Another Failure of Obama's Jobs/Stimulus Program as Pet Green Jobs Company Shuts Doors

$527 million in federal backed loans lost to a company linked with Obama top campaign donor gives green jobs program a black eye!

As Obama prepares to give his latest jobs speech before a Joint Session of Congress next week, he's no doubt going to swing big for more "green jobs." Like these?

On May 26, 2010 President Obama stood inside the new Solyndra solar panel manufacturing facility in Fremont California to give a speech praising his Administration's efforts to create green jobs and restore America's manufacturing edge. The plant had opened after an emergency $535 million in loan guarantees made possible the Obama's Stimulus bill. At the close of his remarks, Obama said:

OBAMA: The future is here. We’re poised to transform the ways we power our homes and our cars and our businesses. And we’re poised to lead our competitors in the development of new technologies and products and businesses. And we are poised to generate countless new jobs, good-paying middle-class jobs, right here in the United States of America.

That’s the promise of clean energy. And thanks to the men and women here today -- and the innovators and the workers all across America -- it’s a promise that we’ve already begun to fulfill.

Earlier he spoke about Solyndra "leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.” 15 months later the company layed off 1,000 workers, shut it's doors and file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Hundreds of millions in federal funds may be gone for good.

Brighter Future for Obama Campaign Contributors?

But the real scandal here isn't just the waste of taxpayer money and the fraud that is the false promise of green jobs but the possibility that political connections to a top Obama campaign donor might have been behind the ill-advised federal loan guarantee to Solyndra.

The Center for Public Integrity reports that one of Solyndra’s major investors was George Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire who raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for Obama during the 2008 election.

Not only was a major Obama donor involved in the project but there were irregularities with the speed and management of the loan guarantee process raising the spectre of political interference. Those questions were highlighted by a Government Accounting Office report which said that ") DOE's [Dept. of Energy] implementation of the LGP has treated applicants inconsistently, favoring some and disadvantaging others."

Such questions reinforce the already prevalent view that spending from the Stimulus Bill was used by the Obama Administration to reward their friends and punish their enemies.

What we have here is a new low. Not only a corrupt loan process but a jobs program that actually LOSES jobs!

2012 can't come soon enough. Let's send the Chicago mob back to the Windy City where it belongs!