Solyndra. LightSquared. The list goes on and on. Obama’s cronies have been receiving special
treatment through federal loans, grants and subsidies. What happens if the federal government gives money
to a company that fails? When Obama has
been picking the winners, the American taxpayers are the ones that lose out in
the end.
Obama was not mum about favorites
was when he said,
“The true engine of economic growth will always be firms like Solyndra.” Vice President Biden said
Solyndra’s loan was “exactly what the Recovery Act is all about.” Department of Energy Loan Programs Advisor Steve
Spinner, who is a top Obama fundraiser who raised at least $500,000 in 2008,
demanded quick approval of the loan from an Office of Management and Budget
official, writing,
“How [expletive] hard is this? “What is he waiting for? Will we have it by the
end of the day?” Solyndra officials made
at least 20 White
House visits. The Department of
Energy officials sat
in on Solyndra board meetings. Energy
and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Oversight and
Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-FL) have expressed
concern about the "disturbingly close relationship between President
Obama's West Wing inner circle, campaign donors, and wealthy investors."
Then there’s LightSquared. Senator Charles Grassley has requested
records of all LightSquared’s communications with government officials to
investigate whether crony capitalism is also at play there. The White House pressured
Air Force General William Shelton to include language in his testimony
supporting LightSquared’s venture. House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has
launched an investigation into government loan programs, saying,
“There's been this attitude that the government can step in and give money and
pick winners and losers, and we see that as a backdoor easy way to end up with
government corruption.” Speaker John
Boehner has also criticized
“government that favors crony capitalism.”
SolarReserve,
which has ties to Obama fundraisers George Kaiser, James McDermott and Lee
Bailey, received a $737 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy
for a Nevada project. Other green
energy companies – Solyndra, First Solar, SunPower Corporation and Abengoa
SA—who have received in excess of $500 million in loan guarantees from the
Obama administration, employ executives or board members who have donated large
sums of money to Democratic campaigns.
A $584,000
stimulus tax credit was granted to a small company named Serious Materials,
whose executive is married to Cathy Zoi, a former assistant secretary for the
Energy Department’s office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
(EERE). There have been suspicious
benefits to the business interests of John Doerr, who donated about
$800,000 to Democrats since 2000, and Steve Westly, who raised over $500,000
for Obama. E-mails also suggest that the
State Department had a cozy
relationship with lobbyists advancing the interests of TransCanada to build
the Keystone XL pipeline. Damon Moglen,
of Friends of Earth who sought a Freedom of Information Act request for those
e-mails, said
“You see officials who see it as their business not to be an oversight agency
but as a facilitator of TransCanada’s plans.”
Former Governor Sarah Palin called
General Electric “the poster child of corporate welfare and crony capitalism.” Jeffrey R. Immelt advised the administration
on job growth and global competitiveness, while he was CEO at GE, who
manufacture green products as an $18 billion-a-year business. It’s no surprise Immelt was the one selected
to sit next to the First Lady when Obama delivered his “jobs plan” speech
before Congress.
Crony capitalism is not just
upsetting for those concerned with transparency in government. It also is contributing to the poor economic
climate. As National Center for Public Policy
Research’s Tom Borelli has pointed out, “crony capitalism was responsible for
the failure of the stimulus.”