What kind of "government" will result from a "government" that finances it's on election?Tesla also is no simple new age car company. It is owned and financed by big donors to the Democratic Party and to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Tesla’s principal owner is Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal. He has an estimated personal wealth of $672 million. His firm received venture capital from the The Westly Group, Daimler Chrysler, and from Abu Dhabi investors. The firm has partnerships with luxury sports car manufacturer Lotus and with Mercedes-Benz.
The secret to access to the DOE money is The Westly Group, run by California Democratic Party stalwart and big Obama campaign bundler Steve Westly. The former eBay executive wasn’t merely a prodigious fundraiser for Obama, raising $500,000 for his presidential campaign. He also served as the president’s California campaign co-chairman. Another Obama $500,000 bundler was Solyndra investor George Kaiser and his foundation.
Westly got statewide attention in 2006 when he spent $35 million of his own money to run an ugly and largely negative race against California state Treasurer Phil Angelides for governor.
Westly is a personal friend of President Obama, and since the election has visited the White House for meetings and social parties. He privately dined with the president in February with a small group of Silicon Valley billionaires. It was called the “trillion-dollar dinner.”
Westly was rumored to be on Obama’s energy secretary short list. When he lost out to physicist Steven Chu, the White House got him a seat on a pivotal DOE advisory committee that made recommendations to the secretary on alternative energy policies. The committee voted in favor of changes to federal rebates for all electric cars — which would benefit Tesla.
Westly’s Washington political connections to the White House have made him a “pied piper” of DOE money for start-ups. DOE records show that Westly’s venture capital firm has reaped at least $500 million in DOE loans for his companies, wowing Silicon Valley’s VC community.
Westly also sat on Tesla’s board of directors early in the car company’s life.
Do we already have it?
Can it be stopped?
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