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Obama’s “Iran-Contra”
I read the following in July 16th’s Wall Street Journal:
The Obama Justice Department made a practice of settling lawsuits against corporate defendants by requiring they make large donations to groups like La Raza. It was, in the words of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, “a scheme to funnel money to politically favored special interest groups.” In a letter sent to Attorney General Loretta Lynch in the closing days of the Obama administration, Mr. Goodlatte noted that “in just the last two years, DOJ has directed nearly $1 billion to activist groups, entirely outside of Congress’s spending and oversight authority.”
I am embarrassed to admit that I had never heard about this practice until now. Even after his leaving office, I still find reasons to be appalled by our previous president. Chalk this up as item #1,742 on the list of things that would have been front-page scandals if a Republican had done them.
This is at least as bad as the Iran-Contra affair, and this was done in the open!
Published in General
Just out of curiosity, why “hated”? Is that your opinion, or are you just reporting on the general perception of the paywall?
It’s my impression that the paywall enables them to pay their journalists without running yearly begathons, as NR does.
I worked in the field for many years and EPA’s use of the strategy was well known.
These sorts of issues are why I’ve grown to doubt that the beltway GOP actually gives a fig about the size of the federal government.
Regarding Bush’s faith based initiative, I do not believe that Bush is dumb enough to have not foreseen that this expansion of federal power would be used to advance leftist goals at the first opportunity. I don’t think he cared. After all, “when people are hurting the government has to move.” Amirite?
The GOP has had control of the House for 18 of the last 22 years. That’s a lot of time to have done something about the justice department and EPA before now, if they’d cared. They didn’t care. Oh, they complained about it, and used it to raise funds. But do anything? Too much work.
For that matter, they’ve not done anything about the IRS abuses other than hold some hearings, grumble, and raise campaign funds. “But, Obama would have vetoed anything they’d passed.” Oops, lost that excuse. What’s the new excuse?
Ultimately, they’re all part of the same insider cabal.
Any word on whether the same will happen with the money from civil asset forfeiture?
Didn’t know about this one, but I am not surprised. But was it deliberate?
What would be interesting and good investigated journalism is see how many former DOJ employees. Now work for and even harder to get did consulting work for these groups that received funds. Then see if they were involved with the settlement in any way. However I think there is a two year wait period so I would hold off on the investigation a bit to see who falls into this corrupt revolving door.
Finding people with a grievance isn’t hard. I think Rosa Parks and Jane Roe were both pawns.
That’s certainly a valid point, and I guess a smiley was probably in order. My experience is that the Journal’s paywall is the least forgiving of major online papers and subscriptions are very much at the high end. I’m assuming that they’ve crunched the numbers and decided that’s what works best for their business plan, rather than encouraging clicks by free riders. Since James Taranto moved on up, I admittedly haven’t been paying much attention.