From Politico:
“Your Honor, the prosecutors have been overzealous in pursuing a crime that never happened,” wrote disgraced Chicago real estate magnate Antoin “Tony” Rezko to his judge a few months ago. “They are pressuring me to tell them the wrong things that I supposedly know about Gov. Blagojevich and Sen. Barack Obama.”
What’s interesting about this claim is that, according to press accounts, Rezko is now indeed talking to prosecutors.
What Rezko has to say is far more likely to impact Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose administration is being investigated.
Not one witness at Rezko’s trial said Obama did anything improper.
And yet … what are prosecutors pressuring Rezko about? And now that Rezko’s reportedly making like a canary, what song is he singing?
UPDATE: An Obama supporter helpfully points out that Rezko’s lawyer Joseph Duffy has walked his client’s letter back, saying that prosecutors never intimated it is investigating anything about Obama.
“I’m not aware of any impropriety related to Rezko and Obama,” Duffy said, per the Chicago Tribune. “At no point has the government ever asked me a single question about Obama, or any wrongdoing involving Rezko and Obama.”
That Obama supporter is whistling past the graveyard - Obama is hip deep in the massive and nauseating corruption which is all there is to Chicago Democratic politics…whether or not the prosecutors will decide to pursue the matter if it relates to Obama remains to be seen (people are fearful of taking on the Democratic party as it is not only corrupt, but quite nasty in the way it takes endless revenge upon anyone who crosses it), but Obama is not clean, not by a long shot. It is, quite simply, impossible for anyone to rise in Chicago Democratic party without willingly engaging in corruption - there is not and cannot be an honest man in Chicago politics because the whole system is built and sustained on political corruption. This is, by the way, nothing peculiar to Democratic party politics per se - any one-party political entity will naturally gravitate towards corruption due to humanity’s fallen nature (something liberalism fails to understand). The only way such things can be changed is via a massive, revolutionary change of heart amongst the electorate, or outsiders calling the corrupt to account and one or more of the corrupt actors detailing the who, where, when, why and how of it all.
Obama may win on November 4th - and if he does, all you liberals will have done is help elevate a deeply flawed leftist to office who, like Clinton, will be mired in corruption scandals from day one to day last of his Administration. Meanwhile, he’ll also push policies which will be bad for America, and bad for the world. Is beating the GOP worth this, liberals?
THINK.
Tags: Chicago, Democrat Corruption, Obama Deceptions, Tony Rezko
October 11th, 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
