The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
News of the Tautological
“Federal Judge to Hear Law Case”–headline, North Platte (Neb.) Telegraph, Jan. 15
If You Don’t Need Insurance, He’s Got a Deal on Aluminum Siding
At the Web site of The American Spectator, think-tanker Paul Chesser takes note of a report by John Stossel on Fox Business Network “about a small window company called Serious Materials” that has big pull in Washington: (watch Stossel’s video here)
The company claims to produce the most energy efficient windows in the world, which other larger companies dispute–but that’s not the point. Watch the Stossel segment [at either link above] and you’ll see how Serious got some high profile endorsements from President Obama and Vice President Biden, which is suspicious because the company’s vice president for policy is married to the overseer of President Obama’s weatherization program, Cathy Zoi. Amazingly, Serious Materials was the only “green” window company to receive some recent tax credits from the federal government.
Stossel reports that after the segment ran, a Serious Materials flack “called to say that my story is ‘full of lies.’ But she wouldn’t say what those lies are.” The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota has the public documents on which Stossel’s report was based.
Timothy Carney at the Washington Examiner reports on another eyebrow-raising apparent conflict of interest:
Mark Ernst, in December 2007, was chief executive officer of H&R Block, the nation’s largest tax-preparation company. Thirteen months later, once President Obama took office, Ernst was named a deputy commissioner at the Internal Revenue Service, where he would spend his first year drafting new regulations for tax preparers–regulations that H&R Block welcomes and market analysts say will benefit the company.
With Ernst in mind, recall Barack Obama’s campaign pledge: “No political appointees in an Obama administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.”
Carney quotes an IRS spokesman’s email saying the rules don’t apply to Ernst because he “is a civil servant at the IRS; he is not a political appointee.” As Carney notes, it’s passing strange for an ex-CEO to pursue a second career as a civil servant. He adds: “Now we can see that the ethics rules, like much of Obama’s good-government talk, is more style than substance.”
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.
