Bad Gone Blog

Imagine if Ku Klux Klan members had stood menacingly in military uniforms, with nightsticks, in front of a polling place. Add to it that they had hurled racial threats and insults at voters who tried to enter.

Now suppose that the government, backed by a nationally televised video of the event, had won a court case against the Klansmen except for the perfunctory filing of a single, simple document – but that an incoming Republican administration had moved to voluntarily dismiss the already-won case.

Surely that would have been front-page news, with a number of firings at the Justice Department.

The flip side of this scenario is occurring right now. The culprits weren’t Klansmen; they belonged to the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. One of the defendants, Jerry Jackson, is an elected member of Philadelphia’s 14th Ward Democratic Committee and was a credentialed poll watcher for Barack Obama and the Democratic Party when the violations occurred. Rather conveniently, the Obama administration has asked that the cases against Mr. Jackson, two other defendants and the party be dropped.

The Voting Rights Act is very clear. It prohibits any “attempt to intimidate, threaten or coerce” any voter or those aiding voters.

The explanation for moving to dismiss the case is shocking. According to the Department of Justice: “These same Defendants have made no appearance and have filed no pleadings with the Court. Nor have they otherwise raised any other defenses to this action. Therefore, the United States has the right … to dismiss voluntarily this action against the Defendants.” In other words, because the defendants haven’t tried to defend themselves, the Justice Department won’t punish them.

By that logic, if a murderer doesn’t respond to the charges, he should be let free. That’s crazy.

The Obama Justice Department did take one action against one of the four defendants: It forbade him from again “displaying a weapon within 100 feet of any open polling location” in Philadelphia. Given that it already was illegal to display a weapon at a polling place and that he was not even enjoined from carrying a weapon at polling places outside of Philadelphia, it is hard to see what this order accomplished.

We asked the Justice Department if it was unable to provide any explanation for dropping the case. Justice press aide Alejandro Miyar merely said: “That is correct.” Multiple times we asked both the department and the White House to comment on charges that the dismissals represented political bias. We received no substantive response.

Hans Von Spakovsky, a legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation and a former commissioner at the Federal Election Commission, tells us, “In my experience, I have never heard of the department refusing to take a default judgment… . If a Republican administration had done this, it would be front-page news and every civil rights group in the country would be screaming about it.”

Consider that the behavior of the defendants was so bad that witness Bartle Bull, a former Robert F. Kennedy organizer who did extensive legal work on behalf of black voters in Mississippi, testified it was “the most blatant form of voter discrimination I have encountered in my life.”

Eric Eversole, a former litigation attorney with the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, told us: “It is truly unprecedented for the Voting Section to voluntarily dismiss a case of such blatant intimidation. The video speaks for itself.”

We couldn’t agree more. After the 2000 Presidential election, Democrats complained about voter intimidation in Florida by pointing to a police car that had been two miles away from a polling place. The police didn’t do anything to anyone, but their presence was deemed sufficient to vaguely intimidate people en route to the polls. In this case, the New Black Panther Party actually blocked access to a poll.

Unlike the Florida incident, this case involving the New Black Panthers screams out for tough justice. Instead, the Obama administration looks the other way. This all but invites racial violence at future elections.

~Boo

Americans are demanding to know why the Obama administration extended a $535 million taxpayer-funded loan guarantee to Solyndra Inc. after officials in the waning days of the Bush administration unanimously vetoed the deal. Why would political appointees push career analysts, who knew the material best, to finance the troubled green energy firm whose product, solar energy panels, cost twice as much to make as their final selling price?

The answer may be simple: Valerie Jarrett.

Solyndra received the Obama administration’s first loan guarantee despite numerous red flags raised by industry and political experts.

In 2008, Fitch Ratings gave the company a B+ rating, meaning investment should be treated as “speculative.” (Spokeswoman Cindy Stoller told ABC News the company regards the mark as “a non-investment grade rating.”) PriceWaterhouseCoopers questioned its sustainability.

Career analysts had the same concerns but acted under extreme political pressure to support the government-favored business. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) felt pressured to complete the review by September 4, 2009, when Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Steven Chu hoped to attend the company’s groundbreaking ceremony. “This deal is NOT ready for prime time,” one analyst wrote in 2009. Another warned the technology was “immature.”

What accounts for the speedy approval, against the best wishes of the analysts who know the material best? Crony capitalism. ABC reports, “Federal auditors had flagged the loan, saying some applicants had benefited from special treatment.” For once, the source of this special treatment is easily identified. The George Kaiser Family Foundation controls 35.7 percent of Solyndra. George Kaiser personally bundled between $50,000-$100,000 in campaign contributions for Obama in 2008. Notoriously porous White House logs show Kaiser visited the White House (at least) four times.

On February 23, the government restructured its agreement with Solyndra to entice investors to sink another $75 million into the failing firm. The restructuring agreement provides that, in case of bankruptcy, those investors get to recoup their funds before taxpayers are repaid. Republican Congressman say this is a clear violation of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which states taxpayer dollars must “not [be] subordinate to other financing.”

As such, the restructuring alone may be an impeachable offense.

Nonetheless, the administration hailed its “success” at putting people back to work. Chris Horner rightly pointed out in the American Spectator that Obama made the company “the face of the stimulus.” Then on August 31, Solyndra Inc. laid off 1,100 workers — the day after its plant started new equipment.

Structural financial problems as deep as Solyndra’s are not overlooked without pressure, and pressure does not come without the aid of important political elites.

The George Kaiser Family Foundation maintains, although its leader met with multiple Obama officials during the loan’s negotiations, he “did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. Government [sic.] regarding the loan.”

The denial strains credulity. Whom, then, did Kaiser pressure? Who agreed to finance, then restructure, a loan for Kaiser’s baby?

Kaiser met with a number of political appointees, none more significant than Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s alter ego and closest adviser.

By all accounts Jarrett, a conduit of radicals into the White House who regularly addresses political and religious extremists, has unparalleled influence over the president. She first got Michelle Robinson Obama well ensconced in Chicago political circles during Mayor Harold Washington’s administration and has acted as an intimate confidant for both Obamas ever since. In July 2009, Obama told the New York Times, “I trust her completely…She is family.” Jarrett, President Obama confided, is entrusted “to speak for me, particularly when we’re dealing with delicate issues.” He added that he runs every decision by her. Jarrett confirmed her own behind-the-scenes power. “We have kind of a mind meld,” she said.

An Obama 2008 campaign official told the Times, “If you want [Barack Obama] to do something, there are two people he’s not going to say no to: Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama.”

Despite her long and well-established connection to radical left-wingers, Jarrett also heads up the administration’s “business outreach.” Kaiser would have gone to great lengths to speak to Jarrett in her capacity both as a (big) business liaison and Obama’s apparent ventriloquist.

By all accounts — both Obama’s and her own — if she gives the order, the president obeys. The only question is whether she rendered judgement that Solyndra should be funded and/or that its half-billion-dollar loan should be restructured in violation of the law.

Rep. Steve Scalise, R-LA, is currently attempting to find out who approved this subordination of the U.S. taxpayer. Kaiser’s meeting with Valerie Jarrett should the top his investigative priorities. If these clear signs of smoke lead to fire, Jarrett must be fired and her boss/servant turned out of office.

~Boo

Republican districts get $362 per capita on average

Democratic districts get $692 per capita on average

Also, on average, Democratic districts received one-and-a-half times as many awards as Republican ones. Democratic districts also received two-and-a-half times more stimulus dollars than Republican districts ($122 million vs. $46 million). Of course, there are more Democratic districts than Republican districts in the Congress.

Is the politics part of the allocation decision?

Well I checked for the correlation between political indicators and stimulus funding. I found that there are no effect of political variables (leadership, tenure in office …) on stimulus funds allocation with one exception: the district’s party affiliation (whether the district’s representation was Republican or Democratic) does matter.

So how much does party affiliation mattered? While the effect is significant, because of the specifications of the model, more confidence should be placed on the relationship between the two variables then on the quantification of that relationship. In other words, while I am confident that whether the district is represented by R or D matters for funding, I just can’t tell you how much this factor matters compared to the other factors that went into the allocation decision.

On the other hand, I can tell you what factor was not a part of the allocation decision: the level of unemployment in each district or the deterioration of unemployment in each district. In other words, unemployment levels didn’t matter. That’s not what the money was supposed to address. Or was it?

~Boo

The Hill reported that Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that “keeping a Democratic majority in the House is ‘too important to the country,’” which is why “she had no intention of ceding control of the House in this fall’s elections, despite Republican optimism that they can win control of the chamber.” Appearing on PBS, Pelosi addressed potential Democratic losses due to Sunday’s health care vote, “I’ve said if passing this bill means I have to walk out of my office that night, it would be with the greatest pride.” However, she cautioned, “I haven’t any intention of losing the Democratic majority.”

Sure. Here is another reason Mrs. Pelosi might want to keep a democratic majority. That’s because, as it turns out, based on my new analysis of the Recovery.org data, Democratic districts are getting 1.8 times more money on average than Republican districts. Using Recovery.gov data, and cleaning it up seriously to be able to use it, we find that Republican districts are getting on average $260.6 million in stimulus awards while democratic districts are getting on average $471.5 million. The average is award per district is $385.9 million.

Interestingly, the data also confirms that the stimulus funds are not allocated based on unemployment rates or even variations in unemployment rates. So basically, if the administration believes that government spending can create jobs, the allocation of the funds doesn’t show it.

~Boo

With the outcome of his own reelection effort 14 difficult months away, President Obama suffered a sharp rebuke Tuesday when voters in New York elected a conservative Republican to represent a Democratic district that has not been in GOP hands since the 1920s.

Bob Turner, the winner, cast the election as a referendum on Obama’s stewardship of the economy and, in the state’s Ninth Congressional District, which has a large population of Orthodox Jewish voters, the president’s position on Israel.

Turner, 70, a retired cable TV executive who has never served in elective office, defeated Democratic State Assemblyman Weprin, 55, who has two decades of experience in public service, to fill the seat left vacant when Anthony Weiner (D) resigned in disgrace in June after more than 12 years in the House.

With almost 88 percent of the voted counted, Turner had a lead of 54 percent to Weprin’s 46 percent, according to the Associated Press.

The defeat c ame as Republicans trounced Democrats in another special House election Tuesday, in northern Nevada, where Republican Mark Amodei led Democrat Kate Marshall, 56 percent to 39 percent almost from the start.

In both contests, the GOP pulled ahead by linking the Democratic candidate to Obama and his handling of the economy. Both Republican contenders urged voters to “send a message” to the president.

In the two weeks leading up to Tuesday’s elections, Democrats conceded that they could not win in Nevada — essentially a Republican seat reverting to form after some competitive races by Democrats, including Obama in 2008.

New York was a different story. National Democrats poured more than $500,000 into a last-ditch effort to save the seat and deployed former president Bill Clinton and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) to try to mobilize voters.

Both races were sparked by sexual political scandals. Weiner resigned after it was revealed that he had sent lewd photos of himself to women via his Twitter account. The Nevada seat came open in May when Rep. Dean Heller (R) was appointed to fill the term of John Ensign (R), who resigned amid allegations that he had inappropriately aided his mistress’s family.

The New York race, for a seat representing a large portion of Queens and a slice of Brooklyn, also turned on Obama’s handling of Israel and Palestine. The district’s large contingent of Orthodox Jews opposes his proposal for Palestinian statehood drawn around 1967 borders. The U.N. General Assembly is likely to vote on the Palestinian statehood issue when it convenes in New York next week.

Turner spent the final days of his campaign blasting Obama on the economy and on his perceived lack of support for Israel. Democrats worry that the apparent drag that the president had on Weprin could be repeated and amplified nationwide during the 2012 elections.

“Make no mistake about it, the albatross around Weprin’s neck is named Obama, and Democrats who value honesty will tell you privately that the president’s 37 percent approval rating in the district is making it difficult for Weprin to win a race that in almost any other time would be a slam-dunk,” Stuart Rothenberg, an independent analyst and editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, wrote Tuesday.

Obama won New York’s Ninth District in 2008 with 55 percent of the vote, less than the 67 percent Al Gore received there in 2000. But even in a down year for Democrats, Weiner coasted in 2010 to an almost 20-percentage-point victory over Turner.

Democrats rejected talk that Tuesday’s election was a referendum on Obama and noted its highly unusual circumstances, including Weiner’s resignation and the fact that the contest was held two days after the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. The 9/11 remembrances essentially brought the race to a halt on Sunday. Also, in a special election with a small turnout, the district’s large number of Orthodox Jews — who have drifted from Democrats since George W. Bush’s first term — played an outsize role in tilting the race toward Turner.

“This is a special election that is purely reflective of who showed up to the polls and the makeup of the district,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview after the defeat.

She said that Orthodox Jews, whose approval rating of Obama stands at just 13 percent, were far outnumbered in other districts with large numbers of Jewish voters and that this result will not be replicated elsewhere. “There isn’t any comparison between districts like mine and New York Nine,” she said.

Turner, who ran as a staunch conservative embracing the tea party, will be the first House Republican representing this portion of Queens since the 1920s — a striking departure from its Democratic traditions. This is the district that sent the late Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic Party’s 1984 vice presidential nominee, to Congress, as well as Sen. Charles E. Schumer, one of the party most consistent liberal voices.

In Nevada, national Republicans poured more than $800,000 into a campaign that linked Marshall to Obama. Amodei, a former state senator, ran one ad that moved back and forth between words uttered by Obama and similar phrases from Marshall.

“Send Washington a message,” the ad’s narrator said, “not a rubber stamp.”

~Boo

Republican lawmakers say the White House may have tried to push through a company’s proposed wireless network despite objections from the military that the project could disrupt vital satellite navigation systems.

Lawmakers this week raised fresh questions about the proposed network by Virginia-based Lightsquared, a firm backed by billionaire Philip Falcone, a prominent donor to Obama’s Democratic party.

At a hearing Thursday of the House of Representatives strategic forces subcommittee, the Republican chairman, Michael Turner, said he would request that the House Oversight Committee investigate whether the company received special treatment from the White House or federal regulators.

The hearing came after a report in the Daily Beast website alleged the White House pressed the head of US Air Force space command, General William Shelton, to downplay his concerns and alter his testimony to lawmakers.

President Barack Obama’s administration denies the allegations, and Lightsquared has rejected charges it is getting special favors.

Republican staff members of the committee alleged the Air Force general told lawmakers that Obama administration officials lobbied him to express support in his testimony for the Lightsquare proposal, the Washington Post reported Friday.

At Thursday’s hearing, Shelton said the proposed wireless broadband network by Lightsquared would interfere with the Global Positioning System (GPS) relied on by the military and private industry.

Tests with Defense Department experts, civilian agencies and others “indicate the LightSquared terrestrial network operating in the originally proposed manner poses significant challenges for almost all GPS users,” Shelton told the committee.

The general’s spokeswoman insisted Friday that Shelton had not watered down his testimony due to alleged White House pressure. “General Shelton’s testimony was his own supported by and focused purely on documented test results,” Colonel Kathleen Cook told AFP.

The company originally planned to provide only satellite phones on its network, but the Federal Communications Commission issued a waiver to the firm in January allowing LightSquared to offer terrestrial-based wireless service to companies.

The Defense Department has raised concerns about interference with GPS users previously, and the FCC has promised not to allow the firm to begin operating until more testing is carried out to ensure there is no disruption to satellite navigation users.

The head of the FCC declined to appear before the committee on Thursday, which the chairman, Turner, called an “affront” to the panel.

~Boo

The Obama administration restructured a half-billion dollar federal loan to a troubled solar energy company in such a way that private investors — including a fundraiser for President Barack Obama — moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of a default, government records show.

Administration officials defended the loan restructuring, saying that without an infusion of cash earlier this year, solar panel maker Solyndra Inc. would likely have faced immediate bankruptcy, putting more than 1,000 people out of work.

Even with the federal help, Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month and laid off its 1,100 employees.

The Fremont, Calif.-based company was the first renewable-energy company to receive a loan guarantee under a stimulus-law program to encourage green energy and was frequently touted by the Obama administration as a model. Obama visited the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters last year, and Vice President Joe Biden spoke by satellite at its groundbreaking.

Since then, the implosion of the company and revelations that the administration hurried Office of Management and Budget officials to finish their review of the loan in time for the September 2009 groundbreaking has become an embarrassment for Obama as he sells his new job-creation program around the country.

An Associated Press review of regulatory filings shows that Solyndra was hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars for years before the Obama administration signed off on the original $535 million loan guarantee in September 2009. The company eventually got $528 million.

Given the company’s shaky financial condition, Republican lawmakers say the decision to restructure the loan raises questions about whether the administration protected political supporters at taxpayers’ expense.

“You should have protected the taxpayers and made some forceful actions here after this analysis,” Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., told a top Energy Department official this week. “Because you should have seen the problems. And you should have said, ‘Taxpayers need to be protected and this has got to stop.’ ”

The loan restructuring is one element congressional investigators are focusing on as they look into the federal loan guarantee Solyndra received under the economic stimulus law.

Under terms of the February loan restructuring, two private investors — Argonaut Ventures I LLC and Madrone Partners LP — stand to be repaid before the U.S. government if the solar company is liquidated. The two firms gave the company a total of $69 million in emergency loans. The loans are the only portion of their investments that have repayment priority above the U.S. government.

Argonaut is an investment vehicle of the George Kaiser Family Foundation of Tulsa, Okla. The foundation is headed by billionaire George Kaiser, a major Obama campaign contributor and a frequent visitor to the White House. Kaiser raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for Obama’s 2008 campaign, federal election records show. Kaiser has made at least 16 visits to the president’s aides since 2009, according to White House visitor logs.

Madrone Partners is affiliated with the Walton family, descendants of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. Rob Walton, the eldest son of Sam Walton, contributed $2,500 last year to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The AP review also found that officials at Solyndra had been seeking a second round of loans from the Energy Department to expand the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters. The request for a second loan was denied.

“We have incurred significant net losses since our inception, including a net loss of $114.1 million in 2007, $232.1 million in 2008 and $119.8 million in the first nine months of fiscal 2009, and we had an accumulated deficit of $505 million at Oct. 3, 2009,” the company said in a December 2009 filing to the SEC. “We expect to continue to incur significant operating and net losses and negative cash flow from operations for the foreseeable future.”

Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said Friday that the company’s financial losses were not uncommon for a high-tech startup and were a major reason Solyndra applied for the federal loan. The loan program is intended to help promising companies that cannot receive financing through private banks because of high risk.

Jonathan Silver, executive director of the Energy Department’s loan program, said DOE officials faced a stark choice late last year and early this year: Refuse to allow the loan restructuring, “thereby ensuring that Solyndra would close its doors immediately” or allow the company to accept emergency financing, “thereby giving it and its almost 1,000 workers a fighting chance at success, and the government a higher expected recovery on its loan.”

The decision by Energy Secretary Steven Chu was not an easy one, Silver told the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but appeared to be the right action at the time.

“Without DOE’s agreement to restructure Solyndra’s loan, the company likely would have faced bankruptcy much earlier — in December 2010″ or soon after, Silver said. “Restructuring gave them a fighting chance to compete and succeed, and kept approximately 1,000 workers from losing their jobs.”

Republicans were not impressed.

“If their model was weak to begin with, and then the market gets worse, doesn’t that mean that maybe we should have just not thrown good money after bad?” asked Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va. “Because now we’re in a worse position in the bankruptcy courts to get our money back.”

GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann called the Solyndra loan an example of “crony capitalism” that benefited political donors.

“It’s wrong to abuse executive authority with unilateral actions” Bachmann said at a campaign event Friday in California. “And of course the other problem with Solyndra is the fact that it appears there was crony capitalism, that there were political donors that benefited by this $535 million loan.”

Newly released emails show the White House was worried about the likely effect of a default by Solyndra on Obama’s re-election campaign.

“The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad,” an OMB official wrote in a Jan. 31 email to a colleague. “The timing will likely coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up.”

The budget official, whose name is blacked out in the email, wondered whether Solyndra should be allowed to restructure its loan.

“Questions will be asked as to why the administration made a bad investment, not just once (which could hopefully be explained as part of the challenge of supporting innovative technologies), but twice (which could easily be portrayed as bad judgment, or worse),” the email says.

~Boo