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Corrupt Government Title: Solargate Update: Bain of Obama: Solyndra audit expected next week The White House is expected to release late next week its audit of Energy Dept. loans to alternative energy firms. The audit was ordered up last October by former White House chief of staff Bill Daley an effort to stanch the political bleeding from the half-billion-dollar loan to bankrupt Fremont solar manufacturer Solyndra. The review has been conducted by Herb Allison, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury who was picked by former President George W. Bush to oversee mortgage giant Fannie Mae after its government takeover, and by President Obama to oversee TARP. The review is expected to focus on post-Solyndra loan monitoring, avoiding the question of the Solyndra loan itself, the subject of months of investigation by House Republicans, among others. Despite the huge black eye Solyndra gave the administration, President Obama has not backed off his green energy push, bringing it up again in his State of the Union address last month, although he pointedly did not call for new Energy Dept. loans: “Because of federal investments, renewable energy use has nearly doubled, and thousands of Americans have jobs because of it,” Obama said. Just today, the administration announced that it was streamlining environmental permitting for offshore wind development. The National Wildlife Federation praised the administration for “skipping the time and resource-intensive Environmental Impact Statement process that would have been required at this stage.” (Is this an admission by an environmental group that environmental permitting is onerous?) Solyndra is Obama’s version of Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital, a juicy political target for opponents. Republicans characterize the Obama approach as gambling taxpayer money on politically driven boondoggles. Obama political guru David Axelrod told Meet the Press last week that such comparisons are unfair. “Where you buy a company, load it down with debt, strip it down, let it go bankrupt and then make money off of fees on the bankruptcy, that’s quite different,” Axelrod said. Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican and son of GOP presidential contender Ron Paul, today was defeated on an amendment to the Stock Act that seemed aimed at the Bay Area’s Steve Spinner, a Obama fundraiser who helped oversee the Energy Dept. loans. The Paul amendment, which was defeated, (Calif. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein voting no) aimed to “prohibit executive branch appointees or staff holding positions that give them oversight, rule-making, loan or grant-making abilities over industries or companies in which they or their spouse have a significant financial interest.” Spinner’s wife worked at the law firm representing Solyndra. We will no doubt be seeing more of the Bain vs. Solyndra debate, because it’s actually not a bad crystallization of two very different approaches to economic policy.
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