Another Solyndra-like Failure Involving Obama And His Top Donors

by Don Azarias
May 1, 2012
It looks like there is another Solyndra-like corporate crash and scandal brewing courtesy of President Barack Obama. This time it involves Amonix, Inc. that, despite a federal green-technology tax credit of $5.9 million in 2010, has announced a layoff of 200 workers. That number comprised two-thirds of its workforce.
The Amonix downsizing is the latest in a string of failures that include the high-profile bankruptcy of solar-cell maker Solyndra in California, November layoffs at a battery-maker A123 in MIchigan, and the January bankruptcy of Ener1. The Obama’s green-tech program gave those companies $535 million, $118.5 million and $249 million, respectively. That’s almost a billion dollars courtesy of the hardworking American taxpayers.
It’s really no different from the Solyndra Corporation’s debacle. Some of Obama’s top donors and fundraisers are partners in Amonix, Inc. The investors include John Doerr’s venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Daniel Weiss’ Angeleno Group LLC and Steve Westly’s eponymous Westly Group. These three investors have also invested heavily in Obama and other Democrats. The president’s aides are now trying to minimize the political damage with the help of the liberal mainstream media that’s doing everything to keep the mess out of public view.
Like the now-defunct Solyndra, Amonix is a solar panel company that was unabashedly endorsed by Obama in 2010 during a speech in Las Vegas, not far from the company’s manufacturing plant. It received the tax credit for a new facility they’re building in the Las Vegas area, a tax credit they were able to match with roughly $12 million in private capital. Obama has been touting his policy of subsidizing green-tech companies for all the wrong reasons.
According to a published report by the Daily Caller, the database maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), Doerr has donated $171,900 since 2008. Weiss has donated $26,480 and Westly has donated $181,250. Nearly all of those contributions went to Democrats. Together, the three have also bundled at least $700,000 for Obama. In return, Obama publicly lauded Amonix in 2010 as an example of a company deserving federal support and private-sector investment.
Meanwhile, Solyndra’s collapse has so undercut political support for green-tech spending that Obama was forced to admit error while defending it in his State of the Union speech. “Some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail,” he said Jan. 24. “But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy. I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here.” Or, are you just trying to save your face, Mr. President?
Republican presidential contender, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and other GOP political leaders are quick to brand these mutual favors as “crony capitalism,” and they are right on target. While it’s creating a real political headache for the Obama Administration, we still haven’t seen or heard extensive coverage on this by the liberal mainstream media.
All the president’s men, led by David Axelrod, acted in the same old way to protect Obama from fallout by criticizing the pundits and critics who stand up to attack Obama’s modus operandi. The American public must be aware by now that Axelrod and the rest of Obama’s political advisers from Chicago always use the same aggressive tactic to deflect criticism of Obama’s political transgressions. They employ the same tactic when Republican leaders try to rein in Obama’s uncontrolled spending on those unaffordable social service and foreign aid programs.
True to his Democratic Party’s ideology and platform, it’s only natural for Obama to champion those social service programs. I have no problem with that. But when he, as the country’s president, gets involved in blatant cronyism that benefits his political fundraisers to the detriment of the United States’ taxpayers, that’s another thing. And I hope I’m not being bold enough to say that such transgression could be an impeachable offense.
It has been an acceptable proposition that a president could use his bully pulpit to win his political battles. And we have to accept the fact that almost all of those chief executives in the history of the American presidency have done that. However, in the case of Solyndra and Amonix issues that resulted in the loss of taxpayers’ dollars, it shows the White House as a federal leviathan using its enormous size and power to undermine the American people. Is this what Obama’s 2008 campaign promise of “change we can believe in” really meant?
Somehow, the silence of the liberal mainstream media is deafening. There’s nothing more we can do about that. They have always been biased in their coverage in Obama’s favor that helped catapult him to the presidency in 2008. I know that Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are trying to prevent these sort of things from happening but they are not the Party in power to make it possible. It’s not that they are trying to look the other way and allow Obama to rule by fiat. Although it’s perfectly clear that it’s the intent of Obama and his Democratic allies.
In the final analysis, this mess, no matter how the Obama Administration tries to sugarcoat it, clearly represents payback to those people that Obama is beholden to. Although a vast majority of the American people may recall that he had always depicted himself as a Washington, D.C. outsider during the 2008 presidential election. What gives?
So much for Obama’s campaign promise of “change we can believe in.”