Obama's Public Equity Failures

Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | May 25, 2012 | Rush Limbaugh

[Kaslin]

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RUSH: Now for some reason I'm obsessed here with this Bain Capital stuff even though I know it's backfiring on them. But every time I listen too someone like Debbie "Blabbermouth" Schultz or some of these other people, I get worked up. When I listen to Obama talk about it and the abject lies that they're telling about private equity in general, these are full-fledged, all-out assaults on capitalism, which burns me. Obama is running for reelection and running against capitalism, telling lies about people who are doing good things.

Bain Capital targeted nobody!

Bain Capital is invited in!

Companies were headed south. Bankruptcy was in their future. They asked Bain to come in and save them. And they had an 80% success rate. And Romney was not there for the longest period of time that they've been around. Romney was there in the founding days, but he hasn't been there in years. He did good work when he was there. In fact, at the time of the specific assaults that Obama is waging against Bain Capital, Romney wasn't there! Obama can't even tell the truth about that, about this steel company.

Yeah, they got eight years out of it after Bain took it over.

If Bain hadn't come in, that steel company and everybody who worked there woulda gone under immediately, or within a few short months.

Bain was able to get eight years out of it, and eight years of employment for some people there. But to say that they bought these places to take them into bankruptcy is the exact opposite of what Bain was doing. But Obama has been doing the very same thing. At least Bain does it with their money and their investors' money. But Obama has been engaged in crony capitalism: Using our money to subsidize his pet industries. And basically all he's been doing is setting up these fraudulent, phony green industry businesses like Solyndra which become a circuitous route for money.

The way it works is: Donors give to Obama; Obama rewards them with loans or paybacks for their private business such as solar panels. They start their business, and in every case, practically -- the vast majority of them -- they've gone bankrupt and the people who work there have been laid off and fired. They didn't have to pay back the money they were given, your money! They just used it up in failed businesses. Obama gets his campaign donations out of it, the people that donated get some of their money back, and everybody was happy -- except the people that worked there.

A guy named Marc Thiessen has a column about this at the Washington Post. It was out yesterday. It's entitled, "Forget Bain -- Obama's Public Equity Record is the Real Scandal." Let me read to you just a little of this. "Despite a growing backlash from his fellow Democrats, President Obama has doubled down on his attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital." Speaking of, here, grab sound bite 11. Lanny Davis is even coming out against Obama! He was on America's Newsroom yesterday on the Fox News Channel with Bill Hemmer.

Hemmer said, "Cory Booker, the Mayor of Newark, what he was saying is that these are good people at private equity firms that work on Wall Street. Don't classify 'em all as evil."

DAVIS: There was a problem with the ad that I saw. It was misleading because it omitted a number of important facts that the viewer should see. Romney wasn't even there when that plant went down. That plant was about to go bankrupt before Bain bought it, brought it back, and in fact created jobs, and then it went under, as the head of the union said, because of foreign imports. So the ad is misleading because it omitted those facts, apart from the fact the person at Bain is currently an Obama bundler when that company went bankrupt. It's not a good idea to mislead people.

RUSH: Do you realize what you just heard? That's Lanny Davis. That's the guy who was better at defending Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal than anybody -- he and Carville were, and maybe The Forehead, better than anybody out there. Lanny Davis, Mr. Democrat. Now, Lanny now has a K Street consultancy firm, and he needs people like private equity people as clients. Folks, he just stabbed Obama, not in the back, right between the eyes. He just tore apart every contention in Obama's ad. He just ripped it to shreds. He said it omitted a number of facts that the viewers should see. Romney wasn't there, the plant was about to go bankrupt before Bain bought it, Bain brought it back, created jobs.

This is undercutting every point Obama is making, that Romney purposely took over losing companies, filed Chapter 11, everybody got fired, Romney got rich, and Lanny Davis just said that none of what this ad says is true. It went under, as the head of the union said, because of foreign imports, not because Bain let it die. And a union guy, an Obama guy says, wait a minute, Bain didn't destroy us. Bain tried to save us. This is profound here. And this what all the people on all the cable networks are talking about, how this is backfiring, and yet Obama's doubling down on it. And the reason he's doubling down on it is because that's all they've got in the playbook. They don't have anything else.

So back to Thiessen's piece. "Despite a growing backlash from his fellow Democrats, President Obama has doubled down on his attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. But the strategy could backfire in ways Obama did not anticipate. After all, if Romney’s record in private equity is fair game, then so is Obama’s record in public equity -- and that record is not pretty. Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters -- leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions. Consider just a few examples of Obama’s public equity failures:

"Raser Technologies. In 2010, the Obama administration gave Raser a $33 million taxpayer-funded grant to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. According to the Wall Street Journal, after burning through our tax dollars, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. The plant now has fewer than 10 employees, and Raser owes $1.5 million in back taxes."

Here's Obama, trying to tell us that the people at Bain are still in business and still doing what they're doing, and the number one guy at Bain right now is an Obama fundraiser, by the way. The head honcho at Bain is an Obama bundler. Bain is still in business. Bain's doing well. Obama is the one that doesn't know what he's doing. Obama is the one that's a disaster. Obama's the one that picks losers. Obama is the one who gives your money away to people that go bankrupt and fire employees.

"ECOtality. The Obama administration gave ECOtality $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009 for, among other things, the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. Obama even hosted the company’s president, Don Karner, in the first lady’s box during the 2010 State of the Union address as an example of a stimulus success story. According to ECOtality’s own SEC filings, the company has since incurred more than $45 million in losses and has told the federal government, 'We may not achieve or sustain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future.'"

Okay, he's two-for-two in failures, but he's gotta like this. ECOtality says they may not sustain profitability. Sustain? They may not even get there. And this guy's in Michelle Obama's box. He's being held up as an example of stimulus success. Another Obama bankruptcy on the verge of happening. "According to CBS News the company is 'under investigation for insider trading,' and Karner has been subpoenaed 'for any and all documentation surrounding the public announcement of the first Department of Energy grant to the company.'

"Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP). The Obama administration gave NGP a $98.5 million taxpayer loan guarantee in 2010. The New York Times reported last October that the company is in 'financial turmoil' and that '[a]fter a series of technical missteps that are draining Nevada Geothermal’s cash reserves, its own auditor concluded in a filing released last week that there was "significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern."' First Solar. The Obama administration provided First Solar with more than $3 billion in loan guarantees for power plants in Arizona and California. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek report last week, the company 'fell to a record low in Nasdaq Stock Market trading May 4 after reporting $401 million in restructuring costs tied to firing 30 percent of its workforce.'"

So a solar firm given three billion, losing $401 million because they fired 30% of the workforce. "Abound Solar, Inc. The Obama administration gave Abound Solar a $400 million loan guarantee to build photovoltaic panel factories. According to Forbes, in February the company halted production and laid off 180 employees. Beacon Power. The Obama administration gave Beacon -- a green-energy storage company -- a $43 million loan guarantee. According to CBS News, at the time of the loan, 'Standard and Poor’s had confidentially given the project a dismal outlook of "CCC-plus."' In the fall of 2011, Beacon received a delisting notice from Nasdaq and filed for bankruptcy."

These are just tip of the iceberg. Everything Obama's touched in terms of public equity has gone bankrupt. They've laid people off. And it's not been his money. It's been ours that he has lost.

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RUSH: Snerdley just asked me a good question. How in the world did all these people get Obama's attention? Who are all these people that got these guaranteed loans and then their businesses went belly up? Who are these people? Well, Peter Schweizer wrote a book. He's a Hoover Institution scholar. Peter Schweizer wrote a book called Throw Them All Out. Peter Schweizer found out that 71% of Obama's Energy Department grants and loans, like the ones you just heard about, went to people who were bundlers and members of Obama's national Finance Committee or they were large donors to the Democrat Party.

Now, can I throw a name out to you? How about Halliburton. What does Halliburton mean to you? And then after Halliburton, what about Blackwater? If you have a decent memory, all during the Iraq war, from 2003 on, all you heard about was Halliburton. Halliburton was some evil, rotten energy company, specifically oil company that Cheney used to run, and they were in charge of all the war effort, and they were in charge of all the restaurants and all the canteens. And then Blackwater was this security group, and they were out there and they were paying people and they were firing guns at the enemy, cronies of Bush and Cheney, Halliburton and Blackwater. And the whole purpose of the war was so that Halliburton would get rich. That's what people think Halliburton is.

Well, that was never true about Halliburton. Halliburton is a multifaceted, multinational. And they do provide the food services for combat troops. I have eaten in Afghanistan in a Halliburton facility. Kellogg Brown & Root is the subsidiary of Halliburton. But look at this. Seventy-one percent of Obama's bundlers or big donors to the Democrat Party or members of Obama's Finance Committee end up getting 71% of 'em. Halliburton was one company. Seventy-one percent of Obama's cronies end up getting money thrown at them. They go bankrupt, they fire their workers, but the people that got the money somehow remain in their homes and in their cars in fat city.

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RUSH: By the way, there are more companies that Mr. Thiessen wrote about here in Obama's public equity. There's a solar outfit. "A company called SunPower got a $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the [regime], and as of January, the company owed more than it was worth. Brightsource got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee and posted a string of net losses totaling $177 million. And, of course, let’s not forget Solyndra -- the solar panel manufacturer that received $535 million in taxpayer-funded loan guarantees and went bankrupt, leaving taxpayers on the hook."

Bain has an 80% track record.

Obama is an 0-fer.

But for some reason, some people think, "The government is trying to help people. The government's trying to help people. Big business is evil. It's rotten." It's a perception that's been with us for as long as you've been alive. And it's been brought to you by the American left and the Democrat Party. And every damn one of these outfits was nothing more than a crony Obama supporter who probably chose these industries to pretend to start up just to get some government money.

There was no business there.

There is no green energy.

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