A Reader-powered list of Democrat scandals in the era of hope and change.
More and more these days, my morning newspaper reads like an ensemble comedy of errors cast entirely with Democrats: Bill Richardson probed! Blago busted! Charlie Rangel investigated! Eliot Spitzer ruined! Kwame Kilpatrick jailed! Bill “Freezer” Jefferson indicted! … and so on. Ugh. Are the Democrats … developing their own “culture of corruption” problem? (Eve Fairbanks)
Here is a quick look at some of the links I’ve been bookmarking. Maybe you’ve been saving some cool links as well.
Please share them with us in the comments section.
1) Another cabinet nominee with tax issues
There’s yet more tax trouble for President Obama’s cabinet picks.
Hilda Solis, his selection for labor secretary, had her confirmation hearing delayed today by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, whose chairman is Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.
2) Obama names “most fined” Washington State bureaucrat to HUD
Obama’s appointment of Ron Sims to the #2 position at HUD sends exactly the opposite message. A court levied the biggest fine for illegal record withholding against Sims in Washington State history — and that record hasn’t finished yet:
Sims is culpable for what may well become the largest fine for violations of public records laws in U.S. history: (see Yousoufian, Armen)
3) Rangel’s Financial Disclosures Omitted Data Over 30 Years, a Report Says
Representative Charles B. Rangel’s financial disclosure forms had at least 28 omissions in the past 30 years and failed to account for what became of more than $239,000 in assets, according to a report issued Wednesday by a private government-ethics group.
4) Rangel faces questions about book royalties
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) is facing new questions about why he has not disclosed any royalty income on his 2007 memoir … And I Haven’t Had a Bad Day Since: From the Streets of Harlem to the Halls of Congress.
The Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocate for government transparency, wants to know why the chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee has failed to report royalty income and has not voluntarily disclosed details of his book contract.
He then presents himself as a credible journalist and nonpartisan commentator in reporting about the administration. Such a move crosses journalistic lines, is a clear conflict of interest and must be stopped immediately.
6) John Conyers wife offers to sell her vote for $25,000
And you thought Democrat politics in Illinois was stinky and sleazy? Well, move over Blagojevitch. Detroit City Council President Monica Conyers, wife of House Judiciary Committee John Conyers (DEMOCRAT-MI) (famous for accusing Republicans of wrongdoing), is in hot water…
Detroit News: A lawyer for a strip club official says his client told a federal grand jury Wednesday that a top aide to then-City Councilwoman Monica Conyers offered to deliver her vote on a permit transfer for $25,000. …
Congressman Conyers has had his own ethical problems. Accusations that he used his congressional staff for illegal campaign related work and to perform personal services like babysitting was “business as usual” according to one former aide.
Worse still, Conyers staff was accused of stealing the Thanksgiving turkeys a Detroit food bank donated to feed the poor. Instead they gave them to friends and political cronies.
7) Blago: Emmanuel a co-conspirator
In an impassioned speech before the Illinois Senate Thursday, Democrat Governor Rod Blagojevich placed responsibility for one key impeachment charge just a door away from the Oval Office. Blagojevich said before the Senate vote that, if he’s impeached, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel should be a “co-conspirator.”
“If you’re impeaching me,” Blagojevich told lawmakers,” … let’s demand that President Obama fire Rahm Emanuel, because Rahm Emanuel is the one who gave me this idea.”
Bill Richardson’s Pay-to-play scandal
A federal grand jury is investigating whether a financial firm improperly won more than $1.4 million in work for the state of New Mexico shortly after making contributions to political action committees of Gov. Bill Richardson (D).
The probe focuses on whether the governor’s office urged a state agency to hire CDR Financial Products. The probe is in a highly active stage at a time when President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Richardson as his nominee for secretary of commerce, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.
9) Analysis: Obama is tarnished by nominees’ tax problems
Instead of ‘change you can believe in,’ Americans could see business as usual when it comes to the problems of some of President Barack Obama’s personnel choices.
10) NY state leaders pay up tax bills
And, Dems on the state level don’t want to pay their taxes either. …
Former NY gubernatorial aide Charles O’Byrne isn’t the only prominent New Yorker with a history of tax troubles.
Twenty members of the current state Legislature have over the years been hit with state tax warrants, similar to liens, for more than $52,000 in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties, according to state records covering the past two decades obtained under the Freedom of Information law.
Additionally, former lawmakers have owed more than $62,000.
In October, O’Byrne admitted to paying more than $293,000 in state and federal back taxes and interest. He quit his post as Gov. David Paterson’s top adviser after his debts came to light.
While all the sitting legislators’ tax bills have been settled, payments didn’t come before the politicians were listed in state documents as facing tax warrants.
Many lawmakers who received warrants pointed to confusion and mix-ups, often regarding their own employment outside of the state. (Lawmakers in both the state Senate and Assembly earn $79,500 plus extra stipends for special duties such as heading committees; taxes are automatically withheld from those paychecks.)
All of the lawmakers who have received warrants are Democrats.
Feel free to revise and extend the list in the comments section.
nuke
vimto1
no2liberals
Robert D
Murder of Ravens
Beto Ochoa
swampie
theobromophile
jseedubya
cesarzambrano
Obama sure can pick ‘em
“Ogden’s record is nothing short of obscene. He has represented Playboy Enterprises in multiple cases, Penthouse Magazine, the ACLU, and the largest distributor of hard-core pornography videos. He has opposed filters on library computers protecting children from Internet smut, and successfully defended the right of pornographers to produce material with underage children.”
“David Ogden has collected checks from Playboy and Penthouse to fight any attempts to establish filters on federally-funded public libraries. Ogden even sued the federal government in an attempt to publish Braille versions of Playboy magazine – at taxpayer expense, of course,” said Burch.
As a lawyer in private practice, Ogden has argued for an unlimited abortion license, gays in the military, and has urged courts to treat traditional definitions of marriage as a social prejudice.
fbi raided lobbying firm linked to abscam jack murtha
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The Federal Bureau of Investigation has raided a defense-related lobbying firm with ties to Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., according to a report late Tuesday in the online edition of The Wall Street Journal. Arlington, Va.-based PMA Group turned over materials to FBI agents who arrived at its offices in November, according to the report. PMA Group was founded by a former top aide on a defense appropriations subcommittee chaired by Murtha, the report said.
Rep. Grace F. Napolitano (D-Norwalk) has collected tens of thousands of dollars in personal income by charging double-digit interest on money she lent her campaign 11 years ago and soliciting donations from Washington lobbyists at “debt retirement” fundraisers.
Napolitano, 72, has taken advantage of a 1998 Federal Election Commission ruling that authorized her to lend $150,000 to her campaign at 18% interest, accepting her argument that the money was from a retirement fund subject to an early withdrawal penalty equivalent to that rate. She lowered the interest on the loan to 10% in mid-2006.
Roland Burris has made an ass out himself and us, in no particular order.
The junior U.S. senator from Illinois, a Democrat let it be noted, now admits that he was deeper into conversations with representatives of the disgraced former governor, Rod Blagojevich, about his possible appointment to seat than he first said, under oath.
The admission was made in an affidavit that he had quietly filed with an Illinois House committee on Feb. 5, the same committee that he swore to that no Blagojevich emissary solicited him, at least not more than once, for cash (a $10,000 figure was mentioned) in exchange for his seat. His honest testimony to the committee was a condition demanded by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and others for their approval of his appointment.
Now, the question becomes: Did Burris commit perjury when he said in an affidavit: “there was not any contact between myself or any of my representatives with Gov. Blagojevich or any of his representatives” about the appointment prior to Dec. 26, when he met with a Blagojevich attorney. In his new affidavit, he said he actually had spoken with three of the former governor’s close associates.
Here’s another question for Reid, second-in-command Sen. Dick Durbin and other Democratic big shots: Are you going to sit there and take this? Will you expel Burris for darkening your door? Will you investigate it, or slip it under the rug?
Burris lied, and liars get fired
Lying on your resume gets you fired. If you claim you graduated from college when you actually didn’t, and your boss finds out, you usually get shown the gate, even if you’re doing a good job. It isn’t that you can’t be an account rep without a college degree. The issue is that once people who lie on their resumes are allowed to keep working, then resumes become meaningless and job applicants might as well fabricate the most extravagant qualifications they can imagine. Roland Burris lied on his job application.
For ethics hawks, Congress could be next.
LINK
Rahm’s rent is just the tip of the ethics iceberg Link
“Published in the New York Post on February 17, 2009
News broke last week that Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff, lived rent- free for years in the home of Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.) – and failed to disclose the gift, as congressional ethics rules mandate. But this is only the tip of Emanuel’s previously undisclosed ethics problems.
One issue is the work Emanuel tossed the way of De Lauro’s husband. But the bigger one goes back to Emanuel’s days on the board of now-bankrupt mortgage giant Freddie Mac.”
U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) is being sued by a roofing company that claims the Democratic lawmaker owes more than $17,000 for unpaid repairs.
The lawsuit against Carnahan and his wife Debra, who until recently was a city judge, alleges the couple has not paid about half of a $35,800 bill to replace the roof and make other repairs on the couple’s home in the Compton Heights neighborhood.
WASHINGTON — Three lawmakers said Tuesday that they were returning campaign contributions from donors listed as employees of the PMA Group, a Washington lobbying firm whose founder is under investigation for purportedly funneling money through bogus donors.
The decision by the three lawmakers — Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, and Representatives Zoe Lofgren of California and Peter J. Visclosky of Indiana, all Democrats — puts new pressure on others who received cash from the PMA Group and its founder, Paul Magliocchetti.
Other big beneficiaries include Representative John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who is chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee; Representative James P. Moran, a Virginia Democrat on the panel; and Representative Alan B. Mollohan, the West Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, among other things.
AP: Democrats hit ethics pothole
The Obama administration and the new Congress are rapidly giving Republicans the same “culture of corruption” issue that Democrats used so effectively against the GOP before coming to power.
Democrats’ ethical issues are popping up at a dizzying pace, after less than two months of party control of both the White House and Congress. Freshman Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill. is only the latest embarrassment.
Democratic Party immersed in culture of corruption.
LINK
The House voted Wednesday to kill a resolution calling for an ethics investigation into potential quid pro quo between lobbyist campaign donations and lawmakers.
While open-ended, the resolution was a direct response to the ongoing federal investigation into the PMA Group, a lobbying company accused of making fraudulent donations to lawmakers using names of people who did not exist.
The firm, which has contributed millions to politicians in the last decade, has close ties to senior Democratic appropriators including Reps. John Murtha D-Pa., and Pete Visclosky,D-Ind. The FBI raided PMA’s headquarters in November and is investigating the group’s founder and president, Paul Magliochetti, a former Murtha aide.
The House decided to set aside the proposal by a mostly party-line 226-182 vote, though 17 Democrats joined Republicans in support of considering the measure.
The vote came just after the House approved a $410 billion spending to fund the government this year, which also contained $8.8 million on projects sought by client of the PMA lobbying group.
Chris Dodd: corrupt to the core
read it all here
Chris Dodd’s convenient condo deal
Rennie points out the problem for the silver-haired Senator: “When Dodd owned a condominium with Downe in the 1980s, while Downe was carrying on his illegal stock scheme, no details of their arrangement were in the deed or mortgage filings. Who paid which expenses associated with owning the condominium didn’t fall into the public’s view. Neither did who used the condominium.
“It raises the prospect that a senator, working much of the time in Washington, could have had his living expenses subsidized when the senator owned that real estate with a rich New York socialite. Even members of the smart set can be in only one place at a time. Downe already had homes in some of the nation’s finest neighborhoods when he bought the D.C. condominium with Dodd, who used to be called, but no more, one of the poorest members of the Senate.”
Nancy Pelosi’s personal airline
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly requested military aircraft to shuttle her and her colleagues and family around the country, according to a new report from a conservative watchdog group.
Representatives for Judicial Watch, which obtained e-mails and other documents from a Freedom of Information request, said the correspondence shows Pelosi has abused the system in place to accommodate congressional leaders and treated the Air Force as her “personal airline.”
10 Mar 2009 // Paul Singer // Roll Call – The West Virginia High Tech Consortium has provided more than $75,000 in free rent and administrative services to the Robert H. Mollohan Family Charitable Foundation, according to tax records, while receiving millions of dollars worth of earmarks from Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W. Va.), who serves as the family foundation’s secretary.
The West Virginia High Technology Consortium Foundation is a nonprofit organization that Mollohan helped establish in the 1990s to bring high-tech jobs and training to his district in northern West Virginia. Mollohan has provided the WVHTC with millions of dollars of earmarks from his seat on the House Appropriations Committee. According to documents from an ongoing court case, Mollohan has been intimately involved in some of the organization’s major management decisions.
Madoff: the big dem scandal you wont hear about
“OpenSecrets.org points out that Madoff and lobbyists within his firm spent nearly $1 million on political influence inside Washington.
In total, he and his wife, Ruth, have given $238,200 to federal candidates, parties and committees since 1991, with Democrats getting 88 percent of that. Overall, Madoff and other individuals at his company, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, gave $372,100 in campaign contributions since 1991, with 89 percent to Democrats. The firm spent $590,000 on lobbying in the last 11 years, all but $10,000 of it with the lobbying firm of Lent, Scrivner & Roth.”
>Maxine Waters’ role come under scrutiny
campaign cash tied to embattled lobbyist
Maxine Waters’ troubling ties
Another NY politician gets the “Rangel tax break”
Wall Street Journal: “Dodd’s Safe Perch Is Shaken by Bailout”
The Wall Street Journal’s Naftali Bendavid is reporting the following on the 2010 political race between U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd and former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons:
As Washington wrestles with a once-in-a-generation financial meltdown, Sen. Chris Dodd has as much riding on the outcome as anyone on Capitol Hill.
As Senate Banking Committee chairman, the Connecticut Democrat will be able to claim credit for new financial regulations the public wants. But he also is a longtime friend of Wall Street, making him a convenient scapegoat if voters sour on the government’s handling of the economic crisis.
Already, a growing anti-industry backlash presages a tough re-election fight for Mr. Dodd next year — a remarkable development given his popularity in a solidly Democratic state. Former Rep. Rob Simmons (R., Conn.) on Monday said he would challenge the senator in 2010, proclaiming in an interview that “it’s time for a change.”
With polls showing the men almost tied, there are signs Mr. Dodd may be staking out a newly populist stance, pushing for limits on executive pay over the objections of the White House and rattling markets by musing about nationalizing banks.
Robert Wexler’s faux residency
According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Wexler attempted to commute between South Florida and Washington when he was sworn into Congress in 1997, but records show Wexler sold his home in South Florida that same year and moved his wife, two daughters and a son from their house to one in Maryland.
Wexler is Florida’s only member of Congress who does not own a home in his congressional district. He has admitted the only house he owns is in Maryland and that he uses his in-laws’ house to meet residency requirements.
Now his general election challengers are urging investigations into whether Wexler meets residency requirements to be registered to vote and run for office and if he has violated that state’s income tax laws.
Fortney Pete Stark’s faux residency
Rep. Fortney “Pete” Stark (Democrat-Californyland) has represented California’s 13th Congressional District since January 1973. In 2007 and 2008, though, he claimed Anne Arundel County, Maryland, as his home, filing for tax exemptions on a waterfront house he claims is his only residence.
Are you sensing a pattern here?
ACORN whistleblowers provide shocking testimony
Anita MonCrief, a former Washington, D.C., ACORN employee, came forward to testify last October in the Pennsylvania case. MonCrief, a Democrat who voted for and still supports President Obama, made allegations including the exposure of Obama maxed-out donor lists illegally shared with ACORN, allegations of illegal intermingling of non-profit employees between ACORN and Project Vote, and the use of intimidation tactics and training methods to skirt regulations, among many other assertions.
Dodd’s Wife a Former Director of Bermuda-Based IPC Holdings, an AIG Controlled Company
No wonder Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn) went wobbly last week when asked about his February amendment ratifying hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives at insurance giant AIG. Dodd has been one of the company’s favorite recipient of campaign contributions. But it turns out that Senator Dodd’s wife has also benefited from past connections to AIG as well.
From 2001-2004, Jackie Clegg-Dodd served as an “independent” director of IPC Holdings, Ltd., a Bermuda-based company controlled by AIG. IPC, which provides property casualty catastrophe insurance coverage, was formed in 1993 and currently has a market cap of $1.4 billion and trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol IPCR. In 2001, in addition to a public offering of 15 million shares of stock that raised $380 million, IPC raised more than $109 million through a simultaneous private placement sale of 5.6 million shares of stock to AIG – giving AIG a 20% stake in IPC.
Clegg was compensated for her duties to the company, which was managed by a subsidiary of AIG. In 2003, according to a proxy statement, Clegg received $1,000 per month and an additional $1,000 for each Directors’ and committee meeting she attended. Clegg served on the Audit and Investment committees during her final year on the board.
Rahm Emanuel’s profitable stint at mortgage giant
Short Freddie Mac stay made him at least $320,000
Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors by a top federal regulator.
One of those allegedly asleep-at-the-switch board members was Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel—now chief of staff to President Barack Obama—who made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.
As gatekeeper to Obama, Emanuel now plays a critical role in addressing the nation’s mortgage woes and fulfilling the administration’s pledge to impose responsibility on the financial world.
Emanuel’s Freddie Mac involvement has been a prominent point on his political résumé, and his healthy payday from the firm has been no secret either. What is less known, however, is how little he apparently did for his money and how he benefited from the kind of cozy ties between Washington and Wall Street that have fueled the nation’s current economic mess.
Blagojevich, his brother, top aides indicted
Research needed on Lon Monk, lobbyist …. more to come
Lawmaker Said to Surface in Lobbying Inquiry
Federal law enforcement officials who raided the lobbyist Paul Magliocchetti’s PMA Group appear to be examining the firm’s relationship with Representative Peter J. Visclosky, a low-profile lawmaker with big influence over federal spending, people familiar with the matter said this week.
One person with knowledge of the investigation into the PMA Group said prosecutors had asked specific questions about Mr. Visclosky and his staff. Two people close to Mr. Visclosky, an Indiana Democrat, said he was taking steps to prepare for legal scrutiny, including retaining lawyers to review his compliance with campaign finance laws.
Karl Denniger at Market Ticker writes:
Chris Dodd’s personal bailout
As Senator Chris Dodd fights for his political career, the embattled chairman of the powerful Senate banking committee is receiving his own economic rescue package from the finance industry. According to the five-term senator’s latest campaign disclosures, filed earlier this week, the financial sector is flooding Dodd’s campaign war chest with donations in advance of what is expected to be a tough reelection bout.
DiFi cashes in
On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.
Mrs. Feinstein’s intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was unusual: the California Democrat isn’t a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments – not direct federal dollars.
Documents reviewed by The Washington Times show Mrs. Feinstein first offered Oct. 30 to help the FDIC secure money for its effort to stem the rise of home foreclosures.
Her letter was sent just days before the agency determined that CB Richard Ellis Group (CBRE) – the commercial real estate firm that her husband Richard Blum heads as board chairman – had won the competitive bidding for a contract to sell foreclosed properties that FDIC had inherited from failed banks.
Hank Morris: the democrat version of Jack Abromoff –
NY Pension Scandal LINK
Speaker Pelosi Blocks Investigations of Corrupt Democrats
Democrats lead 12 to 4
Democratic members of Congress: Sanford Bishop of Georgia, Jesse Jackson of Illinois, Allan Mollohan of West Virginia, John Murtha of Pennsylvania, Charlie Rangel of New York, Linda Sanchez of California, Loretta Sanchez of California, Pete Visclosky of Indiana.
Democratic Senators: Roland Burris of Illinois, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Bob Menendez of New Jersey.
Republican Members of Congress: Jerry Lewis of California, Garry Miller of California, Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, Don Young of Alaska.
Republican Senators: None.
Having no members of the caucus under investigation seems like an impressive feat by Republican senators, but in defense of Democratic senators, there are a bunch more of them.
Details … (pdf)
On Tape Burris Begs For Senate Seat, Offers Check
Sen. Roland Burris was recorded on an FBI wiretap suggesting that he could write a check to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s campaign before the ousted governor appointed Burris to the Senate, reports CBS station WBBM-TV in Chicago.
Burris promised to “personally do something” for Rod Blagojevich’s campaign fund while pressing for the then-Illinois governor to appoint him to President Barack Obama’s former Senate seat, according to a wiretap transcript released Tuesday.
“Tell Rod to keep me in mind for that seat, would ya?” Burris tells Robert Blagojevich, who headed his brother’s campaign fund, in a Nov. 13 phone conversation secretly taped by the FBI.
Pelosi’s pork problem
Picture a freight train roaring down the tracks. Picture House Speaker Nancy Pelosi positioning her party on the rails. Picture a growing stream of nervous souls diving for the weeds. Picture all this, and you’ve got a sense of the Democrats’ earmark-corruption problem.
This particular choo-choo has the name John Murtha emblazoned on the side, and with each chug is proving that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Republicans got tossed in 2006 in part for failing to police the earmarks at the center of the Jack Abramoff and other corruption scandals. Mrs. Pelosi is today leaving her members exposed to an earmark mess that might make Abramoff look junior varsity.
Federal investigators are deep into a criminal investigation of PMA Group, a now-defunct lobby shop founded by a former aide to Mr. Murtha, Pennsylvania’s 18-term star appropriator. The suspicion is that some members of Congress may have peddled lucrative earmarks to PMA clients in exchange for campaign contributions. To get a sense of this probe’s scope, consider that last year alone more than 100 members secured earmarks for PMA clients.
The big problem is getting any coverage of these scandals. The MSM is in the bag for the Dems, and the Dems run the whole show now. Nothing will be done.
The republicans need to sharpen up their rhetoric and get on message. Until that happens, they will continue to wander around in the dark.
Every time they speak they get shot down. Look at the Pelosi/CIA deal. She waves her hand and says it’s over and that’s it. If the media won’t cover it, there’s not much hope.
yet another investigation of charlie rangel …
“Rangel helped preserve a lucrative tax loophole for an Oil Company, and in turn the Oil Company donated a Million Dollars to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service. “
Dick Durbin: Inside trader alert
As U.S. stock markets plummeted last September, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, sold more than $115,000 worth of stocks and mutual-fund shares and used much of the money to invest in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
The Illinois senator’s 2008 financial disclosure statement shows he sold mutual-fund shares worth $42,696 on Sept. 19, the day after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged congressional leaders in a closed meeting to craft legislation to help financially troubled banks. The same day, he bought $43,562 worth of Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B stock, the disclosure shows.
Dodd, Conrad both knew of sweetheart mortgage deals
LINK
Key lawmaker received Countrywide Loans — blocked investigation!
Ethical clouds could haunt peolosi
According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a congressional watchdog group, 15 lawmakers are currently under investigation for allegedly violating ethical standards. Of those four are Republicans and 11 are Democrats. That doesn’t even include former Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson, who was recently found guilty of 11 of 16 charges of corruption. But just as not all members of congress are truly equal in the power they wield, not all members under an ethical cloud pose the same threat for Pelosi. In the House Democratic caucus, there are three that could be the greatest embarrassment for the House Speaker: Ways & Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel of New York, Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Chairman Jack Murtha and Rep. Pete Visclosky.
“These are powerful people in the power structure in the House,” says Jim Thurber, head of American University’s Institute for Congressional and Presidential Studies. “They are also Pelosi’s friends. If she does not let the Ethics committee do objective and aggressive work she undermines her political capital and the integrity of the ethics review. She leaves an opening, a wedge issue, for the Republicans in 2010.”
House ethics panel investigates Maxine Waters
One day after Maxine Waters called for an investigation of Tea partiers, the House ethics Committee announced an investigation into Rep. Waters’ shady banking dealings.
Maxinefreude.
Dozens in congress under ethics investigations.
Link to Wapo
Sanchez sisters looked at by ethics panel for alleged collusion
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/30/AR2009103001377.html?wpisrc=newsletter"Link
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throw ‘em out!
7 on defense panel scrutinized
Washington Post
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Heath Schuler’s land deal looked at by ethics panel
Link
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from the washington examiner
When the Democrats retook Congress in 2006, incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi promised the “to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.” So how’s that promise working out? Let’s start with four developments from the last week:
» Over the weekend, it was revealed that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., had nominated his girlfriend to be a U.S. attorney in his home state. Baucus is a driving force behind the drive to adopt Obamacare in the Senate.
» On Friday, it was reported that the House Ethics Committee had opened an investigation of Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. Staffers on Thompson’s committee say he tried to regulate the credit card industry — outside his panel’s legislative purview — to extort campaign donations from the companies facing regulation.
» Pelosi promised to make congressional office expendiavailable on the Internet. Concurrent with the appearance of the new Web site detailing the information, the amount of information previously available to the public has been significantly restricted. Pelosi then claimed falsely that this was a victory for transparency.
» Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Diane Feinstein, D-Cal., offered an amendment to a new press shield law that provides legal protections only to professional journalists employed by established mainstream media — a blatant attempt to curb independent, often blog-based reporting like that of Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe in their hidden-camera expose of ACORN.
Does that sound honest, open and ethical to you? And this is just what happened in the past week. Many other Democratic scandals remain unresolved.
Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., is still head of the House Ways and Means Committee — which writes the nation’s tax laws — despite millions of dollars’ worth of admitted tax evasion. And it’s been exactly 500 days since Sen. Chris Dodd, D-C chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, promised to release the mortgage paperwork for his Capitol Hill town house. Dodd got a sweetheart mortgage deal from the CEO of failed subprime lender Countrywide he was supposed to be overseeing. That’s just two more examples.
In 2006, when the Democrats were returned to power by voters, corruption among Republican leaders such as Reps. Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney and Mark Foley was understandably a major issue.
Democrats successfully argued in the campaign that GOP corruption was enough to turn over the reigns of power to a different party. If held to their own standards, what will Democrats’ argument for remaining in power be in 2010?
Barbara Boxer Subsidizing Relatives with Campaign Contributions
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has diverted nearly half a million in contributions from her political action committee to her son’s political consulting firm from 2001 to 2009, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
Boxer and Associates, owned by son Douglas Boxer, has in the last 8 years profited to the tune of $497,409.17, $36,000 of which was from last year alone as the politically-vulnerable Boxer readies for a contentious reelection campaign in the fall. These $36,000 in fees are supplementary to the $141,000 Boxer’s leadership PAC awarded her son in 2008 for fundraising consulting.