Earthpork: 7 Days Left

Chief Rainforest con man and Senator Chuck "fauxscal conservative" Grassley campaign contributor David Oman

From the Knoxville Journal-Express:

Earthpark is a $150 million indoor rain forest project, tentatively set to be built on the Pella side of Lake Red Rock. The bulk of the money for the project is coming from the US Department of Energy, thanks to Sen. Charles Grassley. To receive those funds, a matching grant of $25 million had to be raised locally.

Grassley secured the funds five years ago. The project was originally supposed to be built near Coralville, but it did not come to fruition. Pella was named as the new site for the project last year. If the matching funds are not in place by Dec. 1, the money will go back to the US Treasury. In his own words, Grassley once told the Journal-Express, "Five years is long enough."

Oman and the Earthpark Board have been traveling across the country over the past year to work on securing the necessary funding. He said there have been many good discussions with potential investors and that he would be happy to share more information when the time is right.

Er, is this news story correct?

Grassley secured $50 million in pork for this joke, and Oman had already spent $2.9 million of it when Grassley turned off the spigot - which shouldn't have been turned on to begin with. Grassley then had to change the rules on where the money could be spent (all of Iowa, rather than just Johnson County, where Coralville is....) after Oman pulled out rather than face questioning from the Coralville City Council members who actually supported the project but wanted to learn a few minor details - like where the financing was coming from.

So I thought the amount that con man Oman needed to raise was $50 million in matching, not $25 million. I think this news story is incorrect.

But anyway, it's the first news story we've seen on the Rainforest in quite a while and at this point I'm going to mention every one of them as we approach the deadline.

Some of the money can raised can be in "services" - which of course is a total scam because you can't get buildings raised without cash or financing, and con man Oman hasn't been able to raise a private dime in all these years. Oman did get some rinky dink company in Georgia to "donate" $10 million in "financial and technical" services.

Even if Oman can cobble together enough phony promises in order to unlock Grassley's $50 million or $48.1 million or whatever the amount is in pork, he's still got to find a way to finance the construction costs - now down to an alleged $150 million.

How does Oman get the other $100 million financed if he's lucky enough to meet the deadline? He'll only have the cash from Grassley's pork. Nobody in their right mind would loan David Oman $100 million. He's not going to get it out of the Iowa Legislature. And he's certainly not going to get it out of Governor Chet Culver as evidenced from this gubernatorial campaign commercial last year when Culver was running against Jim Nussle: