Corruption in Washington

From John Stossel at Fox News:

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. . . .

Timothy Carney at the Washington Examiner notes:

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."
This campaign pledge manifested itself in an executive order requiring "every appointee in every executive agency" to pledge, "I will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts."
Ernst obviously didn't follow these rules, but the IRS tells me that Ernst is not covered by these rules. "Mark Ernst is a civil servant at the IRS; he is not a political appointee," according to an e-mail IRS statement by an agency spokesman. . . .