Undrained Swamp Update: Things You Can’t Believe are Legal Inside the Beltway, Part XXVII
**Written by Doug Powers
It isn’t difficult to see why so many in Washington can’t or won’t recognize the inherent problem with things like the Solyndra debacle — or crony capitalism in general. So many of them live with it on a daily basis and display a high degree of tolerance within their own ranks for the very things they outlaw for everybody else.
Enter Rep. Rosa DeLauro:
Federal campaign records reveal a self-dealing relationship between a senior Democratic Connecticut congresswoman and her husband’s political consulting firm.
In the last four congressional election cycles, the campaign committee for Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, Friends of Rosa DeLauro, transferred $1.2 million to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which in the same period paid $1.9 million to Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for polling and other services, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings. Stanley B. Greenberg, founding partner of GQRR, is DeLauro’s husband of 33 years.
One comment DeLauro surely gets from the public — aside from “love your movies, Mr. Nimoy” — is, “hey, is that even legal?”
Apparently it is:
Kenneth F. Boehm, a campaign finance expert and chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, said DeLauro’s situation is perfectly legal, even though the funds DeLauro donates to help the DCCC may be re-entering her household through her husband’s business.
Boehm said that legality and propriety do not always coincide: Under current FEC regulations a self-dealing candidate can even pay a spouse for campaign services.
[...]
Capital University Law Prof. Bradley A. Smith, who was chairman of the FEC in 2004, said that self-dealing relationships are not necessarily corrupt, punishable by law or even uncommon.Smith said, “it’s not just a conflict of interest, it just looks bad. It looks like she’s raising money and giving it to herself.”
Yeah, it sure looks that way:
DeLauro is of course a big proponent of campaign finance reform — initiatives that often merely lock all the doors and open all the windows. Politicians who do the kinds of things outlined above and then call for campaign finance and government reforms are the source of constant amusement: “I support this CFR law because we shouldn’t have people like me running around here!”
**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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Ha! Love it Doug. As it stands now, getting elected to Congress is better than hitting the lottery.
These critters are the best argument for term limits.
This is exactly why “anybody but Obama” is not going to fix anything. The problem with our one-party system is that the corruption is deeply rooted in BOTH branches of the Democratic party. “Anybody but Obama” is the latest intellectually corrupt concept that allows the dirty money to determine which one-world-without borders globalist carries the ball next. Fear and hope are no substitute for a real plan. We need to start producing and voting for candidates who are on OUR side. I am just dreading Herman Cain getting stabbed in the back by Palin standing as he gets cut to pieces and then endorsing Romney for the good of the party. (It would also help if Cain made it clear that he is NOT running for vice-president but for president.)
If we can’t win the presidency next year, let’s at least make sure that we gut out Congress by sending the entrenched incumbents home packing.
Wonder if bho has something like this going on with all the crooked things he is involved with? Wonder if somehow mo will get involved getting paid to help bho get re-elected? I bet they have thought about it hard to see if they could pull this off!
L
Can you imagine a world where we all just made our own rules like politicians seem to do. An extension of this type of thinking is how Crazy Harry
Reid just changed the rules in the Senate the other day. What a bazaar country we have become!
Check out the link and you will see a picture of this “woman”. Are there ANY dems in Congress who don’t look like they just stepped off a space ship, or are auditioning for a Spielberg movie? They look like aliens and they think like aliens! I always had a feeling that some of this planet was inhabited by space creatures many hundreds of years ago. Regressives are their spawn. There can be no other explanation.
Go to that link…scroll down for another picture of this creature. Sorry, I know it isn’t nice, but how do these people get elected? I suspect it is a result of people not having a clue who they are voting for, but just vote straight democrat because mommy and daddy always have.
Bless her heart, she is not very attractive is she? You would think with all the money she is getting she could have someone do a little something to help out?
L
Another case of
Lawsand ethics are for you peasants, not for us.
Hypocrites.
O/T but may be important.
Can anyone confirm or deny this about George Soros buying up gun manufacturers?
Public Service. Vote them all out.
My Rep got a sweetheart deal on a condo for her fiance in exchange for greasing the skids for the real estate developer. Even the local Pravda called her out on it – yet she was elected by the union drones who can’t think for themselves.
OMG, this IS very serious if true! We have got to get to the bottom of this STAT or we will no longer have the 2nd with spooky dude in control of the guns?
L
Lock and load, folks, lock and load! Now, let me know when he starts buying up iron skillet companies!
There are still lots of gunshows out there, but the Progs are in this for the long haul!
Doug-Can you confirm?
Buzburd: Great read and should alarm anyone if it’s true.
There was a song out a long time ago called ‘Fear is never boring’. I wish we could send alot of fear into the hearts of the folks in DC. They can make up their on rules and ethics as plymouthaaclaim has pointed out.
Freakin fear they would loose their nice set up would do the trick.
There is a saying in the African country I grew up in,
I thought that was the exception in our nation. At least it used to be, back when most politicians were farmers. Now they all come from the cities.
Not an existential problem even if true. Most gun manufacturers are not publicly traded and many are not domestic companies. I really doubt Barret, Glock, and others will sell out to this guy. Besides, the US military and police need guns too. Someone has to manufacture them.
There are so many guns in the country that they can’t take us out. And gun owners are in the majority. It’s a major, lucrative industry. I am sure someone will jump into the void of any lucrative opportunity that arises should Soros or other totalitarian Marxist create them.
“Most gun companies are not publicly traded…” Then I guess THIS is not a problem…
when you make the laws, its amazing at what can be made legal to do.
They are mostly lawyers now, which means they are mostly professional con artists.
Not that all lawyers are con artists. Just mostly. All of the ones who are also moral relativists are con artists (by definition, as a practical matter) which means every one that’s a Democrat, just for starters.
He wouldn’t buy them for the guns. He’d buy them for the propaganda value.
As in, “If the CEO’s at all those gun companies think this new restriction on gun ownership is a good idea, then I guess it must be ….”
He can’t buy them all and even if he does, the employees who actually design and manufacture them could start their own companies and get back in business if Soros’ plan is to buy them and put them out of business.
Most of the today’s most popular guns are not patent-protected having been first designed in the nineteenth century. The Browning and Colt designs from that age still dominate the market.
There are no significant barriers to entry to anyone who wants to start manufacturing their own 1911 or Ruger Mini-14 or Bushmaster if Soros eliminates the main economies of scale barrier by taking out the biggest retail manufacturers. It would mainly depend on who jumps in the fastest and with the most money.
I don’t believe this story. It would be a futile effort by an evil old fool.
“evil old fool” just may be a very important descriptor !
Why didn’t we Tea Partiers think of this? Apparently, having a clear message and being peaceful and civilized during our ethnically diversified events is what makes us violent racist extremists.
At first, I thought it was cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch all grown-up.
P.Phil #24,
It speaks volumes to me, the stuff these people take to a demonstration and then the apparently still good stuff they just throw away. No sense of value whatsoever !
Seems so doesnt it? These people get paid about $175,000 a year, enough to live a little above average in expensive, DC. Yet they all seem to leave as multi-millionaires. Public service my ass. Apparently the public gets to service them. Then after they are finally voted out, they get to peddle their influence for millions as lobbyists. You would see these parasites run for the hills if terms were limited to two, and there was a 10 year moratorium on becoming a paid lobbyist after the last year of “service”.
Congress, the ultimate insider trading sbw999
according to details in the linked article, the “millions” in the pictoral graph are really hundreds of thousands (overstated by factor of ten). also the last column should be labeled 2009-2010 instaed of 2000-2010. i’m a nit-picker.
What a perfect example of stinking, disgusting useful IDIOTS! They all make me sick! Throw them all in jail, but first, make them pick up after themselves and that includes scooping the poop! They are a bunch of pigs posing as people. My apologies to pigs everywhere!
Really? Yeah, let you or me try this, get caught, and have the authorities say, “Oh. Our bad. Nothing to see here, continue as before. We see no reason for you to have to explain yourself, or to even return the money for that matter!”
So, here’s the question of the day:
Are ugly people in politics more likely to be corrupt, and walk a fine line, than those who are not esthetically challenged?
Feel free to make my point for me by compiling your own list of “corruptofuglies.”
Some on my list are:
Maxine
Rosa
Hillary
FLOTUS
Barbara Lee
Sheila J-Lee
The broad-bottomed bimbo from Florida that “chairs” the National ProDemLibunist Party.
I know there are more. What say you?
Dear helen thomas should be added.
L
You mentioned only women. What about Henry Waxman? Barney Fwank? Harry Weasel Reid? LOTS more!! But Waxman came to mind immediately. He is one ugly dude!
This is a striking example for comparison between the left and right. Here we have hundreds of demonstrators leaving piles and piles of trash and sewage. Depending on who you believe, CBS who estimated 30 some thousand, or the DC Transit Authority who estimated around 4 million, the 8-28 event participants left NO trash scattered around and managed to get ALL their sewage in proper receptacles. Park authorities found only one piece of paper, which was well hidden deep in the grass and had obviously been there for weeks.
Marinating in the swamp……of course they can’t recognize the corruption, it’s just business. They, the powerful elites, feel entitled to what their power can grab and their money will buy. They will get into bed with anyone who will stroke their egos, line their pockets or advance their staying power. These people are addicted to themselves. They think they have a mandate to rule because they were elected. None have any idea how to “represent” the voters. Chicago took this to a fine science. The entire political culture has to change. Politics as a career needs to be ended. Expose them; jail them! And send Soros to France to serve his 3 year sentence for insider trading.
As for the protesters…. where is the EPA? I’m sure there is some eco rule which forbids dumping sewage on public areas. Dog owners have to pick up after their dogs. Send the organizers of OWS the clean up bill or make those who produced the trash clean and sanitize the area.
There is another explanation but it is one the libtards would protest vehemently against. It would be considered as politically incorrect: They could be inhabited by demons.
Can we get the Brits to burn DC to the ground again?
Time to start fresh elsewhere, Nebraska, maybe……
Juneau, Alaska, and I’m dead serious.
Anchorage was Alaska’s Capitol when it was a territory. Alaskans picked Juneau to be their State Capitol because it is surrounded by mountains and the ocean, so it could never grow into being a Big City.
It is also thousands of miles from the Northeast. That would be a huge extra bonus as the US Capitol.
It would be closer to London, Tokyo, Beijing and Moscow, and it would be much closer to the UN building in Oslo or Stockholm (get the UN the hell out of NY), so it wouldn’t be out in the boonies at all … except to those Northeast lawyers and influence peddlers.
It would also be convenient for the first woman POTUS in 2021.
On October 8th, 2011 at 12:04 pm,
Didn’t I see that in Moooshelle’s recent African expedition that Shasha and Malia were on board as “Senior Staff.”
It’s good to be King.
KP
What are Term limits?
Purge!
I know that Justice Thomas was accused of a conflict of interest when his wife became very political. He refused to recuse himself from certain cases. One has to walk the edge of a slippery slope when a spouse is in a business that has links to your occupation. Some marriages take advantage of that link.
It will be interesting to see if Justice Kagan recuses herself from the Obamacare case. If she doesn’t, would that be enough to qualify her for impeachment?
While there are “bought & paid for” Republicans (and they should be kicked out too), the Jackass (Democrat) Party has long held ALL of the patents, trademarks, and copyrights on corruption. Just look at it people. When the Jackasses had the House, Senate, and White House, they were the most extreme expression of “Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.”
These are merely examples of why communism/socialism ALWAYS fails. No matter what these (_*_)s say, what they do is work for the betterment of themselves and their immediate family. The cbc members weren’t giving scholarships to deserving black yutes from their district, but to their children and family members. Face it; we are all basically greedy and lazy! If you don’t believe it, ask yourself when was the last time you went to a neighbors house and gave them money just because they were a good neighbor, or raked their yard just because.
Ronald Reagan destroyed his “evil empire” by spending on our defense, which forced the USSR to bankrupt itself trying to match us. Obama is doing the same to his “evil empire” which happens to be the U.S. as a capitalist nation. His entire family from grandparents to his wife believe the US is bad, because it let’s people win or lose on their own. As all communists, Obiewon believes there are resources to give everyone everything they want. Great theory in the ivy covered classrooms, but you might ask those professors why they never practice what they preach. Every employee at Harvard or Ben and Jerry’s doesn’t make the same amount of income. Why not? aren’t the janitors people just as deserving as the rocket scientists? Just a thought from the cheapseats.
That graph is exactly why Dems shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the Treasury…every year after the first one, they paid more to get less (percentage wise speaking, of course). They can’t even be trusted with their own money!
Just sayin’ is all…
I’m all for campeign finance reform, as a constitutional amendment, nt a law congress will just change like they always do when they think no one is looking. Last time they passed a CFR it had a sunset provision, the day after the following elections.
I really see no reason anyone but registered voters should be allowed to contribute to political campeigns. It undermines the whole political system with bribes and “pay-to-Play” enforced by the party leadership of BOTH PARTIES. Limit political contributions to $20 per person per year and go after the crooked politicians and donory with mandatory fines, jail time and loss of Congressional pensions as well as right to work for any company with a government contract.
No one in their right mind should expect politicians to pass laws that will reduce their ability to extort millions from corporate America. Even the lobyists want this to change, companies have to donate to keep political appointees in federal agencies from investigating them without any cause. It is killing our country and needs to change NOW.
I understand that those in both the Congress and Senate have simplified their Motto to “Nothing is illegal unless your are caught”.
This would even more power to the media. Their ‘news’/propaganda would be harder to rebut. It would give incumbents even more power than they already have to get reelected.
All campaign finance ‘reform’ is about making it harder for a challenger to beat an incumbent. Other than laws regarding disclosure, there should be no campaign finance ‘reform’ laws.
And we shouldn’t need a Constitutional Amendment to accomplish that. It’s already right there in the First Amendment.