But Don't Call it 'Corruption'

Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp.” Barack Obama promised an end to “politics as usual.” Not only did neither of them fulfill those promises, they have actively played the very games they promised to end.

Meet Nancy Pelosi, inside trader.

Somebody, somewhere decided to allow Nancy Pelosi-or her husband-participate in what was the most anticipated IPO that year [2008, when she was still Speaker of the House –ed]. It could have been one of the underwriters selected by Visa to manage its IPO or it could have been Visa itself that awarded the Pelosis the coveted shares. Who was it? And, did they approach Pelosi or did Pelosi approach them?

And Barack Obama has used the cover of “green” energy subsidies to send your tax dollars to his rich friends. Eighty percent of Department of Energy loans during the Obama administration have gone to major Obama backers.

In the 1705 government-backed-loan program [alone], for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party. The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008. Their political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy. It brought them returns many times over.

…The Government Accountability Office has been highly critical of the way guaranteed loans and grants were doled out by the Department of Energy, complaining that the process appears “arbitrary” and lacks transparency. In March 2011, for example, the GAO examined the first 18 loans that were approved and found that none were properly documented. It also noted that officials “did not always record the results of analysis” of these applications. A loan program for electric cars, for example, “lacks performance measures.” No notes were kept during the review process, so it is difficult to determine how loan decisions were made. The GAO further declared that the Department of Energy “had treated applicants inconsistently in the application review process, favoring some applicants and disadvantaging others.” The Department of Energy’s inspector general, Gregory Friedman, … has testified that contracts have been steered to “friends and family.”

But don’t call any of this Democrats Friends and Family Plan corruption. If you’re the Pollutico, just gloss over it with a dismissive one-liner.