**Written by Doug Powers What’s a week without more suspicious Solyndra news? This should be enough to get us by until the inevitable almost weekly document dump that could come tomorrow. From the Washington Times : Fast running out of money, solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC last summer sold off nearly $60 million worth of inventory for less than $20 million in cash to a newly formed corporate entity closely tied to the company’s biggest investors, records show. Backed by $535 million in federal loan guarantees but burning through the little cash it had left, Solyndra made its first sale in late July to a corporate entity that had been formed just a day earlier. Three more transactions followed over the next few weeks with the same buyer, Solyndra Solar II. Todd Zywicki, bankruptcy professor at the George Mason University School of Law, said it’s not unusual for troubled companies to sell off assets to improve liquidity. But he said the inventory sales figure cited by Solyndra — $58.1 million in inventory for $17.5 million in cash — seems unusual. “The test under the bankruptcy code is whether the sale was for reasonably equivalent value and selling inventory at such a huge discount raises real concerns,” he said. “If Solyndra Solar II is owned or controlled by any insiders or anything like that, then it becomes even more suspicious.” No word on how much the whistling robots were re-sold for. Would the aforementioned bankruptcy professor consider these to be “insiders”? Solyndra Solar II was formed in Delaware by affiliates of Solyndra’s debtor in possession lender — investors Argonaut Private Equity and Madrone Capital Partners — as well as other debt holders, bankruptcy and government records show. Another special-purpose entity, Solyndra Solar LLC, was formed to purchase the company’s accounts receivable. Argonaut is the investment arm of a foundation headed by billionaire Oklahoma businessman George Kaiser. Madrone Partners has ties to Wal-Mart’s Walton family. The real test is to wait and see if Solyndra Solar II (Electric Boondoggleoo) sells that inventory for which they paid $17.5 million back to the government for ten times that amount so the Department of Energy can offer it to the next clean energy upstart taxpayers will be on the hook for and thus complete the “green jobs circle of life.” Obviously glass tubes used in solar panels must have not been in demand during the resale process. Your tax dollars at work : **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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Report: Solyndra Sold Assets Cheap to Entity with Close Ties to Investors
As potential opponents have spent the better part of the last year at each other’s throats, the Obama campaign has been quietly building up their war chest. POLITICO reports that the President’s reelection campaign raised $40 million in the last three months of 2011, ending the year with $82 million in the bank and $3 million in debt. A separate joint fundraising committee supporting Obama’s reelection and the Democratic National Committee, reported raising $24 million in the fourth quarter, spending $23 million and finishing the year with less than $1 million on hand. The Obama campaign also released a list of 450 major bundlers who combined to collect at least $74.4 million for his campaign and the DNC. Some on the list of big money bundlers live up to the stereotype from Obama’s critics of who most supports the President; entertainment elites living in Hollywood and New York. Top fundraisers include movie producer Harvey Weinstein, DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, Eva Longoria, gay power couple James Costas of HBO and former White House interior decorator Michael Smith, and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Wintour is the inspiration for Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada. Shamed investor and former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine was also on the list individuals having raised over $500,000 for the Obama campaign. AP notes that list includes two fundraisers linked to Solyndra LLC, the California solar company that received a $528 million federal loan and then later declared bankruptcy, prompting a federal investigation. Steve Spinner, an Energy Department adviser, raised at least $500,000 and Steve Westly, a venture capitalist who was an unpaid adviser to the department, raised between $200,000 and $500,000.
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Obama campaign clocks in $82 Million for 2011
Occupy Oakland protestors burn an American flag found inside Oakland City Hall during an Occupy Oakland protest on the steps of City Hall, Saturday, January 28, 2012, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Beck Diefenbach)
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Mass arrests outside YMCA
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‘Kill the Police’: Cops Arrest Hundreds of Occupy Oakland Protestors After Street Clashes
Back in November, I spotlighted Obama’s half-billion-dollar crony drug deal involving a no-bid contract with politically-connected SIGA. Refresher course here . In November, Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill — chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting and Oversight and up for re-election in less than a year — asked HHS to review the contract. Last week, the NYPost reported that SIGA execs dumped stock when they learned the contract would be far less than they anticipated last spring. Today, GOP Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina asked the HHS Inspector General to investigate: “Yesterday afternoon I submitted my second letter to the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services regarding apparent gross impropriety on behalf of the Obama Administration.” “The more I investigate this deal, the more shocked I become at the potential corruption and insider influence taking place at the highest levels of our government. I cannot help but see the similarities between this case and the Solyndra scandal, since both involve rewarding companies tied to Obama donors, billions in taxpayer dollars, and insider dealing.” “The decisions made by HHS have caused a legitimate small business in North Carolina to be denied a level playing field to provide smallpox treatments in the event of a national emergency. I will be very interested to see how the Administration explains their actions in awarding a billion-dollar corporation such a substantial contract when it falsely claimed to be a small business.” Federal law requires that a certain amount of grants for this research and production be set aside for small businesses. In turn, small businesses will compete for these contracts and “grant awards” while convincing the government that their products will provide the most effective treatment and protections, at the lowest cost to the American taxpayer. The two companies at the center of this – SIGA and Chimerix – competed for this award and submitted their own proposals for drugs to combat smallpox. SIGA’s small business status was challenged and the SBA ruled twice that they were “Other Than Small,” and therefore ineligible for a small business set-aside contract. But rather than acknowledging SBA’s decision, HHS pulled the small business set-aside and reissued the contract as a sole-source, non-compete to SIGA Corp. for $2.8 billion. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc. is a corporation wholly owned by Ronald Perelman, and TransTech Pharma, Inc. (a privately-held drug discovery company controlled by MacAndrews & Forbes). In November 2003, Perelman announced he would invest $10 million through MacAndrews and Forbes into SIGA Technologies – at the time a tiny biotech company that was developing oral drugs to prevent and treat diseases, including smallpox and anthrax. Scandals? What scandals?
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The SIGA scandal: Calls for investigation mount
(Image source: The Atlantic)
Image source: The Atlantic
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Navy’s Plan to Keep Strait of Hormuz Open? Dolphins
It is difficult to imagine half-a-million tax dollars being spent on a four-part video series that graphically attempts to alert kids of the dangers of “raw-dogging” (a.k.a. unprotected sex), yet that is precisely what the Department of Health has done with its new video campaign titled ” More Than Just Sex .” According to Fox News, the video web series was created by DHS through the non-profit Community Health Network (CHN), which has received more than $500,000 towards the initiative. Now, New York lawmaker State Sen. Martin Golden — who alleges the videos portray unprotected sex as “so good, so juicy”– is up in arms. “This video is raunchy,” Golden reportedly told Fox News. “It’s wrong, it’s shameful and they shouldn’t be doing it.” “A half million dollars – that’s what this video cost us,” he said. “No wonder we’re spending so much in education. We’re spending it inappropriately.” As a result, Golden is now demanding that state health workers remove the taxpayer-funded video aimed that uses graphic sex lingo aimed at teenagers reportedly as young as 13-years-old. But a DHS official defended the “More Than Just Sex” series to the New York Daily News, saying the content is not “obscene” or “x-rated.” The videos feature young actors using slang to talk about unprotected sex — or, “raw-dogging” — and the graphic physical and social conditions that can arise from the practice: Fox adds that Michelle Perlman, a spokesperson for the CHN, claims the group wanted the videos to be realistic. “We wanted to have an impact, that was going to be quick and easy,” she told the Daily News. “We want people to be like ‘whoa’.” According to Golden – their mission was accomplished. “I have a 13-year-old son and I definitely don’t want my son to see this racy video,” he said. “My staff looked at it and they didn’t want their children to see it. My community is outraged.” “Somebody asked me if I saw the other three videos, but after seeing the first one I didn’t want to look at the others,” he said. “If you watch this, you will be alarmed.” “We’re spending a ton of money on education and we are 39 th in graduation rates,” Golden adds. ‘We should be teaching reading, writing, mathematics and science.” (h/t: FoxNation )
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‘More Than Just Sex’: Half-Million Dollar, Taxpayer Funded DHS Video Graphically Teaches Teens Dangers of ‘Raw-Dogging’
The Obama administration on Thursday launched a free hotline for people busted on immigration violations to call. (AP File Photo)
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Obama Administration Launches Free Hotline for Suspected Illegal Immigrants
Big Brother is here. How the feds are tracking your kid: ◼ Student privacy at risk from Feds – NY Post Would it bother you to know that the federal Centers for Disease Control had been shown your daughter’s health records to see how she responded to an STD/teen-pregnancy-prevention program? How about if the federal Department of
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What are ‘cradle to career data systems’? And why should you care?
