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Solyndra's failure: Examining the allegations
San Francisco - The accusations started flying as soon as Solyndra shut its doors.
The solar startup based in Fremont shook Silicon Valley and Washington on Aug. 31 when it fired most of its staff and closed the gleaming new factory it had built with a $528 million federal loan.
Within hours, congressional critics accused the Department of Energy of rushing Solyndra's loan, which had been part of President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package.
Republicans suggested Solyndra got the money because its biggest investor had raised campaign funds for Obama.
Solyndra's bankruptcy prompted investigations by a congressional subcommittee and the Department of Justice. Thousands of emails from the government, the company and its investors have been made public.
Four months later, the most sensational allegations - particularly those of cronyism - remain unproven, though the public documents do provide support for some of the accusations.
Allegation: Solyndra won the loan because of political ties.
Solyndra's largest investor was Argonaut Ventures, which operates on behalf of the George Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser, an Oklahoma oilman, was a campaign contribution bundler for Obama in 2008.
Solyndra's loan came from a Department of Energy program established under President Bush in 2005. Solyndra applied for the money in 2006. The program had not issued loans by the time Bush left office, but Energy Department officials were actively considering several applications. They viewed Solyndra as the likely recipient of the first loan, the program's former executive director told congressional investigators. Before Obama took office in 2009, the former director said, the program's staff had set a timeline for issuing a conditional loan guarantee.
Several Energy Department officials interviewed by congressional investigators said they were unaware of Kaiser's link to Solyndra until they read about it in the media, according to a Nov. 16 memo by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, whose oversight subcommittee has been investigating Solyndra.
Kaiser visited the White House in March 2009, before Solyndra's loan was approved, and met with Pete Rouse, who was senior adviser to the president at the time, as well as officials involved in economic policy and energy issues.
Kaiser told congressional investigators that they discussed energy policy and early childhood education - one of his charitable pursuits - but not Solyndra.
The company received conditional approval for the loan on March 20, 2009, and final approval that September.
Allegation: Solyndra received preferential treatment after the initial loan guarantee because of political ties.
Solyndra's fortunes started falling in 2010 as the company found its innovative, tube-shaped solar modules undercut by far cheaper panels made in China. As its financial picture darkened, Solyndra sought help from the Energy Department to modify the terms of its loan. The company also wanted to persuade the Department of Defense to buy its modules.
Some within the company wanted the White House's assistance with both departments. Steve Mitchell, managing director of Argonaut and a member of Solyndra's board, suggested having Kaiser contact Obama's chief of staff. But Kaiser rebuffed the idea in an email. "I would see an appeal as only a last resort, and even then, questionable," he wrote on Oct. 6.
The director of the George Kaiser Family Foundation chimed in, asking why Solyndra's lobbyists couldn't handle the job themselves. Mitchell finally conceded.
"I think the company is hoping that we have some unnatural relationship that can open bigger doors," Mitchell wrote. "I've cautioned them that no one really has those relationships anymore."
Later that month, Kaiser sat next to Obama at a fundraising dinner in Las Vegas. In an email the next day, Kaiser told the director of his family foundation that they talked about early childhood education, as well as how Chinese government subsidies for solar firms were hurting U.S. solar manufacturers. "I never mentioned Solyndra directly," he wrote.
Allegation: Politics caused the Energy Department to rush Solyndra's loan.
Emails from early 2009 show that as the Energy Department moved closer to giving Solyndra conditional approval, the White House pressed for faster action. White House staff wanted Obama to announce Solyndra's conditional loan guarantee during a planned trip to California in March.
"If you guys think this is a bad idea, I need to unwind the WW (West Wing) QUICKLY," Ronald Klain, then chief of staff for Vice President Joe Biden, wrote in a March 7 email to officials at the Office of Management and Budget, which was reviewing the deal's terms.
Emails among the budget office staff show they felt rushed. "This deal is NOT ready for prime time," one staff member wrote on March 10.
The same pattern repeated itself later that year, as the Solyndra loan neared final approval.
White House staff members wanted Biden and Energy Secretary Steven Chu to announce the loan at a Sept. 4 groundbreaking ceremony for the company's new Fremont factory. The latest unemployment numbers were due to be released that day, and the administration wanted to tout its efforts to create green jobs. Once again, the Office of Management and Budget raced to finish its review.
"I would prefer that this announcement be postponed," one staff member wrote in an Aug. 31 email, just days before the planned groundbreaking. "This is the first loan guarantee and we should have full review with all hands on deck to make sure we get it right."
The groundbreaking ceremony and the announcement of the loan went ahead as planned. Budget office officials would later tell congressional investigators that their analyses probably would not have changed if they had been given more time.
Allegation: The Energy Department broke the law when it restructured the loan agreement.
As Solyndra's fiscal health deteriorated, the company's two largest investors agreed to give it a $75 million loan - with a catch. Should the loan fail to save Solyndra from bankruptcy, the investors wanted to be repaid first, before the federal government got any of its money back. In February, the Energy Department agreed.
The department's decision appeared to clash with the 2005 law that created the loan program. Part of that law states, "The obligation shall be subject to the condition that the obligation is not subordinate to other financing." Officials at the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget questioned whether the loan restructuring violated the statute.
Energy Department officials discussed the issue at length. Susan Richardson, chief counsel for the loan program, wrote a legal opinion dated Feb. 15, arguing that the law's prohibition on subordinating the government loan applied only to the initial loan guarantee, not to further rounds of financing.


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From Provincial Reality to Problems of the Individual
The 1970s heralded a turning point in Turkish literature: Socialization and village stories as well as the discovery of the existence of the individual, which were dominant themes in novels and stories in the 1940s and 1950s, now gave way to popularization, urbanization, and individual identity. Political discourse also came to the fore.
The author as an institution also became more visible as a factor in prose. Repression and stagnation, induced by the provisional solution of two interim regimes, played as much a role here as the search for the self.
The search for a new language and form
Toward the end of the 1970s and at the beginning of the 1980s the Turkish novel came into its own. Authors Vedat Türkali and Pinar Kür introduced a new development, and the contemporary Turkish novel began to explore new themes. While forthright political discourse portrayed the reality of the country, the exploration of individual identity found an enduring expression in literature.
The atmosphere of social opposition so prevalent in the 1970s was also reflected in literature: much discussed and of considerable significance in the past, literature freed itself of its stereotypes and searched for a new form and a new language to depict the reality of people and society. This new trend could be observed in the works of representative authors.
While Yasar Kemal, born in 1923 in South Anatolia and who appeared on the literary scene in the 1950s, contributed to a major step in the development of Turkish literature with his trilogy "Kimsecik" (Little Nobody), many of the writers from the so-called "1950's generation" likewise enjoyed a prolific period of creativity that greatly enriched Turkish prose.
Pioneers of the "new novel"
A major characteristic of the prose literature from this period was the tremendous diversity of its themes – with a shift of themes from the country to the city, from provincial reality to the problems of the individual, from the scrutinization of female lives to the portrayal of historical facts, from domestic migration to emigration.
This wealth of themes made it possible for new paths to emerge, leading Turkish literature out of the literary stagnation into which it had been fallen in the 1980s during the "interim government."
During the 1960s literature and culture increasingly opened up to external influences. This, in turn, paved the way for the emergence of formative writers in the 1980s and up through the twenty-first century. Of particular note here are four outstanding novelists: Orhan Pamuk, Mehmet Eroglu, Ahmet Altan, and Latife Tekin.
These authors, each of whom addressed different motifs in the novel – from the historical and social structure of Turkey to the problem of the individual's existence, from the hopeless situations people find themselves in during times of change to the intellectual awareness of being a chronicler – can be called the pioneers of the "new novel."
Another kind of representation arose in the 1980s with the emergence of female writers who explored the theme of the "women question" and scrutinized female lives. In their works, Inci Aral and Erendiz Atasü highlight problems that revolve around the axis of gender relations. Even more noteworthy than their awareness is their exploration of this complex of problems.
During this same period authors such as Murathan Mungan, Hasan Ali Toptas, Ahmet Ümit, and Elif Safak, all known in Germany, also created a sensation with their novels and short stories.
The understanding of regional literature vanishes
The novel grew in prominence in the literary climate of the 1980s. Interest in popular culture was gradually spreading to wider circles of the population. For a society that had just discovered "hobbies," reading became a necessity.
Two facts can be observed of novels written during this period: History became a theme for novels, and the detective story started arousing interest as an independent genre. The understanding of a regional literature, as it had existed since the 1930s, crumbled; the problems of socialization and the new world order took its place in literature.
Novels were also written that dealt with the meaning of society, with the past in light of historical awareness, as well as the present.
Nobel Prize for Orhan Pamuk
The idea of the novel as a powerful instrument for comprehending society and people in society became more accepted. To a certain degree, acceptance of the idea that the path to enlightenment led through the novel is one reason why it became one of the most popular literary forms of expression.
The novel is the genre in which prose can best showcase itself and its maturity, which is why the novel has received the most attention in the reception of Turkish literature in other countries. In this regard, the influence of a highly developed Turkish prose on developments that led to Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Prize should not be underestimated.
Along with the rise in the expression of female voices and themes focusing on female lives and women's search for identity in the 1980s, themes such as city, urbanization, migration, the search for identity, the East-West conflict, sexuality, gender relations, minority identities, social history, political reality, provincial reality, the hopelessness of the individual, and alienation were establishing themselves at the same time.
The modernization of literature
Over the past thirty years literature has taken on the adventure of further developing modernization, which began in the "early Republican phase" around 1900.
The period 1900-1930 was the getting-acquainted phase that explored definitions of society and formulations of its problems; 1940-1960 saw the emergence of a literary idea that asked the question of not only what should be told and why, but how should it be narrated.
The phase after the 1970s focused on social development as a dominant theme, but also extended its attention to the world outside Turkey. International events received even greater attention, and writers experimented in how to shape their view of their own society.
In addition to the idea of holding up a mirror to society, the belief arose that literature could comprehend and depict life.
This era produced the concept of the "new writer" in Turkish literature. New prominent writers no longer concerned themselves solely with their own texts, but viewed life from many different perspectives and could write about it with even greater self-awareness.
Feridun Andaç
© Qantara.de 2007
Translation from the German by Nancy Joyce
Orhan Pamuk
Istanbul – Memories of a City
Orhan Pamuk's essayistic volume "Istanbul" depicts a small slice of the history of the metropolis on the Bosporus – a fascinating book, says Zafer Şenocak, in which the Literature Nobel prizewinner lets places and objects speak for themselves
Interview with Hasan Ali Toptas
"I Try to Expand Life, One Word at a Time"
In 2006 Turkish novelist Hasan Ali Toptaş was chosen to receive the most respected literary award in Turkey, the Orhan Kemal Prize. Fatma Sagir spoke to him about his twin careers as novelist and as court bailiff

subset: commoncrawl


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Yorktown, New York Criminal Court Information for People Answering Criminal Charges
When someone is arrested in Yorktown, and if he is not simply given a desk appearance ticket to appear at court in the future, that person may be held for arraignment (first appearance).
A judge will be brought to the Yorktown courthouse to preside over the criminal court arraignment. At the arraignment, the judge will decide whether to set bail. Bail is an amount of money that must be posted with Westchester County before a person will be released. If you have cash at Court when bail is set, you can post it there. If you don't have bail money immediately in cash, you will need to post it at the Westchester County Jail. At the jail, you can pay in cash or (within limits) by credit card.
Generally, the arraignment will happen in Yorktown within 24 hours of the arrest. If possible, arrangements should be made to obtain a criminal defense lawyer for the arrest process in Yorktown.
Criminal Defense
The information in this website is provided by the Westchester Criminal Defense Law Firm Shalley and Murray. If you have any questions about a Yorktown criminal case or a criminal case anywhere else in Westchester, call us at 914-276-2585. We can speak over the phone or we can schedule your free consultation at your convenience.
We have 19 years experience defending people accused of crimes in New York. Whether the case involves simple marijuana possession, driving while intoxicated, assault, or something more serious, we can help. Call now to speak with a criminal defense lawyer right away about a Yorktown criminal case, or any case in Westchester County, Putnam County, or New York City. Be aware that a case that starts out in Yorktown Court can be transferred to County Court in White Plains for prosecution if it is a felony or domestic violence accusation. For more information on what to do about criminal court matters in Yorktown, call 914-276-2585.
Court Information
- Yorktown Criminal Court is held Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00 PM.
- Office hours are from 9 AM to 5:00 PM Moday throught Friday.
- Telephone number: 914-962-6216


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