The House Energy and Commerce Committee released some White House and other e-mails relating to Solyndra. Unsurprisingly, there were many, many warnings that this was a quite risky method of using taxpayer dollars, and it appears those warnings were ignored:

White House Aide Aditya Kumar in an e-mail to deputy White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer and other White House staffers:

  “Dan: Some background.  This is a Recovery Act Grant. Details: Will be first DoE Loan Guarantee since 1980s (since the geothermal grants in the 80s, I believe).  Total amount will be $535M (with a $107M govt subsidy).  This is a solar panel manufacturing company in Fremont, CA.

Story is two things: JOBS: Solyndra estimates this will create thousands of jobs (over 3,000K was on estimate I saw but not sure how dated that was);

When Government Plays a Part, It can Bring the Private Sector Along: Solyndra has secured over large amounts in private capital which is a story in itself.”

Of course, all of the Solyndra jobs are gone, and perhaps this is a good example of government playing a part it shouldn’t.

Venture capitalist Steve Mitchell in an e-mail to George Kaiser, an Obama donor and Solyndra investor:

“Solyndra selected [Goldman Sachs] as the “banker on the left” for its S1 filing which will occur tmrw. Morgan Stanley is co-leading the IPO. The politics and pressure around this selection was nothing short of ridiculous at some level.”

E-mail from Solyndra investor Brad Jones to  top Obama economic adviser  Larry Summers:

“One of our solar companies with revenues of less than $100 million (and not yet profitable) received a government loan of $580 million; while that is good for us, I can’t imagine it’s a good way for the government to use taxpayer money (I’d prefer my opinion about that specific company to be between us). Every administration seems to feel it knows better than the private markets how to allocate capital, and I’ve just never seen that be true.”

UPDATE: Wait, there’s more!

Aditya Kumar to Jacob Levine of the Office of Energy and Climate Change:

“feels like Rahm wants this too (barring any concerns) — POTUS involvement was Rahm’s idea.”

A May 8, 2010 memo from an unidentified figure in Solyndra to George Kaiser Family Foundation Executive Director Ken Levit (George Kaiser was one of Solyndra’s largest investors):

The past five months have witnessed a tremendous competitive headwind for the company coupled with some severe management mistakes. Cutting to the chase – we will not be going public during 2010 and our longer term business plan looks to be somewhat in jeopardy….”

“I think there is still a plan here to getting a solid return out of Solyndra for ourselves (and our friends and family shares alongside us) but we have pushed out any significant positive event until 2011 and perhaps 2012.

Three weeks after this memo reveals there will be no public offering, that the long-term business plan is in jeopardy, and there is a plan to get a “solid return for ourselves”… Obama spoke at Solyndra:

It was during this event that President Obama declared, “companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.”

For the Obama campaign and Democrats, it’s “Spotlight Romney as Governor” Day.

David Axelrod — you know, the political strategist who routinely attends national-security meetings — will be in Boston, to hold a press conference in front of the State House in Boston to discuss “Mitt Romney’s economic philosophy and his failed economic record in Massachusetts.” Axelrod will warn that under Romney, Massachusetts’s unemployment rate changed from 5.6 percent to 4.7 percent, and that if elected, Romney would inflict the same pain and suffering to all of America.

For the Romney campaign and Republicans, it’s “Spotlight Solyndra Day.” They’ve unveiled a 22-page briefing on the Solyndra scandal.

And, of course, a video:

On MSNBC, President Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, refers to Solyndra as a “strategic investment.”

So, to sum up:

Mitt Romney’s performance record with his clients’ money at Bain: 70 percent profitable, according to a study by the Wall Street Journal.*

Barack Obama’s performance record with your money at Solyndra: 100 percent loss.

I know which “strategic investor” I would trust.

* Bain officials argue that the figure is closer to 80 percent over their history, but that figure appears to include investments made after Romney left the firm.

The Romney campaign wants the American public to know about more than just Solyndra. They insist, “that’s not even half” the story, pointing out similar large loans and grants to First Solar, ECOtality, SunPower . . .

They find  “$16.4 Billion of the $20.5 Billion in Loans Granted as of Sept. 15 Went to Companies Either Run by or Primarily Owned by Obama Financial Backers.”

Remember, Obama argues that Romney is too profit-focused and too obsessed with the bottom line to be an effective president.

Presume for the sake of argument that the Obama administration is correct that the stimulus and their other efforts to decrease unemployment and build a prosperous economy could have worked, but were impeded by factors beyond their control: “This recession turned out to be a lot deeper than any of us realized,” “a string of bad luck,” “the Japanese earthquake” “an Arab Spring” “economic headwinds from Europe” “uncertainty from the debt-ceiling debate” “globalization” “automation” “ATMs,” and so on.

Put aside your inclination to roll your eyes and exclaim, “excuses, excuses” for a moment, and examine what this argument really is: Obama and his congressional allies came up with a plan that could work, but only if the conditions were right, or near-perfect. Any economic instability or unforeseen circumstance, in Japan, Europe, or the Arab world, would impede its effectiveness to the point where our current circumstances — 8.1 percent unemployment, millions under-employed, 2.2 percent quarterly GDP growth, etc. — are the very best anyone could possibly expect.

Then it would be fair to ask, it wasn’t much of a plan, was it?

The specifics of economic instability are hard to predict — if this were easy, we would all be successful investors — but the general phenomenon of economic instability around the globe doesn’t seem that hard to foresee. Europe and Japan have aging populations. China’s boom appears unstable and unsustainable. The Middle East never seems all that far from a conflict, and third-world countries, home to so much of the world’s industrial base, can suddenly find themselves torn apart by political and social instability. And was the success of Obama’s economic plan really contingent upon the raising of the debt ceiling, again and again, without contentious debate, for the entirety of his presidency?

If an economic plan can only be effective if it enjoys stable, growth-promoting conditions at home and abroad . . . how good a plan is it? Because a lot of plans can work in those circumstances.

Are there no other alternate plans or visions that are a bit more resilient? Ones that cultivate the entrepreneurship of hundreds of thousands of American businesses, large and small, instead of relying on officials in Washington to make the right decision again and again? Larry Summers himself said that the federal government makes a lousy venture capitalist, and the philosophy of extending the taxpayers’ resources to a business like Solyndra is privatizing the gains (it’s not like they would trade us the patent for their products) and socializing the losses.

Of course, we can argue, and will, that there were a lot more flaws in the stimulus and Obama’s overall economic philosophy than bad luck and factors beyond his control. But it’s worth noting that even if we accept the Obama interpretation of events and accounting for all of their excuses, he and his administration are asking America to buy into a plan has already proven too risky, too delicate, too easily impeded to be effective.

Summing up the below post, 22 million Americans are currently unemployed or underemployed, and the Obama campaign wants to talk about 350 workers laid off in 1994.

For perspective, in 1994, Barack Obama had not even been elected to any office, and he had not even launched his political career in the home of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers yet.

For perspective, those 350 workers are roughly one-third the number of workers laid off when Solyndra went belly up, costing taxpayers $535 million for their loan guarantee.

Oh, and now two other Senate Democrats are expressing discomfort with the Obama campaign’s criticism of Bain:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a widely respected member of Congress, stopped short of criticizing the president, but made it clear that the campaign should pivot.

“It’s done,” she said. “Go on to other things now.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told The Hill, “I think the average American … hopes that this campaign will focus on competing visions for how to strengthen our economy, help create jobs and move the country forward.”

Pressed on whether he thought Obama’s campaign had operated within those guidelines, Coons paused.

“I’m not going to comment on President Obama’s ad,” he said, shaking his head vigorously.

Former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie just completed a conference call organized by the Romney campaign, arguing that the crony capitalism we’ve seen under Obama is a much greater threat to prosperity and the well-being of American workers than any private equity firms.

“In the private sector, they made decisions based on profit and loss and what’s going to create jobs and what’s going to work,” Gillespie said. “When you have this level of government involvement in our economy, Solyndra and the decisions on the auto layoffs, and you don’t have that transparency, you don’t know if there’s political influence – who gets a health care waiver and who doesn’t – they still don’t say how they make those decisions… That is a clear contrast, this crony capitalism that is rampant in this administration. It’s a real problem…”

From the final Morning Jolt of the week:

Per Se Can You See, By the Dawn’s Early Light

Per se what?

“Obviously, we wish Solyndra hadn’t gone bankrupt,” Obama said. “But understand: This was not our program per se.”

“Congress — Democrats and Republicans — put together a loan guarantee program because they understood historically that when you get new industries, it’s easy to raise money for start-ups, but if you want to take them to scale, oftentimes there’s a lot of risk involved, and what the loan guarantee program was designed to do was to help start up companies get to scale,” he said.

Guy Benson goes to town on the latest round of excuses:

It is true that “Republicans and Democrats” approved a green energy loan guarantee program. But “Republicans and Democrats” did not approve this loan guarantee program. As FactCheck.org reminds us, the program under which Solyndra was handed $500 million in taxpayer money was authorized in the Obama/Reid/Pelosi partisan “stimulus” bill of 2009. Zero House Republicans voted for that law. Also, a previous Solyndra loan application was explicitly rejected by Bush-era actuaries because of its inherent soundness problems. Some of Obama’s bookkeepers continued to warn against its approval, but they were overruled by the White House political team because the president’s allies were determined to make the company the “poster child” of his green vision. That’s also why Obama ignored internal worries and held a big presidential photo-op at Solyndra’s (now-defunct) factory. The list goes on: Obama DOE officials sat in on Solyndra board meetings. One of Solyndra’s top investors, George Kaiser — who just happened to be a major Obama campaign donor — also just happened to make a flurry of White House visits right before the doomed loan was given the thumbs-up. Kaiser and the White House claimed they didn’t discuss Solyndra during those meetings. They lied. We also know that even after Solyndra defaulted on its initial loan, Obama’s Energy Department conveniently restructured the loan terms, assuring that investors like George Kaiser would be first in line to get paid if (when) the company went belly-up. Obama owns this mess, and he knows it. But he’s obfuscating and dissembling to save his own skin.

Obama 2012: Because nothing is ever his fault.

Through much of 2004, we saw reporters repeatedly asking President Bush what mistakes he had made as president. We know what those reporter wanted, or expected to hear; some variation of, “I shouldn’t have invaded Iraq” or “I should have done something differently before 9/11” — perfect fodder for John Kerry attack ads. It’s a no-win situation, since every president makes mistakes — almost all of them make big ones at some point — and an honest answer invites the opposition to make hay. Shortly before departing office, Bush felt comfortable discussing decisions he regretted and areas of disappointment.

Will we see reporters asking President Obama for his biggest mistake of his first term? Will Obama tap-dance around that? Because right now, he comes across as a man who doesn’t really believe he’s made any mistakes in this first term. And you thought Steven Chu was an easy grader.

Obama is continuing to scoff at those who disagree with his energy policies:

“Some politicians . . . dismiss the promise of solar power and wind power and fuel-efficient cars,” Obama said. “They make jokes about it. One member of Congress who shall remain unnamed called these jobs ‘phony.’ If these people were around when Columbus set sail, they would’ve been founding members of the Flat Earth Society.”

Actually, nobody doubts that solar power has its uses. Solar-powered watches and calculators have been around for decades. Of course, because the gadgets they power have small energy needs, the small row of photovoltaic panels is a cost-efficient way to power the device. Powering houses and businesses and office buildings and factories and cars is a different and more difficult challenge, for several reasons — e.g., generating power on a large enough scale, the durability of the panels, what to do in areas with insufficient or irregular sunlight, and so on.

What Obama’s critics really doubt is whether the federal government should be allocating millions and billions to companies that may or may not be able to create a product at a competitive price. Solyndra received a $535 million loan guarantee because the Obama administration and the Department of Energy believed in their product — but it ultimately proved that it couldn’t compete with Chinese manufacturers who made comparable products at lower prices.

The public later found out that one of Solyndra’s top investors was a leading fundraiser for Obama in 2008, and that the Department of Energy official overseeing the program was also a top Obama fundraiser from 2008. Of course, everyone involved insists there was no quid pro quo, but we have executives and investors giving large donations to Obama’s campaigns, and then the Obama administration turning around and giving loan guarantees to those executives’ and investors’ companies — companies that had difficulty overcoming the doubts of private investors. All of this turned out pretty well for everyone except the taxpayer. Solyndra’s still handing out bonuses to employees after filing for bankruptcy.

After years of howling about Halliburton and no-bid contracts, our friends in the Democratic party have suddenly found a circumstance of wealthy company executives and investors donating to politicians and politicians turning around and handing taxpayer money to entities run by those executives and investors, and concluded the circumstance doesn’t bother them in the slightest.

If you don’t think that’s a double standard, you probably believe in a flat earth, too.

The RNC notices that another one of Obama’s favorite companies, solar-panel manufacturer Amonix, is hitting hard times. The company only officially “opened” its plant in North Las Vegas in May of 2011. The company got a $6 million tax credit to build the facility in 2009, and Obama touted the company in 2010. This week, 200 of the plant’s 300 employees got pink slips.

Oh, and in other news:

An Indiana-based energy-storage company that received a $118.5 million stimulus grant from the Energy Department filed for bankruptcy Thursday…

President Obama touted the program in his State of the Union address this year.

“In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries,” he said.

At the time, EnerDel said the grant would help the company double its production capacity and create 1,700 jobs. But the company has faced major financial problems in recent months.

This is all separate from Solyndra. And SunPower. And BrightSource. And Tonopah Solar Energy.

What’s the record for most presidential-touted companies going bankrupt in one term?

Lesson: Don’t let President Obama notice you!