Politico reports on the connection between Solyndra and recent Obama fundraising:

Two Obama fundraisers involved in the controversy surrounding embattled energy company Solyndra ramped up their efforts on behalf of the president’s campaign in late summer, according to the campaign’s voluntary disclosure of its bundler list, released late Friday…

Steve Spinner, a longtime Obama fundraiser of Menlo Park, Calif., raised $500,000 or more during the third quarter, up from $200,000 to $500,000 during the second quarter.

Spinner got a spot in the administration to help monitor the clean energy program that eventually gave $535 million in loan guarantees to faltering Solyndra, which was once touted as a model for business-government partnerships by the Obama White House.

Spinner repeatedly pushed the Energy Department and the White House to commit to a loan before Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to the company’s headquarters in September 2009, according to emails released by the administration last week.

And for those who argue that the Solyndra debacle was just another case of the government making a poor investment…

Two senior Treasury officials said Friday that they had never seen a loan restructuring similar to an Energy Department loan to a failed solar panel maker.

The half-billion dollar loan to Solyndra Inc. was restructured earlier this year so that private investors moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment on part of the loan in case of a default.

Treasury officials Gary Grippo and Gary Burner told a House committee they had never seen that occur in a federal loan. Grippo is a deputy assistant treasury secretary and Burner is chief financial officer at the Federal Financing Bank, which made a $528 million loan to Solyndra in 2009.

The two Treasury officials stopped short of declaring the loan restructuring illegal, as some Republicans allege.

The more you read about the Solyndra bankruptcy the worse it gets. Our federal government appears to have just thrown money to favored friends in support of the idea of green energy. Let’s here what some of the Solyndra’s employees, sorry, former employees, had to say about the company and what they did with the infusion of tax payer cash:

Former employees of Solyndra, the shuttered solar company that exhausted half a billion dollars of taxpayer money, said they saw questionable spending by management almost as soon as a federal agency approved a $535 million government-backed loan for the start-up.

A new factory built with public money boasted a gleaming conference room with glass walls that, with the flip of a switch, turned a smoky gray to conceal the room’s occupants. Hastily purchased state-of-the-art equipment ended up being sold for pennies on the dollar, still in its plastic wrap, employees said.

As the $344 million factory went up just down the road from the company’s leased plant in Fremont, Calif., workers watched as pallets of unsold solar panels stacked up in storage. Many wondered: Was the factory needed?

“After we got the loan guarantee, they were just spending money left and right,” said former Solyndra engineer Lindsey Eastburn. “Because we were doing well, nobody cared. Because of that infusion of money, it made people sloppy.”

Angry is definitely a natural notion for a taxpayer to feel in reading about this debacle, but as I pointed out earlier, this situation is so ridiculous, one also has to laugh. For instance, this same Washington Post article reports that within a week of receiving their 500+ million dollar loan from the Obama administration, Solyndra executives asked for $400 more. Well, why not!

Just was reading this Washington Post story on the Solyndra debacle and found this gold in the beginning of the piece:

Administration officials defended the loan restructuring, saying that without an infusion of cash earlier this year, solar panel maker Solyndra Inc. would likely have faced immediate bankruptcy, putting more than 1,000 people out of work.

Even with the federal help, Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month and laid off its 1,100 employees.

Sooooo the US government had to hurry up and give money to a failing business. Sounds like good public policy to me! Here’s my guess of one of the possible internal Department of Energy discussions about whether the government should lend Solyndra millions of dollars:

Obama official #1: ‘We have to get this 500+ million dollar loan to Solyndra ASAP!’

Obama official #2: ‘Why?’

Obama official #1: ‘Because if we don’t it will go out of business very, very soon.’

Obama official #2: ‘If that is true than maybe we should take even more time to investigate the company. This might be a bad investment.’

Obama official #1: ‘Shut up! Loan approved.’

Ridiculous, I know, but probably not far from the truth. Maybe I’m also being too harsh calling these fake DOE characters ‘Obama officials’, after all it’s not like the President himself was an integral part in pushing and promoting this colossal boondoggle of tax payer dollars. Oh wait, he was:

President Obama visiting the Solyndra solar plant. The worker smiling beside him no longer has a job.

I’ll have more on this gross waste of American tax dollars soon.