From David Reinhard (note the male ponytail reference at the end):
There's, like, a major corporate financial scandal goin' down, dude. Some greed-head wheeler-dealer took almost a million in government funds intended for children and Alzheimer's patients and put the money into a private start-up company. The money was supposed to be a loan, but the loan was never repaid, Now, the nonprofit is broke and under investigation for "significant inappropriate transaction and falsified documents." And, you know, like, the mainstream corporate media? They're paying no attention to the story, man. Children and Alzheimer's patients get the short end of the stick while fat-cat private interests line their pockets -- only in George Bush's America, right?
Wrong. Only in the Air America scandal that's unfolding. The recipient of $875,000-plus from the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club in New York City is Air America, the left-wing radio network designed to take on the talk-radio right.
Air America says it has nothing to do with the "mismanagement and corruption at Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club," and that the loan was made to the network's old owners. But Air America says it will repay the funds anyway. In fact, Air America's parent company said it had wanted to start repaying the loan immediately, but couldn't without the New York City Department of Investigation's go-ahead. Investigators, however, told the New York Post that there was nothing stopping Air America from paying up. "DOI has done nothing and given no instruction preventing payment of money owed to Gloria Wise," DOI's Keith Schwam said. "Any statements to the contrary are inaccurate."
This was not the only troubling element in a scandal that so far has been confined to the blogosphere -- Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, Free Republic, Captain's Quarters and other haunts. Air America's Al Franken recently told the New York Sun's David Lombino he only recently learned the details of the story, but that Air America's new owner, Piquant LLC, discovered the fund transfer in a forensic investigation of the previous owner. But if the company knew about the problem before the city started its probe, why didn't it notify the city?
In other words, what did Al Franken know, and when did he know it?
At least, that's how the question's phrased when the alleged culprit is Karl Rove or George W. Bush.
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Granted, Air America's overall rating have fallen in major markets. But here, the left-wing network is still going strong, particularly in the crucial male-ponytail demographic. A little advice for the network's Portland affiliate:
Think globally and act locally.
