President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign is promising to raise enormous sums of money,  by some estimates and unprecedented $1 billion.  The Finance Chair for the 2012 campaign,  Matthew Barzun, is reactivating the 2008 financial network of campaign bundlers to meet that goal.   In my new book, Throw Them All Out, I expose the scandal that is outrageous and typical: those who are raising money for Obama received large amounts of taxpayer-funded energy stimulus money from the Obama Administration.   It offers a new form of “recycling” when it comes to campaign dollars that is unprecedented.

Consider the sweetheart deals and contracts that have come the way of some of President Obama’s biggest fundraisers:

• Financier David Shaw has raised $1.08 million for Obama’s reelection so far.  Shaw’s firm D.E. Shaw is heavily invested in two wind projects that received taxpayer money:  $115 million for First Wind,  and $117 million for Kahuku Wind.
• Financier John Rogers is a board Exelon board member has raised $1.2 million,  and Frank Clark, an executive Exelon,  has raised $153,000 thus far.  Exelon has been approved for $646 million in Department of Energy loan guarantees for a project called AV Solar Ranch One.  They also received a $200 million Department of Energy cash grant through a company they own called Peco Energy for smart-grid work.
• Financier Steve Westly has raised $302,000 so far.  Westly has held large investment stakes in numerous companies that have received stimulus grants,  including Amyris Biotechnologies ($24 million), Tesla Motors ($465 million),  as well as Edeniqu and Recyclebank.
• Bruce Heyman of Goldman Sachs, who has had three energy projects approved for taxpayer money  Cogentrix ($90 million),  First Solar ($4.7 million), and U.S. Geothermal ($96.8 million) has already raised $366,884 for the Obama 2012 reelection campaign.
• Daniel Weiss of the Angelino Group has raised $39,000 so far.   Weiss’ firm is a major equity holder in Powerspan,  we received a $100 million cash grant for smart grid projects.
• Steve Spinner has raised $31,900 to this point.   Spinner is a green energy investor who worked at the Department of Energy as a “strategic advisor” to the loan program.

Other recipients of energy stimulus money have continued cutting checks.  Ian Cumming of Leucadia,  which has had several large projects approved,  has given $10,000 so far to Obama for America and the Obama Victory Fund 2012.

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With Energy Secretary Steven Chu set to testify Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the government’s $573 million loan to failed solar panel maker Solyndra, an explosive new list of energy loan amounts to President Obama’s top fundraisers, bundlers, and supporters has been released by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer, author of Throw Them All Out.

As the list reveals, 80 percent of all $20.5 billion in Department of Energy loans went to President Obama’s top donors. Furthermore, some of those dwarf in size those given to Obama bundler George Kaiser, owner of the now defunct Solyndra.

The list—which features the likes of Google owners Larry Page and Sergey Brinn, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ted Turner, John Doerr, and Al Gore—raises new questions about the procedures used to administer the now-controversial DOE loans.

Obama Bundlers_ Large Donors_ and Supporters fixed pdf

Schweizer’s list stands in sharp contrast to President Obama’s promise that the allocation of all federal “stimulus” monies would be nonpartisan and fair: “Let me repeat that: Decisions about how Recovery money will be spent will be based on the merits. They will not be made as a way of doing favors for lobbyists,” Obama said in 2009.

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Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer writing in Newsweek:

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. He wanted billions of dollars spent on “shovel-ready projects” to build roads; billions more for developing alternative-energy projects; and additional billions for expanding broadband Internet access and creating a “smart grid” for energy consumption. After he was sworn in as president, he proclaimed that taxpayer money would assuredly not be doled out to political friends. “Decisions about how Recovery Act dollars are spent will be based on the merits,” he said, referring to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. “Let me repeat that: decisions about how recovery money will be spent will be based on the merits. They will not be made as a way of doing favors for lobbyists.”

I recently took a two-day trip down to Palm Springs to attend an event called “Uncloaking the Kochs” hosted by Common Cause. Accompanied by my dear friend, former assembly candidate Alvaro Day, I traveled as an independent investigative journalist, and not in any official capacity on behalf of Big Government or Breitbart.com (though I was pleasantly surprised to run into a familiar friend of mine on rollerblades jovially inviting everyone to Applebee’s).

Among Common Cause’s, well, common causes, are campaign finance reform, net neutrality, outlawing the filibuster, promoting cap and trade, and in this particular case, herding a mass of protesters outside a nearby hotel to yell at Charles and David Koch for being conservative and rich.

Unfortunately several “haves” have missed the memo that you’re not to be both rich and conservative at the same time, and that bankrolling your pet causes is an extra no-no if you’re conservative—thus exempting left-wing billionaire philanthropists George Soros (from whom Common Cause has received $2 million over the past eight years) Peter Lewis, John Doerr, Julian Robertson, Nicolas Berggruen, and many others from being yelled at too. (more…)