Wind Power's Political Payoff

Our ever-campaigning president heads off to a fundraiser held by a politically connected businessman whose company took a $100 million stimulus tax credit. Solyndra didn't stop pay-for-play the "Chicago Way." Tone-deaf somehow does not seem adequate to describe President Obama's silent indifference to the Solyndra scandal of his making as he rushes off to another fundraiser, a $25,000 per person affair in Missouri on Oct. 4 organized by another beneficiary of our stimulus tax dollars. Tom Carnahan, of the Missouri Carnahans, arguably that state's most prominent political family, is listed on President Obama's campaign website as a host of the St. Louis fundraising extravaganza amid widespread unemployment and tanking markets. Coincidentally, of course, Carnahan's energy development firm, Wind Capital Group, is the recipient of a $107 million federal tax credit to develop a wind power facility in his state. We know that people support candidates who tend to share their interests and beliefs, and that an appearance of impropriety may be only that — an appearance of one. But there's a disturbing pattern here of an administration picking winners and losers, with an emphasis on losers who happen also to be donors...more