AN ORGANIZED CRIME RICO LAW VIOLATION MATTER
INVOLVING SILICON VALLEY OLIGARCHS AND THE WHITE HOUSE STAFF AND
OTHER POLITICIANS THEY BRIBED
Every aspect of these assertions can be, or already
has been, proven in FBI investigations, GAO investigations, Grand
Jury hearings, civil jury trials, Congressional investigations and
major investigative journalism broadcast news reports.
Update 3.0
THE
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
ADVANCED
TECHNOLOGY VEHICLE MANUFACTURING LOAN
The Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan
Program is a $25 billion direct public finance program funded by
Congress
in fall 2008 under the guise of "providing debt capital
to the U.S.
automotive industry for the purpose of funding projects that help
vehicles manufactured in the U.S. meet higher mileage requirements
and lessen
U.S. dependence on foreign oil . " The PR department for
the U.S. Department of Energy spends nearly a million dollars per
year seeking to manipulate news and social media to try to pitch
their message that the program was a "success". In fact, it
has been, and remains today, one of the most criminally corrupt
failures in American history
The Facts:
Victims had global character assassination and propaganda-media
defamation reprisal attacks operated against them by White House
staff and their political financiers: Elon Musk, Larry Page, Steve
Jurvetson, Eric Schmidt, Steve Westly, John Doerr, et al. Jury and
FBI-compliant evidence proves this as fact.
Victims were attacked because 1.) they helped law enforcement
investigate the attackers, 2.) They competed with the attackers that
attacker's products and the Silicon Valley Cartel attackers chose to
"cheat rather than compete". Jury and FBI-compliant
evidence proves this as fact.
The attackers spent over $30M, part of that using taxpayer
resources, attacking the victims as proven in the financial
transaction records from Google, Gawker, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Media
Matters, Fusion GPS, et al. Jury and FBI-compliant evidence proves
this as fact.
Victims had been previously funded by the U.S. Government and had
a multi-decade relationship with the highest offices of the
Government, which provided them with deep knowledge of the crimes
that were committed. Jury and FBI-compliant evidence proves this as
fact.
The U.S. Department of Energy is used as a political slush fund to
pay back campaign finance millionaires while blockading the
competitors of those millionaires from reaching the market or
receiving funding. Jury and FBI-compliant evidence proves this as
fact.
The only entities who participated in the global character
assassination and propaganda-media defamation reprisal attacks were
those entities owned and controlled by the attackers. Jury and
FBI-compliant evidence proves this as fact.
Through corrupt rare-earth mining scams and control of federal
contracts and grants, attackers had planned to acquire at least one
trillion dollars in unjust gains and illegal profiteering. Jury and
FBI-compliant evidence proves this as fact.
This amount of money they sought, and the "Mafia-like"
structure they adopted, caused the suspects to engage in the most
extreme crimes, including murder and "Deep State" coup
attempts. Jury and FBI-compliant evidence proves this as fact.
A significant number of person's who were in conflict with the
attackers have died in suspicious manners. Jury and FBI-compliant
evidence proves this as fact.
The suspects have hired the largest numbers of lobbyists and
corporate manipulation lawyers in U.S. history in order to manipulate
political decisions. Jury and FBI-compliant evidence proves this as
fact.
The suspects have spent more money on political bribes than any
group of men has spent in the last century. Jury and FBI-compliant
evidence proves this as fact.
The suspects placed top federal law enforcement and agency bosses
(ie: Michelle Lee, Steven Chu, Kamala Harris, James Comey, et al)
from their own Cartel, into top government positions, with orders to
run cover and protection schemes for them. Jury and FBI-compliant
evidence proves this as fact.
California State officials including the Governor, Controller, The
Senators, Secretary of State and regional officials participated in
these crimes and pocketed the initial profits from these crimes in
covert investment banking. Jury and FBI-compliant evidence proves
this as fact.
Tesla Motors, Google, Netflix, Facebook, Linkedin, Amazon and
other tech Cartel members operate with a common goal of psychological
mass ideology manipulation and monopolistic profiteering based on
government sponsored anti-trust violations and server control
exclusivity. Jury and FBI-compliant evidence proves this as fact.
The attempted cover-ups of these crimes continues to this day.
Jury and FBI-compliant evidence proves this as fact.
A case
study in pay-to-play cronyism By Dan
Epstein (Counsel to The White House)
News
flash: Government subsidies and special-interest favors go hand in
hand.
The
latest example comes from a federal green-energy loan program. Last
month, the DC District Court ruled that
Cause of Action, where I am executive director, can proceed
with a lawsuit
against
the
Department of Energy. We’re suing the federal government for the
blatant political favoritism in its $25 billion “Advanced
Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program.”
In
principle, this taxpayer-funded program was supposed to support the
manufacture of energy-efficient cars. In practice, it rewarded a
select few well-connected companies.
Since
the program was created in 2008, numerous businesses have applied for
its taxpayer-backed financial support. Yet only a small number were
approved. Among the lucky few were two electric car
manufacturers: Tesla and Fisker .
Both
companies’ political connections run deep, especially Tesla’s.
The company’s founder, Elon Musk, was a max
donor for
President Obama. One of its board members, Steven
Westly ,
was appointed to a Department of Energy advisory
board .
And another Obama bundler, Tesla investor and adviser Steven
Spinner, secured
employment in
the department’s Loan Program Office—the very office that gave
the company a taxpayer-backed loan.
Fisker
also
has friends in high places. The company, which has since gone
bankrupt , was
backed by
a San Francisco venture
capital firm whose
senior partners donated
millions to
the 2008 Obama campaign and other Democrat causes. One
partner , John
Doerr ,
parlayed his support into a seat on the President’s Council of Jobs
and Competitiveness.
Such
connections can allow a company to exert political pressure to enrich
itself. Unsurprisingly, Department of Energy emails show that such
pressure was rampant in its loan programs.
There’s
no shortage of examples. The department’s leaders—including
then-Secretary of Energy Steven Chu—repeatedly promised to deliver
results to politicians like Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Sen. Harry
Reid (D-Nev.). One
emails reads ,
“DOE has made a political commitment” to approve a company’s
loan. Another says the “pressure is on rea lheavy” from none
other than Vice President Joe Biden. And still another
shows an
employee asking, “what’s another billion anyhow?”
Unsurprisingly,
the Obama administration gave Tesla and Fisker preferential
treatment, and then some.
The
Department of Energy revised its review process in order finish the
companies’ applications faster. The government gave
them extraordinary access to
its staff and facilities—even to the point of having government
employees personally walk them through the loan application and
approval process.The department ignored its own lending rules in
order to approve the companies’ loans. And it renegotiated
the terms of some loans after
the companies could not keep their original commitments or were
experiencing financial difficulties. Tellingly, Fisker has since gone
out of business, despite receiving over a billion dollars in loans
through this federal program.
Now
contrast this preferential treatment with what happened to XP
Vehicles and Limnia, neither of which have the same political
connections. (My organization is suing the Department of Energy on
their behalf). The two companies partnered to manufacture an
energy-efficient sport utility vehicle that would have competed with
Tesla and Fisker’s cars. They applied for loans in 2008 and 2009
under the same loan program.
The
department refused them both—and it used bogus reasons to do so.
For
starters, the department made claims that were laughably false. To
take one example: It rejected XPV’s application because its
vehicle was powered by hydrogen .
It was an electric SUV. It also raised objections that it didn’t
raise with other companies whose applications were approved. For
instance: The bureaucracy criticized the
proposed all-electric vehicle for not using a specific type of
gasoline. Yet Tesla and Fisker received the loans despite producing
similar all-electric cars.
In
light of these obvious problems and hypocrisy, both companies
presented the Department of Energy with detailed rebuttals. Yet the
government failed to respond. To this day, both XPV and Limnia are
awaiting a satisfactory reply. In the meantime, XPV
has gone out of business ,
unable to compete against its politically connected—and
subsidized—rivals.
This
casts the Department of Energy’s loan program in a new light. It
was sold to the American public as a means of promoting
energy-efficient vehicles. Instead, it was used to benefit a select
few well-connected companies. It was a blatant crony handout, paid
for by the U.S.taxpayer.
Sadly,
similar examples are widespread in Washington. That’s no surprise
considering the feds spend roughly
$100 billion a year in
taxpayer-funded handouts to businesses. This breeds the sort of
government-business collusion Americans think is rampant in
Washington. In fact, over
two-thirds of likely voters think
the federal government helps businesses that hire the most lobbyists,
shake the right hands, and pad the right pockets. They’re right.
This
points to a simple conclusion: Politicians and bureaucrats shouldn’t
use the public’s money to pad private companies’ bottom lines. As
the Department of Energy’s green-vehicle loan program shows, the
capacity for corruption is immense—and inevitable.
Note: We have absolute and indisputable intelligence agency,
FBI-verifiable and forensic expert proof of all of these assertions.
The program was used by the Obama Administration to provide crony
payola kick-backs to financiers and friends of the Obama
Administration and to attack the competitors of the Silicon Valley
financiers of the Obama Administration.
As of 2019, the U.S. Department of Energy claims that they
"overhauled" and "re-did" the ATVM program and
it's sister program: the Loan Guarantee Program. In fact, that is
false.
When you peel back the onion-skin of corruption around the covert
stock market and investment bank holdings of Eric Schmidt, Dianne
Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Elon Musk, etc.; you find that they are
invested in something called "rare-earth mining". Rare
earth mines are generally in third world nations and use child slave
labor. These toxic corrupt operations are responsible for more
murders, beatings, rapes and genocides (over control of these "blood
minerals") than anything on Earth. These minerals are used in
the electric cars, cell phones and solar panels that Silicon Valley
has attempted to control. So, you see, it isn't about "saving
the environment" ; it is about greed, bribes and corruption
on an epic scale.
The program continues today as a political slush-fund and it is as
corrupt as ever. It has NOT been "cleaned-up"! It is STILL
a cesspool of corruption! Obama hold-overs and corrupt insiders, with
personal conflict-of-interest stock and revolving door career deals,
still control the funds and steer the monies exclusively to their
friends.
The program has not funded any company who is not a
campaign-finance friend of the Obama Administration. The DOE program
attacked, lied to, stalled, delayed, gate-keeper blocked and harmed
any Applicants who competed with Tesla, Fisker and the Obama
financiers. Through the Silicon Valley control of the facade
group: "The National Venture Capital Association"
DOE's two main manipulation tricks STONE-WALLING - Where DOE staff throw outsider Applicant's
filings in a box and forget about them for many years in a
Lois-Lerner'd review process that takes any commercial bank only 2
weeks to complete. DOE spends years doing hyperbolic nothings in
order to delay campaign financiers competitors, and 2.) INTERPRETIVE
LYING - Where DOE staff make up things that Applicant's never
said and twist the Applicant's words into anything BUT what the
Applicant's intended, in order to manipulate non-favored Applicant's
into negative interpretations. DOE staff never even called outsider
Applicant's for clarity discussions of any key data. They did not
want to hear the truth, they couldn't handle the truth! They only
wanted their crony's to win the funding!
Every applicant who applied, who was not a crony insider,
hard-wired, Obama bagman was DEFRAUDED, LIED TO, STONE-WALLED
Silicon Valley oligarchs hired "Lobbyists" (who are
political operatives who offer bribes to politicians without ever
using the word "bribe") to take-over the program. Silicon
Valley insider McKinsey staffed the DOE department while working for
the Silicon Valley oligarchs. In a typical corruption example: Steve
Spinner worked at DOE handing out money to Solyndra which his wife
Alison Spinner worked at as Solyndra's lawyer, while the DNC mailer
referred to each of them as the "top West Coast fund-raisers for
the DNC".
Originally Obama's "car Czar" Steven Rattner (indicted
for stock market securities fraud), working from the West Wing of the
White House, had offered a portion of the money to Detroit Auto
Unions if the Detroit Unions ordered all of their members to vote for
Obama in exchange for bail-outs. Obama insiders David Plouffe
(indicted for payoffs to Rahm Emanual), David Axelrod, and Robert
Gibbs extended the deal to the Silicon Valley oligarchs in exchange
for global search engine manipulation favoring Obama.
Charges against the Department of Energy
supported by the factual evidence:
- DOE officials told Applicant's they had to pay tens of thousands
of dollars in order to apply for the LGP monies but with-held
responses until after the dead-line had passed in order to cut
non-Obama financiers out of the running.
- Google provided the staffing for the agencies involved, the
media manipulation for the politicians involved, and was the
beneficiary for some of the funds in a 4-way conflict of interest in
which Google staffed the largest contingent of Obama White House
staff.
- Steven Chu handed massive amounts of DOE cash to Russian
billionaires from Ener1, Severstal and other Russian connections even
though they were foreign billionaires who had no need of U.S.
taxpayer subsidies. If one wants to look at dirty Russian collusion,
they need look no further than Steven Chu, the architect of the
failed Iran Nuclear deal and corrupt Uranium One deal. Steven Chu and
Rahm Emanual ordered DOE's Sandia Livermore Labs and Argonne Labs
(who they were both connected to) to manipulate Applicant data in
order to only favor campaign financiers companies.
- DOE abuses of process defrauded non-insider Applicants out of
billions of dollars of their savings and investor monies yet DOE
never offered those that it harmed and recompense.
- DOE officials owned stock market stock and revolving door job
promises in the very companies that they were supposed to be
conducting "due diligence" on.
- Tesla Motors and SpaceX were staged as campaign finance dark
money conduits to transfer taxpayer cash from government treasuries
to private parties and then into campaign funds without transparent
public disclosure.
- The Obama Administration promised an exclusive on Afghanistan
mining deals to Frank Guistra and the Silicon Valley oligarchs for
lithium, indium, cobalt and rare-earth metals mining after USAID
pitched (
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_VyTCyizqrHs/TBaffwKixYI/AAAAAAAAH74/Wee8LTQfo3k/s1600/afghanminerals.jpg
) manipulated reports from McKinsey Consulting saying that
"Afghanistan was the Saudi Arabia of lithium and had
trillions of dollars of lithium" to dig up. It turned out to
be a lie to get oligarchs to support Obama's Afghan invasion. (
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2007/3063/pdf-page.jpg ) DOE helped
sell this lie because the Russians had already scoured Afghanistan
and found it to be fairly worthless as a mining potential. Elon Musk
bought into this for his battery monopoly. This is why Steven Chu
gave so much money to Russians at Ener1 and Severstal. DOE staff were
fully aware of this. (
http://www.mining.com/1-trillion-motherlode-of-lithium-and-gold-discovered-in-afghanistan/
)
- Google, a Tesla investor and bromance buddy with Elon Musk,
hired more lobbyists for DOE influencing than anybody had ever hired
before in U.S. history. Google hides all negative news stories about
Musk and Tesla and only shows fake news hype about Musk, Tesla and
SpaceX because Larry Page and Elon Musk share an apartment and
financial programs.
- The DOE ATVM and LGP programs are based on arbitrary metrics
which are not even followed by DOE evaluation staff. There is a
secret black-list in operation to keep companies who are competitors
to Obama's financiers from ever getting funded. Even though many
Applicant's beat every "winner" in Obama's DOE handouts,
they were excluded, denied and discriminated against simply for
competing with Obama's Silicon Valley oligarchs.
- Steven Chu, after getting thrown out of office, went to work for
the very people he was supposed to have been conducting due diligence
on. Chu is considered to be one of the most criminally corrupt public
officials ever in charge of an agency aside from his peer, who also
made corruption history: Eric Holder, who helped Comey cover-up the
crimes.
- The DOE ATVM and LGP programs resulted in: THE LARGEST
DISTRIBUTION OF TAXPAYER CASH TO THE MOST COMPANIES THAT THEN WENT
IMMEDIATELY WENT BANKRUPT IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICA!
- Goldman Sachs and Deloitte engineered INTENTIONAL bankruptcies
so that their Silicon Valley oligarch clients could claim windfall
tax write-offs which the U.S. Treasury said resulted in "unjust
gains" for those oligarchs. In other words, the tech oligarch
billionaires took U.S. taxpayer subsidies, which they did not need,
and then bankrupted their own companies so that they could reap
profits in tax write-offs. On top of this Goldman Sachs skimmed
"fees" off-the-top for arranging these deals, at taxpayer
expense, and then ALSO profited from the "bumps" to the
stock market valuations in pump-and-dump crimes. TO BE CLEAR: MANY
OF THESE BANKRUPTCIES WERE TAX SKIMS CREATED TO FAIL! After realizing
this, Applicants and Congressional insiders forced ALL of the
kick-back funded companies into bankruptcy as payback for the
corruption and abuse of their resources. Said one Senator: "If
they want bankruptcies, we will give them bankruptcies..."
- Lachlan Seward, one of the DOE money laundering insiders,
threatened Applicant's that if they "made trouble" they
"would never be funded by DOE as long as they lived".
- When Tesla Motors got their DOE money approved they had NO
DESIGN AND WERE PLANNING TO BUILD A FACTORY. Both of which were
against the so-called Section 136 Rules. Tesla used the DOE money to
hire engineers to design the car from scratch as proven by the
engineers that were hired. Tesla was running all over the country
trying to stage a real estate scam with Dianne Feinstein's Husband's
company CBRE. Tesla even got sued for these real estate scams. DOE
stated that the "rules" said you already had to have a
factory and a design, which the other applicants had. So, against the
"rules" Tesla got the money and figured out the car LATER
and did not use a pre-existing factory until they were later forced
to follow the rules.
- For the same kind of commercial loans, Bank of America and Wells
Fargo take 4 weeks to approve loans this large. DOE staff were either
too stupid to review loans in less than 3 years or were intentionally
stone-walling every applicant who was not an Obama crony.
- As shown by this letter:
https://news.wttw.com/sites/default/files/Letter%20from%20Bright%20Automotive%20to%20US%20Dept%20of%20Energy.pdf
...and hundreds of Congressional reports, DOE staff proved themselves
to be liars and scumbag political manipulators at every turn.
- The public has not seen the entire FBI and SEC investigation
records on the FBI raid and investigation of Solyndra because the
records point straight back to the White House Oval Office!
- A Congressional report on the ATVM and LG programs exposed
layers and layers of crony payola.
- The only Judges who got to rule on the cases were "Obama
Judges" appointed by or beholden to the Obama Administration.
- A CBS News 60 Minutes segment called: "The Cleantech
Crash
- Although felony-class crimes occurred, no DOE officials have
ever been charged with crimes..although multiple FBI officials have
been charged with covering up those crimes.
- Vice President Al Gore, John Doerr and Vinod Khosla have had all
of their finances tracked and connected together through covert
routes that reveal insider stock trading and government policy
manipulation, in this case, for their own personal profiteering.
- Attorney General William Barr has been formally asked, by
Applicants, to appoint a federal Special Counsel to investigate this
matter.
- The Dark Money FEC campaign finance limits were exceeded by the
Silicon Valley oligarchs by many magnitudes in this novel deployment
of quid-pro-quo and search engine rigging services for political
favors and funding.
- There has not been a single person involved in "green"
DOE funding programs who cared anything about "green energy".
The use of the term "green" was a psychological ploy to
seek to pacify the public with a crunchy granola positive vibe while
stealing taxpayer money in plain sight.
- The Obama White House produced a "white list" of
friends companies who could get funded and a "black list"
of their competitors who could never be funded because Silicon Valley
financiers said so. These lists were created from input from John
Doerr, Steve Westly and Doerr's business partner: Al Gore. Even
though most Applicant's beat the metrics, features and national
security issues of favored Obama Applicant's, no outsiders and no
non-campaign financiers would ever be approved.
- The very first Applicant for the ATVM fund was XP Vehicles,
which was solicited to apply by DOE and Barbara Boxer's office. The
1.) Section 136 law, 2.) DOE videos of meetings and 3.) DOE documents
clearly state that Applicant's would be reviewed on a "first-come,
first served"
- As of December 28, 2008 DOE staff already decided who would
"win" the money, and who would not, because the entire
program had been hard-wired, via lobbyists and insiders, to only go
to the "white list" applicants. Nobody who was not on the
original "white list" could ever get DOE funding. It only
takes one "insider" at DOE, from the Obama Administration
(many are still there) to kill any application, no matter how much
better that proposal is compared to every other applicant.
- U.S. Department of Energy and White House officials hired Nick
Denton's sleaze-ball tabloid empire comprised of Jalopnik, Gawker
Media and Gizmodo Media to run character assassination and defamation
campaigns, in partnership with the DNC's Google, to attack any person
who exposed the corruption scam at DOE.
- The GAO wrote multiple federal reports confirming that DOE was
running one of the most poorly administrated non-transparent
operations ever and that DOE staff were not even following the
Section 136 law.
- White House and DOE staff hired Gawker, Gizmodo, Jalopnik
defamation bloggers to attack those who exposed the plot. Patrick
George At Jalopnik attacks outsiders under contract with Elon Musk
and DNC. Silicon Valley campaign finance oligarchs hire him to run
hatchet jobs on innocent outsiders and then Gawker-Gizmodo-Jalopnik
uses their financial partnership with the DNC's Google to push the
character assassination articles to the top of Google web products
and searches. Patrick George, Adrian Covert, John Hermann and Nick
Cook are the sexually degenerate cabin boys that report to boy-loving
sleaze-tabloid oligarch Nick Denton. They created the Fake News
crisis in the media by flooding the internet with defamation posts
and reprisal hatchet job articles designed to damage political
enemies of the Socialists. They coordinate a large number of the
character assassination efforts at Gawker, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, CNN,
New York Times and other propaganda outlets.
- DOE staff never even communicated with Applicant's, who were not
Obama insiders; yet Tesla, Fisker and other Obama insiders got
hundreds of phone calls, meetings and careful help to hand-hold them
through the process to make certain that they got their payola while
the outsiders only got blockades, Lois Lerner "missing hard
drives" and stone-walls.
- The DEFRAUDED staff and employees of Bright, XP, Limnia, ZAP,
Brammo, and the other Applicant's, have NEVER
- The Obama Administration officials who carefully manipulate the
DOE and federal process for crony favorites include: Steven Chu,
Kathy Zoi, Carol Battershal, Steve Westly, Steven Spinner, John
Podesta, Jonathan Silver, Danial Cohen, et al; with cover-up support
from James Comey, Eric Holder, Steve Rattner, et al...
- Over a thousand other criminal and ethics violation charges are
charged against DOE and its associates yet no actual interdictions
have taken place in California or federal government actions because
the "Deep State" cover-ups are so extensive. The raw
criminality of the U.S. Department of Energy in these matters is
verified, proven and audacious...
AG Barr Finds White House Power Was Used By Obama
Administration To Spy On American Citizens And Run Dirty Tricks
Reprisal Operations
by Tyler
Durden
In his first pair of interviews since being sworn in, Attorney
General Barr told Fox
News and WSJ
that he was pursuing the investigation into the origins of the
Trump-Russia probe - an investigation he
has tasked
John
Durham, the US Attorney from Connecticut, with leading - because
Americans need to know whether the government "put a
thumb on the scale" to try and undermine President
Trump both during the campaign and during the first two years of his
term, just like "we need to ensure that foreign actors
don't influence the outcome of our elections."
Separately, he told WSJ
that "government power was used to spy on American
citizens ...I can't imagine any world where we wouldn't take
a look and make sure that was done properly."
Barr has doubled-down on using the term 'spying', which has
angered Democrats, after first using it during Senate committee
testimony from April 10, where he uttered the now-infamous phrase "I
think spying did occur."
The AG has declined to elaborate on what prompted these concerns,
though he has said he'd be interested to see the underlying
intelligence that sparked the FBI decision, in the summer of
2016, to open a counterintelligence investigation. At this point,
Durham's review isn't a criminal investigation, and
Barr hasn't offered a timetable for when the investigation might be
completed. Ultimately, the probe could lead to changing FBI protocols
involving investigations into political campaigns.
Appearing to respond to Barr's interviews, President Trump
declared that his campaign was "conclusively" spied on.
My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on.
Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really
bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was
TREASON!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May
17, 2019
As far as we know, the FBI first started investigating the
campaign after an Australian ambassador told his superiors that
George Papadopoulos had appeared to know about Russian plans to
release 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton. The FBI later sent an informant,
Stefan Halper, and a woman who identified herself as a research
assistant, to meet with Papadopoulos and push him to say whether
Russia was helping the Trump campaign.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Corrupt Greentech VC Influence
Over Washington
Katie Fehrenbacher
-
How Silicon Valley Oligarchs Took Over The Obama Administration
There’ve been a couple articles in the past few weeks pointing
to President Obama as the “clean
tech investor in chief ” and the presidential
VC with bets on clean energy . The real trend is that venture
capitalists focusing on greentech seem to have had an unprecedented
influence on U.S. federal policy and allocations of the stimulus
package.
When I attended the Department of Energy’s (DOE) first ARPA-E
conference (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy) earlier
this year in Washington D.C., I was struck by how many venture
capitalists were there. I shared a cab back to the airport with some
familiar Silicon Valley faces, and was told if your firm didn’t
have a dedicated person in Washington — in some circles they call
them lobbyists — maneuvering grant and loan programs, you weren’t
able to be competitive.
Just look at the figures from the stimulus package (which I am
fully in support of): somewhere between $50 billion and $80 billion
into clean power and energy efficiency initiatives (depending
on how you slice it ). The Obama administration has gone out of
its way to seek the advice of green-leaning venture capitalists and
entrepreneurs in the Valley on how to spend that colossal amount and
what programs would be the most affective.
Kleiner Perkins managing partner John Doerr is on President
Obama’s Economic
Recovery Advisory Board , and was able to convince Vice President
Al Gore to join Kleiner, in addition to former Secretary of State
Colin Powell. Kleiner’s investments have had some successful
government bids, most notably the $529
million loan to Kleiner portfolio company Fisker Automotive out
of the DOE’s highly competitive Advanced Technology Vehicles
Manufacturing, or ATVM, program. Fisker plans to use the loan to
build its factory and launch its electric vehicle in 2011.
If you remember, another winner of the $25 billion ATVM program
was Tesla Motors (s TLSA), which, as most of us know, was backed by
venture capitalists from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Technology
Partners, and Vantage Point among others.
I attended Khosla Venture’s LP meeting earlier this year where
the firm announced
that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair would be joining the
firm as Senior Advisor. Several of my journalism peers were comparing
the political influence Blair could wield to what Kleiner was doing
with Gore.
The Obama administration appointed former
venture capitalist Jonathan Silver as its loan chief to lead both
the DOE’s loan guarantee and ATVM loan programs. About a third of
the DOE’s loan guarantee commitments went to venture-backed
startups, including thin film solar maker Solyndra and solar thermal
company BrightSource.
I wondered
earlier this year if the loan guarantee for Solyndra wasn’t a
mistake, given the company has one of the highest manufacturing costs
out of its competitors. The company withdrew its IPO plans, citing
poor market conditions. The Government Accountability Office also
found that the loan guarantee process treated some companies unfairly
in their bids and risked “excluding some potential applicants
unnecessarily.”
There’s nothing inherently wrong with venture-backed companies
getting government support, and the energy sector needs even more
federal funding to create innovation. I support Doerr and Bill Gates’
calls
for boosting federal government investing to $16 billion per year
into energy innovation. All I’m saying is that this level of
influence should be watched.
You have probably seen
the many issues with Elon Musk And Tesla Motors including: "His
corrupt cobalt mines promote genocide in the Congo as seen in NETFLIX
Black Earth Rising" "His corrupt cobalt mines
promote mass rape in the Congo as seen in NETFLIX Black Earth
Rising" "His corrupt cobalt mines promote child
slave labor in the Congo as seen in NETFLIX Black Earth Rising" "His
is not faithful to his girlfriends" "The
workers that build his batteries die or sicken from toxic
poisoning" "Tesla bribes U.S. Senators with
cash and stock in order to get free taxpayer funds" "He
is addicted to drugs and booze" "He has
sociopath mental issues" "He is a
narcissist" "Tesla has had more recalls for
safety defects, per volume, than any other car maker. Musk refuses to
allow the use of the word RECALL but the facts are the facts." "It
is so easy to hack any Tesla and crash it, break into it or give it
bad braking orders that it is criminally negligent to allow Tesla's
on the street. Even the Chinese have hacked Tesla's from the other
side of the world!" "His partner: Steve
Jurvetson, has been charged with sex and corruption issues" "He
arranged government kick-backs with the White House" "He
is the world's biggest government mooch" "He is
a member of the Palo Alto Mafia" "Google (who
is a major Tesla investor) hides all negative Musk/Tesla news and
hypes TSLA stock in order to profiteer with TSLA stock. This is a
violation of federal SEC laws" "More drivers
have been caught driving drunk, in Tesla's, than any other car Per
Capita produced" "Larry Page is Musk's bromance
buddy and he uses Google to cover-up Musk's scandals" "His
so-called 'foundation" is just a payola and tax evasion scam for
his family" "His batteries are the most
dangerous use of lithium ion storage ever conceived" "His
partner: Panasonic has been charged with multiple corruption,
dumping, price rigging and manipulation crimes around the
globe" "Almost all of the internet 'Tesla
Fanboys' are Russian troll farms and hired bloggers that Musk pays
vast amounts of money to in order to hype up a fake image for
him" "His SpaceX is nothing more than a
domestic spy satellite company" "Musk's brain
chip company tortures small animals in bad science experiments" "His
father screwed his daughter and got her pregnant" "Dianne
Feinstein and her family own Musk interests" "You
can't put out the fires when his batteries explode" "The
fumes from his thermal battery vapors give you cancer, lung and brain
damage"
"Elon Musk only
takes over other people's ideas. He took over Tesla and ran it into
the ground, he destroyed SolarCity with his brothers self-dealing
scam, his brain cap company just cuts open the heads of helpless
animals and all SpaceX does, now that Musk took it over, is launch
satellites that spy on civilians and manipulate
media..."
DOE corruption—appointed and elected officials
should face prison time
Marita
Noon
|
An exhaustive review of 350+
pages of leaked emails lied
Paul Wilbur, President and CEO at Aptera, didn’t think they were
treated unfairly. He told me, “At the end of the day, we couldn’t
get through the process.” But, he admits, he hasn’t read the
emails.
Aptera was trying to build a very efficient electric vehicle with
an under $30K price point. Wilbur met with Secretary Chu who could
see the value in the technology. But our research shows that value
was not the deciding factor in which projects got funded and which
ones didn’t. Wilbur reports that he didn’t donate to any
candidate. He wanted to keep the whole process clean and do what was
“good for America.”
The
report
Aptera’s 100% US technology has since been sold to a Chinese
company.
Aptera was applying for an Advanced Technology Vehicle
Manufacturing loan (ATVM). Only five loans were given out through the
program and all have political ramifications. Christine Lakatos, who
has worked with me on the green-energy, crony-corruption reports I’ve
written, has done thorough research on the topic. She has read each
and every one of the 350+ pages of emails released on October 31 and
has written a blog
post report
Armed with the sweeping knowledge of the House reports and
subsequent hearings, evidence from DOE staffers (many of whom were
appointed by Obama), Lakatos’ research, and personal experience, a
different ATVM applicant has now taken its case to court citing
“corruption and negligence.”
On November 16, 2012, XP
Technologies complaint press
release Cause of
Action
According to the document filed on November 16, “Plaintiffs'
backgrounds include extensive issued patents on seminal technologies
in use world-wide, White House and Congressional commendations and an
engineering team of highly experienced auto-makers. Plaintiff brought
a vehicle design, which was proposed as the longest range, safest,
lowest cost electric vehicle, to be built in America in order to
deliver extensive American jobs nationwide. No other applicant, or
award ‘winner’, has succeeded in meeting, or (is) intending to
meet, that milestone. XP Technology developed a patented lightweight,
low-cost, long-range, electric vehicle using air-expanded
foam-skinned material for a portion of the polymer body and received
numerous patents, acclaim and superior computer modeling metrics over
any competing solution. XP presented a vast set of letters of support
to DOE from pending customers. Major auto-industry facilities and
engineers had joined forces to bring the vehicle to the defense,
commercial and consumer market.”
Over the weekend, we had an exclusive interview, on condition of
anonymity, with a senior official at XP Technologies about the
lawsuit and the experience.
He reported: “Staff from within the DOE have provided evidence
which is quite compelling.” As Aptera's Wilbur made clear, the
individuals within the DOE were very thorough. One of the emails, in
the 350+ pages, was from Secretary Chu himself in which he criticized
staffers for taking a “principled stand,” which held up the
approval process of projects the White House wanted advanced. Another
indicated that the pressure to rush was coming from “above the
agency.” Overall, the emails show that projects were rushed so that
announcements could coincide with visits, speeches, and photo ops—as
well as providing talking points for the president.
Our XP source told us “We experienced, and have been provided
evidence of, applicant submissions and reviews being modified in
order to benefit some and disadvantage others, and the business
connections between the different parties associated with the ones
that benefited is quite extraordinary.” The leaked emails
support this accusation, specifically regarding the “business
connections.” In her post, Lakatos calls it “green fraternizing.”
The emails show that certain applicants and decision makers went bike
riding together, had coffee meetings, sleepovers, beer summits,
parties, dinners, and fundraisers.
While he didn’t provide us with a name, the XP official said,
“We experienced a senior senator blockading our efforts and then
providing favors to a competitor, which then benefited his family
financially.” The discovery the lawsuit will provide will expose
the “senior senator,” but our previous research shows that
Senator
Harry Reid
XP Technologies believes that “DOE officials changed the
first-come-first-served published rules and standards of the funding
in order to take applicants in order of who they favored and who had
purchased the most influence instead of the order in which they
applied, as required.”
Having extensively studied the DOE’s various loan programs,
including the ATVM, Lakatos and I agree with our source’s startling
conclusion: “Based on the evidence provided by investigators, and
experienced directly by our team, it is hard to imagine that at least
one or more elected, or?appointed, officials might not be seeing
measures ranging from censure or even federal prison time.”
Time, the lawsuit, and subsequent investigation will tell.
While the House Oversight Committee has been digging deeply into
the mismanagement and corruption of the green energy loans, the media
has paid little attention. Other than our
report
On November 16, the Heritage
Foundation
On November 19, Lakatos, whose work is listed as “evidence” in
the legal complaint, received a call from Fox News’ Gary
Gastelu—who reported
on the story
XP has a litigation
website
The XP story and subsequent media coverage offers a lesson for
others—especially industries who have been wronged by the Obama
Administration’s practices (such as energy). The lawsuit may—or
may not—send officials to federal prison, as our XP source
suggests, but it could go a long way to winning in the court of
public opinion.
10 months