With the current interest in the Benghazi testimony and the FBI's decision not to warn Boston police about potential danger from the pair that bombed them, I wanted to mention the following small item which otherwise might go unnoticed.
According to the Associated Press via Fox News on-line today, “A Michigan company that received a $50 million federal loan to make vans for the disabled has stopped production and laid off its 100 workers.”
Vehicle Production Group (VPG), Allen Park, Michigan, “received the loan in 2011 under the same clean-energy program that provided a $529 million loan to electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc. Fisker had received $192 million before a series of problems led U.S. officials to freeze the loan in 2011.”
But here are the two parts of this story that really intrigued me.
First, Aoife McCarthy, a DOE spokeswoman, said the loan program "was always intended to involve taking some risks by supporting innovative and cutting edge technologies that hadn't been tried on a commercial scale before."
So, from her statement, It sounds to me like the Department of Energy perceives itself as to being in the venture capital business. Which is fine with their own bucks I suppose, but not if you’re doing it with taxpayer’s money. And especially more despicable when those at the top of the administration have proven time and again they know less than zero about handling funds of any kind whatsoever.
Which leads me to the next natural question, which is: If these various businesses lent to ever make a profit, which I realize is almost impossible, what happens to it? For example, as a taxpayer and thereby an investor, do I get interest payments or a dividend check from borrowers using my money?
Regarding the loan, VPG's former chief executive, John Walsh, said “the DOE loan was a small piece of the $400 million VPG raised, mostly through private investors like Washington-based Perseus LLC." Which brings me to the next item of interest because, “Perseus Vice Chairman James Johnson is a major fundraiser for President Barack Obama, and he briefly headed Obama's vice presidential selection committee in 2008. A DOE spokesman said in 2011 that Johnson, a former CEO of housing mortgage giant Fannie Mae, played no role in persuading the Energy Department to award the loan to VPG.”
So, this guy Walsh who headed a business that went bust after blowing $50 million taxpayer bucks, wants folks to believe that it’s just a coincidence that the major investor is tight with the incumbent. And also that the money was just a drop in the bucket, having little to do with his company at all. Which makes me quite sure that If I buy that one, this guy will try to sell me shares in a toll-bridge he owns that connects Manhattan to Brooklyn.
In other news, I found a couple of items suggesting that some in the major media may be beginning to worry that Benghazi story might not simply be swept under the carpet. Consequently they seemingly don’t want to to get branded as the Hillary panderers they are, so they’re starting to cover their tails.
According to, Jonathan Karl ABC News on-line via Drudge, “When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.
ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.”
And also, Lisa Meyers, NBC News Senior Investigative Correspondent wrote the following: “First of all, in her Congressional testimony, which is (Hilary's) only sustained questioning on this subject -- in her Congressional testimony she basically tried to slam the door on any further questions by saying, remember the dramatic statement, 'what difference does it make?”
So, perhaps, this story will continue to grow and more news sources will come to their senses, finally admitting what a total incompetent the bosses wife was. And if they do that, maybe there’s a chance that all the other miserable failures of the current administration will start getting fair coverage, giving us all a chance to begin recovering from the disastrous lack of skill and leadership of the past five years.
That’s it for today folks.
Adios
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