How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya’?

Several of Barack Obama’s top campaign supporters went from soliciting political contributions to working from within the Energy Department as it showered billions in taxpayer-backed stimulus money on alternative energy firms, iWatch News and ABC News have learned.

One of them was Steven J. Spinner, a high-tech consultant and investor in energy companies who raised at least $500,000 for Obama. He became one of Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s key loan programs advisors while his wife’s law firm represented a number of the companies that had applied for loans.

Recovery Act records show Allison Spinner’s law firm, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati , received $2.4 million in federal funds for legal fees related to the $535 million Energy Department loan guarantee to Solyndra, a solar company whose financial meltdown has prompted multiple investigations. She pledged to take no portion of the money and did not work on the loan applications.

As House Republicans step up their probe of the Obama administration’s green energy loan program in the wake of Solyndra’s bankruptcy, a key focus – and open question – is whether the president’s political supporters had any hand in influencing which companies received the taxpayer support.

“There is great concern over political influence contaminating the DOE loan guarantee program,” said Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. “The prevalence of fundraisers and bundlers scattered throughout DOE is cause for alarm and is a subject our investigation does not take lightly – we are looking into this and will see where it leads us.”

The administration has repeatedly said that politics has played no role in deciding which companies received federal loans.

[…]

Spinner was not the only Obama political supporter to play a role at the Energy Department. California venture capitalist Steve Westly , who raised more than $500,000 for Obama, has Secretary Chu’s ear on green energy issues as a member of a high-level volunteer advisory panel. Mackey Dykes, who was a finance manager for the Obama campaign, was hired to be the liaison between the Energy Department and White House. Each declined interview requests.

Obama’s political supporters were also investors in companies that had applied for loans. Westly has had a stake in at least five companies that have won DOE support; four won funding before he joined Chu’s board. While it is common for presidents to reward top donors with ambassadorships or other political posts, the Sunlight Foundation ’s Bill Allison said it is unusual to see a major donor such as Spinner given a position inside a relatively obscure government loan program.

“For an administration that won’t hire lobbyists to be hiring fundraisers for that role, that seems to be a bit of contradiction,” said Allison. “Obviously you want to keep all people who are involved in political influence out of positions of responsibility.”

[…]

[Spinner’s] wife’s role in a law firm representing corporate clients seeking energy funds prompted Energy Department ethics officials to take a closer look, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The law firm has represented several companies that had applied for Energy Department loans and loan guarantees.

On August 18, 2009, four months into his tenure at the Energy Department, Spinner received an ethics opinion involving that connection. Matt Rogers, then a senior advisor to the energy secretary, wrote that Spinner could continue in his duties, but “not participate in any discussion regarding any application involving Wilson [Sonsini].” The opinion said his wife would forgo pay “earned as a result of its representation of applicants in programs within your official duties.”

Rogers said Spinner’s conflict was minimized because his role at the Energy Department was supervisory – “to embrace strategic objectives, inquire on overall progress of applications to the program staff, anticipate and help senior management clear any institutional roadblocks to accomplishment of the program’s objectives.”

Courtney Dorman, a spokeswoman for Allison Spinner’s law firm, Wilson Sonsini, said the firm also took strides to avoid conflicts, establishing a wall between her and client matters involving the Energy Department while Spinner was in office.

One of those law firm clients, SEC records show, was Solyndra – the California solar panel firm whose collapse put half a billion dollars of taxpayer money at risk and prompted an investigation by the FBI and other agencies.

The law firm worked on the solar company’s failed public offering, the records show. And it also provided Solyndra with outside counsel on the DOE loan guarantee transaction. The company was paid $2.44 million for its Solyndra work, records show – money generated by the Energy Department’s stimulus loan guarantee to the solar panel firm.

Allison Spinner “was not involved with that transaction, nor has she ever worked with Solyndra in any capacity,” Dorman said.

The law firm’s website cites Allison Spinner’s work with other clean tech firms – including Amyris Inc. and HCL CleanTech. Both companies had engaged in the time consuming process of applying for green energy grants. Amyris Biotechnologies won $25 million from DOE in late 2009 to develop a diesel substitute and went public the next year – with Spinner’s wife helping handle the IPO. After Spinner left the department, HCL CleanTech landed a $9 million Energy Department grant to convert biomass feedstocks into fuel and chemical products.

Dorman, the firm spokeswoman, said in an email that Wilson Sonsini “established an ethical wall around Allison with respect to WSGR representation of clients in matters involving DOE loan programs.” Dorman also said that Allison Spinner’s clients had DOE loans or grants “that fell outside of Steve’s jurisdiction.”

Steven Spinner was not with the department when Solyndra won a conditional commitment for the loan guarantee in March 2009. But he was on board when the loan closed that September. A few days later, at a clean tech forum in Boston in September 2009, Spinner spoke of the virtue of the DOE’s support.

“We liked the taste of it,” he said, telling the Boston group the company would bring thousands of jobs.

After leaving the department last September, Spinner has continued to cheerlead for its mission. This July, he co-authored an article for the Center for American Progress titled “Don’t Let Clean Energy Funding Die on the Vine.” The House committee’s investigation of the Solyndra financing was just heating up.

“This ‘embattled’ program has by all business metrics proven an outright success,” he wrote. “Even the most controversial loan guarantee recipient—Solyndra, a solar manufacturer—is seeing an operational turnaround…”

Little more than a month later, Solyndra fired 1,100 workers and filed for bankruptcy.

All pretty interesting — and I won’t deny that I’m fascinated by the specifics of how the Chicago model of pay for play works, when tied to a desire to “fundamentally transform” the United States: it’s almost like a one-party coup, in which the representative system of government is kept as a veneer over what is actually a cabal of bureaucrats, donors, and political power brokers directing the economy, redistributing wealth to corporate cronies and favored startups, and doing it all under the auspices of investments that we pay for, yet have no say in — and a four-year window wherein we’re unable to fire our broker, who has access to our bank account, and to credit lines taken out in our names, and that we’re required not only to pay back, but for the interest accrued, as well.

But all that aside — and yes, it is interesting — the real question is, where do I get me one of them whistling robots?

Those things are bitchin‘.