HOW QUID PRO QUO WORKS AT THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
How do you give payola, funded by working class taxpayers, to millionaires that don't need it, to pay kick-backs for funding Obama's political marketing?
Easy: You use the U.S. Department of Energy as the world's biggest political slush-fund. This way, you get to pay bribes IN PLAIN SIGHT!
The Department of Energy bosses get to claim everything is on the "up and up" but EVERY SINGLE TIME, only the political campaign financiers get the money and their competitors get sabotaged. Neat trick, right?
Here is how it works:
Quid pro quo ("something for something" in Latin[2]) is a Latin phrase used in English to mean an exchange of goods or services, in which one transfer is contingent upon the other; "a favor for a favor". Phrases with similar meanings include: "give and take", "tit for tat", "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours", and "one hand washes the other". Other languages use other phrases for the same purpose.
Corruption in politics at the Department of Energy arises from the mismatch on Capitol Hill: squadrons of well-paid, experienced lobbyists versus DOE offices where aides are overworked, underpaid and have to depend on those lobbyists for information about issues. We want to see DOE offices with more aides, supervised by FBI agents, who would get better pay, to keep them on the Hill longer while they develop their own expertise. We would also close the metaphorical revolving door, through which staffers and lawmakers travel to make more money as lobbyists.
The need for campaign finance reform has always been an urgent one. The quid pro quo of shadow money and special interest campaign financing is at the root of corruption in this country, particularly at the Department of Energy. When government uses millions of taxpayer dollars to rent a bond hastily acquired and for no clear purpose from a ‘party financier’, that is the spectre of campaign finance related corruption showing itself. When construction companies that finance political campaigns to the tune of millions are being awarded public work contracts worth billions under questionable public tendering rules, that is campaign finance related corruption. When a branding company that provided ‘free’ billboards to a political campaign is given the lion’s share of billboard and branding contracts under a new government, we see the spectre of corruption. And then of course there is the issue of abuse of state resources for campaigning, something we seem to have come full Animal Farm on.
Elon Musk, Solyndra, Fisker, Abound and over a hundred other wire transfers from the Department of Energy were quid-pro-quo payoffs to Obama financiers. The layers of the deals were complex but the money always ended up in the same few pockets.
The Department of Energy has a massive fake due diligence program which spends a hundred times more time and money than any bank undertakes to provide funds. All of that due diligence is a fraud. It is a smoke-screen to provide the appearance of "proper review" when, in each and every case, the funds were covertly already arranged in a back room deal.
All of those people that work on those due diligence efforts must feel like fools. Their work is pointless because the deals were already done in smoke-filled back rooms at Perkins Coie, Wilson Sonsini and Covington Burling lobbyist buildings. All of the Department of Energy staff own the stock of the company that "wins" the government cash and most of them leave the Department of Energy, right after the money is transferred, and go to work at that company or it's suppliers.
It is an EPIC crime!
Now, the need for reform is even more urgent, particularly considering the complexity of how capital moves in an oil and gas economy and the impact of that capital on political decision-making. (ie: "...One emerging party, for example, has been against renegotiation of the oil contract with Exxon, arguing that we should accept it and guard against exploitative arrangements with future contracts. When the Department of Energy recently revealed that it had recently hired a US firm to do what should have been done years ago, revise the decades-old Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Act, it was casually revealed that the local firm the US company had partnered with is owned by the Presidential Candidate of the very new party that has – along with the PPP and APNU+AFC – refused to consider contract renegotiation, even in the wake of the damning Global Witness report....")
By breaking the close bonds between lobbyists and congressional offices, lawmakers might become less beholden to the lobbyists' employers — the corporations, unions and special interests that underwrite American politics.
As value is in the eye of the beholder, the something being exchanged for another something may not be equal in value, instead skewed based on one’s perspective.
Governments and multinational bodies impose economic sanctions to try to alter the strategic decisions of state and nonstate actors that threaten their interests or violate international norms of behavior.
Economic sanctions are defined as the withdrawal of customary trade and financial relations for foreign- and security-policy purposes.
Sanctions take a variety of forms, including travel bans, asset freezes, arms embargoes, capital restraints, foreign aid reductions, and trade restrictions.
Expressing concern at the closing of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe. In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine was at stake.
Since its ruling in Buckley v. Valeo, the U.S. Supreme Court has expressed concern regarding corruption or the appearance of corruption stemming from political quid pro quo arrangements and the deleterious consequences it may have on citizens’ democratic behavior. However, no standard has been set as to what constitutes “the appearance of corruption,” as the Court was and continues to be vague in its definition. As a result, campaign finance cases after Buckley have relied on public opinion polls as evidence of perceptions of corruption, and these polls indicate that the public generally perceives high levels of corruption in government. The present study investigates the actual impact that perceptions of corruption have on individuals’ levels of political participation. Adapting the standard socioeconomic status model developed most fully by Verba and Nie (1972), an extended beta-binomial regression estimated using maximum likelihood is performed, utilizing unique data from the 2009 University of Texas’ Money and Politics survey. The results of this study indicate that individuals who perceive higher levels of quid pro quo corruption participate more in politics, on average, than those who perceive lower levels of corruption.
Quid pro quo is not a difficult concept to understand. Too bad the media doesn’t endeavor to investigate and explain it. Your politicians don't work for you, they work for their own insider trading stock market holdings for themselves!