Lefty corruption....again

So the constitution would have to be changed to make campaign finance reform work? That would be an effort!

How about this: if you accept more than X dollars from someone as a donation you have a conflict of interest (which I think is the best translation for the Swedish term "jäv") and can't get into office.

The entire problem is that company X spends loads on money on getting a candidate into office so that said candidate can benefit the company. Which is what conflics of interest (again, "jäv") is all about.

Too big donations can also be seen as bribes.

Übereil

Yup. The court ruled that campaign CONTRIBUTIONS could be limited, but NOT spending by a candidate. The current limit (if i am not mistaken) is 2000 per candidate per election, so a total of 4k per candidate (2k in the primary and 2k in the general).

But, say you were Bill Gates, you would have every right to spend 5 billion of your own money on the election, combined with however much you've received from donations. That's what the Court has ruled.

That's why you see all these "Committee to Elect So-n-so". It's a way to pool money to get around the private contribution limit by setting up a corporation to do the dirty work. It also allows the candidate to shift money back and forth from their personal accounts to the campaign in the form of personal loans that somehow never get paid back.

Obvious finagling, make it illegal.

Übereil

I really don't have a problem with pols getting campaign financing from various interest groups, especially if they accept them from different factions equally, but I do with all these cushy jobs, stock options and set-ups for life.

Just taking Bayh's case as an example(which is by no means singling him out as I'm sure there are dozens more identical ones in Congress) I don't mind, say, his receiving money from Wellpoint for his campaign, but I do mind his wife sitting on their board of directors with a bunch of lucrative stock options. One of the talking heads made a point that when he made his announcement that he might join a filibuster to keep the HC bill from being debated, shares of Wellpoint went up by 2.5 %. You think they didn't make some money, or that her shareholders didn't? That seems like an unfair advantage for that particular company/industry as well as dubious politicking.

I keep going back to that Alan Alda line from West Wing;"If you can't drink their booze, take their money and then vote against them, you don't belong in this business" which some research shows is supposedly a paraphrase of a Sam Rayburn* remark, who said to a first-term congressman who wanted to be excused from voting with the party to satisfy his biggest contributors: "Son, if you can't take their money, drink their whiskey, screw their women, and then vote against 'em, you don't deserve to be here."
source

*Texas Democrat, Speaker of the House, for 17 years, from Roosevelt to JFK

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091030/ap_on_bi_ge/us_congress_leaked_ethics_report

Oops! Ethics panel report gets leaked--names named. Two dems in real trouble, several others of both parties under preliminary investigation. Crooks, man, crooks.

See, same exact thing on Waters as on Bayh:

Waters came under scrutiny after former Treasury Department officials said she helped arrange a meeting between regulators and executives at OneUnited Bank last year without mentioning her husband's financial ties to the institution.

Her husband, Sidney Williams, holds at least $250,000 in the bank's stock and previously had served on its board. Waters' spokesman, Michael Levin, said Williams was no longer on the board when the meeting was arranged.

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This crap is just wrong.

Really messed up. Something needs to be done.

Dump congress. Let me set up my dictatorship. Problem solved.

dteowner said:

Dump congress. Let me set up my dictatorship. Problem solved.

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Yeah,yeah—pretty soon Mrs dte would be sitting on the board of directors for Activison, Bioware, Interplay and Ubisoft…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091205/ap_on_re_us/us_baucus_girlfriend_nominated

Well, at least we know this thread will never drop off the first page.

You beat me to it, dte. Kinda hard to believe anyone could be 'romantically involved" with a geezer like that, but I guess if you have enough money and Viagra, all things are possible.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as corruption or not, but it definitely tips the BS/BPO* meter for me. (dte, try to ignore the actual fury-inducement of teh spending thing—I'm strictly talking Traitor Joe atm ):

Democrats held the vote open for an hour to accommodate Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an Orthodox Jew who walked more than three miles to the Capitol to vote on the Sabbath after attending services at his synagogue in the city's Georgetown neighbor Lieberman wore a black wool overcoat and brilliant orange scarf — as well as a wide grin — as he provided the crucial 60th vote.

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GRRRRRrrrr
Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091212/ap_on_bi_ge/us_congress_spending



*Blood Pressure Overload

You know, there's all sorts of things in that article with a high BPO rating.

It bundles six of the 12 annual spending bills, capping a dysfunctional appropriations process for budget year that began Oct. 1, dysfunctional appropriations process in which House leaders blocked Republicans from debating key issues and Senate Republicans dragged out debates.

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Not even allowed to debate? Well done.

Just the $626 billion defense bill would remain. That's being held back to serve as a vehicle to advance must-pass legislation such as a plan to allow the government's debt to swell by nearly $2 trillion. The government's total debt has nearly doubled in the past seven years and is expected to exceed the current ceiling of $12.1 trillion before Jan. 1.

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Brilliant manipulation, there. The repubs aren't likely to turn down a defense budget, so put them in the bind of accepting ludicrous debt or screwing our folks in uniform. Well done.

"Obviously we need to run the government, but do you suppose the government could be a little bit like families and be just a little bit prudent in how much it spends?" said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.

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WTF? That guy won't be back after his next election. Common sense like that has no business in DC.

Saturday's bill would offer an improved binding arbitration process to challenge the decision by General Motors and Chrysler to close more than 2,000 dealerships, which often anchor fading small town business districts.

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I seem to remember the lefties applauding the closure list as a sign their rule of Government Motors was so wise and successful. Now that the spotlight is off, it's a completely different story.

The Democrats opposed were Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri — who voted "no" only after Lieberman arrived to ensure the bill would advance.

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Wow. Way to take a stand, Evan. Indiana thanks you for making a difference.

Sorry, dte--I hope you're not in the middle of a snack or anything because it sounds like I may have inadvertantly caused indigestion, or even regurgitation.

I think they actually have to allow increasing the debt thing or everything seizes up, so they're/we're all held hostage on that one.

The closures list doesn't sound so evil to me, though. I don't remember anyone grandstanding about it originally, though I'm sure someone did. There were some accusations that only repub bidness was getting the axe--that's the scandalmongering I recall anyway.

Did you miss the "dragged out debates" part of "not allowed to debate?" Let's share the BS fairly, here. There's plenty of material, god knows.

I saw that article this morning, but didn't read it.

As far the debt, I suppose they could *gasp* spend less. If you accept the spending as a given, then you're right that the horribly inconvenient debt cap has simply got to go. The sad thing is that those cap numbers were watered down by the politicians before they passed to be so incredibly high that they'd never come into play.

The lefties held up the bloated dealer list as a poster child for those stupid, greedy CEO types and their depressingly unenlightened oldskool way of doing business. Yeah, there was the whole "targets" angle that Nate Silver unsuccessfully (IMO) tried to debunk, but that was somewhat after the fact.

dteowner said:

I saw that article this morning, but didn't read it.

As far the debt, I suppose they could *gasp* spend less. If you accept the spending as a given, then you're right that the horribly inconvenient debt cap has simply got to go. The sad thing is that those cap numbers were watered down by the politicians before they passed to be so incredibly high that they'd never come into play.

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Oh yeah, they *could* spend less, just like Tiger could give up women, just like Winehouse could put down the crack pipe. I wasn't trying to defend it at all, just pointing out they've all maxed the country's credit cards and they don't have much choice but to give themselves permission to keep bleeding the dollars.

We're actually ranting on more or less the same theme—government inefficiency. You get ticked at the lefty element because they use the con that government is here to help and then can't/won't follow through, while it just kind of chaps my own particular nether parts to listen to the same people that voted for every tax cut, every banking deregulation and every war appropriation be so vocally upset about the deficit while throwing temper tantrums about every little thing instead of doing the job they were elected to do.

But in reality, as I never tire of saying, as a group they all suck.

The part that we probably all should pay more attention to is that 'dysfunctional' quote. I've heard it from more than one talking head, and you can definitely hear it on both the ultra-lefty blogs and in the stuff coming out of the Tea Partiers: our legislative process— and the Senate in particular—-is seriously broken, and it's getting impossible to hide it from even the least aware and most ignorant amongst us.

My crazed husband entertains himself by watching C-Span all day(hey, we're old, what can I say) and even just passing through the room on my way to the coffee, there's never a time when I don't catch something that drops my jaw. Every damn session looks like a scene straight out of Sesame Steet or Kindergarten Kop—a bunch of long-winded, chart-waving, hyperbole-spouting, nonsensical cranky preschoolers throwing spitballs at each other all day and having food fights while the country goes down the crapper. I seriously wonder how much longer things can go down this path before something really major breaks. /end doom&gloom rant

The lefties held up the bloated dealer list as a poster child for those stupid, greedy CEO types and their depressingly unenlightened oldskool way of doing business….

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Must have missed that one—it's hard to keep it all the BS on the radar. So are you peeved because now they're trying to correct it(at least thats what I got from the article), or peeved that they're being hypocrites maybe? You know a lot more about the auto industry than I do, so I really do ask because I'm interested.

They haven't made it to Hypocrite Land yet, but they've certainly found the express train.

GM and DCX (industry initials for Chrysler, don't know what the "X" is about) were forced into producing a list of dealers to ax while they were under government control. Now, I'll give the devil his due and freely admit that both companies have too many dealerships. Much of that stems from contractual obligations getting in the way as nameplates were discarded (for example, many Plymouth dealers were given the Chrysler nameplate to avoid the legal morass of shutting them down when Plymouth was killed off, even though an existing Chrysler dealership was 2 doors down). So I didn't squawk too much—the bankruptcies gave them a golden opportunity to do the deed without having to deal with pesky contracts. The "ax list" was celebrated as Obama showing those fat cat CEOs the smart way to do business.

Up to that point, I'm largely fine. Politcal grandstanding is to be expected, and the business case was actually fairly solid. The falldown is when the lefties realized that closing all these dealers wasn't going to affect the CEOs in the slightest. In fact they weren't even sticking it to fat cat CEOs of other companies. Those businesses were mostly owned by Ma and Pa in East Nowhere, Anystate USA. That's when you suddenly had various congressfolk tweaking the "ax list" to save the dealer in their district. There was a bit of hubbub when it was noted that a disproportionate amount of "saved" dealerships were owned by democrats, which is what you're remembering.

Fast forward to now. Obama and the lefties have done some math and realized exactly how many people are going to be put on the street if this axe list goes thru (300,000 IIRC). That's not just Ma and Pa Owner either—you're talking Greasy the Mechanic and Slimy the Plaid Saleman and Nice Rack in the finance department. Needless to say, that's not politically appealling when unemployment is already thru the roof. So what happened to the "stupid automotive CEO" business case? Oh, it's still completely valid, but suddenly waving that flag doesn't seem like a good idea. Strangely enough, those bozos have finally thought about the consequences of their policies and they don't have the cajones to see it thru. Thus, the earlier parade will be quietly swept under the rug and they just might have enough brass to throw a parade over all the jobs they're going to "save" by dropping "that silly ax list".

Okay. Thanks for painting me a picture. Lots of times I only know you're peeved, but not why. I hadn't realized there was some of the 'class warfare' theme in there, because I don't see through the same lens as you do. To me, there's a legitimate cause in reining in the excesses of the said fat cat CEO's, but I agree completely that shutting down local dealerships is shafting Main Street and not the boys at the top, who are the last to suffer from it as you note.

As we've discussed before, I'm not very happy with a lot of things going on in Washington post-honeymoon, and the administration's ineffectiveness at drawing a line in the sand about what they really mean is one of the big ones.

Every time they—(and I say 'they' because while he may be the figurehead, I'm not putting it all on Obama's back, since like most presidents, he's far from the only bozo on that bus)—every time they wave a big banner about what they intend to do to 'protect the middle class' absolutely nothing comes of it. Under the hood, the same interest groups and the same lobbyists and the same money is calling the shots. We're a year out from the bailout and we've yet to see any kind of legislation to regulate the financial sector so the same thing doesn't happen again in five or ten years, and the claims of transparency and accountability are ludicrous in light of what's going on with AIG ad Goldmann Sachs et al, not to mention the total lack of enthusiasm for pushing through any real sort of health care reform, what with all the deal cutting with Big Pharma and insurance PACs and the watering down of everything that isn't a gift to insurance companies or that actually could help people who need healthcare .

On any given day, it's really hard to tell there's been a change of leadership on a lot of fronts. It's just that the message has been massaged.