Press Release: Cause of Action Sues DOE for Wrongfully Denying Loans to Green Energy Startup Companies

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

JANUARY 10, 2013

 

CAUSE OF ACTION SUES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY FOR WRONGFULLY DENYING LOANS TO GREEN ENERGY STARTUP COMPANIES AND LEAKING CONFIDENTIAL INTEL TO GM AND FORD 

DOE awarded loans to government cronies over more qualified applicants

WASHINGTON – Cause of Action (CoA), a government accountability organization, filed two lawsuits today, one in the United States Court of Federal Claims against the Department of Energy, and another in the United States District Court  for the District of Columbia against the Department of Energy as well as Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Director of the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program, Lachlan Seward , for unlawfully denying XP Vehicles, Inc.’s (XP)and Limnia, Inc.’s applications for funds as well as leaking patented intellectual property to government-backed General Motors and Ford.

“XP and Limnia are fighting against the Department of Energy’s lack of fairness in favor of politics as well as its flagrant abuse of taxpayer dollars to harm small business and benefit political cronies,” stated Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action. “XP and Limnia are now turning to the court for the accountability the DOE failed to administer.”

XP and Limnia allege that the Department of Energy granted loans in an arbitrary and capricious manner, inconsistently favoring some, while disadvantaging other applicants. These loan programs were intended to promote U.S. advanced technology companies and to reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil.

Evidence suggests that XP’s November 10, 2008 Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan application was deliberately “set aside,” substantially delayed consideration, and later denied by the DOE in favor of loan applications from politically-connected governmentcronieslike Tesla, Fisker, and GM.

Additionally, the lawsuit identifies the multiple violations of Non-Disclosure Agreements in which Limnia’s confidential intellectual property including patented energy storing systems and pressure membrane technology were disclosed to GM and to Ford, a recipient of the ATVM Loan Program.

XP and Limnia turned to Cause of Action to hold the Department of Energy, its Secretary and its programs administrator accountable for their actions in wrongfully denying loan applications while at the same time engaging in the unauthorized disclosure of confidential intellectual property with government-backed competitors.

The complaints can be found here.

 

To schedule an interview with Cause of Action’s Executive Director Dan Epstein, contact Mary Beth Hutchins,  202-400-2721 or Jamie Morris, jamie.morris@causeofaction.org.

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Washington Post: Car company says Obama team steered stimulus funds to political favorites

 

 

 

Car company says Obama team steered stimulus funds to political favorites

 

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Truth-Out.org: Government Ethical Standards Are Toothless, Unenforced

Read full article here. Truth-Out.org

“Nonpartisan watchdog Cause of Action said in a memo that “OGE recklessly disregarded clear warning signs of waste, fraud and abuse at GSA. Furthermore, any mismanagement or fraud within the OGE is subject to review only by OGE itself, as OGE lacks an inspector general.”

In the 34 years since the formation of OGE, none of the 5,700 employees working in the 133 executive agencies has found any wrongdoing to be significant enough to trigger enforcement of ethical standards. Similarly, Congressional oversight of the executive branch has ignored president/s who condone torture, assassination, imprisonment of whistleblowers they formerly encouraged, violate the Constitution at will and have been accused of war crimes by constitutional lawyers…”

Daily Caller: Former ethics officer says NLRB inspector general ‘improperly’ cleared Obama appointee of wrongdoing

Read the full story here. Daily Caller

“Prompted in part by Joseph’s claims, the legal advocacy group Cause of Action sent a Dec. 7 request to the Department of Justice for a new investigation into the Solomon case. Cause of Action claimed that the OIG “shifted the blame away from Solomon” in order to resolve a case that has caused turmoil within the NLRB and a headache for the Obama administration.

The case dates back to January 2012, when the NLRB considered suing Wal-Mart over allegations that it violated federal labor laws with its social media policy.

Despite holding more than $15,000 in Wal-Mart stock, Solomon attended a meeting in his office with the NLRB’s Division of Advice on Jan. 23. Solomon expressed in the meeting his desire for the NLRB to delay the lawsuit and instead “reach out” to Wal-Mart to encourage the company to change its social media policy.”

 

A new year’s resolution for the federal government

In a recent Washington Examiner article, Executive Editor Mark Tapscott asked leading advocates for government transparency for their thoughts on what should be the government’s top transparency priorities for 2013. Cause of Action’s Executive Director Dan Epstein was featured as one of the “Nine people who know how to make government work better, more honestly.” Dan laid out five needed changes in the federal government that would yield greater accountability and transparency. One area he touched on is Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.  In addition to Dan’s suggestion of a “Uniform database of FOIA requests and processing, following current online tracking used by the Department of Labor and the FBI,” we want to offer some practical ways agencies can and should be improving their FOIA approach.

For those of us who believe in an honest, transparent government, 2012 was a disappointing year. In January 2009, President Obama submitted a memorandum for heads of Executive Branch agencies stating, “The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.”

Despite the administration’s self-proclaimed commitment to openness, the responses to FOIA requests and lack of available data highlight a lack of follow-through from numerous agencies.

The Cato Institute graded the federal government’s data publication practices and found that, “the administration and the Congress both receive fairly low marks under systematic examination of their data publication practices.” On budgeting, appropriating and spending, eight out of 11 subjects received a D or F.

A Bloomberg investigation submitted FOIA requests to 57 agencies asking for travel records for Cabinet Secretaries and top officials in fiscal year 2011. Only 8 of the 57 agencies provided the documents within the 20-day period required by law and 7 provided the documents within 21 to 30 days. Almost half of the agencies did not provide documents at all by September 14, 2012 (the requests were sent in June of 2012). In a follow-up report in December of 2012, Bloomberg noted that 19 agencies still had not provided documents, including nine of 15 cabinet offices.

A staff report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform examined the FOIA tracking systems for 180 government entities and gave cabinet agencies a C- grade and all 180 entities a B-. The report notes, however, that this only tests an agency’s ability to track its own FOIA requests and does not necessarily reflect its ability to respond to requests.

A FOIA Project study found that FOIA lawsuits have increased 28 percent during 2007-2008 and 2011-2012 from 562 to 720.

Here at Cause of Action, many of the FOIA requests we filed in 2012 hit unnecessary roadblocks including superfluous redactions, needless fees, and failure to meet time mandates required by the law. At one bureau, a whopping 30 percent of our requests have gone unfulfilled for more than 180 days, and at another our investigations team was halted when a FOIA officer went on vacation for 3 weeks without anyone to even answer our questions.

But now, it’s 2013. A new year has come, both in time and politics. This year, we have three New Year’s resolutions to suggest for the government.

  1. Increase efficiency in providing responsive documents to FOIA requests. Some of our requests have been open for more than 6 months with no production. At the very least, agencies should attempt to provide a timetable for when the documents can be produced.
  2. FOIA officers should improve communications with requesters by responding to email and phone calls in a timely manner. One agency could not give any information on one of our outstanding requests because the FOIA officer in charge of our request was out of town for almost three weeks. We could not get a status update or even an acknowledgement that they had our request. If the agency has a question regarding the FOIA request, it should not hesitate to contact the requester to resolve the issue. This will cut down on response times while also reducing appeals and lawsuits.
  3. President Obama and Attorney General Holder need to enforce the vision set out in their 2009 memorandums. Holder stated that agencies “should not withhold information simply because it may do so legally” and “whenever an agency determines that it cannot make full disclosure of a requested record, it must consider whether it can make partial disclosure.” These promises have largely gone unfulfilled, and since there’s no better time than the present, 2013 would be a good time to start keeping them.

Washington Examiner: Nine people who know how to make government work better, more honestly

Read the full story here. Washington Examiner

Daniel Epstein
Executive Director,
Cause of Action
Five most needed victories:
1. Passage of the Data Act and digitalization of all federal spending data.
2. Creation of a private right of action under the Information Quality Act.
3. Creation of judicial review procedures under the Administrative Procedures Act for review of decisions of the IRS whistleblower office.
4. Uniform database of FOIA requests and processing, following current online tracking used by the Department of Labor and the FBI.
5. Legislative action based on the District of Columbia Circuit’s Aera v. Salazar decision, which would require disclosure of political influence on agency decisions, including disclosure of administrative earmarks under Executive Order 13457 – protecting taxpayers against wasteful earmarks.

Fox News: DISH Network co-founder accused of bullying execs for political donations

Read full story here. Fox News

“The Federal Election Commission complaint, filed by conservative advocacy group Cause of Action, claimed an unnamed “insider” had come forward to report DISH executives ‘being compelled to make political campaign contributions’….Cause of Action’s complaint went on to detail how contributions from that PAC often coincided with individual contributions from some of the DISH executives — for instance, a $5,000 PAC donation to the campaign of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in August 2011, and a $2,500 donation from Han the same day; or contributions from two DISH executives to the campaign of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., in September 2010, followed by a $5,000 PAC contribution the following May….”