Lil White Lies: Sorting out Solyndra--THE Novel

Coming across a PolitiFact ruling that arguably could be one category higher or lower, particularly those in the center spectrum of rulings, is not a particularly good way to prove PolitiFact is biased, or that a particular rating is incorrect.  Even my series Grading PolitiFact Liberal-Style suffers from that.  I'm trying my best to "tell 'em like I see 'em."

One method my conservative counterpart and his partner in crime try to prove a PolitiFact (PF) rating deserves more than just one move or two is what I would call “dramatic writing.” The words you use, the tone of your writing, can make things look much worse than they are. Those of us who “journalize”—particularly when we have a political axe to grind—can make it look like suspicious connections or behavior, even when they can be shown to be historically common and/or not unusual, are hugely criminal. In other words, there’s not just smoke, there’s a gigantic fire burning down the city, and everyone is just not as smart as Deff Jeff to see it.

Another review by Deff Jeff Dyberg called “Sorting out Solyndra” does just that. He calls it a “clusterfact”—borrowing from “cluster” as a group with the four-letter “F” word replaced with “fact”, which means “a chaotic mess with multiple problems.” You kind of wonder why he even goes to such lengths in writing such a “magnum opus” (3,600+ word count) if that’s indeed what it is. He appears to have been apprenticed by who else but my conservative counterpart to take the review apart sentence by sentence, with complaints not always justified.

Another opus could be written to show how he jumped the shark and “cluster-facted” himself, but I don’t have all day to comb through everything. So I’ll just make a few points about his most strident “facts” of himself.

Speaking of “Tu Quoque Memes”. A large part of Deff Jeff’s novella centers around the tu quoque complaint: that Obama referred to the Solyndra loan process as having started under President Bush, and the Democrats likewise following suit as defense. But there’s another “tu quoque” that he artfully ignores in keeping with his conclusion that the “Solyndra scandal is a rotting pile of stink in a bucket of corruption.” Because if Solyndra meets his definition of “scandal” there’s more scandals in the stink pile. Remember the Koch Brothers, those big Republican contributors?

Koch Supply and Trading, LP, one of the world's largest crude oil trading companies, will become the newest supplier of crude oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) under President Bush's plan, announced last November, to fill the nation's emergency oil stockpile to its full capacity by 2005.

Of course, by people like Bryan and Jeff, no correlation or causation there.

Or how ‘bout our former VP, Dick Cheney and his company Halliburton? No, no causation or correlation there, or even cause for accusations of “scandal” or “corruption”:

Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse, the former chief oversight official of contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers, has reached a $970,000 settlement six years after she was demoted for publicly criticizing a multi-billion-dollar, no-bid contract to Halliburton—the company formerly headed by then-Vice President Dick Cheney. Greenhouse had accused the Pentagon of unfairly awarding the contract to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root. Testifying before Congress in June 2005, she called the contract the worst case of government abuse she had ever witnessed in her 20-year career.

Wait, there’s one more! One that comes out and just says it!

An inspector general's report charges that top U.S. housing official Alphonso Jackson urged staff members to favor friends of President Bush when awarding Department of Housing and Urban Development contracts.

Favor friends of President Bush? Nah! No cronyism or scandal there! This was in 2006, at the peak of the housing bubble. I wonder if any friends of President Bush went belly up when the housing market crashed, and how this affected their HUD contracts. But that’s okay by Deff Jeff.

Live on Arrival. Deff Jeff also incorrectly states that the loan to Solyndra was “dead” and “had been rejected by the Bush administration.”

…the important number PolitiFact fails to report is the dollar figure approved for Solyndra during Bush's term: A whopping $0.00. In fact when Bush held office the Solydra deal was dead. No matter how much they spin this one the fact remains that every penny that taxpayers will lose on Solyndra came under loans approved by the Obama administration that were previously rejected by the Bush DOE

The most egregious untruth is highlighted: “In fact when Bush held office the Solyndra deal was dead.” In fact, his PolitiFact buddies had covered that point already in a separate ruling—and it was far from “dead”:

House Republicans investigating Solyndra have claimed that the Bush administration ultimately rejected the Solyndra loan, but that's not quite the case. Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and news media point out that Bush energy officials wanted to get the loan closed on their way out the door — it was listed as the first of their "three highest priorities through January 15." (Obama took office Jan. 20, 2009.) But the Energy Department's credit committee held things up for more analysis.

"The number of issues unresolved makes a recommendation for approval premature at this time. Therefore, the committee, without prejudice, remands the project to the LGPO [Loan Guarantee Program Office] for further development of information," the committee said.

It noted Solyndra's project "appears to have merit." But the clock had run out.

That didn't keep Bush from touting the loan guarantee program on his way out of office. On Jan. 6, 2009, in remarks on conservation and the environment from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, he said, "We dedicated more than $18 billion to developing clean and efficient technologies like biofuels, advanced batteries and hydrogen fuel cells, solar and wind power, and clean, safe nuclear power. We're providing more than $40 billion in loan guarantees to put these technologies to use."

As explained by that evil left-wing website Media Matters:

The Department of Energy's loan guarantee credit committee, not the OMB, remanded the application, saying that that although the Solyndra project "appears to have merit," the committee needed more information. The loan programs staff -- still under the Bush administration -- subsequently developed a schedule to complete Solyndra's due diligence that would approve the conditional commitment in early March 2009 and close it by April 2009. Even FoxNews.com reported that "the Bush officials were still weighing the decision on a loan right up until the handover to the Obama administration." In March the credit committee, staffed with the same career officials that previously remanded the application, recommended approval.

In other words, the Solyndra deal was not dead no matter how Deff Jeff tries to spin it. It was a work in process, not yet finalized.

Handily Ignored. Deff Jeff makes a big deal out of PF’s devoting only one line to there being “only” a handful of Solyndra executives who’ve made contributions to Democrats while PF emphasized in a full paragraph the participation of Republicans in Solyndra investments. But he fails to note that the head honcho of Solyndra, the person those executives reported to, President and CEO Brian Harrison, is a registered Republican.

He also conveniently misses board member John Walecka, who “donated $2,400 in 2010 to California Republican Tom Campbell in his unsuccessful GOP primary bid for the chance to run against Boxer.”

Then you have to consider the contributions themselves: many of them were made long prior to when all the Solyndra “scandal” took place: He has one board member who contributed $13,500 “since 1998” and another having contributed $7,150 “since 1991.” He should have just left those out, but then he might just have a handful, but that would put him in agreement with PF, and who wants that?

Spinning Spinner. Then Deff Jeff brings up another contributor, Steven Spinner, a big Obama fund-raiser who was a “top administrator” at the DOE and whose wife’s legal firm is represented Solyndra in its “negotiations with the DOE.” In Bryan White terminology, that is called a “red herring”—a distraction. Jeff does dutifully note that Spinner signed an ethics pledge and recused himself. But he thinks he’s found another missing link in the Obama-contributor connection, when there’s not much of one.

Deff Jeff makes another melodramatic, over the top protracted pitch of right-wing angst that 1.3% of ARRA investments in green technology didn’t work out, and it’s due to the practice of political favoritism that can only be done by Democrats, never by the perfectly innocent, virtuous Republicans. His partisan focus is as one-sided as Bryan White’s Grading PolitiFact reviews: if he disagrees with PolitiFact, it flunks.

I'll grant Deff Jeff a break to say that this could be rated a Half True.  It's actually not conclusive.  But his "it's all true!" mega-rant is just that, and offers nothing to persuade a reader to consider otherwise.