Klain's skill that is important to the regime

Great Andrew McCarthy article at NRO today on Ebola czar (he who has missed the White House strategy meet ins on that issue so far) Ron Klain and his role in the Solyndra debacle. M

McCarthy recounts how Solyndra's ride on the gravy train got going.  The beginning of the story is further proof that W was no conservative:

Solyndra was a solar-energy company backed by the family foundation of George Kaiser, an Oklahoma oil magnate and major Obama fundraiser. Prior to Obama’s coming to power, Solyndra had sought government funding under the economically absurd 2005 Energy Policy Act. That law lets the government play venture capitalist, investing taxpayer money in private “green energy” boondoggles that cannot attract adequate market financing.

Notwithstanding the Bush administration’s zeal to hop on this politically correct bandwagon, it declined Solyndra’s application. As one private analyst later put it, the company was “an absolute complete disaster,” with operating expenses, including supply costs, nearly doubling its revenue — and that’s without factoring in high capital and other costs in an industry with low profit margins. Given that solar-panel competitors backed by China were producing energy at drastically lower prices, the chance that Solyndra would ever become profitable was practically nonexistent.

Then the Most Equal Comrade was elected president and the "company's" backers geared up to re-apply.

Company officers and investors reportedly visited the White House no fewer than 20 times while the loan guarantee was being considered and, later, revised. In short order, Obama made Solyndra the very first recipient of a public loan guarantee when the Energy Act program was beefed up with “stimulus” spending. The loans and credits eventually amounted to a staggering $535 million.

At the time, Ron Klain was chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden. Hot to become the face of Obama-administration green initiatives, Biden planned to announce the Solyndra loan during a much-publicized September 2009 energy speech. Officials at DOE and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had major qualms: They realized that the company was hemorrhaging money; even with the loan, Solyndra would lack the necessary working capital to turn that equation around. Yet the loan was approved in time for Biden’s speech. A rueful OMB official lamented in an e-mail that the timing of the loan approval was driven by the politics of the announcement “rather than the other way around.”

Although Solyndra was a private company, it was using its government loans as a springboard to go public. That triggered the obligation to comply with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules. For an initial public offering of stock, SEC rules require the disclosure of a company’s financial condition.

In Solyndra’s case, outside auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) foundthat condition to be dire. “The company has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception, and has a net stockholders’ deficit,” the PWC accountants concluded. Even with the gigantic loan, Solyndra was such a basket case that PWC found “substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

Even the new post-American regime, upon examination of the "company's" dismal numbers, was disinclined to ladle the largess.  Klain then stepped up to champion the "company's" cause.

The administration was not only aware; it was worried. As ABC reports, just two days before Obama’s speech, his eminence grise, Valerie Jarrett, was warned by California businessman Steve Westly that visiting the company might “haunt [the president] in the next 18 months if Solyndra hits the wall and files for bankruptcy, etc.” Alarmed, Ms. Jarrett reached out to Mr. Klain, admonishing that “we clearly need to make sure that they are stable and solid.”

Klain, in turn, consulted with DOE before downplaying Solyndra’s problems in reporting back to Jarrett:

Sounds like there are some risk factors here — but that’s true of any innovative company that POTUS would visit. It looks OK to me, but if you feel otherwise, let me know.

Jarrett said she would rely on Klain’s assessment, notwithstanding that it conceded the very real possibility, if not likelihood, of catastrophe. As Klain elaborated in a follow-up e-mail to Jarrett:

The reality is that if POTUS visited 10 such places over the next 10 months, probably a few would be belly-up by election day 2012 — but that to me is the reality of saying that we want to help promote cutting edge, new economy industries.

I can hear him now: Ebola? There may be some risk factors, but hey, we’ll be promoting cutting-edge treatments . . . 

Now, you tell me what the rationale was behind making this guy Ebola czar.