Free Republic

House lawmakers sharply criticized the head of the Department of Energy’s green energy loan program for not releasing documents requested by a committee looking into companies that have received taxpayer dollars. “It is disconcerting that the executive director of a major government program is unwilling to commit — to actually commit — to providing all the documents that an investigation committee of the Congress has requested,” California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher .. told Mark McCall, the head of the DOE’s loan office, in a hearing Thursday, “and that the answer being given is using weasel words ... House committee members...

A taxpayer-funded “green” energy company that went bankrupt in July 2012 didn’t just leave behind a legal mess for its creditors – it left behind a mess of contaminated water and toxic carcinogens. Taxpayer Backed Green Energy Firm Takes Millions, Goes Bankrupt and Leaves Behind Toxic Mess Image Source: Associated Press. And its up to the owners of Abound Solar’s deserted 37,000 square foot facility to clean up the broken glass and hazardous wastes.

LONGMONT -- The Weld County District Attorney's office confirmed Thursday that it has launched a criminal investigation into officials at bankrupt Abound Solar, whose manufacturing facility was located along the Interstate 25 Frontage Road but had a Longmont address. ... In the statement, he said his office is "looking into possible instances of securities fraud based on allegations that officials at Abound Solar knew products the company was selling were defective, and then asked investors to invest in the company without telling them about the defective products." ... Abound had used $70.9 million of the DOE's $400 million loan guarantee...

Internal documentation and testimony from sources within Abound show that the company was selling a faulty, underperforming product, and may have mislead lenders at one point in order to keep itself afloat. “Our solar modules worked as long as you didn’t put them in the sun,” an internal source told The Daily Caller News Foundation. The company knew its panels were faulty prior to obtaining taxpayer dollars, according to sources, but kept pushing product out the door in order to meet Department of Energy goals required for their $400 million loan guarantee.

Department of Energy Official before the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee can't answer Rep. Jordan's questions on why Abound Solar got loan despite warnings before hand (July 18, 2012)

Two years ago, President Barack Obama hailed Loveland-based Abound Solar Inc. for its state-of-the-art technology and its potential to create thousands of jobs. ... Abound received a $400 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, drew down $70 million and, by the end of last year, ramped up production at its 400-employee Longmont-area plant. This year, however, the attention directed toward Abound has spun swiftly from praise to skepticism. At the end of February, Abound laid off 280 workers -- about 90 were temporary employees -- at its Longmont plant and halted production ...

A month before Abound Solar announced it would be laying off nearly half its workforce, Congressional Republicans alerted the U.S. Department of Energy that they had questions about the decision to loan the Colorado firm $400 million. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked Energy Secretary Steven Chu to explain how the solar panel manufacturer had qualified for the loan after the ratings firm Fitch had determined the company would make a "highly speculative" investment. Energy officials maintain hope that Abound will find its way in a tough solar energy market. "While the challenges facing solar manufacturers have...

Green Energy: Another stimulus-backed solar panel maker, one the president touted in a weekly radio address, lays off most of its workers. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. President Obama is the Little Orphan Annie of presidents. He is always singing that the sun will come out tomorrow and shine on the American economy and his dreams of green energy. Yet companies such as Solyndra have proved the rule rather than the exception, producing more pink slips than green jobs as solar power and alternative energy continue to be eclipsed by advances...

WASHINGTON - So much for trimming the pork. The practice of decorating legislation with billions of dollars in pet projects and federal contracts is still thriving on Capitol Hill — despite public outrage that helped flip control of Congress two years ago. More than 11,000 of those "earmarks," worth nearly $15 billion in all, were slipped into legislation telling the government where to spend taxpayers' money this year, keeping the issue at the center of Washington's culture of money, influence and politics. Now comes an election-year encore. It's a pay-to-play sandbox where waste and abuse often obscure the good that...

WASHINGTON - It won't be a summer of love for Howard Dean, with peace and understanding in short supply. The Democratic National Committee chairman faces several formidable challenges. Some states are determined to move up the dates of their presidential primaries despite the potential for upending the nomination process, and the party's convention in Denver in 2008 is already dealing with nettlesome labor and financial woes. Dean's biggest test will come next year when the DNC will primarily serve as a shadow campaign operation for the party's presidential nominee. But first he must contend with Florida, whose decision to push...

WASHINGTON, March 15, 2006 – As the 21st century progresses, the United States must be prepared to deal with threats posed by terrorists, corrupt regimes and emerging state powers, a top Pentagon leader said here yesterday. The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review will go a long way toward helping the U.S. military meet these challenges, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told the House Armed Services Committee. "The QDR is a strategic document," he said. "It is based on the recognition that the Department of Defense, and our nation as a whole, face a global security climate of dynamic, complex threats,...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - California's housing shortage, which has pushed median home prices above $470,000, is spurring a variety of moves to change the state's 35-year-old environmental protection law, long considered the nation's toughest. Attempts by the state's home building industry to change the 1970 law, signed by former Gov. Ronald Reagan, are nothing new, but this year Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a growing list of Democrats are joining in. Key lawmakers are pushing bills to make it easier for developers to maneuver around the law, especially to build housing in downtowns and older urban neighborhoods. The growing momentum to...

To Abide or To Abound? The disciple's dilemma: sit at His feet or serve in His name? By John Ortberg My daughter Mallory loves Greek mythology. I once bet her that she did not know the twelve tasks of Hercules off the top of her head. I lost. One of her favorite parts of The Odyssey is when Odysseus navigates a narrow passage with a lethal rock on one side and a fatal whirlpool on the other. Steering between Scylla and Charybdis has been part of our vocabulary ever since. In pastoral ministry I have my own Scylla and Charybdis...

Sakakawea: Myths abound about origin, death of woman who aided Lewis & Clark By Patrick Springer, The Forum Published Sunday, January 09, 2005 Sakakawea ambled into recorded history one "clear and pleasant" morning in a way that endeared her to an explorer still getting acclimated to the harsh plains weather. Sgt. John Ordway noted in his journal that two American Indian women visiting the Lewis and Clark Expedition's winter camp, still under construction, came with welcome gifts - four buffalo robes. "I Got one fine one myself," Ordway wrote on Nov. 11, 1804, at Fort Mandan in what is now...

The jaw-dropping moment came right at the beginning of a hearing in a room tucked away near the top of the state Capitol building. Lawmakers wondered: Was anybody managing spending at the state's adult prisons, which had blown their budget by a half-billion dollars this year? The one-word answer they got from a Finance Department official at the March hearing: No. More than two decades after California started toughening its sentencing laws and building new prisons to deal with rising crime rates, the mammoth penal system it created is embroiled in financial and management turmoil. The adult corrections system has...

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - Arnold Schwarzenegger is often compared to Ronald Reagan, another movie star-turned-politician who blazed California's gubernatorial trail decades ago.</p> <p>But Reagan actually had more relevant experience than Schwarzenegger, having spent years as head of the Screen Actors Guild and as a corporate spokesman for General Electric. And unlike Schwarzenegger, he also was a social conservative. Indeed, in the view of most, there are as many differences as similarities between California's two premier actor-politicians.</p>