GOP, bunch of liars and criminals

    Friday 30 September 2005

Voters are notoriously slow in voting out politicians accused of corruption, but they may reach the tipping point with the latest revelations.

    To be an honest Republican these days must be to wonder what awful revelation is coming next - and how the Grand Old Party, which once claimed to represent political reform, became a front for sleaze, corruption and cynical criminality. Across the country, from the Capitol to statehouses, Republican officials are under indictment, under investigation or under suspicion.

    This week's headlines featured the indictment of Rep. Tom DeLay and the probe of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, but the infection of venality among their fellow partisans is now reaching epidemic proportions. So widespread is the plague that keeping track of all the individual cases, and their increasingly baroque variations, has become a distinct challenge.

    Consider Jack Abramoff, once the prince of K Street lobbyists and a dedicated right-wing ideologue who boasted of his powerful connections to DeLay, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and the entire Republican apparatus in Washington. Already under investigation by the Justice Department for his influence peddling among House members, including DeLay, and his swindling of Indian tribes, Abramoff was indicted last month for bank fraud in a separate South Florida case involving a casino boat company that he partly owned.

    The fraud allegedly committed by Abramoff and his business partner Adam Kidan involved a phony wire transfer they used to purchase a controlling interest in SunCruz from the company's founder, Konstantinos Gus Boulis, in 2001.

    Abramoff and Kidan later fell out with Boulis in a bitter business dispute that turned violent. In February 2001, gunmen ambushed Boulis on a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., highway and shot him repeatedly. On Tuesday, Florida authorities arrested three New York men with mob connections for the Boulis killing. Two of the men - Anthony Moscatiello and Tony Ferrari - had received payments totaling more than $240,000 from Kidan and Abramoff. Moscatiello, a longtime associate of the Gambino Mafia family, and Ferrari were supposedly providing food and consulting services to SunCruz - or so Kidan claimed when questioned by prosecutors. There is no evidence, however, that Moscatiello and Ferrari provided any services to the company.

    Connecting the dots isn't difficult here: Kidan and Abramoff want to get rid of Boulis, who won't go away. Kidan and Abramoff hire Moscatiello and Ferrari with SunCruz money. Moscatiello and Ferrari allegedly whack Boulis, without any motive of their own. If the Broward County state's attorney has sufficient evidence to win convictions for a capital crime, some people will probably be talking soon in hope of avoiding the hot shot.

    The stunning fall of Abramoff, who has yet to hit bottom, is certainly the most colorful tale of Republican depravity. The corporate money laundering to Texas politicians that led to DeLay's conspiracy indictment, and the suspicious insider stock transaction that spurred investigations of Frist by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, seem mundane by comparison. Outrage will be warranted if their misconduct is proved, but everyone sadly knows that these felonies are now common practice in our political and corporate culture.

    Corporate misbehavior has also brought down right-wing publisher Conrad Black, neoconservative strategist and former Bush advisor Richard Perle and the entire corporate board of Hollinger Inc., the Republican-friendly media conglomerate formerly controlled by Lord Black - and that he and others are plausibly accused of illicitly looting for their own benefit. Furious shareholders forced Black to relinquish control of the company and are suing him, as well as Perle and former Black deputy David Radler, for $500 million. The SEC is also suing Black and Radler, and the Justice Department is investigating the former Hollinger directors.

    Last month, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who also happens to be the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case, accepted Radler's guilty plea to mail fraud and wire fraud. Radler is now believed to be cooperating in the prosecution of what former SEC chairman Richard Breeden, a Republican who investigated Hollinger on behalf of shareholders, termed a corporate kleptocracy.

    Kleptocratic morality evidently ruled at least two Republican statehouses in the Midwest as well. Currently under indictment are former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, whose trial on bribery charges began last week, and Gov. Robert Taft of Ohio, who pleaded no contest last month to charges of accepting illegal gifts from a state contractor.

    That contractor is Thomas Noe, a coin dealer who received lucrative investment deals with the state's Workers Compensation Fund and is now at the center of a gigantic scandal known as Coingate. More than $12 million has disappeared from the fund, and former GOP official Noe stands accused of laundering money to various Republican politicians, including the Bush-Cheney campaign. Like Abramoff, Noe is a Bush Pioneer, responsible for raising at least $100,000 for the president last year.

    Still another Pioneer is currently under criminal investigation in a celebrated corruption case involving Randy Duke Cunningham, a prominent Republican representative from San Diego with a senior position on the House defense appropriations subcommittee. On Aug. 18, FBI and IRS agents raided the offices of defense contractor and Bush fundraiser Brent Wilkes.

    Wilkes is reportedly a former business associate of Mitchell J. Wade, the head of a defense contracting firm called MZM Inc. who is under investigation in San Diego for alleged bribery of Cunningham. According to newspaper reports, Wade purchased a home owned by Cunningham at a price inflated by at least $700,000, and also permitted the congressman to use his 42-foot yacht free of charge. Federal agents searched Wade's offices in July.

    Although prosecutors have brought no criminal charges in the case yet, they have filed civil court documents describing the home sale as a violation of federal bribery laws - and Cunningham, who has served in Congress for decades, has already announced that he will not seek another term next year.

    The Republican National Committee's new treasurer, Robert Kjellander, is under investigation too. (Naturally, he is also a Bush Pioneer.) Not long after he assumed his new post at the party's Washington headquarters, Kjellander received a federal subpoena for records of his dealings with the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System, a state pension fund, and the Carlyle Group. Federal prosecutors are reportedly looking into alleged corruption at the fund, and have asked Kjellander to provide information about a $4.5 million fee he received from Carlyle for his role in arranging investments by the fund with the huge private equity fund. Carlyle, of course, is closely connected to the Bush administration, including the president's father, George H.W. Bush, who has worked for the firm as a rainmaker and advisor.

    In fairness, it should be said that all these pols and parasites may be innocent (except for those already convicted), or at least not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is also true that voters have historically been slow to evict politicians from office because of corruption charges.

    But public opinion of congressional Republicans is hitting new lows, and Americans are growing furious about the war in Iraq, the government response to Hurricane Katrina and rising energy prices. The natural impulse to throw the rascals out can only be encouraged by the Gilded Age spectacles now unfolding in Washington and in cities across the country as the indictments continue to come down between now and November 2006.

• GOP, bunch of liars and criminals - gt
  • With liberals it's not the proof behind the accusation - Rep

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And that is really only a handful.  There are some who post on the conservative board who may hold a different political philosophy than me, but they do not seem to be liars.

Why do you ask?

You guys really need to get a grip.  By the way, exactly what do plan to accomplish if you could prove that Pelosi did know about torture?  And if you're looking for some sort of payback for taking down Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, would that not also apply to every other senator (pub and dem) in those briefings?  What you guys are doing are playing partisan politics and failing miserably at it.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/20/gingrich-hoekstra/

MARCH OF THE TITANS -

A HISTORY OF THE WHITE RACE

Chapter 64:The Racial State - The Third Reich

Part Four: The "Final Solution": Nazi Policy towards Jews

The Third Reich and Adolf Hitler will always be associated with an outburst of anti-Jewish sentiment not seen since the Crusades or the Middle Ages. Despite countless books and films having been created on the actual anti-Jewish activities themselves, almost none have focused on trying to explain why Hitler and the Nazi Party were anti-Jewish.

Nazi anti-Jewishness was based on three pillars:

• First, Jews were identified with political subversion and Communism in particular. (See chapter 61:"Jews and Communism") As outlined earlier, this sentiment was by no means a Nazi invention, and had been written about in public by Winston Churchill and a host of others including Henry Ford in America;  the political subversion of which Jews were accused ranged from the fantastic (the Protocols of Zion) to the promotion of pornography, racial mixing, degenerate art ("modern art") and other issues identified as problematic by the Nazis;

• Secondly, the Nazis associated Jews with super capitalism and economic exploitation. This descended directly from the traditional and pre-Christian objections to Jews. Hitlerian anti-Jewishness also accentuated the links between Jewish super capitalists and Communism, personified by the financing of the 1917 Russian Revolution by the American Jewish banker Jacob Schiff; and

• Thirdly, the Nazis associated Christianity with Jews, arguing that this religion was the product of Middle Eastern thought and not native Europe. The Nazis did not however dare to attack Christianity openly, rather leaving it alone to wither by itself, something that has to a large degree started to become reality by the end of the 20th century. Nonetheless, if the private comments of Hitler himself on Christianity are read, it can be seen that Hitler clearly identified Christianity with Jews.

 Only in this light can an understanding of the motivating factors behind the state that Hitler created be gained: a tradition of anti-Semitism going back centuries, modern political thought associating Jews with Communism and subversion, the degradation of Germany under the Treaty of Versailles, economic collapse, and the outstanding oratorical ability of Hitler himself. All of these factors combined to propel the Nazi Party to power in 1933.

You're right - due to the slimy, lying, underhanded tactics of the administration and your boy, Bush, the Swift Boat fiasco with Kerry may  have had an impact on the election.  You sound like you're proud of that.  Figures.

Why can't you folks just leave Sheehan alone.  Why can't someone be anti-war and speak their mind without you guys going nuts? 

                                Video-QT

The Republicans are obviously worried that this Republican talk show host's point of view isn't following their talking points and is a real problem because he's not a Democrat saying them. Joe has been honest before (Schiavo not included) and is simply exposing their ineptitude that so many people are feeling right now.

comments.  nit pickers unite!!

nellies.  Why even bother getting up in the morning with that burden of resentment on your shoulders?

banks by tens of billions of dollars.

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20090206/Bailout.Oversight/

hmmmmm....?  Just because everyone is voting for Barack doesn't make any of it right - they all are bad candidates to some of us......

blechhhhhhhhhhhhh

JMO.........no flames required......

of questions. Some are inappropriate as:"Why does your wife look so miserable all the time." This has nothing to do with serious questions. There was also one on there about somebody losing their labradoodle and what was he going to do about it. Others are down right nasty. I call that abuse.  

Some people are just plain nuts. There are over 11,700 questions listed on there and I think I only got to read around 300. Most that I read were appropriate and relate to questions on what he was planning to do.

Now, before you scream at me, I didn't vote for him, I'm definitely not a fan of his, but I'm willing to watch and see what happens and give an opinion or two once in a while....and that's all it is, an opinion, like everyone else on this board are allowed.

I'm a liberal and I have to say, I really resent it when people say the libs this or the dem's that and refer to all of us in one great big bunch that worships Obama and thinks he's the messiah.   It really bugs the crap out of me.  He's a man.  He's not my Savior. 

I have seen condescension and name calling from BOTH sides of the fence, none of which is appropriate coming from anyone who calls themself an adult.  I do find it interesting that it seems to be much more accepted in this election cycle than in years before.  I don't know if it's because of the proliferation of message boards and the complete lack of humanity that tends to go with posting on them, or if it's this particular year and set of candidates/winners.

Let's give the man a chance.  Yes, he's a man.  I believe he is a very smart man and I have high hopes for him.  Let's avoid name calling, liberal bashing, conservative hate, etc.  That just does everyone a disservice.