Hillary picks corrupt running-mate, but, heck, it is not illegal because "everyone does it."

Kaine accepted clothes and vacations as gifts while in office.

He should fit in with the Clinton family values.

Supreme Court may strike down political corruption laws because "everyone does it."

This is from April, but I missed it.

Or maybe I am more interested in how our political elite class has institutionalized "letting themselves off the hook" ever since the FBI let Hillary off the hook.

If a private company did this, it would used an example of insane corporate greed...

But since it's only your government - and government means "us" ...except for the part about where "we" share the insane profits reaped by the Harry Reid family - It is hunky-dory.

Over the last two or three decades, the Bureau has squeezed the ranchers in southern Nevada by limiting the acres on which their cattle can graze, reducing the number of cattle that can be on federal land, and charging grazing fees for the ever-diminishing privilege. The effect of these restrictions has been to drive the ranchers out of business. Formerly, there were dozens of ranches in the area where Bundy operates. Now, his ranch is the only one. When Bundy refused to pay grazing fees beginning in around 1993, he said something to the effect of, they are supposed to be charging me a fee for managing the land and all they are doing is trying to manage me out of business. Why should I pay them for that?

And:

But the connection is nevertheless important in two respects. First, BLM has promulgated a regional mitigation strategy for the environmental impacts of the solar developments. Let’s pause on that for a moment: the excuse for limiting Bundy’s rights is the endangered desert tortoise. But wait! Don’t they have desert tortoises a few miles away where the solar projects are being built? Of course they do. That’s where they get to the mitigation strategy, which may involve, among other things, moving some desert tortoises to a new location:

The Gold Butte ACEC is preliminarily recommended as the best recipient location for regional mitigation from the Dry Lake SEZ. This ACEC is located 32 miles (51 km) east of the Dry Lake SEZ.

Gold Butte is the area where Bundy ranches. There are a few problems with the Gold Butte location as a mitigation area; one of them is that there are “trespassing” cattle:

The resource values found in the Gold Butte ACEC are threatened by: unauthorized activities, including off-road vehicle use, illegal dumping, and trespass livestock grazing; wildfire; and weed infestation.

So it is possible that the federal government is driving Bundy off federal lands to make way for mitigation activities that enable the solar energy development to the north. But I don’t think it is necessary to go there. Rather–this is the second and more important point–it is obvious that some activities are favored by the Obama administration’s BLM, and others are disfavored. The favored developments include solar and wind projects. No surprise there: the developers of such projects are invariably major Democratic Party donors. Wind and solar energy survive only by virtue of federal subsidies, so influencing people like Barack Obama and Harry Reid is fundamental to the developers’ business plans. Ranchers, on the other hand, ask nothing from the federal government other than the continuation of their historic rights. It is a safe bet that Cliven Bundy is not an Obama or Reid contributor.

The new head of the BLM is a former Reid staffer. Presumably he was placed in his current position on Reid’s recommendation. Harry Reid is known to be a corrupt politician, one who has gotten wealthy on a public employee’s salary, in part, at least, by benefiting from sweetheart real estate deals. Does Harry Reid now control more than 80% of the territory of Nevada? If you need federal authority to conduct business in Nevada–which is overwhelmingly probable–do you need to pay a bribe to Harry Reid or a member of his family to get that permission? Why is it that the BLM is deeply concerned about desert tortoises when it comes to ranchers, but couldn’t care less when the solar power developers from China come calling? Environmentalists have asked this question. Does the difference lie in the fact that Cliven Bundy has never contributed to an Obama or Reid campaign, or paid a bribe to Reid or a member of his family?

Based on the evidence, I would say: yes, that is probably the difference. When the desert tortoises balance out, Occam’s razor tells us that the distinction is political.

So let’s have some sympathy for Cliven Bundy and his family. They don’t have a chance on the law, because under the Endangered Species Act and many other federal statutes, the agencies are always in the right. And their way of life is one that, frankly, is on the outs. They don’t develop apps. They don’t ask for food stamps. It probably has never occurred to them to bribe a politician. They don’t subsist by virtue of government subsidies or regulations that hamstring competitors. They aren’t illegal immigrants. They have never even gone to law school. So what possible place is there for the Bundys in the Age of Obama?//

Hey! Here's an idea! After it's great success in developing green energy, let's turn health care over to the government!

"$1.3 billion in ‘clean energy’ subsidies produce 288 permanent jobs, quadruple cost of electricity in Nevada

Reid-sponsored National Clean Energy Summit pushes more subsidies as key to Nevada’s future"

Well, of course he does.

Where did that stimulus money go?

Here's the story:

As U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid prepares to host his fifth annual National Clean Energy Summit on Aug. 7, a Nevada Journal examination of Nevada’s renewable energy sector shows that over $1.3 billion in federal funds funneled into geothermal, solar and wind projects since 2009 has yielded and is projected to yield just 288 permanent, full-time jobs.

That’s an initial cost of over $4.6 million per job.

Despite this, Sen. Reid continues to hype Nevada as the “Saudi Arabia of renewable energy,” even though the renewable energy subsidized with federal dollars and mandated under Nevada’s Renewable Portfolio Standard costs consumers and NV Energy, Nevada’s publicly regulated utility company, up to four times as much as fossil fuels, such as natural gas.

Even with these government-granted advantages, the few clean-energy jobs in the state of Nevada are still precarious.

Reid-backed geothermal company near bankruptcy

Auditors for Nevada Geothermal Power, a federally subsidized green-energy firm in Nevada, are raising questions about whether that firm is going to fail.

As of last October, Nevada Geothermal Power had 22 employees in Nevada, and, according to the New York Times, had received $145 million in federal subsidies — composed of a loan guarantee of nearly $79 million for its Blue Mountain geothermal project and at least $66 million in grants to the company itself.

The Times called the company a “politically connected clean energy start-up that has relied heavily on an Obama administration loan guarantee,” and said it “… is now facing financial turmoil.”

Today, three quarters later, the latest company audit again questions the “company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

The firm’s survival, wrote auditors on March 31, will depend “on its available cash and its ability to continue to raise funds….”

The Times found similarities between the Obama administration’s support for “Solyndra, the now-famous California solar company,” and Sen. Reid’s support of Nevada Geothermal.

Sen. Reid, the story said, “has taken the nascent geothermal industry under his wing, pressuring the Department of Interior to move more quickly on applications to build clean energy projects on federally owned land and urging other member of Congress to expand federal tax incentives to help build geothermal plants, benefits that Nevada Geothermal has taken advantage of.”

The most recent “clean energy” company failure in Nevada occurred three weeks ago when Amonix, a North Las Vegas solar manufacturing plant that had received more than $20 million in federal tax credits and grants, closed after only 14 months of operation.

Hailed upon its opening by Sen. Reid, U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley and Gov. Brian Sandoval, the 214,000-square-foot Amonix facility had, at its height, employed some 700 individuals. In 2010, even President Barack Obama praised the Amonix plant, saying the “stimulus” tax credits it received had made an “extraordinary impact.”

Today, the company is bankrupt.

Large handouts, few employees

Even the renewable-energy projects that aren’t yet facing bankruptcy aren’t doing much to help reduce Nevada’s 11.6 percent unemployment rate. That’s because most solar photovoltaic plants — plants that convert solar radiation from the sun into electricity — in Nevada employee very few full-time employees.

The Silver State North solar plant, for example, located near Primm, employs only two full-time employees, while the Copper Mountain solar plant in Boulder City employs only five. Combined, these plants have received, or are eligible to receive, up to $92 million in federal loans and subsidies. Copper Mountain is also eligible to received $12 million in tax rebates from the State of Nevada.

That means each supposedly permanent job starts out costing taxpayers about $14.85 million.

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that political corruption is all good.

Breitbart - Richer Democratic States With Lower Unemployment Got Bulk Of Obama Stimulus:

In their explosive new book Debacle: Obama's War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future, Grover Norquist and John Lott, Jr. uncover a startling fact: heavily Democratic states with lower poverty rates, lower unemployment rates, lower bankruptcy rates, and lower foreclosure rates received most of President Barack Obama's $825 billion Stimulus.

Put another way, Stimulus money went to precisely the states that needed it the least but were more politically connected to the Democratic Party.

As Norquist and Lott's data reveal:

There is a perverse pattern: The states hardest hit by the recession received the least money. States with higher bankruptcy, foreclosure, and unemployment rates got less money. And higher-income states received more. Obama may have claimed that he was motivated to help out those in the toughest shape, but it looks more likely that Democrats were more interested in helping their supporters.

In Debacle, Norquist and Lott catalog the stunning degree to which Stimulus funds were allocated to the very states that needed them least. For example, richer states got more, not less, Stimulus money. For every additional $1,000 in a state's per-capita income a state received an average $86 more per capita in Stimulus money.

Furthermore, states with high foreclosure rates got less, not more, money. Specifically, for every percentage point increase in a state's foreclosure rate, a state received $217 less per person.

The amounts given to states ranged widely. For example, while Florida only received $553 per capita, the District of Columbia walked away with $3,745 per capita. And as Norquist and Lott reveal, "The patterns early show that the money went to the places the Democrats represented."

The folly of the federal government's misappropriation of funds can best be summed up with a quote from an Obama Administration official whom Norquist and Lott interviewed for their penetrating book. As she explained, where government spends taxpayers' money doesn't matter because "giving out money is good for everyone."

Conflict of interest laws are for the "little people."



Nancy Pelosi is such a paragon of virtue that she would never act upon her financial interests in making a legislative decision, and if you don't believe it, just ask her.




Hooray, we can repeal all of congressional ethics rules!

Via Big Government

Historians of the future may look back and describe the Obama stimulus package as the "Great Swindle."

Where did that $1 trillion go?

According to Roll Call, the "conscience of Congress, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa) put the corrupt in "corruption."

Last week’s release of FBI documents finally put in writing what nobody had ever said on the record: The FBI suspected that former Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and lobbyists close to him were running a scheme to funnel earmarks to sham companies and nonprofits to benefit the lawmaker’s friends and former staffers.


Bits and pieces of this story were kicked around for years before Murtha died in February 2010. The Los Angeles Times, Roll Call, the Washington Post and others had documented the odd appearance of earmarks for tiny defense contractors that just happened to open an office in western Pennsylvania and just happened to hire one of the lobbying firms close to Murtha and just happened to begin making campaign donations to Murtha and other Members of Congress close to him.

Reporters could do little but assemble the coincidences and couldn’t prove there was anything wrong with the bigger picture.

But it turns out the FBI was reading the stories and was very interested — interested enough that the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation into Murtha and some of the lobbyists in his orbit, a fact that never leaked while Murtha was alive

And:

Federal agents had begun investigating Murtha in 2007 upon hearing allegations that the PMA Group, a lobbying firm run by former defense appropriations staffer Paul Magliocchetti, had paid for Murtha to have a driver. The PMA Group was raided by the FBI in February 2008, and the firm shut down the following year. Magliocchetti is serving a 27-month prison sentence for running a scheme to reimburse friends, family members and colleagues for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of campaign contributions to Murtha and other Members of Congress.


The FBI investigation also suggested that a staff member in Murtha’s office may have failed to disclose thousands of dollars in income and assets on her annual financial disclosure forms; that money from Murtha’s campaign fund may have been used to buy guns for the personal use of another Murtha staffer; that Murtha may have steered contracts and earmarks to other family members; that staff members may have violated the one-year ban on lobbying Murtha’s office after leaving his employ; and that KSA may have run a fraudulent political action committee.

There is no evidence in the released documents that the FBI pursed any of these cases.

Sloan of CREW said the FBI files prove a long-sought point: “It was as bad as we said it was. It wasn’t nothing; it wasn’t OK.”

The Chicago Way - Solyndra Edition.

Hmm....a slush pile of public money, a loan guarantee to a donor, a totally foreseeable bankruptcy, and a bunch of politicians from Chicago.  What could possibly connect the dots:

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden got a nice photo op. They got to make speeches about being "green." But then Solyndra went bankrupt. Americans lost jobs. Taxpayers got stuck with the bill. And members of Congress are now in high dudgeon and making speeches.

Federal investigators want to know what role political fundraising played in the guarantee of the questionable loan. Washington bureaucrats warned the deal was lousy. And White House spokesmen flail desperately, like weakened victims in a cheesy vampire movie.

So forget optics. What about smell? It smells bad, and it's going to smell worse.

Or, did you really believe it when the White House mouthpieces — who are also Chicago City Hall mouthpieces — promised they were bringing a new kind of politics to Washington?

This is not a new kind of politics. It's the old kind. The Chicago kind.

Occam's razor suggests that the simple answer is often the right answer.

The average American is not prone to conspiracy theories.  We tend to think that governments and big corporations are dispassionately operated by people who know the rules and abide by the rules because we know that we would get caught if we were in their position and we don't want to get punished.

On the other hand, we also know that government and big corporations are inhabitated by people who are amazingly like people and that people are not above playing favorites, particularly where they have learned that they are immune from responsibility, as might be the case for someone in government or a large corporation.

Bryan Preston at the PJ Tattler looks at various data points that appear to show grotesque political use of the powers of government to punish political enemies and reward political friends and asks "is it that simple?"

Why did the Department of Justice raid Gibson Guitars twice in the span of two years, yet leave competitor C.F. Martin untouched? Both appear to use the same allegedly illegal woods. The allegation floating around is that it’s because Gibson’s CEO supports Republicans and Martin’s supports Democrats, and we have a Democratic administration hell-bent on punishing Republicans. Instinctively, I want to reject that theory. It’s too simple and too, I don’t know, obvious and even un-American. Gibson’s CEO may face jail time, and the company may end up failing under the weight of the federal boot. And over what?


Why does Warren Buffett, billionaire businessman, keep supporting President Obama despite the president’s obvious economic failures? Reading Tim Carney’s piece about Buffett and bank bailouts that appeared yesterday, it’s evident that at every turn over the past couple of years, Buffett has managed to cash in on huge government actions. Carney suggests that Buffett bought a major stake in Bank of America on the belief that the Obama administration will end up bailing that bank out, stuffing more money into Buffett’s pockets. One would expect a savvy and fair-minded businessman to oppose the rampant regulatory state that Obama has unleashed on the nation’s economy, but if the businessman stands to profit from it? If can use his influence to direct it to move in ways that help him? Does Buffett continue supporting Obama because he, Buffett, basically owns the president and knows he can make money off of his policies?

Why did the Obama administration shut down offshore oil drilling? Why did it take some car dealerships from their owners back in 2009? Do we really have an administration abusing its powers to punish its enemies? Is is really that simple?

Preston points to this data point:

3M Claims Democratic Lobbyist, Talking Head, and Former Clinton Staffer Lanny Davis Tried to Extort $30 Million From It


And I think this is standard operating practice. Do what we want, or we will make government trouble for you.

3M claims an investment company conspired with high-powered lobbyist Lanny Davis in a smear campaign to "coerce" it into paying "tens of millions of dollars ... to save them from the consequences of yet another unprofitable investment," a screening test for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus...

Davis, who worked as a special counsel for President Clinton from 1996 to 1998, has lobbied for a string of controversial clients since leaving the White House, including African dictators, military coup supporters in Honduras, and the government of Pakistan.

This report does not specify the interest of the parties here. It is my guess that 3M entered into some agreement with a company Davis lobbied for, to test and then distribute their drug; they decided it wasn't commercially viable, and terminated the agreement, and then Davis went to work to pressure them into reversing that decision.

I assume the termination of the contract wasn't a breach at all, because I don't see any mention of suing over a broken contract.

After attacking them in the press, it is alleged, they got more direct:

"Defendants' illicit campaign has included overt threats of reprisals by holders of large blocks of 3M stock; public demonstrations by paid individuals posing as victims of an altogether fabricated public health 'issue' allegedly created by 3M's decision to discontinue selling a product no one wanted...

And so forth. And then they kicked it up a notch.

3M adds: "When these tactics failed to yield the financial windfall defendants sought, they resorted to making extortionate demands upon 3M." It claims that Boulter and Davis then "acted together" to make a "crude extortion attempt" by "sending to 3M's counsel an unsolicited e-mail in which Boulter claimed that the British Minister of Defence had instructed Boulter to inform 3M that if it did not pay over $30 million, the Minister of Defence would interfere with 3M's ability to do business with the British government. He also threatened that the British government would reconsider the recently announced call to knighthood of Buckley. This crude extortion attempt threatened both to embarrass Buckley and to tarnish 3M's most valuable asset, its corporate brand."

Sounds a lot like a form of privateering. Well-connected individuals, acting with other pals in government, pirate money away from companies and people. And it's kinda-sorta legal, if you have enough friends in government.

Diversity matters on the Supreme Court....

...unless it involves the cultural traditions/religious tradition of the majority of the population.

Christianity Today on the "Post-Protestant Supreme Court."

Personally, I'm not sure that "diversity" matters all that much in this context, particularly since Supreme Court justices are molded by Ivy League culture and legal culture far more than they are by things like ethnicity or religion.  But if we are going to play the "diversity" card for the official minorities, then shouldn't it matter when we are talking about the majority of the population?

I'd be just as happy to drop all talk about diversity, but you know that is not going to happen when Obama appoints the first Asian or first disable female Polynesian or whatever.

The Ruling Class

Why should our representatives have to suffer the same taxes that we do?

From the Wall Street Journal:

On the same day the House whooped through a 90% surtax on some bonuses, Bloomberg News reported that Democratic Rep. Pete Stark, a House eminento from California, may have been improperly claiming residency in Maryland to get a tax break. As you might guess, Maryland's tax bite isn't as deep as wonderful California's. This follows on news reports last week that Democratic New York Congressman Eliot Engel has been told by Maryland authorities he too may not claim his suburban Maryland home as his primary residence for tax purposes. The AP noted, "Engel isn't the only politician who's been found to be improperly receiving the credit. Another Congressman, some U.S. Senators and several Maryland legislators have also been tripped up by the requirements."

Oh my. If New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank are going to try to make public the names of bonus recipients to help mobs demonstrate in front of individuals' homes, perhaps Maryland's tax authorities could do the same for out-of-state politicians who've turned the state into their personal Liechtenstein. No doubt millions of average Joes living in such tax hells as New York and California would love to work on the taxpayers' dime in Washington and live in a low-tax jurisdiction nearby.

No representation without taxation.