Crony Socialism Is Still With Us

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Corruption: It didn't take long after President Obama was elected in 2008 for the first signs of crony capitalism to emerge. And as time's gone by, conditions haven't improved. If anything, the problem is growing worse.

This much is clear: Democrats who controlled Congress and the White House used the $700 billion TARP program and the $860 billion stimulus as a giant ATM to pay back favored constituencies, at the expense of the rest of us.

We thought the problem, once observed, would disappear. After all, who would want his or her name associated with something as disreputable as crony capitalism?

And yet, it hasn't gone away. In recent weeks, more revelations show just how corrupt our now-permanent "stimulus" culture is:

• Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid has fought on behalf of a Chinese-owned energy company, ENN Mojave Energy LLC, to build a billion-dollar solar energy plant in Nevada as part of the Obama White House "green jobs" campaign. Only problem, Reid's son Rory is one of the attorneys representing ENN Mojave.

• Joe Hynansky, a friend and contributor to both Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama, won a loan of up to $20 million backed by the U.S. government to build a luxury foreign auto dealership in . . . Ukraine. Stimulus? Hardly. Hynansky's family has donated more than $64,000 to both Obama's and Biden's various political campaigns.

• A new book, "Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob America Blind," makes the startling claim that a key aim of ObamaCare is to unionize 21 million health-care workers — giving the dying U.S. labor movement a shot in the arm. Any surprise organized labor has given Obama and other Dems hundreds of millions of dollars in the last decade?