While America as a whole slides toward unemployment and poverty, certain well-connected people are doing very nicely indeed. Consider Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul. Kevin Bogardus of The Hill reports:

 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saw her net worth rise 62 percent last year, cementing her status as one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

Pelosi was worth at least $35.2 million in the 2010 calendar year, according to a financial disclosure report released Wednesday. She reported a minimum of $43.4 million in assets and about $8.2 in liabilities.

For 2009, Pelosi reported a minimum net worth of $21.7 million.

Then, there are those Obama donors who are getting fat government contracts. Fred Schulte, John Aloysius Farrell and Jeremy Borden write in Politico:

Telecom executive Donald H. Gips raised a big bundle of cash to help finance his friend Barack Obama's run for the presidency.

Gips, a vice president of Colorado-based Level 3 Communications, delivered more than $500,000 in contributions for the Obama war chest, while two other company executives collected at least $150,000 more.

After the election, Gips was put in charge of hiring in the Obama White House, helping to place loyalists and fundraisers in many key positions. Then, in mid-2009, Obama named him ambassador to South Africa. Meanwhile, Level 3 Communications, in which Gips retained stock, received millions of dollars of government stimulus contracts for broadband projects in six states - though Gips said he had been "completely unaware" that the company had received the contracts.

More than two years after Obama took office vowing to banish "special interests" from his administration, nearly 200 of his biggest donors have landed plum government jobs and advisory posts, won federal contracts worth millions of dollars for their business interests or attended numerous elite White House meetings and social events, an investigation by iWatch News has found.

Obama political dictum: Punish your enemies, reward your friends. He promised to end this dynamic; but all his promises have expiration dates (h/t Jim Geraghty)

Why is the media silent, for the most part, on Obama's payola?  Where is the NYT on presidential ethics and competent performance?  When we need international allies more than ever he is handing out ambassadorships as party favors