Ted Stevens Was Sharing His Bribes With Most Of The Republicans In The Senate And Most Of Them Are Refusing To Give The Tainted Money Back

If they weren't so venal-- and so adapt at taking very good care of themselves-- you might feel sorry for Republican members of Congress. Here they have been spending all month worrying if voters are going to connect the dots between massive campaign "contributions" from Big Oil (almost a quarter billion dollars since 1990-- 75% of it to Republicans, most of the rest to the Republican wing of the Democratic Party) and the policies that brought on, at least in part, the high gasoline prices. But with the threat still looming that the Democrats might actually expose them by helping voters connect those dots, suddenly there's a new challenge facing them: massive donations of VECO bribes that Stevens spread around the Republican caucus. So far none only a few of the GOP senators who took the tainted money have agreed to give it back.

And Stevens has been quite the little money launderer. He's donated a cool $725,000 directly to the NRSC so they'd be able to pay for their little operations, like stealing the 2002 New Hampshire Senate race for John Sununu. But he's also been handing out VECO and other tainted funds all across the corrupt party. This year alone some of the beneficiaries of Stevens' shady Northern Lights PAC have included:

Lamar Alexander (R-TN- $10,000)
John Barrasso (R-WY- $10,000)
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA- $10,000)
Norm Coleman (R-MN- $10,000)
Susan Collins (R-ME- $10,000)
John Cornyn (R-TX- $5,000)
Elizabeth Dole (R-NC- $10,000)
James Inhofe (R-OK- $9,000)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY- $20,000)
Pat Roberts (R-KS- $10,000) + $5,000 more to Roberts' Preserving America's Tradition's PAC
Gordon Smith (R-OR- $10,000)
John Sununu (R-NH- $10,000)
Roger Wicker (R-MS- $5,000)
Don Young (R-AK- $10,000)

Over the years, Stevens has redistributed immense sums of money-- bribes-- to Republicans. Now they don't want to give the money back, of course. Yeseterday, Tom Allen's campaign let Maine newspapers know that $20,000 has gone into Susan Collins' coffers, although she kicked back $5,000 to Stevens. That seems to be a pattern with him. He gives some of his ill-gotten gains to other Republicans and then they give part of it back to him. In guess this is perfectly acceptable in Washington, where these crooks make their own incredibly lax rules.

Yesterday afternoon Jeff Merkley pointed out that over the years Stevens has doled out $39,000 to Gordon Smith. Merkley isn't asking Smith to return the tainted money to Stevens (who needs it for his legal defense team); he's asking him "to donate the money to charities to help provide health insurance to Oregon children." Smith refused at first but when Merkley pounding him he finally agreed to turn over a small portion of the tainted dough. Meanwhile Smith has taken more than $300,000 in campaign contributions from oil and gas interests, while delivering $18 billion in tax giveaways for oil companies and opposing measures to end excessive speculation on oil prices. I doubt he'll give any of that back.

And what about Collins, Sununu, Cornyn, Coleman and the rest of the crooks? Yesterday Jim Slattery pointed out that Stevens and his crooked PAC "donated $19,785 to Kansas Senator Pat Roberts. In 2005, Roberts voted in favor of Steven's wasteful $230 million 'Bridge to Nowhere' in Alaska.

"This is precisely the reason why so many people are sick and tired of old Washington politics," Slattery said. "After 40 years in Washington, Roberts is willing to take money from a friend and then vote in favor of that friend's pet project.

"Kansans deserve better," Slattery said. "Kansans deserve a senator who will put their needs ahead of those in Alaska."

Slattery called for Roberts to donate the money to charity.

"As chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, Roberts should immediately donate an amount equal to the contributions he received from Stevens to a local charity."

Roberts has refused to give up a dime. Ditto for James Inhofe, who has also been part of this money laundering scheme and won't divest himself of any of it.



UPDATE: VECO DIDN'T ONLY BRIBE STEVENS-- THEY SPREAD THE MONEY AROUND

In fact, Stevens wasn't even the biggest VECO bribe taker; Alaska's one House member, Don Young, was. He's also under investigation. And #3 was Senator Lisa Murkowski, also of Alaska, who is from a notoriously corrupt political family. #4 was Bush and #5 is Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, the only Democrat aggressively defending Stevens and shrilly and hysterically insisting that Stevens is innocent. Here's the whole list of who took what (of donations of at least $1,000):

Don Young (R-AK- $190,530)
Ted Stevens (R-AK- $102,500)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK- $42,250)
George W. Bush (R- $20,050)
Daniel Inouye (D-HI- $13,000)
Norm Coleman (D-MN- $7,000)
Richard Burr (R-NC- $6,000)
Tom Coburn (R-OK- $6,000)
Jim DeMint (R-SC- $6,000)
John Sununu (R-NH- $6,000)
John Thune (R-SD- $6,000)
David Diapers Vitter (R-LA- $6,000)
Kit Bond (R-MO- $4,516)
Arlen Specter (R-PA- $4,000)
George Voinovich (R-OH- $3,750)
John Ensign (R-NV- $2,000)
Steve Pearce (R-NM- $1,000)
Jon Porter (R-NV- $1,000)
Dennis Rehberg (R-MT- $1,000)

WHO WILL BE THE ELEVENTH DEMOCRATIC SENATOR IN NOVEMBER?

Jim Slattery could take them both out in one shot

I don't foresee-- not this year-- a 1936-type scenario that saw just 16 Republicans left in the Senate after the elections. But we're headed in that direction. Many progressive groups talk about a net gain of 10 seats-- which, they say, would make it impossible for the GOP to obstruct legislation with filibusters like they did for the past 2 years. It looks likely that there will be new Democratic senators in Virginia, New Hampshire, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon (where desperate Republican incumbent Gordon Smith is running ads claiming he works well with his pal Barack Obama), Colorado, Minnesota, Alaska with possibilities in Oklahoma, Texas, North Carolina, Idaho, Mississippi and Nebraska. And now there is even talk about... Kansas, where former Congressman Jim Slattery is starting to gain on incumbent Pat Roberts. Kansas hasn't elected a Democratic senator since McCain was a young child riding around on a burro in his native Panama.

The latest Rasmussen poll reports that Roberts led Slattery 48% to 39%. Every single Republican incumbent polling less than 55% in June of 2006 lost in November. In May, Roberts held 52%, The newest SUSA poll (May) shows Roberts with a 50% approval, another sign of coming defeat. Will Slattery be the man to allow the Democrats to relieve Lieberman of his chairman ship and tell him to go sit somewhere else?


UPDATE: MANY THINK WE SHOULDN'T WAIT FOR SLATTERY TO WIN BEFORE DEMOCRATS DUMP LIEBERMAN

Watch the video:



And sign the petition.

DISINTEGRATING GOP EVEN RUNNING INTO TROUBLE IN KANSAS

Even Kansas could be in play this year

It has been hard to miss all the Republican doomsaying and hand-ringing lately-- from Newt Gingrich to the hapless congressional jerkoffs-- who still insist that they disastrous and repeatedly failed, racist strategy of trying to tie Democrats to Jeremiah Wright is the only way to go (Go! Go! Go!)-- to the hack Republican pundits like John Fund and Peggy Noonan:

The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

The headline Wednesday on Drudge, from Politico, said, "Republicans Stunned by Loss in Mississippi." It was about the eight-point drubbing the Democrat gave the Republican in the special House election. My first thought was: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that. Second thought: Most party leaders in Washington are stupid-- detached, played out, stuck in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in '78 or '82 or '94. Whatever they learned then, they think pertains now. In politics especially, the first lesson sticks. For Richard Nixon, everything came back to Alger Hiss.

But even with all this I had to laugh today when I read that even the Kansas Senate seat held by ultimate Bush rubber stamp extraordinaire, Pat Roberts, could be in jeopardy. Lately we've been looking at the 1936 election that left 88 Republicans in the House and only 16 in the U.S. Senate. Of the 16 left in the Senate, one was Arthur Cropper (an ex-Kansas governor who served 5 senate terms starting in 1918), who won re-election against Democrat Omar Ketchum. Cropper won re-election as one of the few Republicans who refused to participate in obstructing FDR's New Deal and, in fact, supported FDR over and over. Roberts, on the other hand, can claim to have enthusiastically participated in every McConnell obstructionist initiative since the voters defeated half a dozen of his fellow Republicans in 2006.

But even if Slattery, an ex-congressman, can't beat evolution-denier Roberts, red states that look ready to elect Democrats in November include Alaska, Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky-- on top of rcrllrnt shots for Democrats in less red states, like Maine, Minnesota, Oregon, New Hampshire, Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia. If you want to help the Democrats pick up not just generic Democrats but Democrats who will not be representing corporate interests over our interests, please consider making a donation to the campaigns of Tom Allen (D-ME), Andrew Rice (D-OK), Greg Fischer (D-KY), and Rick Noriega (D-TX) today at our Blue America ActBlue page.