Lunatic Fringe
The
level of political corruption in repugican and wingnut ranks has
gotten so blatant that they are finally being targeted for
investigations.…
Epitomizes repugican Corruption
Government
officials, or officeholders, who use power and influence related to
their official duties for illegitimate private gain or to influence
policies favorable to their campaign donors are guilty of political
corruption. As a nation bound to the rule of law, it is crucial for the
government to ferret out corrupt officials and officeholders to
investigate, prosecute, and remove them from their position of power
regardless they are sitting Congressional representatives, Supreme Court
Justices, or appointed officials. It is likely there has always been a
culture of corruption in Washington, but it became the modus operandi of
the
wingnuts since the election of Barack Obama as
President and finally there are legitimate calls for investigations to
expose what a normal person would regard as criminal activity. If lying
were a prosecutable offense, repugicans would be sitting in prison
where they belong, but there are enough other offenses that if
diligently pursued and prosecuted would take down wingnuts
using their positions to undermine the government, enrich their donors,
and for personal gain.
Accusing government officials of
corruption is a serious matter, but when there is undeniable proof they
are guilty of malfeasance it falls on agencies to investigate
improprieties. Unfortunately, many of the people tasked with
investigating corruption are unlikely to delve into their own
malfeasance and it is certainly the case with House Oversight Committee
Chairman Darrell Issa. It is too bad the House lacks a mechanism similar
to the State Department’s Office of Inspector General that is not
afraid to investigate its own Department, and last week it was revealed
that is precisely what the IG is doing to uncover corruption and
malfeasance regarding the KeystoneXL pipeline. In fact, if Issa
performed his due diligence as Oversight Committee chairman, he would
investigate John Boehner’s ethics violation in connection to the
Keystone pipeline, but if Issa will not investigate his own corruption,
it is unlikely he will go after Boehner; more on that later.
The Inspector General’s office
confirmed
last week it was examining evidence the State Department violated
ethics guidelines by contracting with an oil industry consultant,
Environmental Resources Management (ERM), to draft the Keystone XL
environmental impact statement that minimized the pipeline’s devastating
impact on U.S. carbon pollution. At issue is
why
ERM was hired to conduct the study when it had close ties to
TransCanada, the American Petroleum Institute, Koch Energy, and other
oil industry players involved in heavily lobbying to promote the
pipeline’s construction. The State Department’s malfeasance was failing
to verify ERM’s contention it had no interest in the pipeline’s
construction, and it indicts ERM for deliberately concealing its
conflict of interest to benefit financially from the pipeline’s
construction. Now, if the Inspector General is investigating conflict of
interest of those pushing the pipeline’s construction, Darrell Issa
should investigate Speaker John Boehner’s conflict of interest in the
pipeline’s approval because he is
invested in seven tar sand companies.
Issa is not going to investigate Boehner’s conflict of interest because he is the
largest recipient of oil and gas industry cash on the Oversight committee. During his tenure in Congress, Issa’s campaign committee has
received
$140,350 in campaign contributions from the employees and political
action committees of the oil and gas industry, so he will not jeopardize
a steady influx of cash. It brings Issa’s ethics into question for
failing to investigate Boehner’s conflict of interest, but it is
doubtful Issa has any ethical standards and now there are calls for him
to face an ethics investigation for profiting from the so-called IRS
scandal he directly initiated.
It was reported that the primary reason the IRS targeted conservative groups is because Darrel Issa
requested the IRS specifically target “
patriot” and “
tea party” organizations seeking “
social welfare”
tax exempt status to conceal their dark money donors. Besides wasting
time and taxpayer dollars chasing a phony scandal he put in motion,
Issa’s effort resulted in the largest fundraising quarter since he began
serving in Congress. In the second quarter of this year, Issa received
$450,000 more in campaign contributions than the previous fundraising
quarter and it resulted in a
petition
calling for a House Ethics Committee investigation into his motivation
for directing the IRS to give extra scrutiny to “tea party” and
“patriot” organizations, and then investigating the IRS for following
his instructions and performing their due diligence.
Issa’s
corruption and investigations are responsible for the repugican drive
to underfund the IRS to prevent them from investigating tax fraud that
cost the government roughly $1 trillion dollars in lost revenue last
year. It is a concerted effort to hamper the IRS from conducting
investigations such as those being called for to investigate the
American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) money laundering scheme
and tax evasion. ALEC provided
a conduit for corporations to funnel gifts and money to Republican
legislators and then write off the illegal “gifts” as charitable
contributions on their tax returns because ALEC is designated as a
501(c)(3) tax exempt social welfare organization.
Of all
government officials expected to be above corruption and unethical
conduct, one would think Supreme Court Justices would be the image of
impeccable ethics, but two Justices rival Darrel Issa as corrupt and
unethical for using their positions of power to advance their
supporters’ agendas. Last week a group of Democrats proposed
legislation demanding High Court justices follow a
code of conduct
every federal judge is held to. It is relatively common knowledge that
Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas spent time at a Koch brothers
millionaire strategy session in 2010 to take direction on how to rule on
Citizens United that gave corporations legal cover to buy repugican
candidates, but that is not the only instance of corruption.
In particular, Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife’s
earnings
from wingnut sewage tank Heritage Foundation for her teabagger
work opposing the Affordable Care Act her husband ruled against last
year. Ginni Thomas gave up her position with the teabag group opposing
the ACA, but she is back again heading up
the “Groundswell” organization dedicated to undermine the ACA’s
implementation and promote the Koch brothers’ agenda. If Thomas was a
federal judge, he would face ethics charges and be removed from the
bench, but the Supreme Court is a law unto itself and is not accountable
to any agency or department for ethics violations.
The level of
political corruption in repugican and wingnut ranks has gotten so
blatant that they are finally being targeted for investigations and it
may be a case of too little too late. With repugicans in charge of the
House, and the nation’s purse strings, they have the ability to thwart
any investigation by withholding funding that they are threatening
to do to the IRS. In fact, the reason the State Department had to
contract with an outside company to investigate the environmental impact
of building the Keystone pipeline is because repugicans deliberately withheld funding
for internally-driven studies. However, when corrupt politicians are in
charge of investigating their own corruption, it is left to the people
to demand they face justice the same as any American guilty of criminal
malfeasance and the people are finally demanding justice.
ALEC is facing the prospect of an IRS and states’ investigation
into tax evasion and ethics violations regarding their money-laundering
scheme because Common Cause and Center for Media and Democracy
filed complaints with the IRS and several state governments. Last year, the SEC was deluged with calls to investigate
John Boehner leading them to seriously consider investigating him for
share manipulation due to his false assertions that the KeystoneXL
pipeline’s construction would create “hundreds-of-thousands” of jobs.
Darrel Issa is facing the prospect of a House Ethics Committee
investigation because of a
petition demanding an investigation into his contrived IRS scandal that increased his campaign contributions by nearly half-a-million dollars.
America
is a nation of laws, and politicians are not immune to investigations
and prosecution for violating their public trust. There is a reason why
Darrel Issa has a long history of run-ins with the law and continues
unabated in a position of power, and why John Boehner continues his
unethical behavior in the House; it is all down to never facing the
consequences of their corruption. ALEC has been laundering corporate
money to send to repugicans since 2006 with impunity because they have
not been investigated by the IRS, and Supreme Court Justices Scalia and
Thomas continue doing the bidding of the Koch brothers because there is
no code of conduct to hold them accountable for judicial malfeasance.
The United States government is the people’s government, and if corrupt repugicans refuse to investigate themselves, then it falls to the
people to demand that unethical political corruption and influence
peddling that is destroying this nation and its people is investigated
and prosecuted with extreme prejudice because the fate of the nation,
and the people, depend on it.
Young
Charlotte Figi was born with Dravet Syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy
in which the patent suffers frequent, long-lasting seizures that don't
respond to medication. Charlotte spent a lot of time in various
hospitals, while the seizures stunted her development.
Alexander
Jansen is stationed in Germany and took advantage of some leave time to
tour Europe with his two younger sisters. They took the train from the
airport to their Dublin hotel and realized too late that Jansen's
backpack was left on the train car! It had a long list of photo
equipment… 
The
UNESCO World Heritage Centre has named 19 more places as World Heritage
sites. Pictured here is the view from Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel,
Germany. The Grand Cascade waterworks flowing down the front embankment
were designed in 1689 and are powered by hydro-pneumatic devices. See
the castle itself, and plenty of pictures of four other beautiful new
World Heritage sites at 
