Ah, The Smell Of Swamp Gas In The Morning!

There seems to be a swampy odor emanating simultaneously from Whitefish, MT, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico:

Puerto Rico has agreed to pay a reported $300 million for the restoration of its power grid to a tiny utility company that is primarily financed by a private-equity firm founded and run by a man who contributed large sums of money to President Trump, an investigation conducted by The Daily Beast has found. 

Whitefish Energy Holdings, which had a reported staff of only two full-time employees when Hurricane Maria touched down, appears ill-equipped to handle the daunting task of restoring electricity to Puerto Rico’s more than 3 million residents. 

Much larger utilities are more commonly used following natural disasters on the scale of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island last month. (our emphasis)

Whew! The smell is getting stronger:

... On Monday, The Washington Post reported that Whitefish Chief Executive Officer Andy Techmanski is friends with Trump administration Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Moreover, Whitefish is located in Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Montana. [snip] 

Zinke isn’t the only member of the Trump administration with a connection to the Whitefish contract. In addition to the Colonnettas’ contributions to Trump’s presidential campaign, Kimberly Colonnetta’s Facebook page contains a photo of her with Ben Carson, Trump’s secretary of housing and urban development. Another photo appears to show Kimberly Colonnetta with Trump Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Both photos were posted the week of Trump’s inauguration. (our emphasis)

Those are a lot of powerful connections!  Not to be confused with connecting Puerto Ricans to power.

No worries! We've located the cause of the smell:

Luis Vega-Ramos, member of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives, told The Daily Beast, “Whitefish’s most important expertise or assets seems to have been… having the U.S. secretary of the interior, Ryan Zinke, as their former congressman and current ally and having the wisdom to retain the services of key people close to the governor [of Puerto Rico].”

“Whitefish seems to be nothing more than a glorified middleman to get the real providers of the services, with which PREPA [the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority] could have contracted directly,” Vega-Ramos said. “It is a cozy sweetheart deal in which Whitefish gets a gratuity for subcontracting the actual providers.”  (our emphasis)

The House Committee on Natural Resources is looking into this, apparently. At last glance, the House is Republican, so the Committee is run by Republicans, who have their swamp gas masks on. Move along, nothing to see here.

(Photo: Interior Secretary Ryan "Stinky" Zinke.)