Corruption

This last weekend, Democrats picked up another seat in Congress. It wasn't just any seat, it was Dennis Hastert's formerly "safe Republican" seat. The win was solid, with Democrat Bill Foster winning 53% of the vote. This was a major blow to the Republican Party.

Salon.com reports that "National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Karen Hanretty [said] in a statement that 'one election in one state does not prove a trend.'"

This is typical Republican blindness, pretending that data points are isolated incidents without looking at the broad picture. Republicans do this with global warming as well, ignoring decades of solid scientific data and pretending that a single cold season somehow is more important than those decades of data showing a clear trend.

I have news for Hanretty: this IS a trend.

Indicted Tom DeLay's old, "safe Republican" seat in Texas has been taken by a Democrat. Pedophile Mark Foley's old, "safe Republican" seat has been taken by a Democrat. The governorship of Kentucky, once "safe Republican" has been taken by a Democrat. The governorships of Montana and Virginia have been taken by Democrats. State legislatures around the nation have been flipping to Democrat like crazy starting in 2005. And, of course, Democrats overwhelmingly took the House and marginally took the Senate in 2006. Fundraising by Democrats is at record highs. Fundraising by Republicans is at record lows. Almost each and every special election that has been held for a Congressional seat since 2005 has flipped from Repub to Dem. Republicans are retiring or flipping parties at record numbers. It started in 2005, and this trend started when Americans saw the true cost of greedy Republican mismanagement when hurricane Katrina hit.

I recently I wrote a piece on the very, very nasty corruption among Republicans in Alaska. Specifically, I wrote about a scandal involving an oil services company, VECO, that involves bribery and buying of favors involving four Alaskan Republican State Legislators, one US Senator from Alaska (Ted Stevens) and the lone House Representative from Alaska (Don Young). The single Democrat, a state legislator, initially investigated was never subsequently accused of wrongdoing. In other words, the VECO scandal is exclusively a Republican scandal.

But when I wrote that piece, I hadn't realized I had only scratched the surface. Turns out, one recipient of VECO's alleged bribes, Rep. Don Young, may well be the poster boy for just about every kind of Republican corruption this nation has been seeing.

Here is a rundown of Don Young's sleaze from The Muckraker:

It's hard to keep track of all of Rep. Don Young's (R-AK) scandals. But we're here to help. Here's a snapshot of what we know about all the ways Young has managed to get into trouble.

Coconut Road
McClatchy reported last week that investigators have begun scrutinizing Young's now famous $10 million earmark for a Florida interchange. Whether the earmark was a quid pro quo for a big time contributor is only half the story. Young also appears to have changed the bill's language after it passed Congress in order to make sure that the money went where (or to who) he wished.

I have reported many times about how the Republican Parties in Ohio, Missouri and Kentucky were about the most corrupt political establishments in America. One that I have been missing is the Alaska Republican Party. I think it is time I turn northward to discuss what is going on in Alaska.

At the epicenter of Alaska corruption seems to be the Alaska oil services company Veco Corp. Veco, until its recent buyout, was an oil pipeline service and construction company. Perhaps Veco would like to be best known for the fact that it carried out a great deal of the clean up efforts after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. But this is not the only thing they were known for. They were known for illegal influence on Republican politicians.

In 2006 the FBI served some 20 search warrants on the offices of six Alaska state legislators: Sen. John Cowdery (R-Anchorage), Senate President Ben Stevens (R-Anchorage) (son of US Senator Ted Stevens), Rep. Vic Kohring (R-Wasilla), Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R-Juneau), Sen Don Olson (D-Nome), and Rep. Pete Kott (R-Eagle River). Also named in the search warrants were VECO officers Bill Allen, Rick Smith and Pete Leathard.

I have said it once and I am going to say it again : The people a candidate attracts matters. It matters if a candidate is willing to look the other way at their supporters' willingness to pick up the slack and run the dirty politics for them. And such is the vibe that I have gotten from the Clintons' supporters way before Hillary announced her candidacy. They want the dynasty. They want the twofer. By all means necessary.

So it's no wonder there's this coming from the Clinton side of the political aisle :

"That's when I caught on," said Coghlan. He realized then that he was being push-polled. That malicious political virus that is designed not to elicit answers but to spread positive information about one candidate and negative information about all others under the guise of an honest poll had arrived in Southern California within days of the important election.

It could become an issue in the closing hours of the campaign.

Someone who obviously favors Hillary Clinton is paying an unidentified company to spread this material phone call by phone call among independent voters, who can, according to California party rules, opt to vote in the Democratic but not the Republican primary on Feb. 5, when nearly two dozen states will choose a large chunk of the delegates to t

Among the very first corrupt Republicans I targeted were Roy and Matt Blunt, corrupt father and son who were, respectively, Congressman and Governor of Missouri. This pair were about as corrupt as you can get, and Matt Blunt was among the least popular governors in the nation. To me, the Blunts are probably the most embarassing political dynasty this nation has, perhaps next to the Bush family itself. Yet, to my dismay, this corrupt and seemingly unpopular bunch hung on to their elected positions even in 2006 when the voters did a pretty good job of sweeping out corrupt politicians.

Well, it seems we are finally starting to force these sleaze out. According to Daily Kos, Matt Blunt, the younger sleaze, is deciding NOT to run for re-election as governor of Missouri. He is retiring because he has "fulfilled all his campaign promises." I guess becoming one of the most corrupt and least popular governors in America, making his chances of re-election slim, is his way of fulfilling his campaign promises. Or is the skyrocketing unemployment in Missouri part of his campaign promise?

Liza's recent article on a humorous side to Republican Joe Barton's (TX-6) opposition to healthcare for Amreica's children rang a bell for me. I remember this Joe Barton. His current crusade is denying Amrerica's children healthcare, but in the past he has been cold-hearted in a different way. He was one of the Katrina 11, the 11 Republicans who voted “No” on the bill that Congress approved and Bush signed to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. These are the cold-hearted bastards who would willingly see Americans die for the sake of more tax cuts for the wealthy and for Halliburton profits.

Joe Barton is one of those cold-hearted bastards. Only now his target is also America's children. But that isn't even new. Barton was one of the Republicans who worked to block the Combating Autism Act in 2006. His actions were so deceptive and so awful, that Don and Diedre Imus (no left wingers themselves) were pissed off and offended. So Barton has a history of right wing extremism when it comes to helping America's children.

But Barton is more than just a cold-hearted bastard. He is also anti-science. He has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from oil and gas industries then, as chairman of the House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee, he proceeded to go after climatologists whose work helped us understand global warming. Joe Barton has been bought and sold by the oil industry and has become one of their main attack dogs against scientists.

Corruption is one of the issues I focus on the most. On Daily Gotham I focus a lot on problems within the Democratic party in Brooklyn, NY. But nationally I find than generally it is Republican corruption that is most prevalent and damaging to America.

Right now, I want to focus on a particularly vile, corrupt Republican Congressman, Tom Feeney (FL-24). This is a man closely connected with the Abramoff scandal that Republicans want you to forget but you and I know is still playing out. But Feeney is also majorly involved in voter fraud. In fact, Feeney should be the poster boy for the most un-American attack on democracy America has seen in recent years.

Feeney is a sitting Congressman, but let's start out by realizing that Tom Feeney has already been fined by the House ethics committee for his Abramoff connections. He has already been found to be corrupt by the House Ethics Committee, yet is still a "respected" member of the Republican Party and has not resigned from Congress.

But there is probably more coming...it seems that the FBI is investigating Tom Feeney further for those Abramoff connections. Gee, and the Republicans wanted us to think the Abramoff scandal had blown over.

But perhaps the worst Feeney has done is active participation in voting fraud. Yes, I say ACTIVE PARTICIPATION in voter fraud. Tom Feeney has been accused of recruiting computer programmers to write software that could alter vote totals on touch-screen voting machines in Florida. From the Seminole Chronicle:

Just when I think the Bush administration couldn't get into a deeper cesspool of corruption, that then comes news like the one about Michael Chertoff being the possible replacement for Alberto Gonzales and ... well ... I have to slap myself out the shock.

Let me refresh your memory :

This the same Michael Chertoff that allegedly traced the 9/11 to Al-Qaeda and who helped market and brand "the war on terror".

Michael Chertoff is the guy that helped write the "torture memorandum" while he was at the criminal division of the Justice Department.

This is the same guy that was supposed to manage and supervise FEMA, especially before, during and after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

At least we can say one thing about Bush : He's loyal.

Memorandum is off the hook this morning with news that Alberto Gonzales has resigned as US Attorney General.

There are cheers and jeers all around the blogosphere for what many consider the worst Attorney General to the worst Presidency in the history of the United States. The press release from Ralph Neas over at People For the American Way better encapsulates what a lot of people in the blogosphere are saying :

The Ennabler General

It’s high time this attorney general resigned. Alberto Gonzales was the 'Enabler General' for the imperial Bush presidency. He undermined the Constitution, made a mockery of the rule of law, and turned the Justice Department into an arm of the Bush Administration’s political operation.

Gonzales protected the interests of George W. Bush over the interests of the American people at every turn. He oversaw a Justice Department that was twisted to serve political interests, from the president’s domestic spying program to bogus allegations of voting fraud that kept minorities and poor people from the ballot box. He showed open contempt for oversight by Congress, and gave testimony under oath that was at best incompetent and at worst, deliberately untrue.

...

Now, it’s time to heal the Justice Department, and find a new attorney general who will restore integrity to the office.

To me though, what's really is important is how Gonzales' fall is not just a foible of his character. To me what is important here is how the Bush administration has used the idea of "diversity" to empower into corruption racial, ethnic and gender minorities.

I know some out there feel I am little more than a cheerleader for the Democratic Party. I think this just shows that they aren't paying close enough attention to what I write over all...but they are right that, fighting against a Republican Party that has become the worst threat to American democracy since the Civil War, I find myself very focused on supporting Democrats at almost every turn. The Democrats are currently all that stand between us and a one-party, right wing theocracy that would make the founding fathers furious.

Under Democratic leadership our basic democracy is not threatened and I don't feel that a budding theocracic dictatorship is at hand. Under Republicans today, that is exactly what I feel. So, given the choice, I cheer the party that best reflects my beliefs, my values and fights against theocratic dictatorship that Bush is foisting on us. And by and large, the vasy majority of Democratic politicians I have personally known are a pretty good bunch.

Doesn't mean I support all Democrats. My readers at Culture Kitchen don't see one side of my blogging that my NYC readers of Daily Gotham do see. I spend a great deal of time battling corrupt and anti-democracy Democrats right in my own community of Brooklyn and I get a lot of shit for it. I have my own infamy in Brooklyn as a rabble rouser AGAINST the mainstream Democrats and, in general, for a loose and inefficient group of "reform" and "progressive Democrats." I cut my blogging teeth on fighting WITHIN the Democratic Party and it is because of the response I got that Liza asked me to be managing editor at Culture Kitchen. But I keep it in perspective. Democratic politicians are, in my personal experience, generally (not always) good and Republican politicians are, in my personal experience, often (not always) a pretty sleazy, greedy bunch.