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John's Blog

Give a man a fish and feed him for a day....Teach him to use the internet and he won't bother you for weeks!

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

The Tainted Thirteen

Beyond Delay
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) launched a website containing the report "Beyond DeLay: The 13 Most Corrupt Members of Congress" which details some of the unethical activities of the OTHER corrupt legislators in Washington. With Delay and Abramoff getting all the press, this site hopes to draw attention to some of the other ethical transgressions that should also should be exposed. Hopefully this might generate some outrage and cause other members of Congress to hold their feet to the fire!
|| JM, 12:02 AM

3 Comments:

Thanks for the link - good one.
Anonymous Anonymous, at 3:48 PM  
I'm all for going after "corrupt" legislators. But here's a group that manages to find 11 Republicans and TWO Democrats? Are Republicans REALLY five hundred percent more likely to be corrupt as a Democrat? Twice, three times, maybe you can sell that - but five?

Or is this a group with a hidden agenda?

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=%5CPolitics%5Carchive%5C200509%5CPOL20050926a.html

When the group like this has an agenda, yet bills itself as an "independent citizens' group", the group is itself corrupt and its recommendations must be discarded as biased. In this day of instantaneous communications, about the only way to not suss this out is to look the other way. Melanie Sloan, the head of this group, is a paid Democratic operative and is affiliated with Democratic groups and sympathizers. Just Google her.

http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0705/0705dempart.htm

Now that we know the deal, let's take a look at the two Democrats on the list and see if there's a reason the Dems would want to throw them to the wolves. Well, Jefferson recently suffered a very well-publicized humiliation in his use of the LA National Guard. That's embarassing to the party, and he really does have a bad record. (Gee a corrupt Louisiana Democrat. Who knew.) He's looking like an expendable Dem maverick, and in getting rid of him it can look as if LA Dem politics are being addressed. (Which I'm all for, but that won't be a drop in the bucket.)

Then we have Maxine Waters, who at least looks to have done some things in office. This one's more puzzling. Wikipedia (which admittedly has been known to be biased in these matters): "Waters is the most prominent African-American legislator in the U.S., an outspoken champion for the underprivileged and underrepresented. She was also instrumental in the election of Bill Clinton as President, as co-chair of his first presidential campaign and prior to that, walking into the Bush White House (uninvited) and telling Mr. Bush that his time was up." Interesting is the fact that the CREW citation of her as corrupt - just made - has already found its way into this listing.

She's a powerful woman. Her hubbie is an ambassador to the Bahamas (nice work if you can get it). But corruption does not exactly bubble to the top of a Google search. And she seems to make all the progressive-sounding "Democratic" statements. Not that something might not be lurking underneath.

So let's see what CREW actually says. Apparently her daughter's "consulting firm", which has a hand in running her mom's campaigns, charges for spots on mailings. Her son has also profited. Over 8 years they apparently made about a half mil. This means, John, that each of them made about $31,000 a year from this deal.

The son is also mentioned as profiting in some deals. Nothing criminal is actually cited that I can see.

So what's going on here is political influence peddling. The problem is, how many elected officials have been in office as long as this woman who DO NOT do this sort of thing? Few. Very few. SO again, how is this woman one of the MOST corrupt officials CREW could find, if she is doing something they all do?

Now the husband. He made a half-mil as a consultant introducing clients to powerful politicians. (The time frame for this -one year? ten?- is not given.)

This one's a puzzle. One factor may be that she's black in a district that has become majority or supermajority Latino in the past ten years. Are polls showing that she no longer has a constituency?

Whatever it is that put her on this list, a comment on the Daily Kos sums it up: "I'll happily pitch a half dozen of our own over the side if they are slimy, if it gives us a pick up of a few dozen seats in the house and 7-8 in the Senate."

I don't actually mind having Democrats looking for ethical conflicts among Republicans, but I do mind having it shoved down my throat with a fistful of lies. Show me an honest, bipartisan watchdog group with the power to make recommendations with bite, or a real citizens' group that takes care to avoid the traps of partisanship, and I'll show you something worth mentioning. Jersey Dems have been "investigating" their own inner workings for years, but none of them went to jail until a Republican AG (thank God for Christie) came along to start convicting them. This "CREW" is just a phony PR construct designed to buff Democrats' image. Reformer, reform thyself.
Blogger Jeff Faria, at 3:40 AM  
I'm sure they have an agenda, but don't we all? It would be hard to argue against true bipartisan reform, but both the left and the right seem to pick up the "ethics banner" as it becomes convenient or politically expedient. If the mud slung against the wall sticks, regardless of who threw it, we need to take a closer look.
Blogger JM, at 10:12 AM  

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