Warren Buffett's Subsidy Buffet

White House pal Warren Buffett didn't become a gazillionaire by not knowing how to work the angles. And he's not above using government power or the taxpayers' pocket to pump-up his profit margins. With this purchase Buffett not only reveals himself as a run-of-the-mill subsidy chaser, but he's betting that taxpayer support for these not-ready-for-primetime energy technologies will continue, despite the scandals that have rocked these programs.

He's a crony capitalist who trusts that taxpayers will hedge this bet on solar.

The Los Angeles Times speculates that Buffett's investment in solar will help "boost" the industry. But by what means? Will his involvement increase the likelihood of technical breakthroughs in solar technology, open new markets for solar power or magically make solar power cost-competitive with conventional alternatives? Probably not. The "boost" he'll give the industry stems not from his influence in the free market, or his excellence as a businessman, or his track record as an innovator, but from his influence in Washington and Sacramento, where his lobbying power will be used to keep the government propping-up companies that can't survive without mandates or subsidies.

Buffett, like all good crony capitalists, is a parasite who wants to keep feeding off the body politic. And his deeper investment in these government-protected industries means he will do everything in his considerable power to keep the protection racket going -- to keep profiteering at our expense.

American Oligarch

New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov didn't become a billionaire on the up-and-up, in a strictly capitalist system, as this piece in the New York Times points out. Like other Russian "oligarchs," he made his money the post-Soviet way, by manipulating a corrupt "system" from the inside to line his pockets. The way he made his fortune wouldn't be legal in the United States, as the story points out. Oligarchs reaped unfair advantage from a too-cozy relationship with government.

The troubling irony in his continuing "success story," as the foreign owner of an American professional sports team, is how adroitly he worked the "system" in New York City to similar advantage. Prokhorov has plenty of cash with which to hire top coaches and talent -- no objection there -- but he will also profit from taxpayer funding of his new arena in Brooklyn. Other government help for Prokhorov "includes eminent domain, major subsidies, a naming-rights giveaway and bad, undemocratic urban planning," reports The Times.

Prokhorov is working the system in New York City the same way he worked the system in the former Soviet Union, by using public resources and government power to get his way and enrich himself. That the two systems are so similar, and similarly corrupt, should be deeply troubling to Americans.