Fuckers...
Smith Electric Vehicles, leaves trail of unpaid bills and broken promises
http://washingtonexaminer.com/smith-...rticle/2548035
MAY 5, 2014
BY RICHARD POLLOCK | MAY 5, 2014 AT 5:29 AM
Four years have passed since President Obama visited Kansas City's main airport, rolled up his shirt sleeves and admonished the skeptics who said Smith Electric Vehicles was unlikely to make good on its promises to build 510 experimental electric-powered trucks and buses suitable for commercial use.
“Come see what’s going on at Smith Electric," the president said, inspecting a table full of bright green truck batteries in what was once a maintenance hangar for TWA. "I think they’re going to be hard-pressed to tell you that you’re not better off than you would be if we hadn’t made the investments in this plant.”
The skeptics turned out to be right.
Despite $32 million in federal stimulus funds and status as one of Obama's favorite "green" companies, the firm has halted production, having built just 439 of the promised 510 vehicles.
It has also left a trail of broken promises and unpaid bills.
Smith created just a quarter of the jobs it initially promised the state of Missouri it would create in return for $1.4 million in tax credits. Meanwhile, it has also stiffed the Missouri University of Science and Technology, the state government, and a local electrical supply company, as well as its landlord, the Kansas City city government, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to interviews and reviews of public records by the Washington Examiner.
As of today, the company still owes $36,000 to Missouri S&T for work the university performed as a subcontractor on a U.S. Army project.
“If you’re not going to pay your [subcontractors] for satisfactory work that was performed, then it does wave a red flag whether the company was a responsible company and whether it should even be doing business with the federal government," said Scott Amey, general counsel for the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.
An American subsidiary of a British firm, Smith Electric stopped production at the end of last year, a fact that was made public only last month. Angela Strand, the firm's chief marketing officer and a company spokeswoman, declined to discuss its financial problems, telling the Washington Examiner in an email, “we do not comment on financial matters.” The company hopes to resume production this summer.
Smith failed to hire at least 100 workers over a two-year period in return for up to $1.4 million in state tax credits. At the end of two years, it had hired only 54 workers, records show.
The firm's original promise was for a minimum of 202 new jobs, but the Missouri Division of Workforce Development halved that goal — a change that division official Alicia Roling described in a 2011 internal email as an “unprecedented modification.”
The state has since extended Smith's timetable to five years to hit its job targets.
The Washington Examiner obtained that email and others regarding the state's relationship with Smith Electric under Missouri's Sunshine Law.
Meanwhile, the debt to Missouri S&T has frustrated and angered many university officials.
For nearly a year, the company failed to pay $132,000 it owed the school, and at one point it tried swap out its debt for a university purchase of its electric buses, records show.
Smith Electric hired Missouri S&T to analyze electric trucks for a contract it won with the Army, which paid Smith nearly $1.5 million. The company's first payment to the university was due in October 2011.
The month before, the company announced plans to go public. It also attempted to use its debt to sell buses to the university, a move that did not sit well with school officials.
"There is no way to use funding owed to us on the U.S. Army [electric truck] subcontract as down payment ... to purchase shuttle buses," Angela B. Rolufs, the university's head of sustainable energy and environmental engagement, wrote to Smith executive Dale Unglesbee in September 2011. "It does not make any sense that we have not been paid for any of the work we have done under this subcontract agreement," she said, later adding, "The fact that we have not been reimbursed for any of the work we have done since our first invoice was submitted almost a year ago is truly not acceptable."
Rolufs' missive also includes a bit of foreshadowing: Missouri S&T was in the market for shuttle buses, thanks to a federal grant, but Rolufs told Unglesbee she would not mention his proposed debt-for-down-payment scheme to her contact at the Federal Transit Administration "because he will question the financial viability of Smith EV" — and she didn't want to slow down the school's campus shuttle purchase "any more than it already has been."
The following summer, the university's deputy general counsel dinged Smith Electric in a letter for five delinquent invoices. “Your invoice(s),” wrote Phillip J. Hoskins wrote in July 2012, "has been referred to the legal department of the university because of your nonpayment of this obligation.”
At the same time, Kelly Bowen, a grants and contracts specialist at the university, wrote the project manager, “It looks like we have invoiced them six, after today seven times, and have yet to receive a payment. Are you aware of any reason why we would not be receiving payment from Smith? The first invoice was sent to them on October 2011.”
Roughly a year later, Smith Electric began monthly payments of $12,000, but stopped without explanation last October with $36,084 still due, according to Andrew Careaga, the university’s director of communications.
Smith abruptly cancelled its initial public offering two years ago even though the company reduced its capitalization goal from $125 million to $75 million. Promised plant expansions in Chicago and New York have not occurred.
In its pre-IPO filings to the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, the firm disclosed that it had never made a profit and conceded that it might never do so. It revealed that its losses were $17 million in 2009, $30 million in 2010, and $74 million in 2011.
The SEC filing also revealed that the federal Defense Contract Audit Agency had reviewed Smith Electric's books for the Energy Department in 2010 and had found the firm had “significant deficiencies that are considered to be material weaknesses in our accounting system.”
The company is privately held, with 49 percent of it being owned by the British firm Tanfield Group, which launched the American Smith Electric after its own electric vehicle program collapsed.
The state of Missouri also placed two liens on the company over tax issues, according to court records. Both were lifted when the company paid what it owed.
Smith has not made lease payments since last November on the 90,000 square feet it rents at Kansas City International Airport, according to David Long, deputy director of the city aviation department. Long declined to say how much Smith owes the city in back rent.
The company also is being sued by an electrical supply firm, Consolidated Electrical Distributors, that says Smith Electric owes it $192,000 for equipment and goods it bought on credit, court records show. The civil suit was filed last December and is pending in Platte County, Mo., Circuit Court.
- IIFFOFRDB
- 05-05-2014, 05:31 PM
- want2c
- 05-05-2014, 05:43 PM
That's just another one of many
For those who only hear about these failing companies one by one, the following is a list of all the clean energy companies supported by President Obama’s stimulus that are now failing or have filed for bankruptcy. The liberal media hopes you’ve forgotten about all of them except Solyndra, but we haven’t.
Evergreen Solar
SpectraWatt
Solyndra (received $535 million)
Beacon Power (received $43 million)
AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy
Nevada Geothermal (received $98.5 million)
SunPower (received $1.5 billion)
First Solar (received $1.46 billion)
Babcock & Brown (an Australian company which received $178 million)
Ener1 (subsidiary EnerDel received $118.5 million)
Amonix (received 5.9 million)
The National Renewable Energy Lab
Fisker Automotive
Abound Solar (received $400 million)
Chevy Volt (taxpayers basically own GM)
Solar Trust of America
A123 Systems (received $279 million)
Willard & Kelsey Solar Group (received $6 million)
Johnson Controls (received $299 million)
Schneider Electric (received $86 million)
That’s 19 (that we know of so far). We also know that loans went to foreign clean energy companies (Fisker sent money to their overseas plant to develop an electric car), and that 80% of these loans went to President Obama’s campaign donor
For those who only hear about these failing companies one by one, the following is a list of all the clean energy companies supported by President Obama’s stimulus that are now failing or have filed for bankruptcy. The liberal media hopes you’ve forgotten about all of them except Solyndra, but we haven’t.
Evergreen Solar
SpectraWatt
Solyndra (received $535 million)
Beacon Power (received $43 million)
AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy
Nevada Geothermal (received $98.5 million)
SunPower (received $1.5 billion)
First Solar (received $1.46 billion)
Babcock & Brown (an Australian company which received $178 million)
Ener1 (subsidiary EnerDel received $118.5 million)
Amonix (received 5.9 million)
The National Renewable Energy Lab
Fisker Automotive
Abound Solar (received $400 million)
Chevy Volt (taxpayers basically own GM)
Solar Trust of America
A123 Systems (received $279 million)
Willard & Kelsey Solar Group (received $6 million)
Johnson Controls (received $299 million)
Schneider Electric (received $86 million)
That’s 19 (that we know of so far). We also know that loans went to foreign clean energy companies (Fisker sent money to their overseas plant to develop an electric car), and that 80% of these loans went to President Obama’s campaign donor
- IIFFOFRDB
- 05-05-2014, 06:12 PM
Let me help you out. Ozombies don't click on links. They are to busy crying.
Report: 80% of DOE Green Energy Loans Went to Obama Backers
Lachlan MarkayNovember 14, 2011 at 10:43 am(59)
A new book by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer details the startling extent of the cronyism that has pervaded President Obama’s “green jobs” push. According to Schweizer, 4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.”
Those companies’ “political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy,” Schweizer explains. “It brought them returns many times over.”
Such is the inevitable consequence of large government interventions in private markets. Leaving aside the losses associated with transfers of funds from self-sustaining industries to ones that rely on government support, such interventions also encourage unproductive business activities by making “subsidy suckling” far more profitable than run-of-the-mill business expansions or product improvements.
When President-elect Obama came to Washington in late 2008, he was outspoken about the need for an economic stimulus to revive a struggling economy… After he was sworn in as president, he proclaimed that taxpayer money would assuredly not be doled out to political friends…
…But an examination of grants and guaranteed loans offered by just one stimulus program run by the Department of Energy, for alternative-energy projects, is stunning. The so-called 1705 Loan Guarantee Program and the 1603 Grant Program channeled billions of dollars to all sorts of energy companies…
…In the 1705 government-backed-loan program [alone], for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party. The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008. Their political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy. It brought them returns many times over.
…The Government Accountability Office has been highly critical of the way guaranteed loans and grants were doled out by the Department of Energy, complaining that the process appears “arbitrary” and lacks transparency. In March 2011, for example, the GAO examined the first 18 loans that were approved and found that none were properly documented. It also noted that officials “did not always record the results of analysis” of these applications. A loan program for electric cars, for example, “lacks performance measures.” No notes were kept during the review process, so it is difficult to determine how loan decisions were made. The GAO further declared that the Department of Energy “had treated applicants inconsistently in the application review process, favoring some applicants and disadvantaging others.” The Department of Energy’s inspector general, Gregory Friedman, … has testified that contracts have been steered to “friends and family.”
…These programs might be the greatest—and most expensive—example of crony capitalism in American history. Tens of billions of dollars went to firms controlled or owned by fundraisers, bundlers, and political allies, many of whom—surprise!—are now raising money for Obama again.
Report: 80% of DOE Green Energy Loans Went to Obama Backers
Lachlan MarkayNovember 14, 2011 at 10:43 am(59)
A new book by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer details the startling extent of the cronyism that has pervaded President Obama’s “green jobs” push. According to Schweizer, 4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.”
Those companies’ “political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy,” Schweizer explains. “It brought them returns many times over.”
Such is the inevitable consequence of large government interventions in private markets. Leaving aside the losses associated with transfers of funds from self-sustaining industries to ones that rely on government support, such interventions also encourage unproductive business activities by making “subsidy suckling” far more profitable than run-of-the-mill business expansions or product improvements.
When President-elect Obama came to Washington in late 2008, he was outspoken about the need for an economic stimulus to revive a struggling economy… After he was sworn in as president, he proclaimed that taxpayer money would assuredly not be doled out to political friends…
…But an examination of grants and guaranteed loans offered by just one stimulus program run by the Department of Energy, for alternative-energy projects, is stunning. The so-called 1705 Loan Guarantee Program and the 1603 Grant Program channeled billions of dollars to all sorts of energy companies…
…In the 1705 government-backed-loan program [alone], for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party. The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008. Their political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy. It brought them returns many times over.
…The Government Accountability Office has been highly critical of the way guaranteed loans and grants were doled out by the Department of Energy, complaining that the process appears “arbitrary” and lacks transparency. In March 2011, for example, the GAO examined the first 18 loans that were approved and found that none were properly documented. It also noted that officials “did not always record the results of analysis” of these applications. A loan program for electric cars, for example, “lacks performance measures.” No notes were kept during the review process, so it is difficult to determine how loan decisions were made. The GAO further declared that the Department of Energy “had treated applicants inconsistently in the application review process, favoring some applicants and disadvantaging others.” The Department of Energy’s inspector general, Gregory Friedman, … has testified that contracts have been steered to “friends and family.”
…These programs might be the greatest—and most expensive—example of crony capitalism in American history. Tens of billions of dollars went to firms controlled or owned by fundraisers, bundlers, and political allies, many of whom—surprise!—are now raising money for Obama again.
- CJ7
- 05-05-2014, 08:59 PM
That's just another one of many
For those who only hear about these failing companies one by one, the following is a list of all the clean energy companies supported by President Obama’s stimulus that are now failing or have filed for bankruptcy. The liberal media hopes you’ve forgotten about all of them except Solyndra, but we haven’t.
Evergreen Solar
SpectraWatt
Solyndra (received $535 million)
Beacon Power (received $43 million)
AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy
Nevada Geothermal (received $98.5 million)
SunPower (received $1.5 billion)
First Solar (received $1.46 billion)
Babcock & Brown (an Australian company which received $178 million)
Ener1 (subsidiary EnerDel received $118.5 million)
Amonix (received 5.9 million)
The National Renewable Energy Lab
Fisker Automotive
Abound Solar (received $400 million)
Chevy Volt (taxpayers basically own GM)
Solar Trust of America
A123 Systems (received $279 million)
Willard & Kelsey Solar Group (received $6 million)
Johnson Controls (received $299 million)
Schneider Electric (received $86 million)
That’s 19 (that we know of so far). We also know that loans went to foreign clean energy companies (Fisker sent money to their overseas plant to develop an electric car), and that 80% of these loans went to President Obama’s campaign donor Originally Posted by want2c
uh, just so you'll know all those funds were set aside and made available by the Bush admin''
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...david-plouffe/
The Energy Department's loan guarantee program was created as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by Bush.
In his signing speech, Bush lauded the bill's support for clean technology, though he didn't specifically mention the loan guarantees.
The loan guarantees were designed to "support innovative clean energy technologies that are typically unable to obtain conventional private financing due to high technology risks."
``````````````````
there ya go Metro IIFFO, click that link Goober
- LordBeaverbrook
- 05-05-2014, 09:11 PM
The Energy Department's loan guarantee program was created as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by Bush.+1 - unbelievable hypocrisy.
In his signing speech, Bush lauded the bill's support for clean technology, though he didn't specifically mention the loan guarantees. Originally Posted by CJ7
- LordBeaverbrook
- 05-05-2014, 09:13 PM
uh, just so you'll know all those funds were set aside and made available by the Bush admin''Uh, and typically, these are always loans from the private sector, so private banks and investors can make money when they succeed, and all the government does is fun loan guarantees.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...david-plouffe/
The Energy Department's loan guarantee program was created as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by Bush.
In his signing speech, Bush lauded the bill's support for clean technology, though he didn't specifically mention the loan guarantees.
The loan guarantees were designed to "support innovative clean energy technologies that are typically unable to obtain conventional private financing due to high technology risks."
``````````````````
there ya go Metro IIFFO, click that link Goober Originally Posted by CJ7
Typical rightie crap. Republican Administration (Bush) sets up a bunch of crony programs and loans, then Democratic Administration comes in and supports the previous Administration's initiatives and Republicans blame the Dems for any failures. If you look closely at it, you come to the conclusion that Republicans don't understand or support how the free market (creative destruction) works.
Republicans now leverage free market programs that they first championed, like Green initiatives and PPACA solely for political gain.
Republicans also leverage foreign affairs and diplomacy solely for political gain.
Seems to me that they have become supportive of sedition, unpatriotic, traitorous and even treasonous. They will do, say and support anything in the unabashed support of power.
- CuteOldGuy
- 05-06-2014, 12:44 AM
Which administration actually approved the loan guarantees to the companies mentioned? If the Obama Administration approved loan guarantees to political cronies and donors, how is it Bush's fault? What about the "change" part of "Hope and Change"? Why didn't Obama change a failing program, instead of expanding it to reward his supporters?
You Obamatons are getting more ridiculous daily.
You Obamatons are getting more ridiculous daily.
- CJ7
- 05-06-2014, 07:46 AM
Which administration actually approved the loan guarantees to the companies mentioned? If the Obama Administration approved loan guarantees to political cronies and donors, how is it Bush's fault? What about the "change" part of "Hope and Change"? Why didn't Obama change a failing program, instead of expanding it to reward his supporters?
You Obamatons are getting more ridiculous daily. Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy
makes no difference ... the $$ was there for the taking... startup energy companies qualify and they have it ... to get it a company still needs to be approved by the House Republicans ... same Republicans that started the program
unless you believe Obama sits around and approves loans, and I'm sure you do.
- CuteOldGuy
- 05-06-2014, 10:16 AM
makes no difference ... the $$ was there for the taking... startup energy companies qualify and they have it ... to get it a company still needs to be approved by the House Republicans ... same Republicans that started the programIt was his administration.
unless you believe Obama sits around and approves loans, and I'm sure you do.
- CJ7
- 05-06-2014, 10:44 AM
- Yssup Rider
- 05-06-2014, 12:05 PM
uh, just so you'll know all those funds were set aside and made available by the Bush admin''He can't. His keyboard is soaked with drool.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...david-plouffe/
The Energy Department's loan guarantee program was created as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by Bush.
In his signing speech, Bush lauded the bill's support for clean technology, though he didn't specifically mention the loan guarantees.
The loan guarantees were designed to "support innovative clean energy technologies that are typically unable to obtain conventional private financing due to high technology risks."
``````````````````
there ya go Metro IIFFO, click that link Goober Originally Posted by CJ7
- CJ7
- 05-06-2014, 02:12 PM
- CuteOldGuy
- 05-06-2014, 03:16 PM
- CJ7
- 05-06-2014, 03:38 PM
- IIFFOFRDB
- 05-06-2014, 04:03 PM
uh, just so you'll know all those funds were set aside and made available by the Bush admin''
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...david-plouffe/
The Energy Department's loan guarantee program was created as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by Bush.
In his signing speech, Bush lauded the bill's support for clean technology, though he didn't specifically mention the loan guarantees.
The loan guarantees were designed to "support innovative clean energy technologies that are typically unable to obtain conventional private financing due to high technology risks."
``````````````````
there ya go Metro IIFFO, click that link Goober Originally Posted by CJ7
From your own source... Ozombie
'Ultimately, the Bush administration program didn't finalize a single loan guarantee." LOL... LOL... LOL!