Courtesy of the Democrats:
Congress has relaxed rules that would have required public disclosure of contributions and parties paid for by lobbyists, narrowing the scope of new ethics rules intended to draw back the veil on Washington’s influence game.
New guidance released by Congress late Wednesday exempts lobbyists from reporting their financing of an array of political and charitable contributions, events and parties at political conventions.
What? You expected something different? If you did, its because you still haven’t purchased Caucus of Corruption.
I know, I know - you liberals out there think Matt and I just wrote a book blaming corruption on Democrats, but that isn’t what we wrote at all. What we wrote is a book detailing how the Democrats are locked into corruption because no one ever holds them accountable - not the MSM, not rank-and-file Democrats and most certainly not other elected Democrats. People are people, and that means that a certain percentage of them will sin - and for a politician, the sin usually revolves around abuse of power by various means. We can’t get all corruption out of politics because we can’t get all people out of it. But we can lessen it greatly if we hold everyone accountable for their actions. By one means or another, Republicans are held accountable…so Cunningham goes to jail, while Jefferson is set to be re-elected, again. So Foley resigns, while Frank is a powerful member of the Democratic caucus. So Rowland is threatened with impeachment by his fellow GOPers to force him out, while Blagojevich is still in office even though he figures prominently in myriad corruption scandals. On and on it goes like that.
Look, Democrats, its not for us to tell you what you must do, but we will tell you what you should do - and what you should do is start to understand that good intentions don’t excuse crimes. It doesn’t matter that these are all good liberals who are reliably on your side on the issues - they are poisoning our politics and contributing to the contempt government is held in. They have to go - but only you, on your side, can actually make them go. Do you really want to be a party which is ok with corruption? Don’t you want to be honest as you can be?
Tags: Caucus of Corruption, liberal lies, lobbyists
July 19th, 2008
Another Democrat getting preferential treatment on a loan:
Senator Kent Conrad said he was given preferential treatment on a mortgage from Countrywide Financial Corp. and will write a $10,500 check to charity.
“It appears Countrywide waived one point on my mortgage,” Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, said in a statement today in Washington. “Although I did not ask for or know that I was receiving a discount, and even though I was offered a competitive loan from another lender, I do not want to have received preferential treatment.”
Conrad said he also received a loan from Countrywide on an eight-unit apartment building in Bismarck, North Dakota, even though the lender typically serves properties that have four units or less. He said he had decided to refinance that loan with another institution.
Conrad and Senator Christopher Dodd, who oversees the U.S. mortgage industry as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, were among those who received loans through Countrywide’s “V.I.P.” program, which waived points, fees and borrowing rules for prominent people, Portfolio magazine reported June 12. Dodd has denied receiving preferential treatment.
“He never expected, asked for or was aware of any special treatment,” Conrad’s spokesman, Chris Thorne, said. “He is paying this to make absolutely clear he will not partake in any preferential treatment.”
As there is more than one way to skin a cat, there is more than one way to bribe a politician. The fact that there is such a thing as a VIP program is disturbing enough (full disclosure: the very large financial institution I work for has one, too, and it annoys me no end, though I’ve never noted a politician in the mix, but I’m also not nearly privy to the full scope of the program), but to see an elected official not making 100% certain that he doesn’t benefit from such a program gets any “clean government” advocate rather upset.
You see, the problem here is that its too large an opening for outright corruption - we don’t know if Conrad was actually being bribed, but the plain fact of the matter is that such a thing can very easily become a bribe. Like this - one of the things Matt and I discovered in writing Caucus of Corruption is that while a politician can’t use political donations to enrich himself, he can put his wife on the campaign payroll and pay her (and, therefor, himself) a hefty paycheck out of donated funds…and more than once Matt and I found that the politician doing this sort of thing had no or token opposition to his re-election bid (meaning he was taking in vast amounts of money for no actual purpose, and shovelling it over to his wife for alleged work on a nearly un-necessary re-election effort). Very easy for Countrywide - or any bank - to turn special treatment of a loan into a bribe; “ok, Senator, you vote the way we want and we’ll ensure that you get a very low cost loan to buy that property you have your eye one” - the savings in such a transaction could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, more than enough to get a corrupt pol to do one’s bidding.
And, once again, this brings me back to the theme of Caucus - that unless and until Democrats start holding their own side accountable for corruption, this sort of shady practice will continue unabated. Conrad might be squeeky clean, but does anyone want to bet me that a program like Countrywide’s VIP program has never been misused? Back in 2004, Democrats were urging any Republican even remotely connected to shady practices be forced out of office…I won’t hold my breath waiting for Democrats to start demanding the same level of accountability for their side.
Tags: Caucus of Corruption, Democrat Corruption
June 15th, 2008
I thought it odd that a mere sex scandal would force a Democrat out of office - didn’t do the trick for Bill Clinton, Barney Frank or Gerry Studds, after all. Spitzer could have done the usual - for Democrats - song and dance about how its a private matter between him and his wife, yadda, yadda, yadda and figure that it’d be old news by the time he ran for re-election in 2010 (naturally counting on “how he’s grown since the scandal” stories from the MSM along the way…). But, he’s out - and out rather quickly. In writing Caucus of Corruption, Matt and I discovered that there is only one thing which will convince Democrats to force one of their own out of office - a risk to the power of the Democratic party as a whole. In the Spitzer sex scandal, there was no immediately apparant risk to Democratic power - but, as it turns out, there was something behind the scenes:
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A prosecutor said Friday that former Gov. Eliot Spitzer may have lied when he told investigators he wasn’t deeply involved in a plot that used a Republican rival’s travel records in an effort to embarrass him. He added that Spitzer could have been indicted had he not resigned in disgrace in a prostitution scandal.
Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares said in a report that Spitzer’s former communications director, Darren Dopp, recounted conversations and e-mails that indicated Spitzer directly ordered him in a profanity-laced exchange to give a reporter records regarding Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno’s use of state aircraft on days he attended Republican fundraisers.
Dopp was provided immunity for his testimony in Soares’ second investigation of the 2007 scandal. Dopp had faced a possible perjury charge because a statement released by the Spitzer administration about the scandal differed from his own testimony, but Soares found Friday that he did not commit perjury.
“If Dopp’s testimony is credited,” Soares’ report states, “then former Governor Spitzer’s answers were not truthful. Accordingly, we intended to present these conflicting accounts to a grand jury.”
But Spitzer’s resignation this month, after he was implicated in an investigation of a prostitution ring, made it impossible to file a charge against him because it meant he was no longer a public employee, the report said.
Spitzer, like Soares a Democrat, never testified under oath in the travel-records scandal. Instead, he was bound by a statute that required public officials to answer questions truthfully or face a charge of obstructing justice.
As an aside, that is a really rather clever law I’d like to see here in Nevada - essentially make it a felony for a politician to lie.
Sex scandal? Big deal. Potential indictment which might blow the lid off of Democratic corruption in New York State, thus dragging down the whole party in an election year? Well, Spitzer had to go. The really terrible truth about the Democratic Party is that it acts like a Mafia organization - anything goes, as long as you pay homage to the Dons (in the Democrats’ case, this would be the public employee unions, the Culture of Death and the kook left)…with, of course, the proviso that if you become someone likely to harm the “family”, you might have to be pole-axed. Spitzer’s whoring was no problem and, indeed, even his breaking of New York law wasn’t a problem, per se…but risking the power and position of the Democratic party? He might as well have tried to rat out Al Capone as do that…
Tags: Caucus of Corruption, Eliot Spitzer
March 30th, 2008
