Quote:
Originally Posted by 12thMan
SlinginSammy33,
A quote from your WaPo article:
“Even the documents cherry-picked by House Republicans today affirm what we have said all along: This loan was a decision made on the merits at the Department of Energy,” Schultz said in a statement. “Nothing in the 85,000 pages of documents produced thus far by the Administration or in these four indicate any favoritism to political supporters.”
Washington Post Dec. 28, 2011
"records do not establish that the Energy Department pressured anyone to approve the Solyndra loan to benefit political contributors."
Per Politico. Hardly left leaning. 3/27/2012
More than a year into a probe that's extended to the Energy Department loan guarantee portfolio, Republican investigators even acknowledge they've fallen short of substantiating their allegations that the administration helped political allies like Tulsa oilman George Kaiser secure hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies through a loan guarantee to Solyndra.
"Is there a criminal activity? Perhaps not," Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa told POLITICO after last Tuesday’s showdown with Energy Secretary Steven Chu. "Is there a political influence and connections? Perhaps not. Did they bend the rules for an agenda, an agenda not covered within the statute? Absolutely."
More from Politico: 6/5/12
Among other findings...Spinner, an Obama fundraiser, monitored the Solyndra loan guarantee while working as an Energy Department adviser — Still, House investigators have been unable to show that the administration approved the Solyndra guarantee to please the president’s campaign donors.
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What you chose not to quote:
From WaPo:
"In March 2010, Mitchell wrote Kaiser about Energy Secretary Steven Chu, describing his attempts to secure a second Energy Department loan. “Chu is apparently staying involved in Solyndra’s application and continues to talk up the company as a success story,” Mitchell wrote. "
"In an October 2010 e-mail exchange, Kaiser appeared to challenge a plan by his associates to press the White House for unspecified help. “The WH has offered to help in the past and we do have a contact within the WH that we are working with,” Mitchell wrote to Kaiser. Kaiser suggested that Chu might take offense at any attempt to go over his head.
“I question the assumption that the WH is the path to pursue when both of your issues are with the” Energy Department, Kaiser wrote to associates Oct. 6, 2010. He said presidential counselor Pete Rouse and Carol Browner, who then headed the White House energy office, might not choose to get involved in the issue.
“If they did, I am concerned that DOE/Chu would resent the intervention,” Kaiser wrote.
Mitchell replied, “The WH meeting is more about assistance in selling panels to the government than it is about getting the DOE loan revised.”
Kaiser responded that Mitchell should “pursue” his White House contacts “to follow up on the casual comment during the plant visit.” Obama had visited Solyndra’s Silicon Valley factory in May 2010 for a press event."
From the ABC link:
" In one pointed memo, shortly before the company declared bankruptcy,
a top Treasury official wrote to the White House to make clear that the decision to restructure the deal did not have Treasury or Justice Department approval -- despite early suggestions that approval from both agencies may be required."
"An elite Obama fundraiser hired to help oversee the administration's energy loan program pushed and prodded career Department of Energy officials to move faster in approving a loan guarantee for
Solyndra, even as his wife's law firm was representing the California solar company, according to internal emails made public late Friday.
"How hard is this? What is he waiting for?" wrote Steven J. Spinner, a high-tech consultant and energy investor who raised at least $500,000 for the candidate before being appointed to a key job helping oversee the energy loan guarantee program. "I have OVP [the Office of the Vice President] and WH [the White House] breathing down my neck on this."
and from the other WaPo link:
But as Hoover Institution scholar Peter Schweizer reported in his book, “
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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.
So the left throws complete speculation that has been debunked for years about Romney/Bain and that's supposed to equate/negate hard facts on Obama funneling tax money to bundlers....ummm OK.