Bain to His Existence --II

Barack Obama has chosen to ignore criticism by prominent members of his own party and continues to to demonize Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital. That's fine, but if private equity deserves scrutiny, and the mainstream media has scrutinized Bain to death, then Obama's "public equity" endeavors also need scrutiny.

In an informative article in The Washington Post, Marc Theissen, outlines the President's amateurish attempt at equity financing and loan guarantees.

Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters — leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions.

Thiessen provides the names of six "green" companies, all of whom have failed and put people out of work after the Obama administration invested over 4 billion dollars. That's billion with a "b" and that's your money, not investments from private individuals of organizations.

But that's not the big story. Thiessen continues:

Amazingly, Obama has declared that all the projects received funding “based solely on their merits.” But as Hoover Institution scholar Peter Schweizer reported in his book, “Throw Them All Out,” fully 71 percent of the Obama Energy Department’s grants and loans went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.” Collectively, these Obama cronies raised $457,834 for his campaign, and they were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.35 billion. Obama said this week it’s not the president’s job “to make a lot of money for investors.” Well, he sure seems to have made a lot of (taxpayer) money for investors in his political machine.

All that cronyism and corruption is catching up with the administration. According to Politico, “The Energy Department’s inspector general has launched more than 100 criminal investigations” related to the department’s green-energy programs.

Now the man who made Solyndra a household name says Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital “is what this campaign is going to be about.” Good luck with that, Mr. President. If Obama wants to attack Romney’s alleged private equity failures as chief executive of Bain, he’d better be ready to defend his own massive public equity failures as chief executive of the United States.

Looks like Obama's public equity funding of green companies was more about rewarding his bundlers that it was about protecting the taxpayer's money. But why would anyone be surprised—that's the Chicago way.