Ener1 Goes Belly Up. Taxpayers Lose $118 M

Another one bites the dust. Ener1 has filed for protection under chapter 11. Ener1 received $118.5 million in Department of Energy loans's. Reporting assets of $73.9 million and debts of $90.5 million in its Chapter 11 petition, the company blames it failure on competition from Korea and China. Of course news of General Motor's Chevy Volt and the fire caused by the battery probably won't improve the demand for any company's battery. In October, NASDAQ delisted the company due to non-compliance with Securities and Exchange Commission filing requirements. A month later, the company’s president, chief executive, and top financial officer were fired. The company operates its sole domestic plant in Mount Comfort, Indiana

Issa Warns Holder More Subpoenas May Be Issued

Congressman Darrell Issa is questioning Eric Holder why Patrick Cunningham of the US Attorney Phoenix office who has invoked the fifth amendment was allowed to work in the DOJ if he had in fact committed crimes that warranted his protection from self incrimination. In a letter to Holder Issa wrote;

"Mr. Cunningham’s broad assertion of his Fifth Amendment privilege raises the specter that the Department has allowed him to continue in his position as Chief of the Criminal Division knowing that he might have criminal culpability himself."

“I have reserved the right to authorize another subpoena for his testimony at a future date … Due to Mr. Cunningham’s recent actions, the Committee will be making further document requests of the Department,” he continued.

Holder is scheduled to testify in front of the committee on February 2, 2012

The Cato Institute Fact Checks Obama's State of the Union Speech

I turned the speech off and played solitary so I'm hearing most of this for the first time.

Manufacturing Tax Breaks? Gimme a Break!

Hang on to your hats! The White House has provided details to its manufacturing tax breaks announced with much ado in last night's State of the Union Speech. It would be going to far to call them breath taking. Probably "exciting" would be a reach. Actually "ho hum" is about right.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that the breaks taken with the corporate tax reform outline would actually hurt U.S. businesses but no plan is perfect. The intent of this plan is not to spur manufacturing it's to punish business and drive up energy prices. The six point plan would:

• Remove tax deductions for moving costs associated with relocating abroad. The money saved from this change would be used to provide a 20 percent income tax credit for the expenses of moving operations back to the United States.


• The second change would target an existing domestic production incentive on manufacturers who create jobs in the United States and double it for “advanced manufacturing"


• Another welfare give away. The plan would provide $6 billion to help local communities deal with job loss from relocation.


• Provide $5 billion in green energy tax credits. I'll bet that left you breathless!


• Occasionally an objet d'art is found in the flotsam and jetsam of Democratic legislation and here it is. It would provide 100 percent expensing on plant and equipment. Too good to be true from this administration. There must be a catch.


• Close a loophole that exempts profits on “intangible property,” such as patent royalties, when those properties are transferred overseas.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce chief tax counsel Caroline Harris said that the change to domestic production credits is actually a punishment for oil-and-gas companies, which will make energy prices increase. Same old whore just a new dress.

Gingrich Has Huge Lead In Minnesota

Newt Gingrich has a commanding lead in Minnesota with the caucuses only two weeks off. According to Public Policy Polling (PPP). The breakdown is; Gingrich, 36% Romney, 18% Santorum, 17% and Paul with 13%. Should Santorum drop out Gingrich would lead 44% to 20%.

Romney's Moderate Instincts May Do Him In

Newt Gingrich may be a pain in Mitt Romney's neck but he is not the only problem Romney has in Florida. Part of Mitt's problem is the help he's hired. If I expect to win in Florida I'm going to hire the people who ran Marco Rubio's campaign not those who ran Charlie Crist's but not Mitt. Romney has hired Stuart Stevens. Stevens and partner Russ Schriefer are the principals in the high-profile Stevens & Schriefer Group. These are the moderate consultants who offered Crist clever advice when he hugged Obama. Okay, maybe the hug was an ad lib the the general tone of Crist's administration which saw him lose to Rubio was pure Steven & Schiefer. Even moderation should be practiced with moderation.

Stevens & Schriefer specialize in helping Republican candidates running in blue states by flaking off the moderate voters from the Democrats. Guess what? Florida isn't a blue state and this is a Republican primary not a general election. Gingrich has fired up the conservative base and Romney's people are preaching "moderation". Florida political junkies are comparing this race to the Crist-Rubio race and if they are correct Romney may follow Crist into political oblivion.

Obama rep: We're not supporting American values

  This excerpt is from the SOTU speech last night. I confess I was already asleep in my chair, mouth open and dreaming of an island in the sun but here it is:

Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. What's at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to reclaim them.

  Now read this, which the newly appointed US ambassador to Russia said publicly:

The new U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, said that in dealing with the former Soviet Union, he and the Obama administration would be advocating “universal values” and “not American values.” [SNIP] 

“And we -- as President Obama has said many, many times -- we’re not going to get into the business of dictating that path,” McFaul said. “We’re just going to support what we like to call ‘universal values’ – not American values, not Western values, universal values.” 

  Okay, so is it just me, or do these statements seem contradictory?
  As always with these weasels, you have to actually observe what they do and not just what they say.
  Lying is a way of life.

Chesapeake To Curtail Drilling But Not In Ohio

As natural gas prices have fallen Chesapeake Energy announced it would reduce the number of working drilling rigs and delay pipeline construction. That comes as bad news for the Marcellus shale in northeastern Pennsylvania, the Haynesville shale in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas and the Barnett shale in Texas but it's good news for Ohio. Chesapeake will focus on liquid-rich plays, including Ohio’s Utica shale that “offer superior returns in the current strong liquids price environment.” It's an ill wind that blows no good and what Chesapeake is saying is that it is shifting its resources to where it can get the greatest return on its investment and that place is the Utica Shale. The Utica is a hybrid play. It yields liquids with its natural gas so while natural gas prices may be in a free fall due to the short term glut; the liquid portion of the play continues to be very profitable. Utica wells produce oil, propane, ethane and butane, all of which are lucrative because they have a wide variety of uses. As rigs are idled in other shales some of them will be shifted to Ohio and he Utica.
.

It's ironic that as Obama announces his long delayed endorsement of the natural gas boom it would go into a stall that probably will not restart until after the 2012 election. As natural gas prices remain low and gasoline prices increase this summer his decision on the Keystone XL pipeline will provide political fodder to Republicans. As export facilities are developed, gas fired power plants constructed, and more vehicles, especially heavy trucks, shift to natural gas it will again be a hot play. As Keynes once said, "In the long run we are all dead." Some may be politically dead in both the short and long run.
Update: The Dayton Daily News has more on this story and it a good read.

Palin; Chris Christie Got His Panties in a Wad

Sarah Palin says Chris Christie " Got his panties in a wad". We don't know how big of a fan she is of Newt Gingrich but she is no Mitt Romney groupie.

Gingrich Leads In Gallup Poll

In the latest Gallup daily tracking poll Newt Gingrich has pulled ahead of Mitt Romney. He has erased a 23 point lead and now leads Romney by 4.

LightSquared Attempted to Bribe Senator Grassley With A Call Center

This blog was one of the first blogs to report the LightSquared scandal. At the time it seemed that the administration was the sole culprit in the case when it pressured Air Force Major General William Shelton to change his testimony about the adverse effect LightSquared's proposed 4G LTE network would have on GPS. Later it was learned that the waiver granted by the FCC which was chaired by Julius Genachowski, a law school buddy of President Obama was tantamount to a $10 billion gift to LightSquared if it could successfully build out its wireless network. Further digging revealed that many in the Obama administration were invested personally in LightSquared and that one Obama crony,
Donald Gips had reaped a $500,000 profit when he sold his stock options and that Senator Obama had once purchased $50,000 worth of Skyterra stock, the company that owned the broadband spectrum which was acquired by Harbinger Capital and renamed LightSquared.

Okay, team Obama got caught with its hand in the cookie jar and unless it can come up with another retirement plan soon they may have to live out the rest of their lives in the middle class. Now a new wrinkle to the case is emerging and this case may turn toxic. Sen. Chuck Grassley has been a consistent and persistent critic of LightSquared and now he is charging that LightSquared is attempting to use "improper influence" to silence him. If one wants to bribe a Senator one should know the Senator's price and in this case it seems LightSquared missed big time. Senator Grassley is hopping mad and has written a letter to Harbinger Capital's CEO Philip Falcone expressing his outrage. Grassley states that twice his staff has been contacted urging him to "pull punches" in his investigation. If the Senator would agree to not rough up LightSquared too much Iowa, Grassley's home state, would be rewarded with a "call center".

On January 6, 2012, at approximately 12:45 p.m., a member of my staff who is investigating the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) decision to grant a waiver to LightSquared, a company owned by your hedge fund, Harbinger Capital Partners, received a phone call from Mr. Todd Ruelle of Fine Point Technologies. Mr. Ruelle indicated that he “only gets paid if this deal goes through” and that “there will be a call center in the Midwest, possibly in Iowa, if this deal goes through.” This statement is of particular concern in light of your e-mail to my staff on October 5, 2011, which read in part, “The last thing I want to do is to make this more political than it already is. It doesn’t belong in that arena. However, since we are already there, I believe I can make this into a win for the Senator, Lightsquared and the consumer.” Taken together, these two statements implied an invitation to pull punches in my investigation. I won’t be a part of that. …

In the course of his phone call to my staff, Mr. Ruelle indicated that while he had not yet been paid by you or Harbinger Capital Partners, he had been offering you advice regarding LightSquared’s negotiations with me and the FCC. Mr. Ruelle stated that he did not appreciate the involvement of lawyers and suggested that you directly ask to meet with me, which you then did.

In addition to this comment, he also told my staff that he had booked you for an appearance on Fox News. A recent FOIA request made public by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) yielded an e-mail from Mr. Ruelle to a federal employee forwarding his e-mails to Fox News bookers where he arranged for you to appear on the Fox News Channel. In this e-mail chain, Mr. Ruelle writes to the federal employee, in reference to your appearance in which you rebutted charges of political influence with the Obama administration and the FCC. Mr. Ruelle wrote: “I have arranged to hit back HARD!” After that email, the government employee asked Mr. Reuelle not to contact him in the future

Grassley has referred the matter to the Senate Ethics Committee which is a pretty savvy thing to do. As of now, since he does not chair a committee Grassley has been hamstrung in his investigation by the majority party but the Ethics Committee is composed of an equal number of senators from each party. Meanwhile LightSquared and team Obama must tread water since the FCC had better not act while LightSquared is stymied in a Senate investigation.

Don't get lipstick on me!

Obama says. Gateway Pundit.

US Attorney To Take Fifth But Did Nothing Wrong. Video

Let me make sure I've done my research correctly. I want to get this right. Attorney General Eric Holder says that no one in the DOJ knew about Fast and Furious until he read about it in the newspaper. Strike that. Eric Holder was the only one in the DOJ who didn't know about it until he read about it in the newspaper because everyone else in the DOJ sent him memos that he didn't read. In any event, there was no wrong doing in the DOJ that all we need to know. Now we are hearing that an Assistant US Attorney in the Phoenix office, Patrick Cunningham is resigning, has lawyered up, and intends to invoke the fifth amendment protection against self incrimination rather than speak on the record about wrong doings that never occurred while he was working at DOJ. As I have stated before when US Attorneys start taking the fifth something must be wrong. Right? Congressman Darrell Issa lays it out in the video below. It's getting close to special prosecutor time!

SOTU check list

Let me be perfectly clear. 
Fair.
Millionaires and billionaires.
Green energy.
Fair.
Unprecedented.
Inherited.
Deficit.
Fairness.
For the children.
Health care.
New technologies.
We've only just begun. Ha.
Bin Ladin. Been there. Done that. Ha.
Bringing troops home.
We're all safer now. Ha. Not.
Public service.
College for everyone. Free.
Fiscally responsible. Maybe that'll include a budget for the first time.
Fair share.
Deficit.
Increase revenue.
The wealthiest among us.
Tax the rich.

Mark Oxner Ad: Children Depicted as Galley Slaves on the USS Obamaboat

Talk about a hard hitting ad. No, this ad which pictures children as galley slaves on the ship of state, formerly the USS Constitution renamed the Obamaboat, is not put out by former loud mouth Florida Congressman Alan Grayson it's being run by his opponent Mark Oxner. It could not have happened to a nicer guy.

Crony Capitalism Spreads to DOD

Surely it's just coincidence that an American company would be denied a chance to bid on a Department of Defense contract that was shipped off shore to a George Soros affiliated company. Of the twenty green energy loans doled out by the Department of Energy 16 of them went to Obama campaign contributors which is also coincidence. The latest bit of Obama malfeasance is the contract for a new attack aircraft which went to Brazilian company Embraer which is currently under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Justice Department, for possible violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Embraer is accused of engaging in bribery in three countries, none of which have been identified publicly. If found guilty, the company could be banned from doing any business with the US government at all. The SEC’s investigation of Embraer went public about three weeks before the Air Force disqualified Hawker Beechcraft without explanation. The Air Force refused to let the American competitor, Hawker Beechcraft, even bid on the project even though there were several advantages to allowing it to have the bid.

• The AT-6 is designed and manufactured in the US to be used by the US and its allies.


• Keeping this contract in the U.S. will help preserve 1,400 domestic jobs at 181 companies in 39 states.


• The AT-6 draws its heritage from the airframe of the number-one training aircraft in the world, the Beechcraft T-6. The company has built more than 725 T-6 aircraft, which are used to train every fixed-wing military pilot in the United States and are successfully operated by six allied air forces around the world. The graduation to the AT-6 light attack airplane would be a natural progression.


• The AT-6 is the sum of the Air Force's proven T-6, A-10C mission system and MC-12W sensor suite, which offers the Department of Defense logistics and cost efficiencies that no other aircraft in the competition can match.


• The weapons and avionics systems included on the AT-6 are familiar to NATO allies and have been proven effective on many continents and in other NATO aircraft.

Not going quietly Hawker Beechcraft has filed suit in the Court of Federal Claims following notification late last week that the Government Accountability Office has declined to review its protest of the decision by the U.S. Air Force to exclude the company's Beechcraft AT-6 from the Light Air Support competition.

Rep Trey Gowdy; Washington Does Not Have Special First Amendment Rights

Congressman Trey Gowdy from South Carolina is one of the best Tea Party finds in the 2010 election. Billing himself a just a simple country prosecutor Gowdy grills a Park Service supervisor about his refusal to enforce the law at McPherson Square in Washington.

"Just let me tell my constituents who want to visit DC this summer that they can come to any park they want to and they bring their tents as long as they say they're protesting."

"So you're not drawing a separate first amendment rule for insomniacs versus narcoleptics?"

 

Another Democrat revealed as liar and leaker

  It's not that Republicans don't lie. 
 They do. 
  But to lie in a way that endangers the lives of others is particularly despicable. It ain't just politics anymore. These are crimes.
  Yesterday we had the revelation of a Democrat consultant/operative who tried to steal the identity of the Iowa Republican Secretary of State to make it look as if he had committed a crime. 
  Today the story is of a CIA agent who endangered the life of a fellow CIA operative in an attempt to discredit the Bush administration.
  Remember all those notorious leaks to the New York Times during the Bush years? Leak after leak after leak?
  It has now been revealed that the leaks originated from former CIA official and former John Kerry staffer John Kiriakou.
  If you read the bland Washington Post article yesterday, as I did, you might wonder just how guilty Kiriakou is and how wrong he is.

In an interview with FBI officials last week, Kiriakou denied disclosing the names of covert officers and expressed dismay that defense attorneys, let alone detainees, had learned CIA officers’ names, according to the Justice Department complaint. 

The document also cites an e-mail that Kiriakou allegedly sent to the CIA interrogator after the New York Times story was published, denying that he had talked except to warn the reporter that naming the interrogator “might not be illegal” but “would certainly be immoral.”

  But Powerline has read the criminal complaint and calls Kiriakou's behavior "sickening."   
  Kiriakou is alleged to have provided to the New York Times (and the WaPo) extremely personal information about another CIA operative named Martinez who interrogated Al Qaeda members at Guantanamo. 
  This personal information enabled the NY Times reporter to stalk Martinez and his family; the information was also given to other reporters, who photographed Martinez and passed those photos on to Al Qaeda in Guantanamo. 
  Hinderaker at Powerline praises Obama's DOJ for doing the right thing in the case of these leakers but also asks why the New York Times editor and publisher are not also charged.
 Kiriakou claims he asked the Times not to reveal the name and then lied to the FBI that he himself had given the name and personal information to the Times. All three men knew and acknowledged that the release of Martinez's name would endanger himself and his family.
  This didn't stop them. 
  Theirs, apparently, was the higher moral authority, of getting the Bush administration.

The State Of The Union Mess

Ever since the glory days of Lyndon B. Johnson days like today, the day of the State of the Union Address had an almost Christmasy feeling. Eager cabinet secretaries giggled in the glee that new federal largess would soon be visited on the many deserving project under their purview. New rights and new freedoms were constantly being discovered in budgetary esoterica. There was "freedom from want" and a "right to a job". Then the "right to affordable healthcare" was discovered and while not a favorite of the public it was loved by the political class who would be exempt from it so it was duly ordained as a natural right, passed into law and then the music died. The president is obligated by law to present a budget not to give a speech but President Obama is better a talking than he is at budgetary concerns so the country will get a speech but no budget and like it. Showing up with an empty sack on a traditional day of giving can be a little awkward especially to blue state legislators so what will the president serve? In the past he has served red meat to his adoring buffoons by attacking the members of the Supreme Court. That's not a good idea this year. The Supremes have been rather testy lately. They have handed the Obama administration two 9-0 losing decisions in recent weeks and during oral arguments in Sackett v EPA the justices all but bitch slapped Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm L. Stewart across the courtroom. The administration may even lose the vote of its own Elena Kagan.

Now Obama, with no money to give must cast about for a new target for his demagoguery or face the wrath of discontented Democrats. Oh, for the glory days of 2009 when then Speaker Nancy Pelosi jumped up and down like a wound up toy, applauding every inanity. Vice President Biden elected to forgo his nap and joined the Speaker in the almost erotic bliss that filled the chamber as Democrats anticipated a near trillion dollar stimulus slush fund. But now as the great orator Jeremiah Wright would say, "the chickens have come home to roost." Probably the Tea Party and its adherents will be called on to sate the blood lust of the party that puts people first. Although thought to be dead by the popular media, the Tea Party can still be vilified as the awful enemy that destroyed so many political careers. It hit the Democratic party like a plague in 2010 and the landscape is still littered with political corpses of the brave men and women of the party that only wanted the best for their friends and allies in business and labor. So if I were to bet, I would bet that tonight the Tea Party and House Republicans will be demonized far more than Ahmadinejad has ever been.

Where Is The Outrage At MF Global

Since no one else is asking when will the DOJ investigate the MF Global theft of customers' funds I will. Jon Corzine, a former head of Goldman Sachs, former United States Senator, and former Governor of New Jersey has presided over grand larceny to the tune of $1.2 billion dollars yet the mainstream media has allowed this story to slip from public view. The fact that $1.2 billion dollars is missing absent an immediate excuse is prima facie evidence that a theft has been committed yet no grand jury has been convened and no arrests have been made. The video below in which Terry Duffy of the CME Group, the parent of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is six weeks old. In that video Duffy flat out tells the Senate committee that a senior employee of MF Global stated that segregated funds had been transferred out of the customer accounts and that Jon Corzine was aware of it. Contrast the treatment of MF Global to that of Gibson Guitar where federal agents with guns drawn herded production employees into the parking lot then forced them to leave their personal affects and go home so the feds could investigate some allegedly illegally imported wood. Where is the outrage and where is the justice? BTW where is Occupy Wall Street when the corruption is real?