Maybe we should ask Nancy Pelosi , Jack Murtha or Harry Reid. The Culture of Corruption was the Democrat Mantra and key to winning in 2006 and 2008. So where is it?
Christina Bellantoni reports in the Washinton Times that Democrats have gone mum on the term but why? Bellantoni believes that the Democrats stopped the COC talk when FBI officials revealed they found $90,000 in marked $100 bills in Louisiana Democrat Rep. William J. Jefferson's freezer. Rep. Jefferson was videotaped accepting $100,000 that officials say was a bribe.
And then there was also Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, West Virginia Democrat, has been accused of directing $178 million to nonprofits in his state whose leaders were donors to his campaigns.
According to Bellantoni those two corrupt Democrats forced House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, to change the corruption claim into one saying only that Republicans are incompetent and beholden to special interests. (That's quite a down grade!) She told the Hill newspaper in June that Democrats' "culture of corruption" message was ending, and it was "time to talk about us."
Okay I'm with that let's talk about them. Remember Senator Harry Reid's claim that not a penny of Jack Abramoff money went to any Democrat? This is what Senator Reid said on PBS:
“This is a Republican scandal. Jack Abramoff gave a quarter of a million dollars to Republicans and Republicans only.”
At a televised press conference in Phoenix, where Mr. Reid was promoting the Senate candidacy of Jim Pederson, he was hit by a barrage of questions that challenged his assertion that the Democrats did not receive any money in connection with the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. To which the good Senator replied:
"Not a single penny of the money from Jack Abramoff ... went to a Democrat. Now he has lots of clients. But the fact of the matter is that any money that I've received has come from people who have given me money over a period of time, and Jack Abramoff's fingerprints [are] not anywhere,"
But upon examination it was found that, Mr. Reid received $30,500 from three Indian tribes for whom Abramoff lobbied during an recent election cycle, according to a reassessment of political contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), which has compiled campaign funds given to lawmakers by Abramoff, his associates or clients he represented.
Also, other public-interest groups report that Mr. Reid has received about $61,000 between 2001 and 2004 from clients represented by Abramoff, contributions that the senator has refused to return because, he says, they were not illegal.
Joe Cannon a Utah Republican Chairman during Senator Reid's stop in the state indicates that Senator Reid received much more than a penny, Cannon said:
"One of the biggest beneficiaries of Jack Abramoff is Harry Reid,"
In a Washington Times Editorial June 21, 2006-The real Jack Murtha- it is reported by the Los Angeles Times that Rep. Murtha, the ranking member on the defense appropriations subcommittee over saw defense appropriations to his brother Robert Murtha, whose lobbying firm represents 10 companies that received more than $20 million from last year's defense spending bill. "Clients of the lobbying firm KSA Consulting -- whose top officials also include former congressional aide Carmen V. Scialabba, who worked for Rep. Murtha as a congressional aide for 27 years -- received a total of $20.8 million from the bill," the L.A. Times reported.
In early 2004, according to Roll Call, Mr. Murtha "reportedly leaned on U.S. Navy officials to sign a contract to transfer the Hunters Point Shipyard to the city of San Francisco." Laurence Pelosi, nephew of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, at the time was an executive of the company which owned the rights to the land. The same article also reported how Mr. Murtha has been behind millions of dollars worth of earmarks in defense appropriations bills that went to companies owned by the children of fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, Rep. Paul Kanjorski. Meanwhile, the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign-finance watchdog group, lists Mr. Murtha as the top recipient of defense industry dollars in the current 2006 election cycle.
Finally, in the 1980 Abscam scandal, Mr. Murtha was named by the FBI as an "unindicted co-conspirator."
Culture of Corruption? No I'm thinking that the Democrats don't want to travel to far down the road of, “The Cultural of Corruption” because Dems are sure to run into themselves on that road. But as for the Pelosism, “Republicans are incompetent and beholden to special interests ” that is a road that can be well traveled by Democrats because like Democrats the Republicans ARE beholden to special interest only the Republicans are so incompetent that they allow Democrats to point an accusatory finger at them with no answer or rebuttal.
