If anyone is actually interested in the politics behind the latest Democratic strategy that generated the epidemic story line read the attached article by Amy Sullivan.
The problem with the bananna peel strategy, as Ms. Sullivan points out, is that it hardly a strategy for governance and is susceptible to counter-strategy.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0605.sullivan1.html
Seems like you can’t hardly read any articles about Jack Abramoff without a mention of Rick Santorum.
And then there’s Santorum’s ‘charity’ that is run by a lobbyist and where they spend something like half of the donations that they take in, on themselves:
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/7821894/detail.html
Santorum bills for children’s school $100K
District pays, though family lives in Virginia
http://www.gatewaynewspapers.com/pennhillsprogress/36884/
If you don’t think Santorum has some ethical challenges then you haven’t been paying attention. Santorum’s been in so much trouble that his approval rating is abysmal, he is ranked 98th out of 100 when it comes to voter approval:
http://www.surveyusa.com/50State2006/100USSenator060323Net.htm
Or maybe you just like to “think outside the box”.
[quote]hedo wrote:
If anyone is actually interested in the politics behind the latest Democratic strategy that generated the epidemic story line read the attached article by Amy Sullivan.
[/quote]
Exactly!
The Democrats are FORCING the Republicans to be corrupt!
I blame Bill Clinton.
[quote]Brad61 wrote:
hedo wrote:
If anyone is actually interested in the politics behind the latest Democratic strategy that generated the epidemic story line read the attached article by Amy Sullivan.
Exactly!
The Democrats are FORCING the Republicans to be corrupt!
I blame Bill Clinton.[/quote]
Silly man. You should have read the article.
It’s about a Democratic Strategy, not the Republicans, written by a Democrat.
[quote]Brad61 wrote:
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/13689399.htm[/quote]
It says he was not involved iin the corruption aspect of the case.
I think you proved my point.
Abramoff & K Street, Santorum and CaseyWhat lobbying scandal means to you
By CATHERINE LUCEY
luceyc@phillynews.com 215-854-4172
Scandal, corruption, dirty-dealings - it’s just a regular day in our nation’s capital, right?
Still, you might have noticed that the reports of skulduggery have been heating up lately, with D.C. lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleading guilty to bilking his clients, bribing at least one congressman and evading the law.
This case now has people buzzing about how the Republican Party and lobbyists are entwined in Washington. It’s likely to be an issue in the campaign battle between U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and Democrat Bob Casey Jr. this year.
Here’s a primer on Jack Abramoff and the current Washington lobbyist scandals:
Q. Who is Jack Abramoff?
A. Abramoff was a high-flying Washington lobbyist, who owned a restaurant for entertaining clients.
Q. What did he do wrong?
A. Earlier this month he pleaded guilty to conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion. Abramoff admitted to giving perks to politicians, including boxes at sporting events and trips to Scotland, in an attempt to curry favor for his clients. He also copped to making off with client money, misusing charities and lying on his income taxes.
Q. What politicians are affected by Abramoff?
A.So far the two in the hottest water are Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Tex., and Rep. Robert Ney, R-Ohio.
Ney - who has stepped down as chair of the House Administration Committee - is accused of taking a golf trip to Scotland, dinners and other favors in exchange for supporting Abramoff’s American-Indian tribe clients in Texas. He says he has done nothing wrong.
DeLay - who has stepped down as House Majority Leader - is accused of taking a trip to Scotland and of using Abramoff’s skybox at a Washington arena. He’s also already in trouble for a conspiracy to violate campaign finance law in Texas.
Q. Did Santorum get any favors from Abramoff?
A.No. In fact, his spokeswoman told the Lebanon Daily News that he did not know Abramoff. Santorum did receive $11,000 in contributions from Abramoff clients, which he has donated to charity.
Q. Was Santorum involved in this K Street thing I keep hearing about? What’s K Street?
A.K Street is the street where many Washington lobbying firms are located. The K Street Project was an operation launched by DeLay and neo-conservative activist Grover Norquist in 1994 to push lobbying firms seeking access to hire Republicans.
Q. What was Santorum’s involvement?
A. Santorum apparently was brought into the K Street effort in 2000 after the GOP gained the White House. According to the Washington Monthly, he held regular meetings with lobbyists to discuss corporate and trade association jobs for Republicans.
Q. I don’t understand. Would corporations get in trouble if they didn’t hire Republicans?
A. It seems that way. The Motion Picture Association of America got punished with they hired a former Clinton cabinet member as its new boss, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The House retaliated by removing $1.5 billion in motion picture industry tax cuts from an upcoming bill.
Q. What does Santorum say about all this?
A.He admits to having held meetings, but says they were above- board, calling them a “good-government thing.”
Q. Is K Street going to get in trouble?
A.There is a corruption investigation under way, which Abramoff is cooperating with. GOP leaders have also said they plan to to pass legislation that would further reign in lawmakers by banning lobbyist gifts and favored travel to politicos. Santorum is leading the GOP reform effort, which has Bob Casey Jr. crying foul.
Q. What does Casey have to say?
A.Casey is asking supporters to sign a petition on his Web site asking that the K Street Project be shut down and that Santorum not supervise reforms. But Santorum’s camp insists that he has been involved in no wrongdoing and that he’s the man for the job.
Q. What’s going to happen next?
A.The hubbub over K Street sure isn’t going away. And with a Senate election in November, you’re going to hear a lot more from Casey and Santorum about it.
[quote]Q. Did Santorum get any favors from Abramoff?
A.No. In fact, his spokeswoman told the Lebanon Daily News that he did not know Abramoff.
Q. What was Santorum’s involvement?
A. Santorum apparently was brought into the K Street effort in 2000 after the GOP gained the White House. According to the Washington Monthly, he held regular meetings with lobbyists to discuss corporate and trade association jobs for Republicans.
Q. What does Santorum say about all this?
A.He admits to having held meetings, but says they were above- board, calling them a “good-government thing.”[/quote]
How gullible do you have to be, to think Rick Santorum (#3 in the Senate) doesn’t know America’s #1 biggest and most important Republican lobbyist and fundraiser (Abramoff).
What about the other 2 stories? Santorum asking for 100k in yearly tuition money to pay for his kids “cyber school” from a school district he doesn’t live in?
Santorum’s charity (Operation Good Neighbor, nice name huh) soliciting public donations and then spending roughly half of the money they raised, on themselves. Wow, such Good Neighbors!
[quote]Brad61 wrote:
Q. Did Santorum get any favors from Abramoff?
A.No. In fact, his spokeswoman told the Lebanon Daily News that he did not know Abramoff.
Q. What was Santorum’s involvement?
A. Santorum apparently was brought into the K Street effort in 2000 after the GOP gained the White House. According to the Washington Monthly, he held regular meetings with lobbyists to discuss corporate and trade association jobs for Republicans.
Q. What does Santorum say about all this?
A.He admits to having held meetings, but says they were above- board, calling them a “good-government thing.”
How gullible do you have to be, to think Rick Santorum (#3 in the Senate) doesn’t know America’s #1 biggest and most important Republican lobbyist and fundraiser (Abramoff).
What about the other 2 stories? Santorum asking for 100k in yearly tuition money to pay for his kids “cyber school” from a school district he doesn’t live in?
Santorum’s charity (Operation Good Neighbor, nice name huh) soliciting public donations and then spending roughly half of the money they raised, on themselves. Wow, such Good Neighbors![/quote]
No proof of corruption. Not even a hint of it.
Regarding the school thing that is par for the course for all politicians.
Regarding the charity thing that is the way charities work. Most charities spend far too much on themselves.
All those squeeky clean Dems. Brad, stop drinking Nancy Pelosi’s kool aid
"An example of how wide the corruption investigations are ranging comes a front pager by reporter John Wilke in the Wall Street Journal last week about a Democratic Congressman from West Virginia named Alan Mollohan. It seems Mr. Mollohan’s personal net worth, as reported in his required disclosure forms, has grown from about $100,000 in 2000 to as much as $11.4 million in his most recent filings.
The jump in Mollohan’s personal wealth cannot be explained by being frugal with his Congressional pay. Members of the House and Senate who are not members of the top leadership make $165,200 per year.
It can be partially explained by the fact that a former staffer is the head of a non-profit foundation in West Virginia which is “financed almost exclusively by earmarks backed by Mr. Mollohan.”
In fact, according to the WSJ, “Mr. Mollohan has steered at least $178 million to nonprofit groups in his district over the past five years using earmarks.” Let’ see: $178 million in earmarks? If $11 million has stuck to Mollohan’s fingers, that’s only about a six percent commission. Who can argue with that?
The Justice Department is taking seriously this business of trading official favors for personal wealth. In addition to West Virginia’s Mollohan, Ohio Republican Bob Ney has been referred to in a number of criminal actions, and “a criminal bribery investigation is under way into a Louisiana Democrat, Rep. William Jefferson.”
According Wilke’s reporting in the Journal:
‘The cases are part of a widening attack on public corruption, with some 200 Federal Bureau of Investigation agents working on such cases nationwide, according to the chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Alice Fisher. “We are seeing a surge in these cases and we’re adopting aggressive tactics, including undercover operations,” she said.’
The way this all works is: A Congressman on the Appropriations Committee, like Mollohan, steers your tax dollars to private and public works in his home district. That part is fine. But the dollars have become so enormous that greed, not good works, has become the driving force.Mollohan’s “tight-knit network” includes friends who run the foundations, get paid well for doing it, and then donate to Mollohan’s campaigns and family foundations in return.
Plus, they become Mollohan’s partners in investments apartments and houses. And they run the companies which contract with the foundations to make even more money, some of which is funneled back into Mollohan’s financial orbit allowing him to have “recently bought a $1.45 million oceanfront home” in Bald Head Island, NC which (a) is in addition to five other properties there in which Mollohan has an interest and (b) is not in West Virginia.
An editorial in yesterday’s Charleston (WV) Daily Mail pointed out that while Mollohan and his pals were inventing jobs and investment opportunities for themselves,
“Ames True Temper closed its plant in Parkersburg last fall. Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel posted net losses of $33.8 million in 2005. Employment has fallen from 14,000 workers in the 1970s to just to just 2,100 at Weirton Steel.”
So, now you may understand why the Democrats are having a hard time getting any traction on a Republican corruption message?
And, think about this:
Alan Mollohan is the senior Democrat on the House Ethics Committee.
Ironic, huh? "
[quote]biltritewave wrote:
Alan Mollohan is the senior Democrat on the House Ethics Committee.
Ironic, huh? "
[/quote]
Rick Santorum is the Republican heading up the Ethics Reform committee. So what?
I was unaware of Mollohan, so kudos for pointing him out. I see there is an investigation. I don’t see any charges yet though. Lets see if charges are brought, as they were against DeLay, Cunningham, Abramoff, Kidan, Safavian, Libby etc. I’ve heard estimates that as many as 20 GOP congressman and aides may face charges, just in the Abramoff affair alone. But lets chalk up Mollihan and Jefferson as 2 bad Dems.
I like Zap Branigan’s explanation: Everybody does it!!!
What a surprise, another ethically challenged Republican.
[quote]Brad61 wrote:
…
What a surprise, another ethically challenged Republican.[/quote]
To whom are you referring?
All politicians are crooks Republican and Democrat.
BTW, I am an independant but since the Democratic party has been coopted by the likes of you I find it hard to vote Democrat.
Republicans suck ass, Democrats suck dick…Sounds status quo to me. They can all bite me.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Brad61 wrote:
…
What a surprise, another ethically challenged Republican.
To whom are you referring?
All politicians are crooks Republican and Democrat.
BTW, I am an independant but since the Democratic party has been coopted by the likes of you I find it hard to vote Democrat.[/quote]
You’re not an independant. You’re a right wing nut-case. To you, anybody who dares to stand a bit more to the center as Bush is a “left wing loon”.
[quote]Wreckless wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Brad61 wrote:
…
What a surprise, another ethically challenged Republican.
To whom are you referring?
All politicians are crooks Republican and Democrat.
BTW, I am an independant but since the Democratic party has been coopted by the likes of you I find it hard to vote Democrat.
You’re not an independant. You’re a right wing nut-case. To you, anybody who dares to stand a bit more to the center as Bush is a “left wing loon”.
[/quote]
You are a clueless troll. Go try someone else.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
All politicians are crooks Republican and Democrat.
[/quote]
Ever hear this saying
When you’re a thief, you think everyone else is a thief too.
Hell, everybody steals (so I’ll steal too). That’s what I think, when I hear people make statements like All politicians are crooked. Lets see, I’ll bet you think all cops are on the take, all priests fondle the altar boys, and all husbands cheat on their wives.
Talk about hitting the nail on the head! Seems to me that Zap has his head jammed all the way up George Bush’s ass, while pretending to be Mr. Neutral.
And re: the democratic Rep Mollohan, if he is guilty send him to prison. That is the appropriate place for corrupt politicians. What Mollohan did may not be any different than what Dick Cheney regularly does with funneling public money to Halliburton, who knows. But Mollohan is only one out of two allegedly corrupt Dems, while you have literally dozens of allegedly corrupt Republicans, if you want to play tit-for-tat.
[quote]Brad61 wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
All politicians are crooks Republican and Democrat.
Ever hear this saying
When you’re a thief, you think everyone else is a thief too.
Hell, everybody steals (so I’ll steal too). That’s what I think, when I hear people make statements like All politicians are crooked. Lets see, I’ll bet you think all cops are on the take, all priests fondle the altar boys, and all husbands cheat on their wives.
You’re not an independant. You’re a right wing nut-case. To you, anybody who dares to stand a bit more to the center as Bush is a “left wing loon”.
Talk about hitting the nail on the head! Seems to me that Zap has his head jammed all the way up George Bush’s ass, while pretending to be Mr. Neutral.
And re: the democratic Rep Mollohan, if he is guilty send him to prison. That is the appropriate place for corrupt politicians. What Mollohan did may not be any different than what Dick Cheney regularly does with funneling public money to Halliburton, who knows. But Mollohan is only one out of two allegedly corrupt Dems, while you have literally dozens of allegedly corrupt Republicans, if you want to play tit-for-tat.[/quote]
As I he said before if DeLay is guilty hew should pay the price. He has looked like a crook all along.
Any other crooked politicians should go too.
To try to equate a charity that spends money on itself for fundraising and operating expenses with being a crook is foolish. That is how charities work.
If Santorum is a crook he should pay the price too however there are no realistic allegations about him so you just look like a partisan ass when you try to tie him in.
I really don’t give a shit if you think I am independent or a Republican.
You are on the political fringes and have proven yourself incapable of non-partisan thought or discussion.