o'teapot dome - Obama Admin $6.3B Ties to Clean-Energy Firms

Obama's clean energy cesspool exposed

"Obama Administration Has Ties to Clean-Energy Firms"
By Paul Scicchitano, NewsMax.com, Wednesday, 15 Feb 2012
article source: http://www.newsmax.com/US/Clean-energy-venture-capital/2012/02/15/id/429561
link source: http://times247.com/articles/obama-s-dirty-ties-to-clean-energy

President Obama promoted his clean energy
agenda in a March 2011 speech at
 Georgtown University in Washington, D.C.
Photo Credit: AP

     The U.S. Department of Energy provided $2.4 billion to clean-energy companies with ties to the former firm of Sanjay Wagle, a venture capitalist who was a Barack Obama fundraiser during the president’s 2008 campaign.
     DOE provided the money over a three-year period to clean-energy companies in which Wagle’s former firm, Vantage Point Venture Partners, had invested, according to The Washington Post, which reported that Wagle left his California firm to join DOE shortly after Obama’s election.
     Moreover, the Post found that some $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing were provided to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers.
     While the White House sought to play down the relationship between staffers and advisers with venture capital ties, David Gold, a venture capitalist and critic of Obama’s investments in clean technology, said that it would be naïve to believe there wasn’t some subtle influence.
     “To believe those quiet conversations don’t happen in the hallways — about a project being in a certain congressman’s district or being associated with a significant presidential donor — is naïve,” Gold said. “When you’re putting this kind of pressure on an organization to make decisions on very big dollars, there’s increased likelihood that political connections will influence things.”

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     The Teapot Dome scandal was a bribery incident that took place in the United States in 1922–23, during the administration of President Warren G. Harding.   Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome and two other locations to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding.  In 1922 and 1923, the leases became the subject of a sensational investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh.  Fall was later convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies.

     Before the Watergate scandal, Teapot Dome was regarded as the "greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American history".  The scandal also was a key factor in posthumously further destroying the public reputation of the Harding administration, which was already unpopular due to its poor handling of the Great Railroad Strike of 1922 and the President's veto of the Bonus Bill in 1922. (source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal) 

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