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President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, Robert Kennedy, Jr., netted a $1.4 billion bailout for his company, BrightSource, through a loan guarantee issued by a former employee-turned Department of Energy official. It’s just one more in a string of eye-opening revelations by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer in his explosive new book, Throw Them All Out. The details of how BrightSource managed to land its ten-figure taxpayer bailout have yet to emerge fully. However, one clue might be found in the person of Sanjay Wagle. Wagle was one of the principals in Kennedy’s firm who raised money for Barack...

A new book by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer details the startling extent of the cronyism that has pervaded President Obama’s “green jobs” push. According to Schweizer, 4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.” Those companies’ “political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy,” Schweizer explains. “It brought them returns many times over.” Such is the inevitable consequence of large government interventions in private markets. Leaving aside the losses associated with transfers of funds from self-sustaining industries to ones...

Washington (Platts)--4Nov2011/612 pm EDT/2212 GMT The White House Friday rejected a subpoena issued by the House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee to produce internal communications and other documents related to now-bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra's $535 million loan guarantee. In a letter to the Republican leaders of the committee, White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler called the subpoena a partisan "vast fishing expedition" without legal justification. "The committee's extremely broad request for documents -- now a subpoena -- is a significant intrusion on Executive Branch interests, particularly given that you have not made any effort to tailor the request to...

The White House is strongly rebuffing a subpoena from House Republicans seeking all communications about a failed solar panel manufacturer that received a half-billion dollar federal loan guarantee. In a letter to two top Republicans on the House energy panel, White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler says partisan politics is driving the request. The White House has already turned over 85,000 pages of documents on Solyndra. The company filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers after receiving $528 million in federal backing. Ruemmler said those documents show no wrongdoing or political favoritism by the administration. House Republicans have used Solyndra...

* China eyeing "vastly superior" scale, Immelt warns * "I worry a little bit about us," Immelt says of U.S.* GE "all-in" on solar, sees potential $20 bln business By Scott MaloneNov 3 (Reuters) - General Electric Co's Jeff Immelt worries the United States may lose ground to China in the renewable energy sector because it is not prepared to invest in solar, wind and other technologies on the same scale.But the chief executive of the largest U.S. conglomerate said his company remains undaunted and will continue to work in the sector despite the recent bankruptcy of solar panel maker...

(Reuters) - Beacon Power Corp filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, just a year after the energy storage company received a $43 million loan guarantee from a controversial Department of Energy program. The bankruptcy comes about two months after Solyndra -- a solar panel maker with a $535 million loan guarantee -- also filed for Chapter 11, creating a political embarrassment for the administration of President Barack Obama, which has championed the loans as a way to create "green energy" jobs. Beacon Power drew down $39 million of its government-guaranteed loan to fund a portion of a $69 million, 20-megawatt flywheel...

Yesterday, another shoe dropped in the chronicles of the Obama administration’s crony capitalism. A start-up electric car company with ties to Al Gore got a $529 million loan guarantee from Obama’s Department of Energy to build luxury electric cars...in Finland! Leaving aside the fact that to date only two of these $97,000 cars have been sold (one of them to a movie star), we might at least hope that this ridiculous exercise in the government picking winners minus any competitive, transparent process (Al Gore’s venture cap firm) and losers (the taxpayers subsidizing a car no one wants) would produce manufacturing jobs in the...

WASHINGTON -- A tiny car company backed by former Vice President Al Gore has just gotten a $529 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell for about $89,000. The award this week to California startup Fisker Automotive Inc. follows a $465 million government loan to Tesla Motors Inc., purveyors of a $109,000 British-built electric Roadster. Tesla is a California startup focusing on all-electric vehicles, with a number of celebrity endorsements that is backed by investors that have contributed to Democratic campaigns The awards to Fisker and Tesla have prompted concern from...

The Fisker Karma electric car, developed mainly with your tax money so that a bunch of rich VC’s wouldn’t have to risk any real money, has rolled out with an nominal EPA MPGe of 52. Not bad? Unfortunately, it’s a sham. This figure is calculated using the grossly flawed EPA process that substantially underestimates the amount of fossil fuels required to power the electric car, as I showed in great depth in an earlier Forbes.com article. In short, the EPA methodology leaves out, among other things, the conversion efficiency in generating the electricity from fossil fuels in the first place....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama says the U.S. must continue to give clean energy companies loan guarantees in order to compete with Chinese subsidies that entice companies to move offshore. Obama is defending his administration's decision to give a $528 million loan guarantee to a solar energy company that later collapsed.

Lemming powers of observation aren’t highly regarded. Wouldn’t you think witnessing fellow critters plunge en masse over cliff edges would offer cause for some among them to reconsider the perilous path ahead? But then some humans, most notable government leaders, are similarly lacking in foresight. This deficiency is evident in the E.U.’s wind and solar energy stampede which has sped their arrival to the brink of economic collapse. Before America races any farther down that same road, let’s pause to heed lessons from their costly experiences. And we might learn much from our own as well. Consider Denmark. On Earth...

A $38.6 billion loan guarantee program that the Obama administration promised would create or save 65,000 jobs has created just a few thousand jobs two years after it began, government records show. The program — designed to jump-start the nation's clean technology industry by giving energy companies access to low-cost, government-backed loans — has directly created 3,545 new, permanent jobs after giving out almost half the allocated amount, according to Energy Department tallies. President Obama has made "green jobs" a showcase of his recovery plan, vowing to foster new jobs, new technologies and more competitive American industries. But the loan...

The rapidly evolving scandal surrounding a $535 million government loan to Solyndra, a California solar energy company, that shuttered its doors and filed bankruptcy last week, has now been connected to the office of Vice-President Joe Biden. Emails obtained by investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee and released to ABC News demonstrate how deeply involved the White House was at the highest levels in fast-tracking the approval of the politically well connected start-up in direct conflict with numerous private as well as government warnings that the survival of the company was very doubtful. On March 10, 2009 according...

... Democrats have found enough information in public records of the Energy Department’s loan approval process and from media reports to try to widen the Solyndra scandal to Republicans. Although Solyndra’s biggest private investor was a venture capital fund affiliated with Kaiser, its second largest investor was a fund linked to the Walton family, of Wal-Mart renown, a major donor to Republicans. Kaiser has denied he ever spoke to the Obama administration about the Solyndra loan. The chief executive of Solyndra, Brian Harrison, is a registered Republican, according to the San Jose Mercury News. The Democrats’ main defense against accusations...

<p>Our Lawyer-in-Chief, the brilliant Harvard law professor, has recently put on a symposium for us on investment law.  It should be titled “How not to invest when saving/creating jobs with taxpayer dollars.”</p> <p>Lawyer Obama apparently ignored a glowing, red legal flag when his administration decided to make what turns out to be a $527 million loan to a now-bankrupt solar energy company. The loan was part of a package made to struggling Solyndra, a solar company owned by a top contributor to the president, as we reported previously on Townhall Finance.</p>

These pointless monstrosities will continue to proliferate until the Government sees sense. Three separate news items on the same day last week reflected three different aspects of what is fast becoming a full-scale disaster bearing down on Britain. The first item was a picture in The Daily Telegraph showing two little children forlornly holding a banner reading “E.On Hands Off Winwick”. This concerned a battle to prevent a tiny Northamptonshire village from being dwarfed by seven 410-foot wind turbines, each higher than Salisbury Cathedral, to be built nearby by a giant German-owned electricity firm. The 40 residents, it was reported,...

A high profile, politically well-connected California solar energy company that had won a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama Administration declared bankruptcy earlier this month and closed its doors sending 1100 workers to the unemployment line.   The demise of Solyndra has already sparked an FBI investigation, congressional hearings, and raised numerous questions of political cronyism and corruption connected to the highest levels of the Obama Administration.   While the White House and Congressional Democrats feign surprise at the collapse of what was described as "the most hyped startup in the crowded Solar Energy field," it appears Obama Administration representatives...

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. Word of the Energy Department's unusual arrangement came as federal agents on Thursday converged on the California headquarters of the failed solar company, focusing fresh attention on the first corporate beneficiary of President Obama's stimulus program to create new clean energy jobs. The company, which closed its doors last week and laid off 1,100 workers, has been a subject...

Solyndra, the solar-cell company whose collapse last week triggered a national debate over green jobs, filed its bankruptcy papers Monday, listing $859 million in assets and $784 million in secured loans. The company's biggest lender was the federal government, which loaned Solyndra $528 million in 2009 to build a new factory near its Fremont headquarters. As part of an effort to boost renewable power companies, the government offered Solyndra as much as $535 million for the project, but the factory cost slightly less to build than expected. The government will not, however, be the first creditor in line during Solyndra's...

In this May 26, 2010 file photo, President Barack Obama, with Solyndra Chief Executive Officer Chris Gronet, looks at a solar panel, during a tour of Solyndra, Inc., a solar panel manufacturing facility, in Fremont, Calif. Solyndra received a $535 million loan from the U.S. government has announced layoffs of 1,100 workers and plans to file for bankruptcy. (WaPo) Top Obama bundler George Kaiser made multiple visits to the White House in the months before the company was granted a $535 million loan from the government. iWatch News reported, via Free Republic: The i Watch News investigation confirmed that at...