Rag Hand

Ethics Committees: Proving congress has a sense of humor.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House ethics committee on Friday cleared seven lawmakers of improperly or illegally considering campaign contributions when steering earmarks amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in mostly no-bid contracts to some 40 companies.

In a 305-page report, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct said its nine-month investigation revealed a widespread perception among corporations and lobbyists that campaign contributions provided enhanced access to lawmakers or a greater chance of getting earmarks.

In reality, members of Congress “by and large, take great care to separate their official and campaign functions, particularly with respect to earmark requests,” it said in a unanimous decision.

Taxpayers for Common Sense and other watchdog groups criticized the ethics committee’s decision to clear the lawmakers, but said it was not surprising.

Members of the ethics committee themselves obtained $200 million in earmarks either by themselves or with other lawmakers, Taxpayers said on its web site.

When congress “forced” representatives to put their name on earmarks -saying that it would decrease earmarks-, they knew full well that earmarks would become something politicians could openly brag about.

The “Ethics panel” found no wrongdoing. Maybe that is because they are as guilty as the people they “investigated.”

The politicians we elect have become so used to doing favors for “friends,” who in turn contribute to the campaigns to make sure that their friends can stay in office so they can do more favors, that they are apparently oblivious to what appears to the rest of us to be rampant corruption.

People adapt to their environment, and in any political situation doing favors for golfing buddies by folding pork into an unrelated bill is the norm, and our elected representatives see nothing wrong with this, therefore there is no ethics violation, because that’s just the way things work around there.

Crooked politician is redundant.

Political Nevada is actually active and has three posts up.
(According to a mutual friend the reason for the delay wasn’t slowness of the authors writing but a technical problem that interfered with his ability to post.)

In his post “Two Party System?” the author makes it clear that he is a big fan of multiple parties, coalition governments, and governments collapsing and being forced to start over.

Currently our simple two-party government is stagnating because there is absolutley no cooperation between them. Those in power seem to feel that they can delay votes and laws until the next election when they might have a larger percentage of the total membership(house or senate) to force their will.

If they had to deal with multiple political groups, maybe they wouldn’t waste so much time, maybe they would get more work done; maybe it’s about time that we have more than our sacred two-party system?

For the most part I agree with him, and as long as the Constitution says nothing about this being a two party system, I see no reason not to go with the European model of a multi-party government.

Our current electoral system can accommodate as many parties as needed without requiring any major modifications. This change might even force this country to become a democracy instead of a republic.

However the real problem, and the real power, lies in the cost of getting elected. The major political contributors are not going to support anyone they don’t see as a winner, meaning someone who can get elected within the existing structure and can be controlled by them. Any change to the status quo will either threaten their established relationships or make it prohibitively expensive to buy politicians except on a local level.

On top of that, the constant competition would leave the politicians subject to continual scrutiny, and therefore make them accountable to the voters in real time. For this reason alone the two 800lb gorillas are never going to allow any changes to the status-quo.

If you think that either party will allow more than lip service when it comes to change, just remember all the promises the Democrats made before they were elected and how many real changes they made once they had the power.

It would appear that Citibank is preparing for a run on the bank. When you consider how many billions of dollars of the taxpayer’s money Citigroup has received to cover for problems created by their own greed and incompetence, I can’t say that I blame them for building legal walls between themselves and their customers.

Seeking Alpha — Seen on a recent Citibank (C) statement: “Effective April 1, 2010, we reserve the right to require (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking accounts. While we do not currently exercise this right and have not exercised it in the past, we are required by law to notify you of this change.”

“I called Citi about it and they said the warning applies only to customers in Texas and that the notification had been mistakenly included on statements nationwide.”

They say it only applies to Texas. Okay. So what’s wrong with Texas? Or is Texas the only state that has a law requiring them to notify their customers?

BTW: While in the midst of being bailed out Citi bought a $50 million jet.

After more than a year without a new post the author of Political Nevada has deleted his old posts and started fresh.

The blog’s first post is in support of Harry Reid. In it the author points out the obvious; regardless of the noise being generated by his opponents, Sen. Reid has more influence in Washington than all his opponents combined.

I wholeheartedly agree. Harry’s political juice is something our state desperately needs if we are going continue to be a political power, instead of reverting to our old “there’s nothing there but wild horses, sagebrush and gambling” status.

As a side note:
A friend of the author told me that Political Nevada was going to be published once a week. It has been 10 days with no new post.

I hope that the author is only off to a slow start, and not running out of steam before he even gets out of the gate.

You always picture Olympic athletes driving themselves as hard as humanly possible for the love of the sport and the pride of winning.

Maybe some are, but it turns out that gold medals are worth more than their weight in real gold, according to this article in RT.

The Russians are reportedly paying their top athletes 100,00 euros for gold, 60,000 for silver and 40,000 for bronze. Plus a car from the Fund for the Support of Olympians of Russia. There are also reported to be houses and land for some local heroes.

Canada on the other hand is paying a mere $25,000C for gold with $15,000 and $10,000 for silver and bronze respectively.

The US is reportedly paying about the same as the Canadians, but American sporting officials are planning to drastically increase the amount of prize money by London 2012.