Republican corruption

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?

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:

What would you do if your Congressman came to you personally to ask for your help? What if the help he asked you for was to help design a program to rig an election?

If you're Clint Curtis you go public with the scandal and run for Congress against him.

Clint Curtis grew up Republican in Illinois and Florida. It took the recent Republican scandals and the realization that his Republican Congressman wanted to rig elections to bring Clint Curtis to the realization that the Party that calls itself Republican had long ago abandoned the values it once professed. In this Clint is coming to the same realization that Jim Jeffords came to when to switched to Independent, that Arianna Huffington came to after watching her idol, Newt Gingrich, show his true colors, and that Pete McClosky came to when he switched his party affiliation to Democrat...after a lifetime of being a Republican including a candidate for President in a primary against Nixon. Clint describes his own change this way:

In September of 2000, Clint’s life took a course that he never could have imagined. It was then that Clint was first introduced to Tom Feeney the incoming Speaker of the Florida House. Clint was a programmer at Yang Enterprises, a company whose owner was an associate and confidant of Mr. Feeney. Initially Clint was impressed. He expected that Mr Feeney shared the values of the Republicans he knew growing up in Illinois. Clint identified with the Republican values at the time - conservative and based on ethics and integrity. It was always the Democrats under Mayor Daley that were engaged in corrupt behavior. Clint expected that Mr. Feeney would share those values. Clint soon learned he did not.

Kentucky just held their primary election for Governor. The results (see here) mean currently indicted Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher will face off against Democrat Steve Beshear in November's general election. Democrat Beshear has been a reformer, pushing for a referendum reforming the Kentucky Judicial System and working as a consumer advocate. By contrast, Ernie Fletcher is currently indicted on charges of conspiracy, official misconduct and political discrimination. And yet Republicans elected Fletcher in the primary with just over 50% of the vote. Once again, the Republican Party shows itself to be accepting of corruption.

I have written about Fletcher before. Last year he ranked as the 5th least popular governor in the nation (Republican governors of Ohio and Missouri, also heavily involved in corruption, were the two LEAST popular governors in America). Fletcher's administration is suspected of violating the state's merit system laws and using politics as the basis for hiring or firing government employees. In essence, they are going back to the time of the so-called “spoils system” where government firing and hiring was a rewards system for political allies. This was considered unacceptable more than 100 years ago and was ended on the Federal level by the Civil Service Act of 1883 which made it illegal to fill various federal offices by the spoils system. Kentucky also has a “Merit Law” that outlaws the corrupt spoils system. Yet Repub Gov. Fletcher wants to go back to and older time, where corruption was accepted as normal. Nine current or former members of Fletcher's administration have been indicted on a series of misdemeanor charges alleging violations of the Merit System personnel law. And Republicans in Kentucky agree with him about good old fashioned corruption. And almost universally this is seen as guarnateeing a big win for Steve Beshear come November.

Looks like yet another in a long line of Halliburton Republicans is guilty of crimes. Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has been found guilty by a jury. From Salon.com:

Eleven jurors -- the 12th was dismissed after being exposed to press reports about the case -- found Libby guilty of 1) obstructing justice by lying to the grand jury about how he learned and whom he told about Plame; 2) making a false statement by lying to the FBI about a conversation he said he had about Plame with NBC's Tim Russert; 3) committing perjury by lying to the grand jury about his conversation with Russert; and 4) committing perjury by lying about his conversation with Cooper and other reporters.

What was left off that list of charges was treason. Libby was part of a conspiracy that revealed the identity of a covert agent who was involved in the War against terrorism. Revealing that identity compromised our defense against terrorism and constitutes treason. That is the real charge that should have been leveled against Libby.

Now, what was Dick Cheney's role in all of this? Was his underling acting alone or under direction? Is Dick as guilty of treason as Libby? I think that deserves some investigation, don't you? Maybe Congress wants to look into it?

This didn't even get it's own article in the NY Times but rather was buried at the bottom of an article on 4 marines dying in a helicopter crash. Really, you have to scroll down almost to the end to find it. It turns out that Halliburton has been awarding subcontracts based on bribes:

In Rock Island, Ill., the director of operations for a Saudi company that operates dining facilities for American troops in Iraq and Kuwait was sentenced Friday in the Federal District Court for the Central District of Illinois to 51 months in prison for his involvement in a kickback scheme, according to a news release issued by a federal prosecutor’s office there.

In the scheme, Mohammad Shabbir Khan, operations director of the Tamimi Global Company, paid kickbacks to an employee of Kellogg Brown & Root Services to secure two dining subcontracts valued at $21.8 million, the statement said.

A United States district judge also ordered Mr. Khan to pay a fine of $10,000 and restitution to the United States government of $133,860, the amount he paid the Kellogg Brown & Root employee, the statement said.

The judge also sentenced the former Kellogg Brown & Root employee, Stephen Lowell Seamans, to 12 months in prison for his role in the scheme, the statement said.

Mr. Seamans was also ordered to pay restitution of $380,130 for that and another kickback scheme, according to the statement.

Americans woke up and realized their government had been lying to them for 6 years. They saw the depth of Republican lies and corruption and they voted accordingly.

The Republicans forgot a very important lesson:

“You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.”

--Abraham Lincoln, the best Republican President

Disgraced Republican Congressman Bob Ney has now pleaded guilty to bribery charges in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal. He is the first Congressman to plead guilty in this case to date, though it has also brought indictments to the likes of the disgraced Republican, Tom DeLay. Remember, Bob Ney was an early target of my Target the Corrupt Republican Campaign. Tom DeLay was another early target! So far, I think I am doing well in picking them.

If you want to fight corruption, please consider donating to defeating corrupt Republicans in this year's election (including Bob Ney's OH-18 and Tom DeLay's TX-22 seats), and please consider donating to electing Democratic Attornies General who will pursue, rather than block, investigations into Republican corruption (Secretaries of State races also included).

Republican corruption is becoming so blatant that even Congressional Republicans are deciding not to block an investigation of it. Jack Abramoff may be in jail, but the Republican scandals surrounding his empire of sleaze continue to grow.

From Salon.com:

Senate Questions Nonprofits' Tax Status

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By JOHN HEILPRIN Associated Press Writer

October 12,2006 | WASHINGTON -- Five nonprofit groups, including one of President Bush's biggest supporters, may have broken tax laws and put their tax-exempt status at risk by helping convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a Senate Finance Committee report concludes.

The 600-page report issued Thursday was prepared by the committee's Democratic staff. Majority Republicans, however, had agreed to its release and joined with Democrats in issuing subpoenas for documents and e-mails cited in the report.

It has become HIGHLY unusual for the Republicans to allow this kind of honest investigation of corruption. They have generally used their domination of both houses of Congress to block all Congressional investigation of Republicans. And, more often than not, they have covered up for their cronies like they did for six years after finding out about Foley's solicitation of sex from minors. So this is a real change for Republicans and shows that even they can't stop the public from knowning what is going on within their own ranks.

Mark Foley, Republican Congressman, solicits sex from a minor. And the Republican leadership did nothing. And now we find they are lying through their teeth about it.

Tom DeLay, Dennis Hastert and Tom Reynolds all claimed they had known nothing about Foley's sleaze. They were innocent as could be. Then we learn from one of Reynold's aides that Reynolds had known months before they had admitted they had known, months before the news broke. They knew for months and did nothing to report Foley's illegal and immoral behavior.

Now we learn the lies and cover-ups are even worse than we thought. We now learn that Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., confronted Foley about his Internet communications with teenagers as early as 2000. That means Foley has been a sitting Republican Congressman for SIX YEARS after the Republican party KNEW he was soliciting sex from minors. From Salon.com:

October 09,2006 | WASHINGTON -- A Republican member of Congress confronted then-Rep. Mark Foley about his Internet communications with teenagers as early as 2000, according to a newspaper report.

The report in the Washington Post pushes back by at least five years the date when a member of Congress acknowledges learning of the Florida Republican's questionable behavior toward pages.

It came as the Republican leadership attempted to present a united front on the congressional page scandal that has rocked the GOP a month before midterm elections and put House Speaker Dennis Hastert on shaky ground.