Steven Chu Should Lose His Job Over The Solyndra Scandal

The Secretary of Energy takes responsibility for and defends the granting of a half-billion-dollar-loan guarantee to an imploding solar panel maker. But that's not where the campaign donor buck stopped. In testimony Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Steven Chu, caught in a tangled web of administration deceit regarding a $535 million guaranteed loan to Solyndra, tried but failed to continue the administration line that the affair was just a good-faith bet that went bad. "As the Secretary of Energy, the final decisions on Solyndra were mine, and I made them with the best interest of the taxpayer in mind," Chu claimed in his opening statement. "I want to be clear: Over the course of Solyndra's loan guarantee, I did not make any decision based on political considerations." If political considerations were not involved, then explain the Oct. 30, 2010, email in which advisers to Solyndra's primary investor, Argonaut Equity, said the Energy Department had strongly urged the company to put off an announcement of looming layoffs until Nov. 3, the day after the midterm elections in which President Obama's failed stimulus was a hot issue. In point of fact, newly disclosed emails show Democratic fundraiser and Solyndra investor George Kaiser talked directly with White House officials about the now-bankrupt solar company's $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. Kaiser, a major Obama bundler and backer who raised $50,000 to $100,000 for the president's election campaign, was one of Solyndra's primary investors. Kaiser himself donated $53,500 to Obama's 2008 election campaign, split between the DSCC and Obama for America. In a March 5 email, Kaiser wrote to Solyndra board member Steve Mitchell: "BTW, a couple of weeks ago, when Ken and I were visiting with a group of Administration folks in DC who are in charge of the stimulus process (White House, not DOE) and Solyndra came up, every one of them responded simultaneously about their thorough knowledge of the Solyndra story, suggesting it was one of their prime poster children."...more