Tag: Politcal Bribery

Bribery As A Weapon

We all know that Donny has his little black heart set on acquiring Greenland…..and now he has come up with a new strategy….Bribery.

The Trump administration is reportedly discussing sending payments to Greenlanders to sway the population to back the U.S. takeover of the territory from Denmark.

The bombshell report from Reuters cited “four sources familiar with the matter” and added that “while the exact dollar figure and logistics of any payment are unclear, U.S. officials, including White House aides, have discussed figures ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 per person, said two of the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.”

Reuters reported earlier in the week that the White House is weighing various options for “acquiring” Greenland, which the Trump White House has stated is an official policy goal of the U.S.

“President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal,” the White House said in a statement on Tuesday.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio later added that the U.S. is looking to buy Greenland, not invade it. Rubio made the comment to lawmakers on Wednesday, with the apparent goal of de-escalating rising tensions with Europe, given that Greenland is an official territory of Denmark – a NATO ally.

Some 57,000 people live in Greenland and their leadership has explicitly rejected any notion that the territory is for sale. “Enough is enough … No more fantasies about annexation,” Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen wrote over the weekend on social media.

Trump Admin Reportedly Looking at $100,000 Payments For Greenlanders to Join US

Will Greenlanders fall for this BS?

Where will the cash come from?  Taxpayers?

To Donny everything has a price and he is depending on cash as an incentive to a silent revolution in his interests.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Bribery Vs Lobbying

Since it became a major thing I have been telling anyone who would listen of the evils of “K” Street, the lobbyist central.

To me lobbyists, there is about 12000 lobbyists on K Street, that is about 22 lobbyists per every member of Congress and they all have buckets of money to give away for favorable rulings, is nothing more than bribery masked as campaign donations.

But what is what?

Bribery and lobbying are often conjoined in the public mind: Critics of lobbying suggest that it’s bribery in a suit. While both seek a favorable outcome, the two remain distinct practices. Bribery is considered an effort to buy power; paying to guarantee a certain result; lobbying is considered an effort to influence power, often by offering contributions.

One key difference is that bribery is considered illegal, while lobbying is not.

Lobbyists try to shape laws, legislation, and public policy to the benefit of the group or entity that employs them. Their campaigns (which are legal) can sometimes be public ones (or fed to the media to influence the public), but they more typically target politicians, elected officials, legislators, and government agency employees; the movers and shakers on Capitol Hill and in state capitals too.

Lobbyists—the term referring to both individuals and organizations—have existed as long as governments; they traditionally have been considered “information givers,” a valuable source of facts and data, though admittedly in support of their cause or industry. Lobbyists systematically build up support for their causes, over years and decades. Often, they fund a study, survey, or research that might sway a politician’s opinion or their constituency’s opinion.

…

In contrast, a bribe usually occurs on an individual level. And it is anything but public. A bribe giver usually gives an offer of money “under the table” in order to subvert standard processes. This could be paying a tax officer to clear reports with under-reported revenue or sending goods without an invoice.

The bribe may be in the form of a donation or favor in kind. A company’s purchase manager may award an order to a supplier in return for undue favor in the form of money, against his company’s policy of awarding orders based on criteria of quality and price. Public officers are offered bribes to enable evasion of taxes and the corresponding liabilities at an individual or company level.

However it’s done, a bribe—along with its cousin, the kickback—results in an unfair advantage for the bribe giver. Bribes may seem like small amounts compared to lobbying contributions, but therein lies the problem: They often cannot be accounted for.

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/the-differences-between-bribery-and-lobbying.aspx

Sorry but they are the same thing…..only difference is one is a crime and the other has been sanctioned by the Supreme Court…..a bunch of political hacks that are just as easily swayed by cash as the Congress.

So where is the damn difference?

There is none!  Both get what the person offering wants….they have to pay to play….and the politicians get flush with cash and that is why they all want to stay for decades in Congress….the more influence they have the bigger the payouts.

Time for this to change…..all cash should go into an election fund and all politicians share in it equally.

Just my take on this conundrum.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Foreign Bribery Of Congress

I have been writing about the bribery that goes on in our Congress. Congresspeople get cash from a wealth of sources even foreign countries have been known to bribe our Congress.

Countries like Saudi Arabia, Israel just to mention a few….but it is a lot deeper than those I listed.

But just how deep is this crime?

Democratic Texas congressman Henry Cuellar was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges of “bribery, unlawful foreign influence, and money laundering.” The accusations revolve around a set of deals in which Cuellar allegedly accepted money from a state-owned Azerbaijani oil company and a Mexican bank in exchange for an agreement to push U.S. foreign policy in their favor.

As concerning as this may be, it’s not even the first such indictment against a sitting member of Congress this year. In March, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) received a superseding indictment which expands further upon earlier accusations that the former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman took bribes to advocate on behalf of the Egyptian and Qatari governments.

These cases make it clear that foreign bribery, in which representatives of one country pay money to manipulate the representatives of another, is still a serious problem in the United States. As the world’s most powerful and interventionist nation, no other government has more influence over the rest of the world’s affairs — influence which can be bought. The recent charges against Rep. Cuellar and Sen. Mendendez show how significant of a problem bribery and undue influence has been for the U.S. congress, while also drawing attention to the ongoing efforts to prevent this corruption from continuing.

Bribes offered in exchange for political favors are nothing new in Congress. The first congressional bribery investigation on record took place in 1854, when a lobbyist attempted to bribe members of Congress into extending the patent for the Colt revolver handgun. The question of bribery across borders, however, did not receive much attention in Congress until fairly recently.

Concerns about foreign bribery emerged most forcefully in the mid-1970s as a result of the Watergate investigation and the Church Committee, which investigated abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies. These investigations identified slush funds run by large companies that could be used for illegal political donations and undisclosed foreign payments, including several U.S.-based corporations with overseas operations.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/congress-bribery/

The bribes are hidden behind those damn PACs, political action committees.

It is time to clean up the den of corruption….there is no place for it in our system.

Sadly money makes the wheels of government less squeaky and running ‘smoothly’…..as they say ‘follow the money’.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Legalized Political Bribery

I have been writing about the whole corruption thing that the Supreme Court brought about awhile back.

Here I am talking about the decision of the Supreme Court known as “Citizen United”.

This decision flung open the doors for the corruption in our political system….and made it legal.

…

the damage Republicans on the Supreme Court did to America when they legalized political bribery.

The good news is that there are numerous things Congress can do to undo the Court’s bizarre doctrine that money is the same thing as free speech and corporations have Bill of Rights freedoms and protections as “persons.”

Neither of these “rights to bribe” by the morbidly rich and corporations were recognized in the early years of our republic. Even today we’re unique among advanced democracies in holding these Supreme Court-created doctrines which underpin much if not most of today’s political corruption.

Congress has never, in the history of the United States, passed a law saying rich people buying politicians is the same thing as free speech or that corporations have a right to bribe politicians and lie to the public. To the contrary, Congress has passed hundreds of laws — which were overturned by these three Supreme Court decisions — regulating money in politics and criminalizing political corruption.

The Court’s inventing these twin doctrines has even corrupted the other two branches of government, leading today to legislative paralysis, an erosion of civil and voting rights, and widespread public cynicism.

The Executive branch of our government has done a lot of damage over the past five decades, from Nixon committing treason to blow up LBJ’s 1968 peace talks with Vietnam so he could beat VP Humphrey in that election, to Reagan’s massive tax cuts and defunding of our schools and colleges, to Bush’s two illegal and unnecessary $8 trillion wars, to Trump’s burning spies by passing classified information along to Russian intelligence while president.

The Legislative branch has also played a role in most of those fiascos and crimes, as well as the current Republican circus in the House of Representatives.

https://www.rawstory.com/amp/what-the-supreme-did-to-america-when-they-legalized-political-bribery-2659438661

Thanx to the Supreme Court has given real credence to the old say ….”the best government money can buy”.

There is no way out of this situation and it will only get worse as the money gets bigger.

Americans will remain the furthest thing from the minds of our elected officials.

If SCOTUS has legalized corruption then can we ask if the Court is corrupted?

Under the guise of the regressive legal theory of “originalism,” the United States Supreme Court Republican-appointed majority has issued a series of ultra-right rulings on such vital issues as votingrights, gerrymandering, unionorganizing, the death penalty, environmental protection, guncontrol, abortion, and campaign finance. The end goal appears to be nothing less than the dismantling of the last vestiges of the New Deal and the Civil Rights movement.

But in addition to being reactionary, is the court also guilty of corruption? The answer depends on how we define and think of corruption.

In the strictest legal sense, the justices appear to be in the clear. Under federal law, “public corruption” is defined as “a breach of the public’s trust by government officials who use their public office to obtain personal gain,” asking for or receiving anything of value in exchange for an official act. In a 2016 decision reversing the bribery conviction of former Virginia GOP Governor Bob McDonnell, the Supreme Court narrowed the legal definition of public corruption to require strict proof of a “quid pro quo”—a swap of money or another benefit in return for a specific governmental favor.

But from a larger moral and political perspective, the court’s Republican majority is far from innocent. We expect all federal judges—and particularly those at the top of the judicial pyramid—not only to be law-abiding but to be free of political bias and conflicts of interest. We expect them to honor the enormous faith we have placed in them to use their lifetime appointments to be forthright stewards of justice and democracy.

That faith has been breached time and again.

https://www.alternet.org/us-supreme-court-2659400868/

My thought is….yes they are.

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Money Well Spent

Would you like 450,000% return on your investment?

A silly question….of course you would.

Well that is the return on the bribes the Defense industry gave to Congress and all members got their blood money.

I know….I know….I bitch a lot about the M-IC but seriously (?) this is ridiculous….

Military contractors give members of Congress millions of dollars in hopes of boosting the Pentagon budget—a practice that could have a huge payoff for the next fiscal year, according to an analysis published Thursday by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

The new report reveals the industry poured about $10.2 million into 2022 campaign and political action committee (PAC) contributions for members of key committees, and contractors could see a nearly 450,000% return on that investment.

The sector gave $2,990,252 to members of the House Armed Services Committee and $7,175,092 to members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, or a total of $10,165,344 for this election cycle.

President Joe Biden requested an $813 billion Pentagon budget for fiscal year 2023. The House committee in June voted to add about $37 billion, while the Senate panel last month voted for a $45 billion increase above the White House request.

As the Public Citizen report—which relies on campaign finance data from OpenSecrets.org—explains:

Notably, the average campaign contribution from the military-industrial complex to a member of the House or Senate Armed Services Committee who voted “yes” to increase military spending for FY23 is more than triple the average campaign contribution from the military-industrial complex to those who voted “no.” Those who voted “yes” received average contributions of $151,722. Those who voted “no” received average contributions of $42,967.

The House committee’s top recipients from the past two years who recently voted to boost the Pentagon budget were Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) at $404,525; Rob Wittman (R-Va.) at $237,799; Mike Turner (R-Ohio) at $150,950; Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) at $131,000; and Elaine Luria (D-Va.) at $127,743. Rogers is the panel’s top Republican.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/07/07/weapons-industrys-10-million-investment-congress-could-yield-450000-return

You still cannot see the corruption going on?

Do you still think that you have a voice in Congress?

You do if you have millions to bribe a Congressperson….if not you are just a means to an end and have little sway over the decisions these slugs have to give.

At what point do we allow this corruption to continue?

Greed and corruption are the politics of today….and the Congress cashes (no pun intended) in….and cases in massively.

Not to worry this corruption will continue and continue….and you worry about the corruption in say Russia….look a little closer to home….you will be surprised.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is It Bribery?

Did you know that there are 535 voting members of our Congress and about 22.5 lobbyists per member…all of which have suitcases full of cash waiting to give to our members?

Now that rings up an interesting thought…at least in my mind….is that cash given to the members of Congress a bribe?

First what constitutes bribery?

Bribery refers to the offering, giving, soliciting, or receiving of any item of value as a means of influencing the actions of an individual holding a public or legal duty. This type of action results in matters that should be handled objectively being handled in a manner best suiting the private interests of the decision maker. Bribery constitutes a crime and both the offeror and the recipient can be criminally charged.

Proof of bribery requires demonstrating a “quid pro quo” relationship in which the recipient directly alters behavior in exchange for the gift. Because the relationship does not occur directly enough, campaign donations from corporations or individuals to political candidates do not constitute bribery.  (Why the Hell not?)

I have made my thoughts on this corruption for years…..

Lobbyists–The New Anti-Christ

Lobbyists: Scourge Of The Hill

Why are these people given a pass on bribery charges?

Lobbyists are professional advocates that work to influence political decisions on behalf of individuals and organizations. This advocacy could lead to the proposal of new legislation, or the amendment of existing laws and regulations. However, a lobbyist is prohibited from paying a politician to secure his or her vote on these matters.

Members of the lobbying industry have the task of representing clients — including corporations, trade groups and nonprofit organizations — and advocating on their behalf in the nation’s capital.

The relationship between lobbyists and lawmakers is complicated. On one hand, lobbyists pursue relationships with lawmakers in order to shape legislation so that it benefits clients who would be affected by new laws or regulations. On the other hand, lobbyists are frequently targeted by lawmakers as sources of campaign money, which the lobbyists feel beholden to give to improve their clients’ prospects of success.

Congresspeople make millions from people influencers….it is straight forward in my book…..

Corporations own this country and the lawmakers….so the people have very little power over the direction of this country….simply because they do not have the cash to get Congress to act on important issues that benefit the people of this country.

So is ‘lobbying’ a corrupt practice and is their ‘donation’ really just bribes hiding behind some obscure rule of thumb?

Cut any way you like to my mind it is simple….it is bribery and should be banned from the halls of Congress.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Closing Thought–18Jan22

Will SCOTUS help legalize bribery?

Sen. Ted Cruz is doing his best to see that the court does just that.

The details of Federal Election Commission v. Ted Cruz for Senate, a case that the Supreme Court will hear next Wednesday, read more like a paranoid fantasy dreamed up by leftists than like an actual lawsuit.

The case concerns federal campaign finance laws, and, specifically, candidates’ ability to loan money to their campaigns. Candidates can do so — but in 2001, Congress enacted a provision that helps prevent such loans from becoming a vehicle to bribe candidates who go on to be elected officials. Under this provision, a campaign that receives such a loan may not repay more than $250,000 worth of the loan using funds raised after the election.

When a campaign receives a pre-election donation, that donation is typically subject to strict rules preventing it from being spent to enrich the candidate. After the election has occurred, however, donors who give money to help pay off a loan from the candidate effectively funnel that money straight to the candidate — who by that point could be a powerful elected official.

A lawmaker with sufficiently clever accountants, moreover, could effectively structure such a loan to allow lobbyists and other donors to help the lawmaker directly profit from it. According to the Los Angeles Times, for example, in 1998, Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA) made a $150,000 loan to her campaign at 18 percent interest (though she later reduced that interest rate to 10 percent). As of 2009, Napolitano reportedly raised $221,780 to repay that loan — $158,000 of which was classified as “interest.”

So in 11 years, the loan reportedly earned Napolitano nearly $72,000 in profits.

https://www.vox.com/2022/1/12/22877010/supreme-court-ted-cruz-fec-campaign-finance-bribery-loan

Still a mystery on how this case will go….but knowing the track record of the Robert’s Court I am not optimistic.

Maybe now would be a good time to take on the corruption and bribery committed by lobbyists and their corporate puppet masters.

Just a passing thought on my part.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Buy Your Career

It is not something new that the wealthy buy their positions in any presidential administration….it is just a way of life in the DC or our political system.

So when I read the William Barr had gave a bunch of dollars to the GOP Senate…..I was not surprised….may be you will be……

Attorney General William Barr donated $51,000 to the committee tasked with electing Republican senators just as the Republican-led Senate began considering his nomination in late 2018.

Quartz released the details of the conveniently timed donations in a report on Thursday.

Barr occasionally made political donations to the Republican Party between 1993 and 2018.

“In the lead up to his Senate confirmation hearings for attorney general earlier this year, his giving habits suddenly changed,” Quartz reported. “Barr’s donations became far more frequent, notable for their size, recipients, and possible utility to him.”

He gave thousands to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) between November 7, 2018, and February 14 of this year, when he was confirmed. Barr’s nomination was publicly announced by Trump on December 7.

https://shareblue.com/william-barr-gave-senate-gop-cash-just-months-before-confirmation/

Again the old saying holds true….”American politics is the best government money can buy”……

And tomorrow is the big day….a former DoJ employee testifies before Congress…..and the games will begin in earnest.

“Lego Ergo Scribo”