RUN, DOOLITTLE, RUN!
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According to this morning's Hill there is a growing chorus on the right urging one of California's most corrupt congressmen-- not as corrupt as Jerry Lewis, but more corrupt than Buck McKeon, maybe on a par with Duncan Hunter-- not to run for reelection.
Republican operatives fear that if [Rep. John] Doolittle does not retire at the end of this Congress and survives what would be a bruising GOP primary, they will lose the nine-term lawmaker’s seat. Doolittle is under an ethics cloud, having had his Virginia house investigated by the FBI last year. Several prominent Republicans are seeking to defeat him in the primary.
According to three well-placed Republican sources, former Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.)-- who lost his seat amid ethics allegations-- has called on longtime friend Doolittle to not seek reelection in the interest of keeping the district a GOP stronghold. In the last Congress, Pombo was a panel chairman while Doolittle was a member of GOP leadership.
Doolittle's ethical lapses-- and obvious criminal behavior-- leave him with a serious problem: even Republican donors won't contribute to him, knowing full well that whatever they give him for "reelection" will go straight to attorneys' fees. His campaign fund has about $37,000 in the bank and owes about $34,000. He was forced off the lucrative House Appropriations Committee, from which he was able to solicit immense bribes in the past. His other problem has little to do with Doolittle himself; his Democratic opponent, Charlie Brown is wildly popular in the northern California district and likely to kick his ass. (Charlie, who has been reendorsed by Blue America, is closing in on a $400,000 war chest.)Pombo's call for Doolittle to retire is an echo of sitting Congressman (and fellow far right extremist) John Campbell, who admits he's worried that the GOP will have virtually no chance of holding the seat if Doolittle is on the ballot. Of course, if every Republican member of Congress guilty of criminal behavior in the Culture of Corruption regime of Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert got the same attention, they'd lose at least a couple dozen incumbents.
Labels: California, Charlie Brown, Culture of Corruption, Doolittle
posted by DownWithTyranny @ 11:21 AM
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10 Comments:
Right, because we ALL know that no Democrat has ever been under an ethics investigation, has ever been charged with anything, has never been forced to resign from Congress due to corruption, or anything like that. We ALL KNOW that Democrats are clean and pure as the fresh wind-driven snow!
DoLittle AND his wife are BOTH taking FrogWalk Dance Lessons at the Infamous Top Gun Duke Cunningham
Frogwalk Dance School.
(DoLittle says they are investigating his WIFE, not him funneling campaign contributions through HIS wife's consulting company).
Anonymous: Just for the record, I assume you somehow stumbled into DWT for the first time, and so can be forgiven for not being aware of how vociferously we go after Democrats who show Republican-like ethics. (See, for example, pretty much any post starring the Dem Who Would Be Tom DeLay, Master Rahm Emanuel.)
Beyond that, however, in order to imagine that "they're all the same" as regards the late, unlamented Republican Congress requires a level of ignorance, stupidity, or rank dishonesty that's almost impossible to fathom in this day and age. Is it truly possible that you're unaware that Republican congresscrooks were operating the joint as basically a private crime enterprise?
We're talking about literally dozens of Republicrooks who should already have had their trials or (more likely) plea agreements to land them in the slammer.
Of course most of what we call the "traditional" media have given most of these people a pass. The Republicrooks count on this minimal attention and even tinier attention span. They know that there are countless ignorant Americans who will just chalk it all up to "they're all crooks." No, the corruption of the Bush-era Republican Congress is going to be studied forever by historians wondering how the dickens such a thing could have been allowed to happen.(You have to figure that public obliviousness played a significant part.)
Ken
Ken
I'm in the middle of reading some of Lucy Komisar's research into the biggest bank heist in history-- the BCCI rip off of billions of dollars. Although responsibility rests primarily with the Bush family and the criminal syndicate around them, it could never have succeeded without the active criminal participation of countless other political insiders of both parties, crooks like Orrin Hatch and Clairborne Pell on the Republican side of the aisle and crooks like Burt Lance and Clark Clifford on the Democratic side.
The difference, of course, is that while both corrupt Republicans and corrupt Democrats were taking millions of dollars in bribes to allow BCCI to illegally acquire and rip-off American banks-- not to mention finance terrorism and drugs-- it was a small handful of Democrats-- no Republicans, who were all eager to protect their cronies-- who went up against the Bush Crime Family to fight this and shut down BCCI. The Bush family, with the help of a corrupt corporate/political system was able to tamp down prosecutions and minimize the damage. No Bushes-- not Neil, not Jeb, not George I-- wound up in prison. Had John Kerry told the real story of the BCCI scandal-- of which he is one of the few heroes-- he would have destroyed many Democrats, but he could have enlightened the American public as to the most dangerous threat it faces-- the Bush Crime Family. George II would never have even come close to winning the 2004 election had Kerry been an effective communicator of the scandal he exposed 2 decades before.
The Bush family and their cronies are the very definition of "a continuing criminal enterprise" as contemplated in Title 21 of the U.S.C..
The sheer depth and volumue of their criminality is simply staggering and dwarfs anything heretofore seen in modern history.
The tentacles of this family of mobsters extend into so many industries that it is hard to keep count: oil exploration, banking, equities, venture capital, computer software, life insurance, major-league baseball, high-tech security, real estate, cable television, fruit and vegetable imports, irrigation pumps, and airline catering...and that does not even take into account their war profiteering.
Al Capone would be viewed as too small-time to even be considered for inclusion in this family of mega-grifters.
Here is a short (3 pg) article by Joe Conanson that outlines just a few of the Bush Crime Family's escapades:
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2003/08/21/conason_four/index.html
Again, this is only a partial expose and does not include the profiteering and war crimes that later follow.
Ken, sorry, I don't know how to embed links.
Well, it looks like Doolittle is retiring from Congress. Better to quit while you're still ahead it looks like. Probably helps to ensure that the seat remains in Republican hands.
Meanwhile, William Jefferson (D-LA) still has his seat in Congress.....
Jefferson is a small time hoodlum, not part of a systemic corruption of the political system. Last June DWT celebrated his indictment and earlier than that we called for his resignation or electoral defeat. But he's a pipsqueak compared to the real criminals like Bush, Jerry Lewis, DeLay, Hastert and today's resignee.
I can hardly wait for Jerry Lewis' announcement that he will not run. The amount of money he's benefitted is definitely criminal.
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