Solyndnra was Chump Change

The new story is SunPower, another solar power company that was granted $1.187 Billion (with a "B") loan guarantee from the feds.  SunPower, too is on the ropes and owes more money than it's worth:

SunPower now carries $820 million in debt, an amount $20 million greater than its market capitalization. If SunPower was a bank, the feds would shut it down. Instead, it received a lifeline twice the size of the money sent down the Solyndra drain.

Shockingly, the company is well connected to prominent democrats, the people who continue to push the #OWS assault on capitalism...

Rep. George Miller (D., Calif.), co-chairman of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee and close confidant of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (who has Solyndra connections of her own), was a strong advocate for SunPower, which according to PAC filings contributed $15,650 to House and Senate Candidates in 2010. Of that, $14,650 went to Democrats, including $4,000 to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), $2,900 to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) and $500 to Miller himself. Oh, and the company also hired Miller’s son as a lobbyist.

The Department of Energy was recently shown to have hidden the tracks of this loan as it started to go south:

In the April case, the Department of Energy loan programs office announced in a press release on April 12 "conditional commitment" to a $1.187 billion loan guarantee to support the California Valley Solar Ranch project, which it said was "sponsored by SunPower Corporation."

But that release was later changed on one website to say the project was "sponsored by NRG Energy." The date on the release remained "April 12, 2011."

The two companies are closely linked. Just before the announcement of the loan guarantee in September, NRG completed its long-in-process acquisition from SunPower of the same California Valley Solar Ranch project that had received federal support.

But in April, that project was still owned by SunPower, not NRG.

In a second instance of retroactive press release revision, someone changed a release from September 30 that announced the finalization of the California Solar Generation project. In an early version of the September 30 press release, the government said the project was "sponsored by SunPower." That was later changed to "sponsored by NRG Energy."

 What was it George Orwell said? 

He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.