected to double its revenues in 2011 [and] there was 'strong demand in the United States' for its shipments," the Democratic lawmakers wrote in a letter. "These assurances appear to contrast starkly with his company's decision to file for bankruptcy last week."
The company has been searching for a buyer or investor to bail it out since February, when an out-of-court restructuring reshuffled its mounting debt load. Under the restructuring, the DOE agreed that in the event of a default and liquidation, the government would be paid after private creditors providing a new $69 million loan that the company said it needed to stay afloat.
The deal was unusual for the U.S., which is usually the most senior creditor in any type of loan or guarantee. But government officials viewed the arrangement as a way to protect the $460 million in taxpayer funds that were already on the line, people familiar with the matter said. That gamble failed as the company collapsed anyway.
On Wednesday, a bankruptcy judge gave Solyndra one month to find a buyer for its assets.
—Cassandra Sweet, Brent Kendall and Ryan Tracy contributed to this article
Obama @ Solyndra: "American inginuety and dynamism,.. embodied the entreprenuerial spirit,.."
Part 2
Uploaded by StartLoving3 on May 26, 2010
While traveling in California, President Obama visited Solyndra Inc., a solar panel manufacturer, and spoke to employees about the economy. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) was also in attendance.
