Neil McCabe posted more disturbing news today at Human Events concerning the influence peddling scandal involving Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez, CA) on behalf of, SunPower, and his son George Miller IV, a lobbyist for the failing greedtech concern. Journalist McCabe has filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for a rapidly growing list of critical questions including collusion between Miller and son, sealed land records, and details of $1.2 Billion of unvetted loan guarantees for SunPower minutes before the Department of Energy loan program expired.
And did we mention the rush by Mt Diablo Unified School District to contract with SunPower to illegally use Measure C monies to install solar panels in school parking lots throughout the district?
McCabe’s document request, made in partnership with Judicial Watch, was filed after weeks of unsuccessfully requesting answers to the questions about crony capitalism and nepotism, circumstances surrounding the $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy’s 1705 program applied for by San Jose, Calif.-based SunPower, which was approved hours before the program expired on Sept. 30.
“SunPower is a troubled company and yet, as other troubled companies go out of business, this one gets Navy contracts, public school contracts and a preliminary approval of a $1.2 billion loan guarantee just as it is negotiating a friendly takeover of 60 percent of its stock, explains McCabe. “It is fair to ask what it really going on.”
The same day, SunPower received a $100 million contract from the Navy to provide electrical power to the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, in California, beating out 12 other proposals.
In support of the loan request, Rep. George Miller III, the co-chairman of the policy and steering committee for House Democrats, wrote a letter to the Department of Energy and led Secretary of the Interior Kenneth L. Salazar on an Oct. 14, 2010, tour of the company’s facility in Richmond, Calif.
The congressman’s son, George Miller IV is a founding partner and principal in the influence-peddling firm Lang, Hansen, O’Malley & Miller, which billed the solar company $176,000 in lobbying fees, starting in 2009.
The stonewalling and obfuscation by Miller, his son, and SunPower, has reached Byzantine levels, McCabe says. My colleagues were incredulous, they could not believe the land records had been sealed.
“It is my hope that the congressman, his son and SunPower and everybody else involved wants the facts to come out. Many times things look sinister until everything is laid out in the open.”
Rep. Miller should come clean now and tell his constituents what he knew and when, and why he pressured funders to back SunPower after he knew his son was making a fortune as a lobbyist for SunPower! Then he should resign.
And if he doesn’t…who’s to say, since his son represents the Marlboro Man, is there any reason why we wouldn’t someday see Miller influenced pro-tobacco curricula in MDUSD as well?
Bill Gram-Reefer is Editor & Publisher of Halfway To Concord, founded in 2004. Halfway To Concord is the leading online source for community-driven political news, events, and opinion for Contra Costa County and the San Francisco East Bay.
{ 0 comments… add one now }