Obama’s Patronage Pigs Can’t Fly

As if President Obama didn’t have enough bad news last week, Solyndra, which manufactures solar panels, filed for bankruptcy and laid off almost its entire work force of 1,100. Going down the tubes with it, of course, is a $535 million loan that was guaranteed by the federal government as part of the stimulus program.

Commentary Magazine
by John Steele Gordon

And it seems the White House put pressure on the Department of Energy to OK the loan. As the Washington Post reported:

Frank Rusco, a Government Accountability Office director who helped lead a review of the Solyndra loan and the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program, said the GAO remains “greatly concerned” by its 2010 finding that the agency agreed to back five companies with loans without properly assessing their risk of failure. The companies were not identified in the report, but the GAO has since acknowledged that Solyndra was one of them.

And one of the company’s biggest backers, George Kaiser, is also one of Barack Obama’s biggest backers. That, I’m sure, is another “coincidence,” such as the Republican debate being held at the same time that he chose to address Congress.
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