The stench of corruption that characterizes the Solyndra scandal — the affair of the so-called green energy company, run by a billionaire Obama crony, that cost taxpayers a fortune — permeates the whole green energy scene.
But a recent article — amazingly, in the Washington Post, hitherto a bastion of Obama Regime support — turns over yet another rock, exposing yet more maggots crawling around the putrid Department of Energy (DOE).
What is humorous about this piece is that it focuses on “venture capitalists” who were in on the, shall we say, less idealistic side of the green industry.(Obama, by the bye, raised more than twice as much campaign money from the venture capital industry as did his rival McCain.) The listed include many worthy luminaries.
- Sanjay Wagle was a major fundraiser for Obama in 2008, leading a group of greenies called “Clean Tech for Obama.” He then left his company, Vantage Point Venture Partners, to join the DOE team in charge of doling out $80 billion in green energy subsidies. Is it any coincidence, comrades, that companies in which Vantage Point had invested raked in $2.4 billion from the DOE slush fund?
- David Danielson left General Catalyst to join Obama’s DOE. Subsequently, the DOE handed out $105 million to three companies backed by General Catalyst. The DOE denies any connection here — pure coincidence.
- David Sandalow is a longtime Democrat player (he was part of the Clinton Administration as well as a fellow at the Brookings Institute, a liberal thinktank). He was paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars by venture capital company Good Energies (don’t you just love these names?) the same year he left it to join the DOE (2008). Again, according to the DOE, it is pure coincidence that SolarReserve, one of the companies invested in by Good Energies, scarfed up $737 million in DOE loans.
- Steven Spinner (a marvelously Dickensian moniker) raised over a half-million bucks for Obama. He was then made a loan advisor to the Green Regime’s DOE, which awarded venture capitalist firm Wilson Sonsini’s client firms $2.75 billion in various forms of financing. By another astonishing coincidence, Spinner’s wife just happened to be working for — Wilson Sonsini!
- John Roos was a major “bundler” for Obama’s 2008 race. He was also CEO of Wilson Sonsini when its clients received all that DOE pelf.
- Steve Westly was another big donor-bundler for the Obama campaign. He is the founder of venture capitalist firm Westly Group. He also served on the DOE advisory board, the same DOE that forked over $600 million to companies invested in by the Westly Group.
- David Prend is head of the venture capital firm Rockport Capital. Prend has long been affiliated with the DOE, going back to the most recent Bush administration, and continued his role under Obama. Companies supported by his firm (including the infamous Solyndra) received $668 million in money from the DOE.
Some years back, I reviewed a great book by Arthur Brooks, Who Really Cares?, which showed conclusively that progressive liberals are actually far less charitable on average than people who don’t support redistributionist governmental policies. That is, progressive liberals generally were shown to be liberal only with other people’s money.
What is emerging now is a corollary to that thesis. It is now obvious that venture capital firms run by progressive liberals venture only other people’s capital.
