Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts

Monday, November 4, 2013

Memo: Administration bungled Obamacare long before GOP had power to obstruct

Photo - Harvard professor and health care expert David Cutler, a supporter of the administration's efforts, wrote that "the early implementation efforts are far short of what it will take to implement reform successfully."An emerging theme from Democrats struggling to explain the Obamacare fiasco is that stubborn Republican opposition has hobbled the administration's efforts to implement President Obama's complex national health care scheme. If you want the particulars, just glance at "The Obamacare sabotage campaign" by Politico's Todd Purdum.
But a memo revealed in a new Washington Post examination of the rollout shows the administration was already on a disastrous path in May 2010, just two months after Obamacare was signed into law -- and six months before Republicans won control of the House and more Senate seats in the November 2010 elections. At the time the memo was written, Democrats still had the huge majorities in the House and Senate with which they had passed Obamacare on party-line votes.
In the memo, dated May 11, 2010 and sent to top administration economic official Larry Summers, Harvard professor and health care expert David Cutler, a supporter of the administration's efforts, wrote that "the early implementation efforts are far short of what it will take to implement reform successfully." Cutler continued: "For health reform to be successful, the relevant people need a vision about health system transformation and the managerial ability to carry out that vision. The President has sketched out such a vision. However, I do not believe the relevant members of the Administration understand the President's vision or have the capability to carry it out."
Cutler laid out a set of problems: 1) poor leadership at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a key organization in creating Obamacare; 2) clueless management at the Department of Health and Human Services on the subject of setting up exchanges; 3) an ineffective effort to work with insurers in implementing reform; and 4) general incompetence. "The overall head of implementation inside HHS, Jeanne Lambrew, is known for her knowledge of Congress, her commitment to the poor, and her mistrust of insurance companies," Cutler wrote. "She is not known for operational ability, knowledge of delivery systems, or facilitating widespread change."

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Obama and Democrats Lied Us Into a Bad Law ...

Well, let’s see if we can lift the veil of mystery. For starters, Obama’s statements were not  ”narrowly untrue.”  They were broadly, knowingly and entirely untrue. He repeated them over and over again, often straight into the camera. It’s nice that Greg Sargent concedes now that the president “could have been clearer.” But “could have been clearer” implies that he was a little clear about how this would work and just didn’t clarify enough. The truth is the complete opposite. He wasn’t even deliberately unclear. He was clearly dishonest. Obama was stridently deceitful. Seriously, watch this video compilation of Obama’s repeated and vociferous statements about “keeping your plan” and tell me he was just failing to be sufficiently clear that millions of people wouldn’t be able to keep their plans:

 This raises a larger problem about the wonkosphere. Ross Douthat is right when he tweets:
“Furor over ‘if you like your plan …’ is a reminder to everyone in Wonkland (where everyone knew it was BS) that most ppl don’t live here.”

I agree that everyone in wonkland knew it was b.s. But what does it say about the liberal wonks that they either never said so when the legislation was being debated or said so very quietly under their breaths. I’m genuinely curious, did Sargent or his colleagues at the Washington Post report that what Obama was saying — never mind the impression he was leaving — was a lie, or even “narrowly untrue”? I mean did they report it when it might have hurt the law’s chances of passage, not afterwards when all lies are retroactively absolved as the price for social progress.

Indeed, what is so infuriating to many of us is that now that it’s the law of the land, Obamacare supporters act as if all of the lies were no big deal and no serious person believed them anyway. But as anyone can tell you, if Obama had been honest about the trade-offs in his signature piece of legislation, it would never have become his signature piece of legislation. So please, don’t tell me the lies don’t matter.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Fast and Furious—Still Infuriating

With the economy still cratered, a slew of foreign policy debacles, and a government shutdown, most Americans probably haven’t thought much about the Fast and Furious scandal in recent months. The Scrapbook doesn’t know what it says about the times we live in that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ homicidal negligence is all but forgotten a few years later, but we’re pretty sure it isn’t good.
John Dodson
JOHN DODSON
LANDOV
The ATF is certainly doing everything it can to make sure that Americans don’t revisit its inexplicable decision to give thousands of guns to Mexican gangs, resulting in the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and dozens of Mexican nationals. Two years ago, ATF whistleblower John Dodson revealed the incompetence of the Fast and Furious operation, which led to the resignation of a number of top-ranking ATF officials. It also led to Eric Holder becoming the first attorney general in U.S. history to be held in contempt of Congress for stonewalling congressional investigators. To this day, the ATF and its overseers at the Justice Department have refused to provide the House Oversight Committee thousands of documents that would shed light on Fast and Furious and possibly prevent another such debacle from occurring.
Dodson has now written a book about the scandal and his role in bringing it to light. Surely, his story is worth telling. However, the ATF has denied Dodson the right to publish his book, using the excuse that the agency is allowed approval over “outside employment.” As if to thoroughly burnish the ATF’s deserved reputation for incompetence, here is the note the bureau sent Dodson denying his request to publish his book, as quoted in the Washington Post: “This would have a negative impact on morale in the Phoenix [field division] and would have a detremental [sic] effect on our relationships with [the Drug Enforcement Administration] and FBI.”

Friday, October 11, 2013

Media Blasts Obama: Most Closed, Control Freak Administration

You know things are really bad when the mainstream press corps trashes the Obama administration—on the record!—for its secrecy, aggressive efforts to control information and hostility towards the media when it exposes information viewed as unfavorable to the president.  
This includes an unprecedented number of prosecutions of government sources, seizures of journalists’ records and even criminal investigations of reporters. As a result government sources are afraid to speak to journalists, even if it doesn’t involve sensitive national security issues but rather routine stories that help keep elected officials and government accountable. “There’s no question that sources are looking over their shoulders,” said a senior managing editor at the Associated Press, who added that “sources are more jittery and more standoffish.”

 A veteran chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, David E. Sanger says “this is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered.” Consider the source; a journalist at a powerful mainstream newspaper well known for its favorable coverage of everything Obama. The surprising lashing by the mainstream media comes this week via a special report on the Obama administration and the press from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

A former executive editor at the Washington Post wrote the analysis, which includes scary details of the Obama administration’s efforts to control and even silence the media. It also offers a forum for some of the nation’s best known journalists and editors to vent about the unprecedented animosity towards the press. The Obama administration is “squeezing the flow of information at several pressure points,” says a former CNN Washington bureau chief who directs the School of Media and Public Affairs at a university. This includes limitations on everyday access necessary for the administration to explain itself and be held accountable.

How bad is it? “The Obama administration is far worse than the Bush administration,” in trying to thwart accountability reporting about government agencies, according to Ellen Weiss, Washington bureau chief for E.W. Scripps newspapers and stations. ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton, who has been covering presidents since Gerald Ford, reveals in the report that “there is no access to the daily business in the Oval Office, who the president meets with, who he gets advice from.”  In fact, Compton said many of Obama’s important meetings with outside figures on issues like health care, immigration, or the economy are not even listed on his public schedule which makes media coverage difficult.

“I think we have a real problem,” said New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane. “Most people are deterred by those leaks prosecutions. They’re scared to death. There’s a gray zone between classified and unclassified information, and most sources were in that gray zone. Sources are now afraid to enter that gray zone. It’s having a deterrent effect. If we consider aggressive press coverage of government activities being at the core of American democracy, this tips the balance heavily in favor of the government.”

Friday, September 20, 2013

Obamacare should be a golden issue for Republicans in 2014. But they are screwing it up.

A man holds a sign at the Tea Party Patriots 'Exempt America from Obamacare' rally on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, September 10, 2013. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS HEALTH CIVIL UNREST)Just 42 percent of those polled support the law while 52 percent disapprove. Dig into those numbers and a clear passion gap presents itself; 26 percent strongly support the law while 39 percent strongly oppose it. But, wait, there’s more. Thirty six percent believe the law has made the health care system worse while 19 percent think it’s made it better. (Among independents, just 16 percent think it has made things better while 35 percent say it has made things worse.)  Just nine percent of people said that the law had made their family’s health care costs better while 33 percent said it had made them worse. (Among independents, that was 10 percent better/34 percent worse.)

That set of numbers — combined with Obama’s middling popularity (47 percent approve/47 percent disapprove in the Post-ABC poll) — should be the main ingredients for Republican electoral success in a second term, midterm election like the one coming in 2014.
But, but, but. Republicans have chosen to fight on the one piece of ground that isn’t favorable to them on healthcare: tying its defunding to keeping the government open.
In that same Post-ABC poll that shows dire reviews for the health care law, just 27 percent of respondents want Congress to shut down the government rather than fund Obamacare. (To be clear: Republicans are emphasizing their desire to keep the government open but are simultaneously insisting that the legislation have defunding Obamacare tied to it, a non-starter for the Democratic Senate and White House.)

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Waking a Sleeping Giant in Colorado

Democrats knew what they wanted in Colorado, but they overreached. 

Two weeks ago, the Washington Post declared the recall elections of two powerful state senators in Colorado a national “referendum on guns.” Indeed, the defeat of state-senate president John Morse and fellow state senator Angela Giron will cause some Democrats to rethink their push on gun control.

But of course, many Democrats have reacted by shrugging off the results. Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has dismissed the losses as the result of “voter suppression, pure and simple” (orchestrated by the National Rifle Association and the Koch brothers, of course). Mark Glaze, executive director of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, predicted that the victory by gun owners would be short-lived at best and that gun-control legislators would take comfort in knowing that his group “will have their back.”

In reality, it is hard not to appreciate what was accomplished. The difficulties facing the recall were overwhelming:

 Both state-senate districts were overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2012, President Obama carried Morse’s district by 21 percentage points and Giron’s by 19 points.

 These were the first recalls of legislators in Colorado history. Nationally, recalls of state legislators, particularly state legislative leaders, has been very difficult. Morse and Giron were only the 37th and 38th state legislators in U.S. history to face recall votes (before this vote, precisely half the efforts had succeeded). Prior to Morse, there had only been four recall elections against legislative leaders, and the legislative leader was retained in three of those four races. Giron was also a powerful senator, serving as vice chairman of the very important, especially for her rural district, Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Energy Committee.

Friday, July 26, 2013

Obama to address Organizing for Action summit Monday

President Obama speaks about the National Security Agency's secret data collection. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)President Obama is scheduled on Monday to address supporters of Organizing for Action gathered for a day-long summit in Washington, an event that kicks off a month of stepped-up campaigning by the advocacy group.
Obama will speak at a “working dinner” of volunteers, donors and staff assembled at a downtown hotel, his second in-person address to OFA  since it launched in January. Other speakers will include Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood.
The meeting is part of what OFA has dubbed “Action August” – a month in which it aims step up pressure on lawmakers home for the summer recess over issues such as immigration reform, gun control and environmental protection.
“It’s all about making sure members of Congress hear directly from the people they represent, on the issues that matter to all of us,” OFA executive director Jon Carson wrote in an e-mail to supporters.

Monday, July 22, 2013

Zimmerman verdict: 86 percent of African Americans disapprove

George Zimmerman arrives in the courtroom for his trial at the Seminole County Criminal Justice Center, in Sanford, Fla., Friday, July 12, 2013.  Zimmerman is charged in the 2012 shooting death of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin. (AP Photo/Orlando Sentinel, Joe Burbank, Pool)African Americans have a mostly shared and sharply negative reaction to the shooting of Trayvon Martin and the not-guilty verdict in the resulting trial, while whites are far more divided, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
At least eight in 10 African Americans say the shooting of the Florida teenager was unjustified, recoil at the verdict in the trial and want the shooter, George Zimmerman, tried in federal court for violating Martin’s civil rights.
On the Martin shooting in particular, the racial gaps are extremely wide.
Among African Americans, 87 percent say the shooting was unjustified; among whites, just 33 percent say so. A slim majority of whites (51 percent) approve of the not-guilty verdict in the Zimmerman trial, while African Americans overwhelmingly and strongly disapprove. Some 86 percent of blacks disagree with the verdict — almost all of them disapproving “strongly.”
There is also a partisan tinge to the public views. Among whites, 70 percent of Republicans but only 30 percent of Democrats say they approve of the verdict.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

EDITORIAL: Dirty Tricks on Election Day


THE WASHINGTON TIMES -- The race for the White House is coming down to the wire, and the closer this contest gets, the greater the chance it could be decided by electoral shenanigans.

Though voter fraud affects everyone, it has turned into a highly partisan issue. Republican efforts to strengthen laws to require voter identification and an audit of voter rolls have met persistent challenges from Democrats and the Obama Justice Department. Democrats pretend such fraud is imaginary and allegations to the contrary must be manifestations of racism. This argument not only has a corrosive effect on the political culture, it is demonstrably untrue.

Independent investigations across the country have identified serious systemic problems. An audit by Election Integrity Maryland found cases of deceased voters still on active rolls, duplicate voter registrations and people listing vacant lots or business addresses as residences. In North Carolina, investigations discovered several thousand voters listed at the age of 110. Another 30,000 turned out to be deceased. Sometimes these are just paperwork errors, but other times something far more troubling is going on.

Maryland’s 1st Congressional District Democratic challenger Wendy Rosen was forced to withdraw from the race in September after she admitted casting ballots in both Maryland and Florida. In Philadelphia, there are precincts where voter turnout surpasses 100 percent of those registered there. In North Carolina, some early voters noted that their touch-screen ballots for Mitt Romney were defaulting to Barack Obama. Local election officials said the problematic machine needed “calibration.” However, this illustrates the frightening potential for deliberate fraud in electronic and computer-based voting. Without a physical record, there’s no way of verifying whether anyone was disenfranchised. We may one day look back on the “hanging chad” as a bulwark of democracy.

The Obama campaign has made early in-person voting part of its end-game strategy, rushing supporters to the polls before they have a chance to change their minds. This, too, is an invitation to fraud. Human Events reported that non-English-speaking Somalis were being taken by the busload to vote early at Ohio polling places, shepherded by Democratic minders.

Via: Washington Post

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Thursday, October 25, 2012

The Least Shocking Endorsement Of All-Tima: WaPo Backs Obama…


(CNN) – The Washington Post announced in an editorial Thursday their endorsement of President Barack Obama.

The Post, which also endorsed then-Illinois Sen. Obama in 2008, said that while much of the campaign for the White House has “dwelt on the past,” Obama is in a better position to lead in the challenges that lie ahead.

The Washington-based newspaper, whose editorial page leans left, said their endorsement comes recognizing disappointments in Obama’s first term but said the president “is committed to the only approach that can succeed: a balance of entitlement reform and revenue increases.”

The editorial contrasts this with what it said is Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s future – “one in which an ever-greater share of the nation’s wealth resides with the nation’s wealthy, at a time when inequality already is growing.”

The Post notes dissatisfaction that Obama failed to reach a fiscal deal with Congress in 2011, the president’s isolation “inside a tight White House circle” as well as his attitude toward business as an “obstacle rather than a partner.”


Monday, October 22, 2012

THE BIG FAIL: Fact Checking Obama At Debate #2: 13 Lies And Counting…


An Assortment Of Obama’s Lies During The Second Presidential Debate

 


LIE #1: OBAMA MISCHARACTERIZED HIS RESPONSE ON LIBYA

THE CLAIM: Obama: “The Day After The Attack, Governor, I Stood In The Rose Garden, And I Told The American People And The World That We Are Going To Find Out Exactly What Happened, That This Was An Act Of Terror.” OBAMA: “Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job. But she works for me. I’m the president. And I’m always responsible. And that’s why nobody is more interested in finding out exactly what happened than I did (sic). The day after the attack, Governor, I stood in the Rose Garden, and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened, that this was an act of terror. And I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime. And then a few days later, I was there greeting the caskets coming into Andrews Air Force Base and grieving with the families.” (President Barack Obama, Presidential Debate, Hempstead, N.Y., 10/16/12)
THE FACTS: The Washington Post ‘s Fact Checker: Obama Did Not Say “Terrorism” In The Rose Garden And “It Took The Administration Days To Concede That That It Was An ‘Act Of Terrorism’” Unrelated To The Video. “What did Obama say in the Rose Garden a day after the attack in Libya? ‘No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this nation,’ he said. But he did not say ‘terrorism’-and it took the administration days to concede that that it was an ‘act of terrorism’ that appears unrelated to initial reports of anger at a video that defamed the prophet Muhammad.” (Glenn Kessler, “Fact Check: Libya Attack,” The Washington Post’s The Fact Checker, 10/16/12)
THE FACTS: Politico ‘s Mike Allen: In The Rose Garden, Obama Said “Very Generally, We Will Not Let Acts Of Terror Go Unpunished.” POLITICO’s MIKE ALLEN: “There’s going to be a bunch of fact checks, but just to do a fact check here. When Governor Romney said that Obama had been slow in calling the Libya attack terrorism and the President said ‘oh wait a minute, in the Rose Garden, the day after, I referred to an act of terror’, Candy Crowley stepped in and said that he was right. It’s actually arguable. And I’m looking at the transcript of that White House event the day after and he started by referring to them as selfless acts, which is casted very differently than the sort of very planned action that we now have. Later toward the end, he makes a reference to 9/11 and he says, very generally, we will not let acts of terror go unpunished. So that’s going to be an arguable point.” (Presidential Debate Wrap-Up, Politico Live, 10/16/12)

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Heritage Expert Confounds the “Fact Checkers” on Welfare Reform


“Obama’s Palace Guard,” Mark Hemingway’s Weekly Standard cover story exposing fact-checkers for willful complicity in the gutting of welfare reform, is a must read for anyone who cares about the state of the news media—and for those who plan to watch, cover, or participate in the presidential debates.
Hemingway meticulously details the checkosphere’s studied indifference—with rare exceptions—to the plain facts. In 4,000 words, he lays bare the media fact-checkers’ almost comical avoidance of the one expert who could help them understand how the Obama Administration is dismantling “workfare”: The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector, who helped write the work requirements in the 1996 welfare reform law and just published his latest paper on the outrage.
PolitiFact, Hemingway concludes, came off as more interested in consulting liberal critics of welfare reform and dismissing Rector, conservatives in Congress, and Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) for daring to suggest the left would want to undo the workfare program it opposed from the start:
PolitiFact said [Rector’s] concerns should be dismissed for no other reason than they are at odds with the Obama administration’s spin. PolitiFact didn’t even address the fact that Rector … was the source of the charge the Obama administration is gutting welfare reform or that he helped write the welfare reform law.
The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler gets some credit from Hemingway for awarding Bill Clinton two out of four “Pinocchios” for stretching the truth in his speech defending Obama’s move to administratively undo welfare reform.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Have Polls Always Underestimated The GOP Vote?


Knowing that exit polling has historically overestimated the Democratic vote and knowing how much the final regular polling in the 1980 race understated Ronald Reagan’s support compared to Jimmy Carter, it is worth looking at what the final poll results said in other presidential election years.
The facts show a similar trend in a pro-Democratic direction almost uniformly. Historically speaking, pollsters have underestimated how many people would vote for the Republican presidential candidate:
Writing at National Review, reporter Jim Geraghty quotes an anonymous pollster who provides a helpful review of past polling data:
In 1992, Gallup’s final poll had Clinton winning by 12 percentage points, he won by 5.6 percentage points. In late October 1992, Pew had Clinton up 10.
In 1996, some reputable pollsters had Clinton winning by 18 percentage points late, and Pew had Clinton up by 19 in November; on Election Day, he won by 8.5 percentage points… In 2004, pollsters were spread out, but most underestimated Bush’s margin. (2000 may have been a unique set of circumstances with the last-minute DUI revelation dropping Bush’s performance lower than his standing in the final polls; alternatively, some may argue that the Osama bin Laden tape the Friday before the election in 2004 altered the dynamic in those final days.) In 2008, Marist had Obama up 9, as did  CBS/New York Times and Washington Post/ABC News, while Reuters and Gallup both had Obama up 11.
Now, if this was just random chance of mistakes, you would see pollsters being wrong in both directions and by about the same margin in each direction at the same rate – sometimes overestimating how well the Democrats do some years, sometimes overestimating how well the Republicans do. But the problem seems pretty systemic – sometimes underestimating the GOP by a little, sometimes by a lot.
In 2004, the final telephone surveys mostly favored George W. Bush against John Kerry but the exit polls clearly did not. As usual, they overstated the Democrat vote (see our earlier report on reasons for this) which led many Democrats to expect that Kerry would win the popular vote and the presidency. When that did not happen, it triggered a widespread belief among hardcore Democrats that Republicans had somehow managed to “steal” the election in several different states, particularly in Ohio.
Via: Newsbusters

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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

MSM Tipping Point On Obama in the Middle East?


The repercussions from 9/11/12—the day the roof fell in on the Obama administration’s Middle East policy—continue to rumble across the diplomatic and political landscapes. Before that day, much of the country’s political and media establishment had been studiously ignoring signs of trouble in the Middle East or, when problems were too serious to ignore, studiously refraining from drawing conclusions about the overall state of US policy in the region.
The anti-American riots that have been rocking the Muslim world since 9/11 have shaken the establishment out of its complacency. Increasingly, even those who sympathize with the basic elements of the administration’s Middle East policy are connecting the dots. What they are seeing isn’t pretty. It’s not just that the US remains widely disliked and distrusted in the region. It’s not just that the radicals and the jihadis have demonstrated more political sophistication and a greater ability to organize and strike than expected and that the struggle against radical terror looks longer lasting and more dangerous than thought; it’s that the strategic underpinnings of the administration’s Middle East policy seem to be falling apart. A series of crises is sweeping through the region, and the US does not—at least not yet—seem to have a clue what to do.
The New York Times and the Washington Post are both thoroughly alarmed by the state of the region after 9/11/12 and the reporters if not the editorial pages have moved on from the “Blame Bush” approach. The latest article by Helene Cooper and Robert Worth in the Times cites some pretty biting criticism about the President’s approach to the Arab Spring from (unnamed) top aides and associates. It even quotes an Arab diplomat who sounds nostalgic for the good old days of W to illustrate a criticism of the President made by an (unnamed) State Department official who said, speaking of the President:

Monday, August 20, 2012

Lamestream coverage leans left


By Howie Carr
Sunday, August 19, 2012 - 
+ Recent Articles


The more the campaign goes on, the more desperate the bowtied bumkissers of the lamestream media become in their attempts to save the failed administration of their hero.

The latest example: A hip-hop expert went on MSNBC (where else?) and claimed that using the word “angry” to describe Barack Obama is racist. Then he threw in the n-word for good measure.

Angry used to be popular with this crowd, at least when describing “angry white men” (Republican voters) or “temper tantrums” (GOP victories).


But now “angry” joins an ever-growing list of moonbat-proscribed words and phrases that have been deemed “racist.”
Also, were you aware that we’re in an economic “recovery”? And that Barack has “created” more than 4 million jobs? 

That’s what his cheerleaders report, day after day, with straight faces, even when they glumly add that the newest numbers are “unexpectedly” bad.

When Obama abruptly changes his position on an issue (think gay marriage), he is said to have evolved. When Mitt does the same (say, on abortion), he flip-flops.

Ann Romney wears a $990 shirt in May, and the Washington Post denounces her as out of touch and “indicative of a tone-deaf campaign.” Last month in London Mooch-elle Obama showed off an embroidered jacket that cost $6,800. The verdict? She “wowed ’em” at Buckingham Palace.


Wednesday, August 15, 2012

DOE loan chief warned staff that personal e-mail could be subpoenaed


Tuesday, the Washington Post reported on documents showing that Jonathan Silver, the former head of the Department of Energy’s $38 billion clean-energy loan guarantee program, directed a staff member not to use personal e-mail addresses in official DOE correspondence in order to prevent personal accounts from becoming eligible for government subpoena — and did so a matter of days before the now-failed, $500-million-loan-recipient solar company Solyndra went bankrupt.

“Don’t ever send an email on doe email with a personal email addresses,” Silver wrote Aug. 21, 2011, from his personal account to a program official’s private Gmail account. “That makes them subpoenable.” …
Silver repeatedly communicated about internal and sensitive loan decisions via his personal e-mail, the newly released records show, and more than a dozen other Energy Department staff members used their personal e-mail to discuss decisions involving taxpayer-funded loans as well. The Washington Post received the e-mails from Republican investigators on the committee. …
Silver said Tuesday that he did not mean to avoid congressional scrutiny. “I intended to advise my DOE colleagues to use their official email for official purposes and personal email for personal purposes,” he said in a statement. “It was never my intention to avoid the requirements of the Federal Records Act.”
…The White House and Chu have repeatedly asserted that the Energy Department staff made all loan decisions based on merit, without regard to politics or donors. …
Silver wrote on June 12, 2011, to David Lane, counsel to White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, arguing that approving a loan to a solar-generation facility called Project Amp would help Obama politically.
Despite Silver’s protestations, this all looks more than a little bit sketchy. Perhaps instead of worrying over how to avoid making loan-related correspondence subject to Congressional subpoena, maybe they should have been worrying about — oh, I don’t know — not doing things that would make a Congressional subpoena cause for alarm?

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