Trickle Down Tyranny

by Michael Savage

  That’s why I’m devoting an entire chapter of this book to showing you just how far Obama and his crooked cohorts have gone with their takeover of the cause of saving our environment.

  Let me start with their attack on one of our most successful companies.

  In 1986, the Gibson Guitar Corporation was struggling, about to go under. That was the year its current CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, bought Gibson and through a brilliant marketing strategy turned it around, making it profitable within less than a year of taking ownership. Like me, Juszkiewicz is a committed environmentalist. He’s a supporter of the Rainforest Alliance and the Environmental Defense Fund, among other environmental protection organizations.1

  I’m still wondering what he did to deserve the treatment his company has received from the Obama administration.

  On Wednesday, August 24, 2011, thugs from Eric Holder’s Justice Department—armed to the teeth with automatic rifles as if they were shutting down a meth lab—raided the Gibson Guitar offices and manufacturing facilities in Memphis, Tennessee.2

  They were there to seize wood the company used in manufacturing guitars, and company financial records, in order to determine if Gibson had been using wood that had been banned under a recently revised U.S. law.

  The real purpose of the raid had nothing to do with rare wood: It was conducted to demonstrate the power of government regulators to impose their will on American businesses and, by extension, on the American people. They waved their guns in people’s faces and threatened Gibson employees with jail terms before closing down the factory for the day and sending the workers home.

  Juszkiewicz was clear about what he thought the Justice Department was doing: “Agents seized wood that was Forest Stewardship Council controlled. Gibson has a long history of supporting sustainable and responsible sources of wood and has worked diligently with entities such as the Rainforest Alliance and Greenpeace to secure FSC-certified supplies. The wood seized on August 24 satisfied FSC standards.”3

  I’m even more clear about what the Justice Department was doing: The raid was nothing more than the Justice Department attempting to intimidate Gibson without filing charges.

  Gibson is one of the most successful musical instrument manufacturers in the United States. Its guitars have been used by virtually every jazz, blues, and rock musician from Charlie Christian to Albert King to Eric Clapton. Gibson created the first and most famous solid-body electric guitar, designed by and named for the legendary musician and innovator Les Paul.

  They’re also one of the most environmentally friendly companies I know of, committed to the conservation and wise use of the rare woods that go into some of their instruments.

  As bad as the raid on the company was, the regulatory fascists aren’t stopping at simply trying to shut down Gibson. They’re after much more than that.

  The musicians who own Gibson instruments that might be made from banned wood are subject to having them seized, even though most of the instruments in question were manufactured decades before the restrictions on the wood they contain were in place.

  The raids were conducted under the Lacey Act of 1900, originally passed to regulate bird feathers used in ladies’ hats. The law was expanded in 2008 to include wood imports.

  The bans aren’t just on the wood the bodies of the guitars are made of. They extend to fret boards, bridges, anything, no matter how small, that might possibly be made from a restricted wood at any time. Instruments that were made before the law was expanded in 2008 are apparently grandfathered in to the legislation, despite the fact that their owners and manufacturers could have had no idea they were playing or manufacturing anything illegal.4

  It’s more than simply protecting endangered species of plants and animals or preventing global warming, though. I’ve told you over and over that Obama’s green energy initiatives are nothing more than dangerous power grabs designed to weaken the economy and give more control over our lives to the leftist elite.

  Juszkiewicz makes it clear just how brutal the Holder/Obama storm troopers were and what he and his employees had to endure: “I was pretty upset. But you can only do so much when there’s a gun in your face and it’s the federal government.”5

  The federal government committed the equivalent of armed robbery from a company that is a symbol of American capitalist success.

  From electric guitars to electric cars, the Obama administration is an administration of regulatory fascists determined to control or shut down everything from manufacturing to energy production.

  The Environmental Nazi in the White House promotes these green energy initiatives, not because he’s committed to saving the planet but because he’s committed to taking it over.

  The Politics of Green Energy

  He’s also committed to paying back his political supporters.

  I’ve known for a long time that that’s how politics works. When someone contributes money to your campaign, you find a way to repay them. There’s no secret about that.

  But when you combine political payback with a green energy initiative based on phony science and the investment of billions of taxpayer dollars in companies the government knew were about to fail, you get some of the biggest scandals in recent memory.

  In 2009, the federal government guaranteed a loan of $535 million to a green energy company that had absolutely no prospects for success. Like much of the legislation this administration has produced, Obama rammed through the loan without the necessary due diligence and against the advice of the Office of Management and Budget.

  The company was the poster child for the president’s corrupt green energy initiative. Obama visited it in May 2010—well after his advisors were aware that the company was in trouble—promoting it as a company that would create green energy jobs. The White House went so far as to produce a video explaining how “companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter, more prosperous future.”

  There were some dissenters. In May 2010, one Obama fund-raiser wrote to Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, “A number of us are concerned that the president is visiting Solyndra. Many of us believe the company’s cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term. . . . I just want to help protect the president from anything that could result in negative or unfair press.”6

  By the fall of 2010, the administration knew that Solyndra was in trouble. Even though they continued to promote Solyndra as one of the success stories of the president’s green energy strategy, the Department of Energy pushed hard for Solyndra to hold off announcing pending layoffs until November 3, 2010. E-mails reveal that one investor wrote this: “[T]hey did push very hard for us to hold our announcement of the consolidation to employees and vendors to Nov. 3rd—oddly they didn’t give a reason for that date.”7

  The investor, Argonaut Private Equity, couldn’t possibly have been that naïve, not with the midterm elections being held on November 2, the day before the date approved for a negative announcement.

  Do they expect us to swallow the lie that delaying the Keystone XL pipeline until 2013 has nothing to do with the 2012 presidential elections, too?

  This is the most corrupt, lying administration in the history of this country. Not a single decision is made without considering the Democratic far-left base or the fat cats and unions that hold this anti-American, anticapitalist administration together.

  The Panderer-in-Chief will stop at nothing in his assault on our freedom.

  In promoting Solyndra, Obama was ignoring warning signs that had been surfacing for more than a year. A PricewaterhouseCoopers audit of the company two months earlier said that Solyndra “has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders’ deficit that, among other factors, raises substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”8

  On top of that, the Energy Department’s credit committee, which decides who gets federal energy money and who doesn’t, had reached the conclusion that Solyndra’s a
pplication for funds was “premature” in January 2009, just before Obama took office.

  Inspector General Gregory Friedman, who was appointed to oversee the distribution of stimulus funds, said that the green energy projects being funded were so far divorced from the reality in the industry that it was like “attaching a lawn mower to a fire hydrant.”9

  After Obama was inaugurated, Solyndra funding was fast-tracked.

  The reason?

  His financial backers stood to lose big money.

  Billionaire George Kaiser, a major Obama fund-raiser, was one of the early investors in Solyndra. With the company struggling, Kaiser and others ponied up an additional $75 million in financing early in 2011. In return, they received priority over other creditors—including the taxpayers guaranteeing the loan—to be repaid.

  Another Obama fund-raiser, Steve Spinner, is a “top official” in the Energy Department charged with monitoring how guaranteed loans are made. He ostensibly wasn’t involved in the Solyndra decision, but not because there might have been any conflict of interest on his part: His wife’s law firm had represented the company, so he stepped aside.

  Do you have any doubt that the half billion in taxpayer dollars will be used primarily to make Obama cronies whole on this deal?

  Or that the deal was rigged from the start?

  Once it had secured the federally guaranteed loan, Solyndra went on a lavish spending spree. The company doled out $344 million on a new corporate headquarters building with a state-of-the-art conference room whose glass windows smoked over at the touch of a switch in order to conceal who was in the room. Just down the road, at the company’s manufacturing facility, unsold solar panels piled up.10

  Solyndra executives lied to the White House in May 2011, saying “we have good market momentum, the factory is ramping and our plan puts [us] at cash positive later this year,” and two months later followed up with “We can assure you we have a path to profitability.”11 In a move that was a sign they knew Solyndra was in trouble, the Energy Department hired the investment bank Lazard Ltd. in mid-August for $1.1 million to give advice on how the company could restructure its finances “both in and out of bankruptcy,” according to records.12

  On April 15, 2011, and again on July 8, more than a dozen Solyndra senior executives gave themselves big cash bonuses that ranged from $37,000 to $60,000 apiece.13

  One of the big shots at the foundering company, Karen Alter, Solyndra’s senior marketing vice president, took home two $55,000 bonus checks. Alter had contributed $6,300 to Barack Obama and two other Democratic candidates. Ben Bierman, executive vice president of operations, was another big Democratic contributor. He gave Obama $2,300 and several other Democrats a total of $7,400. Both of these scammers received salaries of at least $250,000 in addition to their bonuses.

  But those weren’t the worst offenses. On July 1, 2011, Chris Gronet, one of the Solyndra founders, was “transitioned to the role of adviser and consultant” from his job as CEO, shortly before the company declared bankruptcy. His reward for running Solyndra into the ground? A severance package worth nearly half a billion dollars!14

  In late August, less than a month after the CEO jumped ship, Solyndra laid off 90 percent of its workforce.

  Less than two weeks after that, the company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

  Within days, Eric Holder’s FBI agents raided Solyndra headquarters and seized company documents and computers.

  A criminal investigation into Solyndra is under way and company executives might face criminal charges.

  The company’s AWOL CEO and its CFO were called before the House Energy and Commerce Committee to testify on September 23, 2011. Their response was to take the Fifth.

  Because they’re the targets of a criminal investigation, they can invoke their Fifth Amendment constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination. The fact that Holder had initiated a criminal investigation gave them the cover they needed to clam up.

  I’m the only one telling you that if Holder hadn’t acted as he did, Solyndra execs couldn’t have taken the Fifth and would have had to reveal what they knew about the scam or risk being in contempt of Congress.

  Holder’s actions may well have been taken in order to prevent them from having to testify before Congress.

  They might keep the White House from having to testify as well. E-mails indicate that the West Wing was monitoring the situation from the start and knew the risks it faced but went ahead anyway in order to protect Kaiser and other politically connected investors.15 That’s illegal, and should result in criminal indictments against anyone from the White House who was involved, including the president.

  The scandal is compounded by the fact that the Obama administration rigged the process so that investors in Solyndra—who were also big Obama donors—would get paid back before the taxpayers who guaranteed the loan.

  According to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, a 551-page legislative behemoth, federally guaranteed loans “have an assured revenue stream that covers project capital and operating costs (including servicing all debt obligations covered by the guarantee) that is approved by the Secretary and the relevant State public utility commission.”16 In addition, guaranteed loans “shall be subject to the condition that the obligation is not subordinate to other financing.”17 In other words, taxpayers are the first to get paid back in the event the loan goes bad.

  There’s no question that the Department of Energy broke the law when it restructured the loan agreement in order to give private investors precedence over taxpayers in the case of the company’s collapse—which collapse the DOE knew was a certainty at the time the loan was approved. That didn’t stop the government from doing what it did to taxpayers in the GM/Chrysler bailouts. Susan Richardson, chief counsel of the DOE loans program, decided differently. She explained that paying back taxpayers first was not “a continuing obligation or restriction” but applied only to the initial issuance of the loan.

  She’s saying, “The hell with the taxpayers the minute after the loan has been granted.”18

  Obama justifies throwing money away on high-risk, guaranteed-to-fail green energy companies on the grounds that China is doing it. That’s his rationale for giving a company with revenues of less than $100 million annually more that half a billion taxpayer dollars.19

  In fact, of the $20 billion in stimulus funds available for the DOE to use in the guaranteed loan program, $16 billion of it went to Obama contributors.20

  Despite the fact that some e-mails related to the Solyndra scandal have been released, the White House is slow-walking its compliance with a subpoena issued by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in early November 2011.21

  It’s another example of the stonewalling that has been the hallmark of the leftist vermin in this rogue administration every time they’re confronted with the reality of their corruption.

  The Democratic donors who invested in Solyndra aren’t the only ones making a killing. Lawyers connected with the Obama administration are going to feast on Solyndra fees, too. Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, a Republican who supported Obama, is slated to make $825 an hour to consult with Solyndra during bankruptcy proceedings. Three others from the McDermott Will & Emery law firm will bill the government between $425 and $775 an hour to represent Solyndra.22

  I want you to get an idea of how widespread this scandal was, and how deeply it went into the ranks of Obama’s political and financial cronies.

  Did you know that Nancy Pelosi was directly involved in this scandal, too?

  Here are the details: Pelosi’s brother-in-law received most of the last-minute $737 million guaranteed loan to Tonopah Solar Energy. That company is a subsidiary of another company, SolarReserve, which is building a large solar-thermal plant in the Nevada desert. Ronald Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s husband’s brother, is a vice president of the private equity company that is the primary funder of this project and which had a hand in Solyndra as well.23

  Another famous poli
tical name cropped up in the list of cronies Obama gave money to for non-viable green energy projects: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. BrightSource Energy listed as its principal private investor a company called VantagePoint. RFK Jr. is one of the “venture partners” of that company. BrightSource listed more than $200 million in losses in its prospectus, and admitted that its “proprietary technology has a limited history and may perform below expectations when implemented.”24

  That was all the Obama administration needed to hear. It green-lighted the foundering company for $1.4 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout money.

  If you think the FBI was interested in gathering evidence to prosecute Solyndra—or any other of the phony companies that have received tens of billions of our money—let me set you straight: If so much as a single Solyndra executive or any government official involved in the Solyndra deal is brought up on criminal charges, it will be because Eric Holder has been replaced as attorney general.

  I’m telling you that there’s no chance Holder’s FBI seized evidence in order to make it public. I believe that Holder’s ultimate purpose was to make sure the evidence in the case never sees the light of day. I’m convinced that the crooked Attorney General will do everything in his power to protect Obama’s interests and those of his financial backers.

  As I see it, Obama—because he’s unable to understand anything but the socialist economic theory that was drummed into his head during his school years—has once again ignored the markets in order to impose his political agenda on American business and to protect his backers. Lifetime federal government employees have no place being venture socialists with other people’s money. If they were in the private sector, they would have been out of business long ago, but because they’re protected by taxpayer money, when they lose they simply move on to other projects and leave it to the lawyers to clean up. With our money.

  This administration has also thrown away our money in other federally funded green energy projects. Beacon Power Corporation, which had received $43 million in loan guarantees from the same source that backed Solyndra, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late October 2011. Beacon develops energy storage systems based on “flywheel” technology. The money was supposed to go toward building an energy storage plant in Stephentown, New York.25 Flywheel energy storage technology is supposedly an alternative to chemical batteries for storing electrical energy and making it available in times of energy shortages. In the case of Beacon, two of their flywheel energy storage systems failed, one resulting in a “catastrophic” steam explosion at the company’s Stephentown facility.26