Graft and Corruption

Trump talked about the graft and corruption that has been the modus operandi of our government when he mentioned that Stacey Abrams was one of the leaders of a coalition of NGOs that got $2 billion to reduce carbon emissions. The left immediately circled the wagons to say that Trump had been “debunked.”

“Stacey Abrams has not received a penny of this EPA grant,”

Of course there isn’t going to be a check that reads “kickbacks” or “corruption” in the memo line, but let’s look at what she herself had to say:

In 2023 and 2024, I led a program called Vitalizing De Soto. We worked in a tiny town in south Georgia to demonstrate that by replacing energy-inefficient appliances with efficient appliances, you can lower your cost. And in fact, we accomplished that for 75% of the community. They got appliances that are lowering their bills,

Look at the facts:

There are 400 people in Desoto, Georgia living in 125 households. If she bought new appliances for 75% of them, that makes new appliances for 94 households. She claims that each household got 6 appliances. At $2,000 per appliance, the entire project should cost no more than two and a quarter million. Setting aside the fact that this project to reduce electric bills through buying new appliances is an incredibly inefficient way to do it, one has to wonder how many people skimmed off the top, received kickbacks, and were paid inflated salaries.

If the goal is to get people to purchase new, energy saving appliances, all the government had to do was give a tax rebate for people who buy new appliances. Instead, this was obviously a Democratic strategy that used taxpayer funds to hand out freebies in the contested state of Georgia in the run up to the 2024 election. That funds were skimmed off the top and pain to corrupt politicians was also part of the plan. That’s how so many in Congress get rich.