Pirate's Cove

The Washington Post’s Carol D. Leonnig and Joe Stephens, along with a few editors, are probably soon to receive a screaming, profanity laced tirade from the White House for this story

(WP) …. During the next three years, the department provided $2.4 billion in public funding to clean-energy companies in which Wagle’s former firm, Vantage Point Venture Partners, had invested, a Washington Post analysis found. Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers.

Obama’s program to invest federal funds in start-up companies — and the failure of some of those companies — is becoming a rallying cry for opponents in the presidential race. Mitt Romney has promised to focus on Obama’s “record” as a “venture capitalist.” And in ads and speeches, conservative groups and the Republican candidates are zeroing in on the administration’s decision to extend $535 million to the now-shuttered solar firm Solyndra and billions of dollars more to clean-tech start-ups backed by the president’s political allies.

Consider, that’s just the amount “with connections….”: that’s certainly not the total amount that we can assume went to companies that include people who were big donors. We recently learned that yet another solar company, Genesis, is going bust, after soaking the taxpayers with an $825 million loan guarantee.