Just wow. This is breath-taking in it's scope and audacity. Seems that former homemaker Christine Delay was quite the rain-maker in La Famiglia Delay.
A registered lobbyist opened a retirement account in the late 1990s for the wife of then-House Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and contributed thousands of dollars to it while also paying her a salary to work for him from her home in Texas, according to sources, documents and DeLay's attorney, Richard Cullen.
The account represents a small portion of the income that DeLay's family received from entities at least partly controlled by lobbyist Edwin A. Buckham. But the disclosure of its origin adds to what was previously known about the benefits DeLay's family received from its association with Buckham, and it brings the total over the past seven years to about half a million dollars.
Buckham was DeLay's chief of staff before he became a lobbyist at the end of 1998, shortly before the account was opened and the flow of funds began. He has come under scrutiny from federal investigators because his lobbying firm received hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue from clients of indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
So there's the set up...another in the long line of JACKabramOFF connected lobbyists.
From 1998 until recently, Buckham, an evangelical minister, met regularly with DeLay, occasionally attended staff meetings in his office, made scheduling recommendations or decisions for the office, and served as DeLay's chief political and spiritual adviser, even though he was not formally employed by him. At the time, Buckham's clients included a host of companies with regulatory and legislative business before Congress, and whose interests DeLay supported.
Under congressional ethics rules, lobbyists such as Buckham are barred from providing gifts or gratuities with a total value exceeding $50 to lawmakers in a single year. No similar prohibition exists for payments to a lawmaker's family members, but the pay must be a reasonable wage for real work and not be meant to influence a lawmaker's votes. Nothing in pending House and Senate lobbying reform legislation addresses the issue of such lobbyist payments to lawmaker's families.
My guess? He was comforting Delay with the spirit of the Benjamin, but I'm just cynical thataway I guess.
Besides financing the retirement account, Buckham played a role in two other streams of income that indirectly benefited DeLay.
One involved payments to DeLay's family by his principal political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), which drew its largest donations from corporations. Three former DeLay staffers with firsthand knowledge of Buckham's activities have described him as a decision maker for the group, even though it was formally run by its executive director.
An arm of the group paid Buckham a monthly consulting fee, and Buckham in turn employed its executive director as a consultant to his lobbying firm. The two of them shared a single office on the top floor of a townhouse owned by a nonprofit organization that Buckham created and directed. Buckham's role is relevant because from 2001 to Jan. 31, 2006, ARMPAC paid Christine DeLay; DeLay's daughter, Dani DeLay Ferro; and Ferro's Texas firm a total of $350,304 in political consulting fees and expenses, according to public records.
The Washington Post previously disclosed that from 1998 to 2002, Buckham's lobbying firm, Alexander Strategy Group, paid Christine DeLay a monthly salary averaging between $3,200 and $3,400. Cullen initially said the payments were for telephone calls she made periodically to the offices of certain members of Congress seeking the names of their favorite charities. Christine DeLay then forwarded that information to Buckham, along with some information about those charities.
Something like this?
Christine Delay- "Hi, this is Speaker Tom's wife! I need to know congress critter X's favorite charity. Every call I make, ensures that money goes to my favorite charity, Tom'n'Me!! Yeah, calling to find their favorite charity for $3,400 a month from home. What, she got that idea off of one of those "work at home" infomercials?
Last week, Cullen said the payments were also for general political consulting Christine DeLay provided to her husband. Cullen said he does not have complete records of the salary payments or the dates when Christine DeLay performed the work from the couple's home in Sugar Land, Tex. But a source familiar with the pay records said the total she received from the Alexander Strategy Group was about $115,000.
Together with the retirement account worth about $25,000, this means the family's total financial benefits from entities at least partly controlled by Buckham exceeded $490,300.
Before being paid by ARMPAC for political consulting, Christine DeLay, a homemaker and advocate for foster care, had not done paid work of that type. That circumstance has figured in government investigations of payments to other lawmakers' spouses, on the grounds that, if the compensation began after a lawmaker's election, it might have been meant to influence official acts.
So, what, they need 27 8x10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one to see where the garbage is buried here? This isn't American Blind Justice, this is a prime example of the selling of the government to the highest bidders.
I'm guessing that no legislation is going to cover this egregious loophole now or ever. Delay used it, William Jefferson allegedly used it to extract money from donors/those with business before him in one way or another.
The only way to change is to humiliate and arrest enough of these "public servants" until they law is changed and like little kids they are all "penalized" for the behaviour of a miscreant few because they can't seem to stop feeding at the trough of corruption long enough to realize what it's doing to the Republic.
Hm, well it seems (and I know you all will have a tough time with this), that the adminstration has lied again... or is just continuing the same lie forward.
We were told that the VA record thefts were records of vets discharged after 1975, and those with whom the VA has had contact/records of things like VA home loans, and educational assistance; then it was a few Navy and National Guard troops who might still be on active duty, but not to worry. Now it seems that the data theft covers damn near everyone who has ever served and is still serving since 1975.
Social Security numbers and other personal information for as many as 2.2 million U.S. military personnel -- including nearly 80 percent of the active-duty force -- were among the data stolen from the home of a Department of Veterans Affairs analyst last month, federal officials said yesterday, raising concerns about national security as well as identity theft.
The department announced that personal data for as many as 1.1 million active-duty military personnel, 430,000 National Guard members and 645,000 reserve members may have been included on an electronic file stolen May 3 from a department employee's house in Aspen Hill. The data include names, birth dates and Social Security numbers, VA spokesman Matt Burns said.
...
For example, security experts said, the information could be used to find out where military personnel live. "This essentially can create a Zip code for where each of the service members and [their] families live, and if it fell into the wrong hands could potentially put them at jeopardy of being targeted," said David Heyman, director of the homeland security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Another worry is that the information could reach foreign governments and their intelligence services or other hostile forces, allowing them to target service members and their families, the experts said.
Well, duh.
Apparently however, word out of the 1600 Crew is that they still "support our troops and honor our veterans". I'm having a harder and harder time understanding how. Don't know about you all.
This ought to be an issue in the reelection of every single congress criminal out there. If they don't support a massive and immediate program to (1) change every single vets and active duty person's social security information and (2) ensure that every affected person is protected by free credit monitoring and some type of indemnity program against ID theft then they are not worth a single penny they are getting paid.
And if they say it's "too costly", fuck'em. They're getting ready to hand better than One Trillion dollars to people like Paris Hilton. I think that we come before hereditary zillionaires, or maybe I'm just some sort of commie-pinko asshole who wants a handout, or something.
The whole O'Reilly-Malmedy thing just pisses me off to no end. There sits Supreme Windbag Bill O'Reilly lying outright about the Malmedy Massacre and the sound of pins dropping in Right Blogistan is pretty amazing.
Keith Olbermann has been all over our old buddy, Falafel O'Loofah like a polyester shirt on a humid day. Not a moment of time goes by without Keith getting in O'Reilly's face about this, and rightly so. So I sent Olbermann a letter. Apparently the Actor, Charles Durning, is not only a survivor or the Normandy Landings as an infantryman, but a survivor of Malmedy. How fitting that someone like Durning should call O'Reilly out on June 6th about the lies that O'Reilly is spreading.
Anyone who can pass this on to Countdown gets my eternal gratitude, since I'm sure they get 12 million emails an hour.
Here it is:
Keith,
I have been watching Countdown and getting ever more annoyed over the O'Reilly lies about Malmedy and his casual slander of veterans. Today it's Malmedy, tomorrow it'll be the heroic Lt William Calley who escaped with his life after being pinned down in a savage firefight with the villagers of My Lai....doncha know?
It might be interesting to know, that doing some checking around the internets using Google (something that O'Loofah has never heard of, obviously) that the actor Charles Durning was not only one of the first Americans to land on the beaches at Normandy, but also a survivor of the Malmedy Massacre. I wonder if he'd be willing to speak to O'Reilly and try to shut him up (not that O'Loofah will ever actually shut up).
Durning was wounded by an "S" Mine on June 15, 1944, at Les Mare des Mares. He was transported by the 499th Medical Collection Company to the 24th Evacuation Hospital. By June 17, he was back in England at the 217th General Hospital. Although severely wounded by shrapnel in the left and right thigh, right hand, the frontal region of the head and the interior left chest wall, Durning recovered quickly and was determined to be “fit for duty” on Dec. 6, 1944. Durning was present for the Battle of the Bulge, the German counter-offensive in December 1944. Taken prisoner, he was among the very few troops who escaped being massacred by Gen. Pieper's 1st Liebstandart Adolph Hitler, an elite SS Panzer unit at Malmedy. He escaped with two others, and returned to find the remainder murdered.
Is it worth your time (I hope you read this) to have someone try and speak to Mr. Durning (who is very reluctant to speak of his wartime experiences)?
I hope this might be useful in the continuing battle to bring a small dose of reality to the delusional world of Falafel O'Loofah.
Sincerely,
Jo Fish
usndemvet.com/blog
So, anyone out there know how to reach Olbermann? I figure this has about as much chance of getting through as my winning the lottery...but hey, it's worth a shot.
I wonder how long it'll be before the mailing lists of the DNC, which are probably on some William Jefferson-owned PCs start getting emails about from a Jefferson offspring asking for help getting their money out of Nigeria? After all, the story has all the elements of a good Nigerian Scam letter; the family fortune endangered, the patriarch locked away or threatened by the law, the benighted son or daughter pleading for help getting their money... it's all there.
Seems Jefferson is our very own "allegedly" corrupt politician. I suspect he's a Democrat by neccescity, and for no other reason. Had he been able to be elected under the Banner of Pachydermness, he'd have as easily thrown his allegiance to them. Public service, so it appears, was all about getting and staying rich, not the public good...
Four months later, over lunch in a congressional dining room, Jefferson informed Mody that he wanted a 5 percent to 7 percent stake in W2-IBBS in the name of his five daughters. That stake would be channeled through their own African company, Global Energy & Environmental Services LLC, which would be run by his son-in-law, according to court documents.
Over the ensuing months, Mody increasingly questioned Pfeffer and Jackson about the deal and her $3.5 million. In March 2005, she went to the FBI. From then on, Jefferson's ever-more-complex business dealings unfolded under the watch of federal investigators.
On May 12, 2005, Jefferson demanded that his stake in the Nigerian deal rise from 7 percent to as much as 20 percent, "for my children," according to court documents. The figure eventually reached 30 percent.
"for his children", yeah, the impoverished Harvard-law educated ones...yeah, that's it; that's the ticket.
Oh, and I completely forgot this bit of William Jefferson trivia...
Amid the chaos and confusion that engulfed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck, [Rep. William Jefferson, (D-LA)] used National Guard troops to check on his property and rescue his personal belongings — even while New Orleans residents were trying to get rescued from rooftops, ABC News has learned.
Let's get a replay from the 1600 Crew's greatest hits for a moment, shall we?
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday played down recent deadly attacks on Americans in Iraq, equating those losses with everyday violence in large U.S. cities.
...
Asked at Pentagon press conference about the Iraqi resistance, Rumsfeld described it as "small elements" of 10 to 20 people, not large military formations or networks of attackers. He said there "is a little debate" in the administration over whether there is any central control to the resistance, which officials say is coming from Saddam Hussein's former Baath Party, Fedayeen paramilitary, and other loyalists.
"In those regions where pockets of dead-enders are trying to reconstitute, Gen. (Tommy) Franks and his team are rooting them out," Rumsfeld said, referring to the U.S. commander in Iraq. "In short, the coalition is making good progress."
Yeah, so successful at "rooting out" the troublemakers that three years later, here's a story from Mess O'Potamia over the weekend.
Gunmen wearing police uniforms raided bus stations in central Baghdad, abducting at least 50 people, including drivers and passengers preparing to travel outside Iraq, including two Syrians, an interior ministry official said.
The attackers also seized people working in the area, where several travel agencies are based and buses pick up passengers traveling mostly to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, Lt.-Col. Falah al-Mohamedawi said.
The victims were herded into more than a dozen vehicles. More details were not immediately available.
Remember, they hate us for our freedoms. I wonder if this is the result that "GOD" intended when he "spoke" to Beloved Leader in his hallucinatory delerium-tremens state late one night on his way to eat the snack of the American Chickenhawk, cheese curls and diet water.
In Iraq it seems, the "light at the end of the tunnel" might truly be an on-coming train. It's just that the geniuses who planned this debacle aren't traveling by rail, they're in their private jets laughing all the way to the bank.
