Tim Carney at the Washington Examiner brings us another heartwarming tale of crony capitalist success, demonstrating once again that campaign donations are the best investment you can make in a politicized economy:
James Torrey of Greenwich, Conn., has bundled more than $1 million for Barack Obama’s presidential runs, is a huge donor to Democratic Senate campaigns (including Obama’s 2004 race) and gave about $80,000 combined to Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential races.
This couldn’t have hurt his appointment to the board of directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corp. — a federal agency that subsidizes U.S. businesses investing in foreign countries.
Torrey is also on the board of the microfinance company MicroVest. After Torrey joined OPIC’s board, MicroVest went from being a moderate customer of OPIC to a leading recipient of OPIC subsidies: $57 million in taxpayer-backed financing and another $20 million in OPIC-provided insurance.
$77 million returned in benefits and subsidies on a little over $1 million in Democrat donations? Not too shabby.
Naturally, a bunch of Republican killjoys, led by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), are asking questions about Torrey’s role in securing that sudden tsunami of taxpayer loot for his company. Obviously they don’t understand how the world works now. I look forward to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits prying the relevant documentation out of OPIC sometime around 2017, so we can know the rest of the story.