Here's a question: why DO Republicans find it so easy to believe thousands of scientists around the world are engaged in a conspiracy to promote a global warming hoax so they can get billions of dollars in research money? Why DO they seem so certain Solyndra loans absolutely positively had to be a payback to a major Obama donor? What do they know that the rest of us don't?
More after the squiggle.
Here's a story you may have missed while Solyndra-Gate was getting smeared all over the airwaves:
Jian-Yun “John” Dong, a virologist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, was charged with trying to make illegal campaign contributions upwards of $30,000 to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. He is also accused of using government funds awarded to his company GenPhar for lobbying, travel, and other activities excluded by the grants.
The Scientist short news item linked above picks up from a longer story from Science Insider:
A virologist who worked on biodefense vaccines and was active in South Carolina politics has been charged with making illegal campaign contributions and using research grants to defraud the U.S. government. Jian-Yun Dong of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston was named in two federal indictments filed 5 months ago and released this week by the U.S. district court in Charleston. Two biotech companies launched and directed by Dong (who is also known as John Dong)—GenPhar and a spinoff called Vaxima, both in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina—are named as part of a fraud.
The Post and Courier reports how Senator Lindsay Graham steered funding to Dong:
Graham helped GenPhar secure $19.6 million in federal grants between 2004 and last year to fund research into vaccines for deadly dengue fever and the Ebola and Marburg viruses. Most recently, Graham and former Congressman Henry Brown helped land a $1.3 million earmark for GenPhar last year to aid in the dengue vaccine research, according to earmark-tracker LegiStorm.
SNIP
During this period, Dong and his wife became substantial donors to Graham’s campaign and his PAC, the Fund for America’s Future. They donated thousands more to other conservatives candidates and causes as well. U.S. senators Jim DeMint and John McCain were among those the couple supported, as were former Rep. Brown and the National Republican Congressional Committee, records show.
Now, there may be more here than meets the eye... or less. Graham certainly has legitimate reasons to support someone of demonstrated ability who is busy doing research with big implications for national security and health, someone who is creating jobs and building companies in Graham's home state. Dong is certainly well within his rights to support politicians whose views he finds support his own political inclinations... though maybe not as enthusiastically as he did? And keeping track of where every last penny is going can be so hard, especially when millions are going back and forth. Who can tell what part of a lab was built with private investment or public money, at first glance? (Unless of course it has to do with Stem Cell research, where Congress was insisting everything had to be strictly separated.) It's so hard being a scientist and an entrepreneur.
It's perfectly possible that this will all turn out of have been a misunderstanding, some honest mistake. Graham is not being charged with anything after all, claiming he had no knowledge of the contributions at the time the funding decisions were being made, etc. etc. Be that as it may, we now have a legitimate reason to use the words "Lindsay Graham" and "Dong" in the same sentence.
Still, when you see Republican politicians demagoguing about science conspiracies and expressing outrage over the appearance of quid pro quo Federal funding, when you see the Right Wing Mighty Wurlitzer at work, you have to ask yourself a few questions, like:
How come they're so quick to see a pattern of corruption? Is it just plain horse sense - or personal familiarity?
Are these guys so angry because they see it as theft of public funds - or because it's cutting in on their racket?
How exactly do they see this as different from the usual interactions with the business community, like the bankers or big oil? Didn't the Supreme Court have some recent ruling about money being equivalent to freedom of speech, and corporations having the rights of citizens?
Odd. I'm trying to remember any similar activities coming to light during the Bush years. How many times did the FBI raid companies that had gotten government funding and failed to account for it? How many times were political connections scrutinized when the big bucks were being handed out? I seem to be drawing a blank for some reason.
I can't wait for the House Republicans to jump all over this, and I can only imagine how outraged FOX NEWS, Limbaugh, Hannity, and the rest will be.
Yeah, right.