This sort of goes against the GOP/MSM insistence that Palin is a “maverick”.
GOP vice presidential pick Sarah Palin accepted at least $4,500 in campaign contributions in the same fundraising scheme at the center of a public corruption scandal that led to the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens.
The contributions, made during Palin’s failed 2002 bid to become Alaska’s lieutenant governor, were not illegal for her to accept. But they show how Palin, a self-proclaimed champion for clean government, has been part of an Alaska political system that is now under the cloud of an ongoing FBI investigation.
Following in the footsteps of the national GOP, the Alaska Republican Party made a clear and decisive vote in favor of corruption by voting for Ted Stevens in the primary. With the corrupt Ted Stevens as the standard bearer for the Republican party, the distinction between him and Democrat Mark Begich are clear. Hopefully November Alaska voters make a clear anti-corruption vote and vote for Begich for Senate and Obama for President.
The message:
“The old John McCain wouldn’t have allowed one of Jack Abramoff’s top cronies to raise money for him. But this time around, it’s clear that Senator McCain is willing to do whatever it takes to win–even if that means embracing President Bush’s policies, his tactics, and now his disgraced fundraisers. The American people want a real change, not the same old Washington politics that Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed perfected,” said Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor.
Of course, the old John McCain was one of the Keating Five so that may be a bit generous.
CREW on Reed/McCain
Reed lost his 2006 campaign for Georgia lieutenant governor in large part because of details about his relationship with Abramoff — much of the information uncovered by McCain’s Indian Affairs Committee investigation into the wide-ranging lobbying corruption scandal.
The Senate probe discovered $4 million in payments Reed accepted to run a bogus anti-casino campaign aimed at reducing gambling competition. An Indian tribe with a competing casino made payments to Reed, which according to the Senate investigation’s final report, were “passed through” Abramoff’s firm, Preston, Gates, Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, and another organization, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform.
On the campaign trail, McCain often touts his work tackling Abramoff’s corrupt lobbying practices as evidence of his commitment to cleaning up Washington and a straight-shooting style that transcends politics.
Just another part of the mountain of Republican corruption that is turning off Alaska’s citizens
Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday revealed an audio recording that shows an aide pressuring the Public Safety Department to fire a state trooper embroiled in a custody battle with her sister.
Palin, who has previously said her administration didn’t exert pressure to get rid of trooper Mike Wooten, also disclosed that members of her staff had made about two dozen contacts with public safety officials about the trooper.
The bizarre thing is this might make Palin more likely to be McCain’s running mate.
My friends, that’s not change we can believe in.
Despite what appears to be a middle-class lifestyle, the couple has written $61,600 in checks to John McCain’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee, most of it within days of McCain’s decision to endorse offshore oil drilling.
At a June fundraiser, the Rocchios joined top executives at Hess Corp. — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hess, his wife, Susan, his mother, Norma Hess, and six other officials in giving a total of $313,500 to a joint McCain-RNC fundraising committee, Federal Election Commission records show.
The donations, first traced by Campaign Money Watch last week, were part of $1.2 million in oil industry contributions to McCain’s Victory ‘08 Committee, 73 percent coming after McCain reversed his long-held opposition to offshore oil drilling. The non-partisan watchdog group said oil executives and their spouses from Colorado, Mississippi, Louisiana, California, Indiana, New Jersey and Florida also donated.
Ah, those Republicans strike again…
More details:
Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the U.S. Senate and one of the chamber’s most powerful members, was indicted Tuesday in Washington, a result of a years-long investigation into corruption in Alaska politics.
The seven-count indictment, charges Stevens with making false statements by failing to disclose things of value he received from the Veco Corp., an Alaska-based oil services compmany, and from its CEO, Bill Allen, over an eight-year period.
The indictment charges that among the undeclared items were substantial improvements to Stevens’s home in Girdwood, Alaska; automobile exchanges in which he received new vehicles that were worth far more than the old ones he exchganged; and household goods, including a Viking gas grill.
John McCain can attack Barack Obama as a Marxist until the cows come home. I don’t know of a single Democrat/progressive who wouldn’t want DeLay, the most corrupt political leader in a generation, out there as a face for the Republican party and the campaign of John McCain. Tom DeLay forever!
John McCain is just more of the same Republican corruption America has been voting against.
According to Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, McCain’s “finance co-chair Tom Loeffler['s] … lobbying firm has collected nearly $15 million from Saudi Arabia since 2002 and millions more from other foreign and corporate interests.” Another McCain aide, finance director Susan Nelson, was paid $ 15,000 a month by Loeffler’s firm while she was on the campaign payroll even though “Federal election law prohibits any outside entity from subsidizing the income of campaign workers.” Time and again, McCain demonstrates that his calls for higher ethical standards seem not to apply to him and his campaign.
photo credit: EAWB
Is this some kind of progress?
The former treasurer for the National Republican Congressional Committee transferred as much as $1 million in committee funds into his personal and business accounts, officials announced today, describing a scheme that could prove to be one of the largest campaign frauds in recent history.
For at least four years, Christopher J. Ward, who is under investigation by the FBI, used wire transfers to funnel money out of the NRCC and into other political committees he controlled, then shifted the funds into his own personal accounts, the committee said.
I’d rather them stealing from each other rather than the rest of us, so perhaps we should vote them all out and leave them to their devices.
John Boehner is just as corrupt as Tom DeLay and the other leaders of the GOP
Only in Washington could an old pro like Boehner, an eight-term congressman with close ties to Washington’s K Street lobbying culture, be seen as the fresh face of reform. Boehner’s ever-present George Hamilton tan gives him the look of a man forever coming back from vacation. He does get around: over the years, he has made the most of controversial rules allowing members to accept free trips to luxury retreats around the world. Since 2000, Boehner has taken more than $150,000 worth of junkets paid for by private interests ranking him in the top 10 of all members of Congress.
Very interesting
Missteps and misconduct that have reached into all levels of government — from the White House and Congress to governors’ offices in Connecticut and Ohio — have helped drive 88 percent of those surveyed to say the problem is a serious one.
Scandal has touched all politicians. President Bush’s approval rating was 42 percent, slightly better than his standing in the previous AP-Ipsos poll, due in part to improvements in the economy. Still, 57 percent of those surveyed disapproved of Bush’s handling of the presidency.
The President remains overwhelmingly unpopular, and his party in control of congress is corrupt. It would be nice if we had an opposition party to point this out.
House Republicans reject Democratic resolution on corruption
House Republicans, in a party-line vote, rejected a Democratic-sponsored resolution Thursday denouncing a “culture of corruption exhibited by the Republican leadership.”
The resolution, introduced by Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California, would have specifically condemned the GOP majority’s practice of holding open close votes until wavering Republicans can be won over, sometimes with favors or threats.
The brave and beloved press secretary must correct history to beat back the liberal whore pigdog facts.
Republicans have to be taught the things the rest of America already knows
President Bush has ordered White House staff to attend mandatory briefings beginning next week on ethical behavior and the handling of classified material after the indictment last week of a senior administration official in the CIA leak probe.
Ken Tomlinson must have gotten a hall pass.
Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the head of the federal agency that oversees most government broadcasts to foreign countries, including the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, is the subject of an inquiry into accusations of misuse of federal money and the use of phantom or unqualified employees, officials involved in that examination said on Friday.
Mr. Tomlinson was ousted from the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on Thursday after its inspector general concluded an investigation that was critical of him. That examination looked at his efforts as chairman of the corporation to seek more conservative programs on public radio and television.
It’s as if there’s a Republican Culture of Corruption at the highest level of government, stinking from the head on down.
More of the sort of government you can expect when you elect Republicans.
‘Can I quit now?’ FEMA chief wrote as Katrina raged
Two days after Katrina hit, Marty Bahamonde, one of the only FEMA employees in New Orleans, wrote to Brown that “the situation is past critical” and listed problems including many people near death and food and water running out at the Superdome.
Brown’s entire response was: “Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?”
DeLay staffers attempted to help controversial lobbyist
Rep. Tom DeLay’s staff tried to help lobbyist Jack Abramoff win access to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, an effort that succeeded after Abramoff’s Indian tribe clients began funneling a quarter-million dollars to an environmental group founded by Norton.
“Do you think you could call that friend and set up a meeting,” then-DeLay staffer Tony Rudy wrote to fellow House aide Thomas Pyle in a December 29, 2000, e-mail titled “Gale Norton-Interior Secretary.” President Bush had nominated Norton to the post the day before.
These aren’t aberrations or hiccups. They happen by design. Conservatives don’t believe in an effective or useful government, they believe its only use is to get their cronies a steady salary and to make life easier for fat cat lobbyists and corporate crooks.
CIA Leak Prosecutor Focuses On Libby
As federal prosecutors in the CIA leak investigation reach the critical stage of deciding whether to bring criminal charges, they are zeroing in on contradictions between the testimony of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, and that of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, according to sources close to the investigation and attorneys for individuals enmeshed in the probe.
The prosecutors and the federal grand jury are also scrutinizing whether Libby, or his attorney, tried to discourage Miller from giving testimony to the grand jury, or tried to improperly influence what Miller would say if she testified, according to the same sources.
And did Scooter Libby simply act as a lone wolf, without the go-ahead from his boss — or his boss’s boss?
Recent Comments