Corruption, With A Side Order Of Violence
Now that Jefferson has been indicted, House Democrats, who pledged "to lead the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history," will need to decided what to do about the thousands of dollars in campaign contributions Jefferson has made to his colleagues and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).
Following U.S. Representative Tom DeLay’s indictment at the hands of a local district attorney, the DCCC called on GOP candidates to return contributions they received from the then-House Majority Leader.
Jefferson donated nearly $140,000 to the Democrats’ campaign committee. Jefferson also gave thousands to Democrat House members and candidates, including freshmen Nick Lampson, D-TX, Heath Shuler, D-NC, and Ciro Rodriguez, D-TX.
Lampson and Shuler received contributions from Jefferson’s re-election committee, while Rodriguez received $1,000 from Jefferson’s political action committee, the Future PAC. Only Lampson is reported to have returned Jefferson’s contribution.
Other Democrats who received financial support from Jefferson are:
Sanford Bishop, $1000;
Corrine Brown, $2000;
Lois Capps, $500;
Julia Carson, $1000;
Donna Christensen, $1000;
Emanuel Cleaver, $2000;
Chet Edwards, $1000;
Al Green, $2000;
Alcee Hastings, $1000;
Barbara Lee, $1000;
John Lewis, $500;
Carolyn McCarthy, $1000;
Charlie Melancon, $2000;
Gwendolynne Moore, $1000;
Brad Sherman, $1000; and
Mel Watt, $1000.
Jefferson also contributed a total of $5,680 to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) PAC. Jefferson’s Future PAC gave $1,000 each to Democrat Representatives Corrine Brown, Julia Carson, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Carloyn McCarthy, Kendrick Meek, Mike Ross, and Linda Sanchez.
It's not an unreasonable stretch to assert that the new Democrat House majority, which ran on a promise to clean up the "Republican culture of corruption," owes its existence to a flood of filthy money from a racketeer they refuse to vomit out of their midst.
Beats me why they don't (the Congressional Black Caucus not withstanding). It's not as though they'd lose Jefferson's seat, given that he was overwhelmingly re-elected despite his legal troubles. This could be Crazy Nancy's "Sister Soljah" moment if she had the brains to recognize the opportunity Icebox Willie has provided her.
But then again it may not be a matter of intelligence, savvy, or irrational fear of the CBC that drives the Speakerette, but rather "birds of a feather" syndrome:
First, we know that Gupta is a crook because of his affiliation with La Clinton Nostra. This suggests that his "unorthodox" hiring of Crazy Nancy's son to a lucrative job at which he is a complete novice is not an unsubtle ploy to curry her favor, but rather a quid pro quo for an under-the-table arrangement already made. Perhaps a down-payment on the ride-to-the-rescue that a triumphant return of Hillary Clinton to the White House would be for InfoUSA.A database company that has showered money on Bill and Hillary Clinton – and is alleged to have aided scam artists – now appears to have close links to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's family as well.
The firm InfoUSA, headed by major Clinton backer Vinod Gupta, has placed Pelosi's son, Paul Pelosi Jr., on its payroll – even though he has no experience in the company's main business activities, NewsMax has learned....
Just four weeks after Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House this past January, Gupta and InfoUSA hired her son as a senior vice president. He told NewsMax InfoUsa pays him $180,000 a year.
Even though his job with InfoUSA is considered full-time, Paul Pelosi continues another full-time job, as a home loan officer at Countrywide Home Loans, part of Countrywide Financial, in San Mateo, a suburb of San Francisco.
While InfoUSA is based in Omaha, Pelosi said he reports to a small InfoUSA office in San Mateo.In two interviews, Paul Pelosi confirmed that Gupta hired him as senior vice president for strategic development starting February 1, just after Pelosi's mother took the gavel as speaker on January 4. He said his mother is aware of his new job.
A person familiar with the arrangement says Gupta treats Pelosi as a "trophy" and has the Speaker's son accompany him at high profile meetings around the country....Spokesmen for Nancy Pelosi and for InfoUSA did not respond to requests by NewsMax for comment.
Still, most Democats are corrupt, the differences being in the levels of skill and discretion at mining the system. But that party's crazoid base really loves the guys who shout that domestic political "jaw-jaw" needs to be augmented by "war-war":
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Tuesday that the Bush Administration has done nothing to defuse a "quiet riot" among blacks that threatens to erupt just as riots in Los Angeles did fifteen years ago.
The first-term Illinois senator said that with black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still displaced twenty months after Hurricane Katrina, frustration and resentments are building explosively as they did before the 1992 riots.
"This Administration was colorblind in its incompetence," Obama said at a conference of black clergy, "but the poverty and the hopelessness was there long before the hurricane.
"All the hurricane did was to pull the curtain back for all the world to see," he said...."Those 'quiet riots' that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths," Obama said. "They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better."
He argued that once a hurricane hits or a jury renders a not guilty verdict, "the frustration is there for all to see."...
Obama noted that during the riots, a bullet pierced the abdomen of a pregnant woman and lodged in the elbow of her fetus. The baby was delivered by caesarian section, the bullet was removed and the child, Jessica Glennis Evers-Jones, has only a small scar on her arm to show for it.
Using the incident as a metaphor, Obama said society's problems are worsening because "in too many places across the country, we have not even bothered to take the bullet out."
"When we have more black men in prison than in college, then it's time to take the bullet out," he said.
I could be snarky here and ask if Obama's "bullet-in-the-fetus" analogy means he's pro-life. What I find more pertinent is his equating of Hurricane Katrina to the Rodney King trial. Leaving aside that one was a natural disaster and the other was a proper jury verdict to politically overheated, ludicrously exaggerated charges, is not Obama, in not-so-many-words, inciting the black residents left in New Orleans to reenact the L.A. riots? To rise up against "white America" and "burn the crackers up" or "take the honkies down" or "string up the pinkskins Bush & Cheney and give 'em the Tupac treatment"? At the very least, he's provided would-be rioters with a pre-emptive endorsement.
In the event of such violence, would Obama be blamed for planting the seed? Of course not; Obama already pre-emptively put such blame on the President, even though the "despair, poverty, and hopelessness" in New Orleans, to the degree that government influenced it, is entirely the fault of the Democrats they have regularly elected for year after year after decade after decade.
Democrats like...."Icebox Willie" Jefferson, who, if you'll recall, commandeered a military escort to his Big Easy residence after Katrina to recover some of his funny money because he feared (other) looters might be of the sort Barack Obama is hoping to inspire.
Maybe if he'd spread some of that "cold cash" around to the "brothers & sisters," Jefferson's party, at least, would be in a bit less of a pickle right now. It wouldn't have been generosity with his own money, but at least it wouldn't have been syphoned from the taxpayers.
That no Democrat seems able, much less willing, to recognize the distinction tells you all you need to know about the culture that had now re-entrenched itself on Capitol Hill - and the White House, in nineteen and a half fleeting months.
posted by JASmius at 9:30 PM
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