So, the White House pressured Solyndra to time its layoffs for political reasons:
Yes, very odd, isn’t it? Actually, it’s so transparently obvious that even Joe Biden could piece together this mystery: Team Obama knew their party was already headed for a world of hurt on election day and wanted to mitigate the damange to the greatest extent possible. Plus, by dropping this ugly news on November 3rd, the entire news media would be suitably distracted by the (important) task of breaking down just how devastating the previous night’s GOP tidal wave had been. From the White House’s perspective, it was a win/win strategy. They could escape or delay electoral consequences for their own abysmal failures, then try to slip the entire development past the American people. So they applied enormous pressure and dangled a $40 million carrot in front of Solyndra’s CEO to “persuade” him to play ball. Lo and behold, he did.
A month later, Solyndra partially defaulted on its loan — which, it’s worth noting, the White House knew from day one was a wildly risky taxpayer-funded gamble — thus violating its terms. They were duly “punished” for this violation with a generous restructuring of their loan guarantee, which authorized politically-connected private financiers like Obama donor George Kaiser* to recoup the first $75 million if (or, more accurately, when) the company went belly-up. This it is precisely what happened in early September of 2011. This arrangement may have violated the law, but legal concerns were shrugged off. The big question: Regarding the politicized layoff notification delay ploy, who knew what, and when?
But remember, the Obama administration has no scandals.
It would have worked if the people working at Solyndra weren’t so lazy, pssh. Obama was going for something bold! Grand! Whiz-bang F’n fantastic! We were gonna build our generations Hoover dam out of solar panels and “Seize the Day” like the Soviets did with Sputnik …. or something. And since the Chinese have apparently beaten us in the solar energy arena, we might as well let them have Canada’s oil too. I mean, who wants a bunch of oil from a bunch of weirdo Canadians that can’t even keep oil out their sand, eh?
“Crystal clear!”
They were duly “punished” for this violation with a generous restructuring of their loan guarantee, which authorized politically-connected private financiers like Obama donor George Kaiser* to recoup the first $75 million if (or, more accurately, when) the company went belly-up.
It’s things like this that should give the TEA Party and Occupy Whereever folks common ground, only one side doesn’t seem to be protesting against the right people.