The Corrupt Bastards Club

[truthmatters]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews


Wow Alaska is special.

[Nukeman]

Now that you have found *gasp* coruption in a state predominately Reb. lets see if truth really does matter to you and find a balance of a Dem held state doing the same thing. it really shouldn't be that hard I can think of a few instances right off the top of my head but lets see if you can wrap your pointy little head around the concept that politicians as a whole are corrupt or is it just the republicans in your book.....

[red states rule]

Now that you have found *gasp* coruption in a state predominately Reb. lets see if truth really does matter to you and find a balance of a Dem held state doing the same thing. it really shouldn't be that hard I can think of a few instances right off the top of my head but lets see if you can wrap your pointy little head around the concept that politicians as a whole are corrupt or is it just the republicans in your book.....

Does this count?


Two Convicted for Ohio Vote Fraud, Media Leaves Out They're Democrats
By Warner Todd Huston | November 6, 2007 - 04:02 ET
We have seen over and over again how the MSM (and the AP in particular) can't seem to force themselves to mention the party affiliation of some elected official accused and/or convicted of a crime if that official happens to be a Democrat. Now the MSM has expanded that from elected officials even to party workers. The AP reports a story on two Democrat election officials convicted of recount rigging and neglect of official duties for their actions during the 2004 elections but, for some hard to determine reason, few if any news sources are mentioning that these two are Democrats. Jacqueline Maiden and Kathleen Dreame have pleaded guilty to the charges after an aborted conviction from last January, the original trial having been granted a retrial on grounds not connected with the pair's actions.

Their crime is a bit hard to explain, but what it comes down to is that they committed fraud with the 2004 ballot recount procedures that amounted to their attempt to get out of following the proper procedure to conduct the recount.

Most of the news reports take great pains to say that the convicted operatives' actions "weren't for political purposes," but even if that were true does that make legitimate not mentioning that they are Democrat Party election officials in Cuyahoga County, one of Ohio's most Democratic counties?

Again, we have to ask, what would these news sources do if these two guilty officials were Republican election workers? Who can doubt that the party affiliation would have led the reportage of this crime?

So, no party affiliation for Maiden and Dreame from either UPI, the AP, or the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The closest we get is an oblique reference to the claim that the pair's actions didn't help John Kerry in 2004.

Special prosecutor Kevin Baxter did not claim the actions affected the outcome of the election. Democratic Sen. John Kerry Kerry gained 17 votes and President Bush lost six in the county recount.

The fact that Kerry gained 17 votes in the recount would not have been mentioned had these two not been Democrat Poll workers, the suspicion being that they fraudulently created Kerry's gain out of thin air. But surmising this point takes some thought and is not obvious on its surface. So, even the recitation of this point does not explain in a straightforward manner that these two women were Democrats.

No, what we have here is another game of hide-the-Democrat from the readers. Another in a long list of stories that will seemingly never end.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-...eyre-democrats

[Nukeman]

how about these over just the last 3 months

Democrat corruption over the last three months
Democrats are harping on the corruption of the Republican Party. Please note that Democrat corruption in government is widespread and far reaching. I could have listed many examples of Democrat corruption such as Sandy Berger stealing documents from the National Archives- however- I decided to look at headlines over the last three months. The below are headline from September - just over 3 months of Democrat corruption.

- An independent counsel who investigated possible tax violations by former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros charged that the Clinton administration thwarted his efforts to get to the truth.

- U.S. Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) is under criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for possible bribery in exchange for promoting business deals in Africa

- Federal prosecutors alleged in court documents that Ernest Newton, a former state Democrat Connecticut senator worked with a reputed mobster and his associate to try to stop police raids on businesses and advance their business interests

- Clarence Norman Jr., the longtime powerbroker of Brooklyn NY Democrats was found guilty of intentionally soliciting illegal campaign contributions.

- A top aide to Jim Black, the Democratic speaker of the state Legislature of North Carolina, resigned amid reports he had received payments from a company hoping for the lottery contract. The .State Board of Elections is investigating Black's campaign finances. The investigation comes after the group Democracy North Carolina said it found evidence that video-poker operators were funneling money through unsuspecting donors to Black's campaign.

- West Virginia.Logan County Clerk Glen Dale "Hound Dog" Adkins admitted to selling his vote for $500 in the 1996 Democratic Party primary, while Perry French Harvey Jr. pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe voters in last year's Democratic contest

- Former Democrat Gov. Donald Siegelman of Alabama was charged in a "widespread racketeering conspiracy" that includes accusations he took a bribe from former hospital executive Richard Scrushy for a key state appointment.

- Frank Ballance - a former Democrat Rep. from North Carolina was sentenced to four years in federal prison for conspiring to divert taxpayer money to his law firm and family through a charitable organization he helped start. Ballance, was a state senator before being elected to Congress in 2002, also agreed to repay $61,917 and to forfeit $203,000 in a bank escrow account in the name of the John A. Hyman Memorial Foundation.

- Five Democratic activists in Wisconsin accused of slashing the tires of vans rented by Republicans on Election Day 2004 are currently on trial

- Chuck Chvala, a Former Democrat Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader was sentenced to nine months in jail for felony misconduct in office and illegally funneling campaign contributions. Chvala had reached a plea deal with prosecutors earlier this year, admitting to charges that he directed a state employee to run a political campaign and used an independent expenditure group to funnel campaign contributions to a fellow Democrat.

- Brett Pfeffer, a former legislative director to Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting bribery of a public official and conspiracy.

- Raymond Reggie, a New Orleans political Democratic consultant and fund-raiser who is Senator Kennedy's brother-in-law was sentenced to a year in prison yesterday after pleading guilty to bank fraud charges.

[truthmatters]

I guess this just makes all this corruption just go away in your minds?

[Kathianne]

I guess this just makes all this corruption just go away in your minds?

Not in mine, when I read the following I was appalled:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...onal_ploy.html

November 12, 2007
A Failed Congressional Ploy
By Robert Novak

WASHINGTON -- The ploy had been hatched behind closed doors by Democratic leaders of both houses. A pork-laden appropriations bill filled with $1 billion in earmarks would combine with veto-proof spending for veterans. Instead, the two measures were decoupled in a Senate party-line vote last Tuesday.

The Democratic scheme to present President George W. Bush with a bill that he could not veto seemed a clever strategy, but it was based on presumption of Republican ignorance and cowardice. As late as last Monday, savvy GOP Senate staffers predicted Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's decoupling motion would fail. In fact, she did not lose a Republican senator, as Democrats fell far short of the 60 votes needed to keep the two bills together.

During a confusing week on Capitol Hill, lawmakers engaged in games difficult for insiders to understand and incomprehensible for ordinary voters. As the first Congress controlled by Democrats since 1994 nears the end of its first year, the desire to bring home the bacon trumped concern over the falling dollar, the crisis in Pakistan and the continuing conflict in Iraq.

The reason that not one of 13 appropriations bills had reached the president's desk was Bush's threat to veto at least 10 of them. Doubting their ability to override these vetoes, Democratic leaders conjured up combined packages that Bush would dare not veto. The earmark-heavy appropriations bill for the Labor and Health and Human Services (HHS) departments would be joined with the Defense bill, which funds Iraq, and with Military Construction, which contains money for veterans.

The Defense component was quickly removed after protests by Rep. John Murtha, influential chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee. But plans for a Labor-HHS merger with Military Construction went forward. A stand-alone bill containing veterans money had passed the House, 409 to 2, on June 15, and a similar measure got Senate approval, 92 to 1, on Sept. 6 -- measures Bush would sign. But Democrats held off final passage so they could meld it with Labor-HHS, which they did in last week's Senate-House conference report.

At the same time, the pork content of Labor-HHS grew. Citizens Against Government Waste found 2,274 earmarks in the bill worth $1 billion. They include $1.5 million for the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute and $2.2 million for the AFL-CIO Appalachian Council. Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad, North Dakota's two professed budget balancers, got $1 million for Bismarck State College. Sen. Arlen Specter, the Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations subcommittee's ranking Republican, procured $882,025 for "abstinence education" in his home state of Pennsylvania.

The conference report's "compromise" Labor-HHS bill at $151 billion was actually more expensive than either the House or Senate version. It contains a $1 million earmark for a Thomas Daschle Center for Public Service and Representative Democracy at South Dakota State University to honor the former Senate majority leader who was defeated for re-election in 2004. Sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Robert Byrd and Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Daschle Center was one of nine earmarks "airdropped" into the final version by the Senate-House conference without being passed by either the Senate or House. Silently removed from the bill by the conference report was the prohibition, passed by the Senate in a rare defeat for earmarkers, against spending $1 million for the Woodstock "hippies" museum in Bethel, N.Y.

In the past, if a point of order against an appropriations bill was affirmed, the whole bill would die. But a new rule pressed by Democrats this year made it possible to split veterans spending away from Labor-HHS without killing the bill. All 46 Republican senators present voted to sustain the point of order, so that the Senate fell 13 votes short of the 60 votes needed to keep the two bills together.

Consequently, the Senate last Tuesday again had to pass the bloated Labor-HHS bill. It did, but by a 56 to 37 margin, short of a veto-proof majority, as 19 Republican senators changed their affirmative vote from the last time they considered this bill. In an extraordinary outburst against the 19 switchers, Majority Leader Reid called them "sheep and chickens" who had "chosen to defend a failed president." In truth, he had just lost an audacious ploy.

[Nukeman]

I guess this just makes all this corruption just go away in your minds?

I beleive that somewhere on this board at one time I was told that you just think faster than the rest of us unfortunately you have yet to prove that.

You fail to miss the part where most of us dont bring up this type of corruption and attempt to make a point of this party does this or this party does that. When it comes to politicle corruption there are no party lines. This is something with your speedy intelect fail to comprehend.

To answer your STUPID question no it doesnt make it go away but to attempt to make it seem that the republcans are more corrupt than the dems is just stupid.

Your moniker is Truthmatter yet you only represent one skewed side of any argument. Truth knows no side yet you continue to pick apart the republicans and find fault with every thing they do. yet you conveniently over look any type of problems with the democratic party. If truth really matters to you you would cut out the party line bullshit you spewl all the time and give equal time to all side not just the one you HATE...

[truthmatters]

This is not picking things apart , this is vurtually the entire Alaskan republican party.

You can then go dig up all the Dem corruption over the last 20 years. That does not mean a god damned thing except YOU are the one picking things apart.

[Immanuel]

I guess this just makes all this corruption just go away in your minds?

Nope, just points out the fact that BOTH sides are corrupt. Which is a point you tend to ignore.

Have you ever thought about taking the plank out of the eye of your own party before pointing out the one in the eye of the Republican party?

Immie

[red states rule]

Here is a gem folks


As New Jersey Democrats Meet, Corruption Arrests Steal Spotlight

By DAVID W. CHEN
Published: September 8, 2007
Correction Appended

ATLANTIC CITY, Sept. 7 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton wowed the crowd. So did Gov. Jon S. Corzine. And there to cheer them on, relishing every partisan barb aimed at President Bush’s policies on Iraq, the economy and health care, were about 1,000 of the state’s most ardent Democrats.

But the person who all but upstaged the state Democratic Party’s annual convention here was a Republican who was 117 miles away in Newark: the United States attorney, Christopher J. Christie, whose office announced on Thursday the arrests of 11 current or former public officials — including two Democratic assemblymen — and another man accused of accepting thousands of dollars in bribes.

By Friday afternoon, Governor Corzine, as well as the Senate president, Richard J. Codey; the Assembly speaker, Joseph J. Roberts Jr.; and the state Democratic chairman, Joseph P. Cryan, had called on the two legislators to resign. Several high-ranking Democrats, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that they expected the two — Assemblyman Mims Hackett Jr., who is also the mayor of Orange, and Assemblyman Alfred E. Steele, a Passaic County undersheriff — to step down within days.

Democrats who had read all 44 pages of the supporting material accompanying the criminal complaints said they were shocked and disgusted by the accusations of cash payouts and expletive-filled boasts about vote-rigging.

“Unfortunately, it’s become the focus of the convention, and it’s a very sad day for the Democratic Party,” said State Senator Stephen M. Sweeney, a Democrat from Gloucester County. “How dare these Democrats cast a cloud over the entire Democratic Party? Is your name worth $5,000? People will talk about the corrupt Democratic Party, and you know what? That’s fair game.”

To the embarrassment and astonishment of Democrats gathered in this resort, this was the second consecutive year that Mr. Christie had managed to hog the stage in absentia.

Last year, just as the convention was getting under way, Mr. Christie’s office subpoenaed the records of a nonprofit community agency in Hudson County that had paid more than $300,000 in rent to United States Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat, while also getting millions of dollars in federal grants with Mr. Menendez’s help. At the time, Mr. Menendez was locked in a close race with his Republican opponent, State Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr., and Democrats contended that the release of the subpoenas so close to the election was politically motivated.

Could Mr. Christie’s timing be mere coincidence two years in a row?

Yes, said most Democrats interviewed here on Friday. Hardly any Democrat was accusing Mr. Christie of playing politics. Instead, many praised him and the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who worked on the 18-month investigation.

Mr. Codey may have set the tone in a speech at a breakfast that was talked about all day.

Saying that Democrats should “look at ourselves and ask, ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ ” he went on: “These questions about whether the U.S. attorney is too political, that’s not the question. He didn’t put a gun to anyone’s head and force them to put their hand in the cookie jar. Our criticism should never be directed at law enforcement officers who are doing their jobs.”

And Mr. Roberts said that he was prepared to consider new measures to strengthen ethics legislation that was signed on Tuesday by Mr. Corzine — perhaps not immediately in a special session, as Republicans demanded on Friday, but soon.

for the complete article
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/08/ny...cratic%20Party

[truthmatters]

They are both made up of people and people are corruptable.


The R platform is just easier to buy because they can vote in the interests of whoever can afford to buy them and get relected.

When dems do so they lose their base.

The rebuplican party we have at the momment is all about corporate backing.

[Hagbard Celine]

So I guess the fact that there have been Democrats who have been caught or accused of malfeasance, it excuses the Republicans from Alaska? Is that the gist of the argument here?

[red states rule]

They are both made up of people and people are corruptable.


The R platform is just easier to buy because they can vote in the interests of whoever can afford to buy them and get relected.

When dems do so they lose their base.

The rebuplican party we have at the momment is all about corporate backing.

Oh really?

Clinton Supporter Arrested in N.J. Corruption Sting
By Patrick Healy

Update: Blake Zeff, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, just e-mailed to say that Mayor Rivera stepped down from Mrs. Clinton’s Mayors Council today.
Among the 11 public officials arrested in an F.B.I. corruption sting in New Jersey today was a leading Democratic supporter of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign in that state, Mayor Samuel Rivera of Passaic.
It was the latest legal embarrassment involving an ally of the Clinton campaign, coming only one day after a wealthy Clinton donor, Norman Hsu, missed his court date in a California fraud case and apparently disappeared.
Clinton advisers this spring and summer have been aggressively touting their long list of endorsements from elected officials and prominent Democratic donors, to indicate the breadth of establishment support that Mrs. Clinton enjoys. Yet, in the case of Mr. Hsu and now Mayor Rivera, the criminal allegations indicate a cost that can come with quickly rounding up political support from far and wide.
The Clinton campaign has severed ties with Mr. Hsu; as for Mayor Rivera, he remains a member of Mrs. Clinton’s Mayors Council as of this afternoon, but a campaign spokesman said that the charges were “serious” and will be monitored closely.
According to the criminal complaint filed in Federal District Court, Mayor Rivera allegedly promised to deliver a majority of votes on the Passaic City Council to steer city insurance brokerage business to a dummy company set up by the F.B.I.
Federal agents posing as company executives offered a $50,000 payment to Mr. Rivera in return for the business, according to the complaint; Mr. Rivera allegedly accepted an initial installment of $5,000.
Mr. Rivera, according to a transcript of secretly recorded conversations laid out in the complaint, boasted profanely of essentially controlling the seven-member city council. He said that securing a four-vote majority would be “easy, easy, easy,” and, at another point, said the deal was as good as done.
“I make the [expletive] decision. And the council. And believe me, I’ve got the four [expletive] votes on the Council. So let’s stop [expletive], and let’s get this thing rolling,” Mr. Rivera said, according to the complaint.
Mr. Rivera is one of about 100 members of Mrs. Clinton’s Mayors Council, which, according to a campaign press release in July, “will advise the campaign on policy and outreach.”
When Mr. Zeff was asked this afternoon about Mr. Rivera’s status with the campaign he replied, “These are serious charges and as the process moves forward we will be monitoring them closely.”
The 11 officials, who also included two Democratic state assemblymen, are scheduled to appear in Federal District Court
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ruption-sting/

[Kathianne]

So I guess the fact that there have been Democrats who have been caught or accused of malfeasance, it excuses the Republicans from Alaska? Is that the gist of the argument here?

Actually the point you and TM seem to be making the only corruption that counts is that by Republicans. On the other hand, TM throws in some nonsense about Democrats that do so 'lose their base.'

[truthmatters]

I hope he goes down hard.

I will vote Hil if I have to but I would prefer someone who is less soaked in the current system.

Do you want to talk about Abramhoff and who he was buying?