AP's Sept. 16 Solyndra Story, Part 2: A Pathetic 'Both Parties Were In On It' Attempt
Part 1 on the Associated Press's September 16 evening story ("Obama admin reworked Solyndra loan to favor donor"; saved here at my web host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) by Matthew Daly and Jack Gillum criticized the reporters and the wire service for making it appear as if all the findings in the story were the result of original work.
Two other paragraphs in the report in my opinion represent a blatant but clumsy attempt to give the impression that the bankruptcy of a major beneficiary of Department of Energy stimulus-driven loans was a bipartisan fiasco:
Story Continues Below Ad ↓Argonaut is an investment vehicle of the George Kaiser Family Foundation of Tulsa, Okla. The foundation is headed by billionaire George Kaiser, a major Obama campaign contributor and a frequent visitor to the White House. Kaiser raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for Obama's 2008 campaign, federal election records show. Kaiser has made at least 16 visits to the president's aides since 2009, according to White House visitor logs.
Madrone Partners is affiliated with the Walton family, descendants of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. Rob Walton, the eldest son of Sam Walton, contributed $2,500 last year to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Y'all get the point, don't you? George Kaiser, Democrat. Rob Walton, Republican. Therefore, the takeaway is supposed to be that donors to both parties were somehow involved in convincing the government to allow their January Argonaut-Madrone loan of $69 million to have senior status over all other debt, including money the company owed Uncle Sam.
Even ignoring the huge difference in amounts given -- Give me a break. But it's far worse than that. Rob Walton gave far more money to Democrats in 2008 when it arguably would have been far more relevant to getting Solyndra's original funding. Additionally, I couldn't even find the $2,500 contribution to the RNC the AP reporters claim occurred.
Madrone Partners may be funded by the Waltons, and I don't want to pretend that they have no influence, but as seen here, the investment firm's two executives, Greg Boyd Penner and Thomas A. Patterson, are not family members. In addition, the investment firm appears to have no publicly identified board or committees, which would not be particularly unusual for such an operation.
Readers will note at this Business Week link that Penner and Patterson have 115 and 39 "relationships," respectively. These "relationships" are described at each gentleman's link as "Board Members Affiliated." Those listed appear to be members of other boards on which Penner and Patterson serve. Patterson's detailed affiliation page indicates that he has no common board link to anyone named Walton. Penner has two Walton links, one with "S. Robson Walton" of Greener Capital, who is the "Rob Walton" to whom AP refers, and another with "Jim Walton" of Arvest Bank Group. The common affiliation is that all three gentlemen are on Wal-Mart's board.
In contrast to how it reported Kaiser's involvement as head of the Kaiser Family Foundation which has invested in and runs Argonaut, note that the AP reporters did not specifically say that "Rob Walton" has any active involvement in Madrone or the foundation funding it. This may be because he doesn't. If he really doesn't, why name him? If he does, why not specify what his involvement is?
Daly and Gillum were also strangely selective in identifying the political contributions of S. Robson Walton aka "Rob Walton" (2008 OpenSecrets.org link; 2010 link; note that searches on "Rob Walton" and "Robert Walton" at the Heavy Hitters section of OpenSecrets.org both came up empty):
First, note that the $2,500 contribution the AP specifically named in its story isn't present. Second, and far more important, note that Rob Walton and his wife donated far more than $2,500 to the DNC and Barack Obama in 2008. The combined 2008 total of $34,100 is about 14 times larger than the unlocated $2,500 contribution the wire service claims Rob Walton made to the RNC. If one is going to allege quid pro quo -- and again, if Rob Walton even has anything to do with Madrone, which the AP never really established -- the money going to Democrats in 2008 in anticipation of regime change is far more relevant. It is beyond comprehension why Daly and Gillum didn't report them.
It appears that Matthew Byers and Jack Gillum might have thought that their story was too harsh on Democrats and felt like they need to throw in something -- anything -- that would make it appear that Republicans also got their hands dirty with Solyndra. If so -- Nice try, guys; no sale. But, again if my take on things is correct, what an incredibly irresponsible and deceptive thing to do.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
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Comments
Sorry AP, we aren't buying
Submitted by LAM SON 719 on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 1:54am.
Sorry AP, we aren't buying any of it, just another pathetic attempt to save the moronic, lazy, shiftless, leftist dirtbag in the white house.
The Republicans started it
Submitted by Dan The Man 2 on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 3:41am.
The Republicans started it and left leaving Obama to pick up the pieces. He was too inveigled with fixing things and this just slipped through.
A corollary of "It's Bush's fault"
Submitted by Galvanic on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 3:06pm.
The Democratic spin-machine and its MSM echo gets more ridiculous all the time.
Whenever I see that a story is from AP, I automatically know...
Submitted by jawebster1 on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 3:54am.
know that if politics are involved, that it will be a story that could just as well have been written by the DNC.
Excellent Factual Reporting
Submitted by nadnad1776 on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 6:37am.
Dear: Tom Blumer
--Excellent detective work Mr. Blumer. You clearly demonstrated (once again) the leftward bias of the All Progressive News Service and their boilerplate for Democrats, Liberals, Progressives, Socialists, Communists, Palistinians, and haters of Capitalism and America in general.
Best Regards
Clear Ether
Really, AP??????
Submitted by motherbelt on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 7:20am.
And how many visits to the WH did Walton make, as compared to Kaiser?
A pathetic attempt at equivalence, indeed.
But, again if my take on
Submitted by Karcarius on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 9:03am.
But, again if my take on things is correct, what an incredibly irresponsible and deceptive thing to do.
They're democrats,irresponsibility and deception are part of their genetic structure.
Tom - LATimes is at it too, Re: Solyndra . . Bush
Submitted by Gary Hall on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 12:55pm.
Wow - great work Tom.
From a LAT's story today, I'm noticing that these details continue to be [carefully] omitted from their coverage of "Obama's One-Half Billion Panel to Nowhere." This is at least the second time this week, that the LATimes attempts to leave this impression that this was Bush's, and right on schedule the Obama folks just continued the Bush plan:
What is left out? Oh, how about an the internal email dated Jan. 13, 2009: Subject: Sylandra Meeting:
Here's from another effort on Thursday, in the LA Times:
Throughout much of the coverage, we're seeing the usual; most of the MSM's effort presents the charges through the politics of the Republican party making the charges (sometimes described as in their zest to block the new stimulus bill) - seldom does it appear that the investigative press is out making the charges. When they find their scapegoat, however, they will start digging.
Then, the first referenced LAT's article, above, brings up Mr. Kaiser:
Sure - he's denied it (Republicans must be asking him - this paper sure as heck isn't going to). Is there something else? Right over at sister New York Times: Oh, how about this from the NY Times:
How can they continue to leave out the White House visits. Sure reminds me of Mr. James Riady and the Clinton white house. Oh, on the sidebar -- the Hillary Clinton State Department agreed to let him back into the US, earlier this year. Hmm.
For the record. The only thing that I see here that is bipartisan in this story, is that the Bush administration reached out to the Democrats - the greens - and supported the development of solar technology for the future of this country. Where the lines of similarity seem to be severed, however, is that the Bush administration clearly understood the difference between economic realities (involving tax-payer money) and the need to make a president look green in front of his constituency.
(;~/ gary
Thx. And even though the Bankruptcy is over 2 weeks old ...
Submitted by Tom Blumer on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 2:37pm.
... it took Andy McCarthy at NRO to break the news that allowing the private investors' interests to be above the government's was clearly illegal.
Great info, Gary. Well done.
Submitted by Galvanic on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 3:25pm.
It all aligns with the statements by Democrats Dingell and Markey on Issa's House committee. Dingell, who reads statements lkike Strom Thurmond, portrayed a timeline which made it appear that the Obama WH was merely keeping Bush's plan on track. It deliberately left out the 13 JAN 09 decision to disengage from discussions with Solyndra.
Malarkey pointed to a rapid decrease market prices but failed to explain how this would've hurt Solyndra.
All of this distracts attention from the key facts regarding the advise of OMB to the Obama WH and the meetings at the WH.
Galv . . reminds me of Enron and the Clinton era
Submitted by Gary Hall on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 5:25pm.
I usually tell people to pull out their calendar. Bush became Pres. Jan 21, 2001. The dot.com bubble of exceptional crony capitalism, venture capitalism gone mad, irrational exuberance, and exceptional corporate fraud and waste -- I like to refer to it as the Enron Bubble --- collapsed 10 months prior to Bush's inauguration, in March 2000.
Enron was of the era of the Clinton years - the international contract awards, the guaranteed US government loans, the foreign trade missions with Ron Brown's Commerce Department, the golf with Bill Clinton, etc. Bush was a governor at the time.
Shortly after Bush became President, his administration refused the requests of Enron and it's agents (like Robert Rubin) to renew the loans and to intervene in matters involving their credit rating, etc.
As a result, Enron, like several thousand other companies of the dot.con era, promptly went out of business.
The national media has always sought to pin Enron on Bush (he can take credit for helping Enron turn Texas into the country's #1 wind energy state - a true Mr. Green) - always seeking to protect Clinton from the actual record.
The media succeeded.
Here we are again.
They're seeking to connect this to Bush - and are busy trying to find scapegoats (what that 1st LA Times piece I linked is all about) . In fact, this is the only manner in which, other than investigating Republicans, that the MSM conducts investigative reporting -- when they are seeking to protect the Democrats.
(;~/ gary
I've seen Politifact do the same thing
Submitted by povertypimpin on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 1:04pm.
Whenever the Democrats say something false our go over the top with spin Politifact will find some way to bring Republicans into it and make them look equally bad. Of course when Republicans are caught stretching the truth they won't bother to drag Democrats into the analysis.
1984?
Submitted by TempusFugit on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 2:44pm.
"We've always been at war with Eastasia"
It gets more Orwellian every year, doesn't it?
And Rolling Stone has the nerve to say Fox News is the greatest propaganda machine since Goebbels. Project much?
Did the so-called journalists
Submitted by jessieH on Sun, 09/18/2011 - 7:21am.
Did the so-called journalists at the AP go to school to learn how nto make stuff up? What was it, four years of telling their professors the dog ate it?