Green stimulus profiteer comes under IRS scrutiny

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

Vice President Biden snickered during last week's debate at the suggestion there was waste, inefficiency or cronyism in the 2009 stimulus bill.

 

 

If he can stop cackling for long enough, Biden, the self-proclaimed "stimulus sheriff" should sit down with the IRS officials and the federal inspector general who are investigating a solar company owned by leading Obama donor and subsidy recipient Elon Musk.

 

Musk, as he cashes in on his solar investment by taking his company SolarCity public this month, had to make an awkward admission in his financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing SolarCity, the SEC filings reveal, and at the same time the Treasury Department's inspector general is investigating the company. The question at hand: Did President Obama's Treasury Department inappropriately give stimulus money to Musk's company.

Obama's stimulus transformed a long-standing tax credit for renewable energy investment into a direct grant from Treasury, worth 30 percent of a company's investment in a renewable project. Musk's company has applied for approximately $325 million in these stimulus grants, according to the SEC filing.

[Draggingtree]

Elon Musk — Obama’s Triple Dipper [Reader Post]

 

By: guyfawkes99

 

News that the Treasury Department’s Inspector General has opened an investigation to determine whether three solar companies inflated the cost of their work to increase the payments they would receive from the government should send shivers down the spine of the taxpayer-subsidized green energy industry.

Solar City is the most interesting of the names on the list. Its Chairman, Elon Musk, is an Obama supporter who has used taxpayer funds, not once, not twice but three times to enrich himself. Musk has been able to parlay his political donations and lobbyist contracts with the Obama Administration into loan guarantees and grants. Musk spent $480,000 from 2007 to 2011 to lobby Congress, the White House, EPA and DOE and his company Tesla Motors received a $465 million loan guarantee from DOE’s ATVM program. Tesla’s public offering made Musk nearly $600 million. Likewise, Musk’s company SpaceX has a lifeline of government contracts with NASA that total nearly $1 billion.

http://floppingaces.net/2012/12/23/elon-musk-obamas-triple-dipper-reader-post/