Solyndra Raided By FBI: Solyndra $535 Million In Stimulus Funds

Ed Morrissey - Barack Obama plans on talking about using stimulus funds for job creation tonight.  Think he’ll mention Solyndra, which his administration fast-tracked to $535 million in taxpayer-financed loan guarantees?  Naaaah:

FBI agents armed with search warrants descended this morning on bankrupt solar company Solynrda this morning.

The investigation comes after a request by the Department of Energy’s inspector general, FBI spokesman Peter Lee told NBC Bay Area News.

Agents arrived at 7a.m. and are examining the factory. Solynrda has a skeleton crew of 100 workers on the scene, closing the factory down. A CNBC photographer on the scene says the FBI has promised a press conference. An agency spokesperson at its San Francisco headquarters says he’s unaware of any such plans.

Just to remind everyone, Obama touted Solyndra as an example of what government subsidies to green-tech firms could do for the economy and job creation.  So far, it’s managed to make $535 million disappear from the economy and took 1000 jobs with it.  As ABC reported yesterday, taxpayers are actually behind the company’s main investor, George Kaiser, in recouping the losses.  Coincidentally, Kaiser was a big bundler for Obama in 2008.

And coincidentally, his company made a lot of visits to the White House over a two-year period while getting the taxpayer subsidies, too (via Zombie at PJ Tatler):

Not only does the now-bankrupt solar energy firm Solyndra have a cozy financial  relationship with the Obama administration, company representatives also made numerous visits to the White House to meet with administration officials, The Daily Caller has learned.

According to White House visitor logs, between March 12, 2009, and April 14, 2011, Solyndra officials and investors made no fewer than 20 trips to the West Wing. In the week before the administration awarded Solyndra with the first-ever alternative energy loan guarantee on March 20, four separate visits were logged.

George Kaiser, who has in the past been labeled a major Solyndra investor as well as a Obama donor, made three visits to the White House on March 12, 2009, and one on March 13. Kaiser has denied any direct involvement in the Solyndra deal and through a statement from his foundation said he “did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan.”

But the countless meetings at the White House seem hardly coincidental. Kaiser, in fact, is responsible for 16 of the 20 meetings that showed up on the White House logs.

Now we have the FBI raiding Obama’s pet green-tech company at the behest of a DoE Inspector General.  This of course prompts the question of when this IG gets the Gerald Walpin treatment.

With Obama about to make a case for even more government intervention and manipulation in markets, this raid couldn’t have come at a worse moment for the administration.  If this raid turns up any official corruption, though, this moment will look like a Sunday afternoon on a Martha’s Vineyard golf course by comparison.

Update: Oh, by the way, this was Solyndra’s gratitude for getting over a half-billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies:

The chief financial officer of bankrupt start-up Solyndra, which had ramped up its operations after getting a U.S. government loan for solar companies, declined to say on Wednesday if potential buyers would keep its business in the United States. Under questioning at a bankruptcy court hearing by a U.S. government attorney, CFO W.G. Stover declined to identify either of the two companies that have shown an interest in Solyndra’s operations or even where they were based. Asked if the potential buyers might move Solyndra’s unique solar cylinder business overseas, Stover would only say that doing so would increase the cost to a potential buyer.

Feeling the love yet?

Update II: Getting some of this in the comments:

Isn’t Holder in charge of the FBI? He will shut down the investigation and conduct a DOJ investigaton of his own in 5.4.3…

First, the FBI has performed professionally for decades in regards to politics; they learned their lesson from Watergate and the long Hoover reign.  Second, the DoJ isn’t conducting the investigation, and technically neither is the DoE.  The IG is an independent actor, and the FBI would have to turn over all products from the search to the IG.  However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for Darrell Issa to insist on access to the materials as well, since Congress has oversight jurisdiction on executive-legislative agencies like the DoE.

Rep. Maxine Waters To Obama On Black Unemployment.Treat Blacks Like Iowans

Johnathan Allen - Just hours before President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of Congress on his jobs plan, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is demanding the nation’s first African-American president prove he cares as much about unemployed blacks as he does about Iowa’s swing voters.

“There are roughly 3 million African Americans out of work today, a number nearly equal to the entire population of Iowa. I would suggest that if the entire population of Iowa, a key state on the electoral map and a place that served as a stop on the president’s jobs bus tour were unemployed, they would be mentioned in the president’s speech and be the beneficiary of targeted public policy,” Waters said in a statement to POLITICO on Thursday.

“So, one question to be answered this evening is, are the unemployed in the African-American community, including almost 45 percent of its youth, as important as the people of Iowa?” Waters asked.

In recent weeks, Waters and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus have become increasingly critical of the president’s economic performance and have publicly called on him to focus on black unemployment.

Last week, the Labor Department reported that black unemployment — already well above the 9.1 percent national average — had a large one-month jump of 0.8 percent, to 16.7 percent in August from 15.9 percent in July. It’s the highest level of African-American joblessness in 27 years.

“This evening, as the President speaks to the nation about his plan to create jobs, he must acknowledge the economic disaster in the African American community, whose unemployment rate hovers at roughly 16.7 percent, almost double that of the general population and equal to depression-era levels. He must then articulate how the plan he puts forth will target the communities with the highest rates of unemployment, including the African American community,” Waters said.

With Obama unlikely to win the support of Republican lawmakers for his jobs proposal, any Democratic efforts to paint the GOP as obstructionist could be undermined by black lawmakers’ dissatisfaction with the president’s plan.

Perhaps no black lawmaker has been as vocal as Waters in criticizing the president on employment matters. But she has long been popular in her Los Angeles district, and may feel that she has more freedom to push Obama without risking a backlash from African-American voters who flinch at the prospect of hurting him politically. In particular, Waters’ statement takes Obama to task for failing to target aid specifically to high-unemployment areas, which she says would improve the lot of poor black, white and Latino communities across the country.

“It is time for us all to acknowledge that a rising tide does not lift all boats,” Waters said. “To be clear, I am not advocating for a ‘Black Jobs’ program. Rather, I am advocating for an approach that uses targeting to areas with high unemployment and poverty as a guiding principle in the design and disbursement of any new programs, tax cuts or emergency assistance. Such strategic allocation could have a net-positive impact on the unemployment rates in communities of color, and the country as a whole.”

Waters cites Franklin Roosevelt’s Tennessee Valley Authority law, which created infrastructure-building jobs in a hardscrabble part of the country during the Depression-era 1930s.

“For example, if the President and Congress were to create an infrastructure bank, we could use small, women-owned, minority-owned and community banks, which disproportionately serve communities of color, to make loans for infrastructure projects with local hiring requirements, rather than the large financial institutions who are disconnected from communities and through the bailout, have shown an unwillingness to lend,” Waters said.
“Additionally, the President and Congress could create a tax-credit, similar to credits suggested for hiring veterans, which would incentivize companies to hire persons from areas of high unemployment. Finally, the President and Congress could target federal dollars to states and localities with high rates of unemployment and poverty to hire teachers, police and firemen.
“Just as Roosevelt recognized the need in rural areas then, the President must recognize the need in urban communities now. These Americans, deserve no less,” Waters added.
“[T]here are those, who believe that the President, because he is black, cannot talk specifically about issues directly impacting the black community, like high unemployment. They suggest that doing so would endanger the President’s chances of being re-elected. I share the desire to re-elect the first black President,” her statement continued.
“But, I would offer a slightly different analysis. If the unemployment rates in the African American Community continue to climb, like they did in August by almost a full percentage point, those African American voters who came out to the polls for the first time in 2008 but who have since lost their home and/or their job, may not return to the polls. Therefore, targeting public policy to a community who accounted for 13 percent of the electorate in ‘08, and who is now experiencing the culmination of a decade of economic crisis, is not just good policy, but good politics.