Sad: DNC defaulting on convention loan; sticks Duke Energy for $10 million

Anybody dumb enough to guarantee a DNC loan is getting what they deserve.  Is is sad democrats won't pay their bills.

The Democratic National Committee has no plans to repay Duke Energy for an unprecedented $10 million line of credit it guaranteed to help the Democratic convention’s local host committee put on President Obama’s three-day nominating convention in Charlotte, N.C., last September.

A Duke company official said the company was claiming the money as a business expense for tax purposes, meaning shareholders will foot $6 million of the cost, according to a report in the Charlotte Observer.

The large loan and the secrecy surrounding it have government watchdog groups deeply concerned. They say the arrangement raises serious conflict-of-interest issues for Mr. Obama and challenges his claim to be committed to disclosure and transparency.

Since guaranteeing the loan, Duke Energy previously had refused to disclose the payment terms or when it would come due. At the end of January a Duke Energy spokesman referred all questions about the loan to Dan Murrey, a surgeon in Charlotte who was chairman of the convention host committee.

Busted: Emails prove Obama used DOE loans to help Harry Reid get re-elected...

Least surprising story of the day...

Via Beltway Confidential:

President Obama claims that political considerations did not influence the Energy Department’s green energy loan program, but newly-released internal emails show that his administration subsidized Nevada companies in order to help Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., win his 2010 reelection campaign.

“And these are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics,” Obama said last week when asked about the green companies that have gone bankrupt despite receiving taxpayer support.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released DOE emails today that compromise Obama’s position on two counts: one, the emails show that Obama himself was involved in approving loans; two, DOE officials were keenly aware of the political interests at stake, as they regarded the loans as a way for the White House to help Reid by giving him a way to brag about bringing federal money into Nevada.

Messages from late in 2010 demonstrate that DOE officials were concerned that President Obama’s personal desire to get DOE loans approved was putting tax payer money at risk.

Yet Another Obama Fundraiser Gets $400 Million Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Guarantee

Green pay for green play?

Via Washington Examiner:

Abound Solar, given a $400 million Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee for a project expected to create 400 permanent jobs, receives private financial backing through an investment firm founded by a fundraising bundler for President Obama.

The Sunlight Foundation notes that Bohemian Companies, which was founded by billionaire and Obama bundler Pat Stryker, participated with other companies in the “second institutional equity round of financing” in 2008 for Abound Solar, which recieved $104 million total through that round of financing.

Stryker gave $50,000 to Obama’s inauguration, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and raised a further $87,000 for the inauguration. Stryker has since donated $35,800 to the 2012 Obama Victory Fund, Sunlight reports.

Keep reading…

Abound Solar  makes solar panels. Solyndra made solar panels. The Chinese made solar panels much cheaper than Solyndra. Solyndra went bankrupt and took hundreds of millions of our tax dollars with it. I predict this company will be in bankruptcy within three years.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's brother-in-law's company owns part of company that received a $737 million solar plant loan

Thee is nothing to see here. Please move along.

Department of Energy officials and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have slammed as absurd reports from conservative blogs that inflated the connection between Pelosi's brother-in-law and a Nevada solar power project that received a $737 million federal government loan guarantee this week.

SolarReserve, based in Santa Monica, received the loan guarantee to build a 110-megawatt solar-thermal plant in Tonopah, Nev., that will use the sun's heat to create steam to drive a turbine.

Among SolarReserve's investors is Pacific Corporate Group, a private-equity firm headquartered in La Jolla (San Diego County). Ronald Pelosi, the brother-in-law of the House Democratic leader and a former president of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, is an executive with the firm.

Fed Passed out Tens of Billions of Dollars to Foreign Banks

The Federal Reserve has put American taxpayers on the hook for tens of billions in loans to foreign banks. You should be outraged.

The biggest borrowers from the 97-year-old discount window as the program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program surged to a record. The disclosures may stoke a reexamination of the risks posed to U.S. taxpayers by the central bank’s role in global financial markets.

Oh, and they fought to keep this information secret.