"Obama Fights Back Against Koch Brothers in New Ad."

NYT headline for an article that includes this embedded ad (which refers to "secretive oil billionaires attacking President Obama"):



And here's the ad — linked in the article — that the Obama as is fighting back against:



What do you think? Did Obama "punch back twice as hard"?

"When the Obama administration and Congress expanded the clean-energy incentives in 2009, a gold-rush mentality took over."

Write Eric Lipton and Clifford Krauss in the NYT:

The windfall for the industry over the last three years raises questions of whether the Obama administration and state governments went too far in their support of solar and wind power projects, some of which would have been built anyway, according to the companies involved....

Read the whole thing.

"I can only conclude that your decision to issue a subpoena, authorized by a party-line vote..."

"... was driven more by partisan politics than a legitimate effort to conduct a responsible investigation."

"House Panel Votes to Subpoena White House for Solyndra Records."

Fox News reports:

The White House immediately slammed the vote, saying it has "cooperated extensively with the committee's investigation by producing over 85,000 pages of documents, including 20,000 pages produced just yesterday afternoon."

"And all of the materials that have been disclosed affirm what we said on Day One: this was a merit based decision made by the Department of Energy," White House spokesman Eric Schultz said....

If all the materials you've chosen to disclose affirm the story you want to tell and the story is difficult to believe, isn't that a reason to look for more evidence? Who cares how many sheets of paper were produced so far? And if everything relevant has already been produced, why the sensitivity about the subpoena?

Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., who chairs the energy panel's investigations subcommittee, said the White House has been "stonewalling" on Solyndra, releasing some documents but not all.

"They feel that the inner circle of the West Wing is off bounds and we have no right to ask this information," Stearns told Fox Business News this week. "I think the American taxpayers deserve an answer."

"I mean, we're just talking about what happened on Solyndra. It's nothing to do with national security," Stearns added. "We're asking where the taxpayers' money went. And frankly, we're just trying to understand, did the White House actually push this (loan) out, knowing that it was going to fail?""

If the inner circle of the West Wing is off bounds, the White House will refuse to comply with the subpoena, but the subpoena forces the White House to take that stand, conspicuously, which will have a political effect of some kind.

Either Rahm or Obama himself pushed to spotlight Solyndra...

"... despite numerous internal warnings that the company could be financially unstable, according to newly obtained e-mails," reports the Washington Post.

Then there's this Steve Spinner character, who, oddly, appears in 2 different places in the article:

“Any word from OMB?” Department of Energy stimulus adviser Steve Spinner wrote to a department staffer about final terms of the Solyndra loan to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget. “I have the OVP [Office of the Vice President] and WH [White House] breathing down my neck on this.”...

Steve Spinner, a DOE loan program adviser who had served as an Obama fundraiser in 2008, was married to a partner at the law firm of Wilson Sonsini, which was representing Solyndra in its loan application. He had signed an ethics agreement in which he said he would not engage in negotiations about the loan or loan terms for the company.

Yet throughout Solyndra’s loan process, Spinner worked hard to defend the company from criticisms inside the government, including questions from climate czar Carol Browner’s office. He pushed to get a final decision on approving the loan in August.

“How [expletive] hard is this?” Spinner wrote on Aug. 28 to an another department official. “What is he waiting for? Will we have it by the end of the day?”

I'm seeing other news reports headlined the material about Spinner, which makes me suspect that WaPo deliberately buried it.

ABC News: "Obama Fundraiser Pushed Solyndra Deal From Inside." Politico: "Solyndra loan supported by Obama fundraiser." CBS News: "Obama fundraiser pushed Solyndra loan." Bloomberg: "Energy Official With Solyndra Links Pressed for Loan."

"The political scandal over the failure of Solyndra, the politically connected solar-panel maker, just got a lot more interesting."

"The FBI raided the company's Fremont, California offices yesterday and executed a search warrant."

Congress has been investigating the company, which received a $535 million government loan guarantee in March 2009 and announced August 31 that it is filing for bankruptcy. Yesterday's FBI raid is the first hint of a larger government probe, which is being conducted in cooperation with the Department of Energy's Inspector General. The FBI declined to comment. A Solyndra spokesman said it was surprised by the raid and is cooperating.

Political connections can come back to bite you, when the politicians you were connected to need to gnaw through that connection and run like hell.

ADDED:

“Officials from the Department of Energy have for months been sitting in on board meetings as ‘observers’ at Solyndra, getting an up-close view as the solar energy company careened towards bankruptcy after spending more than $500 million in federal loan money.” Probably felt just like being back at the federal government, which is careening toward bankruptcy after spending more than $15 trillion in loan money . . .

"Bush was flayed for Enron. Where does that put Obama and his green-energy pet?"

Rich Lowry on Solyndra.

Via Hot Air.

The White House insists it didn’t intervene with DOE on Solyndra’s behalf, but — go figure — the company’s key investor was a foundation headed by George Kaiser, a billionaire known for raising boatloads of money for Barack Obama.

Via Instapundit.