The financial scandal that dogged Rep. John Murtha until his death in February has reached a climatic point following the arrest Thursday of a former aide to the Pennsylvania Democrat. But as the case sparks comparisons to the infamous Jack Abramoff scandal, the story has yet to generate as much attention.
Paul Magliocchetti, the owner of a now-closed lobbying firm that represented defense clients, was arrested Thursday on charges of making hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions.
The charges against Magliocchetti, brought in federal court in Alexandria, Va., included making false statements to the Federal Election Commission.
But the coverage of Magliocchetti has drawn scant media coverage. By comparison, the Abramoff scandal, which involved Republican lawmakers, captured national attention.
Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the Media Research Center, noted that the Washington Post ran a front page story Friday on the Magliocchetti, but he slammed the broadcast news stations and newsweeklies for not offering as much prominent coverage.
"They're not going to do anything that would put a Democratic member of Congress on the cover of a magazine," he said. "They run in a pack and the pack isn't mindless. They have a narrative they want and they're going to stick to it."
Abramoff was sentenced in 2006 to nearly six years for a fraudulent Florida casino deal and got a four-year sentence in 2008 for conspiring to defraud the U.S., corrupting public officials and defrauding his clients in a separate case.
Even Abamoff's release from prison in June has generated more media coverage. Abramoff landed a job at Tov Pizza, a kosher pizzeria in Baltimore soon after his release.
Graham said "it's very easy for a partisan media" to largely ignore the Magliocchetti case.
"Too difficult. Congressman dead. No one cares," he said. But he added "there's elements that could make a compelling television news story but they just don't want to do it."
As part of his plea deal, Abramoff cooperated in a long-running Justice Department investigation that led to the convictions of former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles and several top Capitol Hill aides.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/07/2010 10:52 ||
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#1
We already knew(Thank You Rantburg) That the media mis represented Democrat's Ills and Magnified Republican,s.
This is only proof if people know about it, otherwise it falls "Under the Radar" which is the entire intention.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/07/2010 12:30 Comments ||
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Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $36 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.
Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs.
Under director Rajiv Shah, the United States Agency for International Development will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
08/07/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Couple this news with plans for Government Motors to build and open a new plant that will create thousands of new jobs... in Mexico.
#5
That is just frickin' unbelievable. The revolution begins now. Frickin' traitors. If not now...when?
Posted by: Black Charlie Chinemble5313 ||
08/07/2010 0:47 Comments ||
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#6
From the comments...
I emailed them regarding this article, This is their response:
Thank you for your e-mail to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The United States has a long history of extending a helping hand to those overseas struggling to make a better life, recovering from a disaster or striving to live in a free and democratic country. This caring stands as a hallmark of the United States around the world -- and shows our true character as a nation. U.S. foreign assistance has always had the twofold purpose of furthering America's foreign policy interests in expanding democracy and free markets while improving the lives of the citizens of the developing world. Spending less than 1 percent of the federal budget, USAID works around the globe to achieve these goals. USAID plays a vital role in promoting U.S. national security, foreign policy, and the War on Terrorism. It does so by addressing poverty fueled by lack of economic opportunity, one of the root causes of violence today. As stated in the President's National Security Strategy, USAID's work in development joins diplomacy and defense as one of three key pieces of the nation's foreign policy apparatus. USAID promotes peace and stability by fostering economic growth, protecting human health, providing emergency humanitarian assistance, and enhancing democracy in developing countries. These efforts to improve the lives of millions of people worldwide represent U.S. values and advance U.S. interests for peace and prosperity. Sincerely,USAID Information Center
#7
"Private Partners".....? Another Bill and Melinda Gates business development opportunity no doubt. Buggering USAID would be the FIRST thing to be discontinued under a Besoeker administration.
#8
The United States has a long history of extending a helping hand to those overseas struggling to make a better life.
It would be nice if they looked inward to helping Americans, because if they-meaning the feds- dont then the rest of this email will have dire realities.
But then USAID Is like the ACLU and CAIR, they care little to nothing about the average American and more about their agenda of tearing America down...
Posted by: 49 Pan in UAE ||
08/07/2010 2:13 Comments ||
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#9
I know a lot of unemployed and underemployed IT people. This is treason, the people that came up with and executed this policy should be executed themselves. Up against the wall, no mercy. Using our tax dollars to destroy our economy, what arrogant assholes.
State Department should be cleaned out with a flamethrower.
#10
lack of economic opportunity, one of the root causes of violence today.
And we see a severe lack of this in the US developing... I wonder if those bright boys have done the math yet on what happens when Americans go "freedom fighter"?
As guerillas, we are hard core - ask the British. As terrorists we are a damned sight more effective than the bloody Muhammadans - ask McVeigh's victims. And we hold the grudges hard and long - visit Gettysburg for what happens when the US gets fired up against itself.
These bureaucrats and insider politicians and elitists in DC should be rounded up an summarily executed before they bring ruin to us all.
A gentle reminder to help protect Fred and this site by avoiding overt calls at the Burg for violence against US officials. No matter how deserved they may be.
#14
I bought a new router yesterday. The router was made in China. I ran into some setup problems. I got a guy in the Philippines to walk me through it. We wonder why we don't have jobs in this country. We regulate the hell out of our industries (what's left) but we are limited in regulation of foreign exporters to the U.S. So we are tying the hands of U.S. manufacturers. These are jobs which could get us out of the employment problems we got. What is the real cost of cheap labor?
#18
@tu i hear ya my wife is in the IT field and is currnetly laid off . She just about threw up when i showed her this article.
Posted by: chris ||
08/07/2010 12:23 Comments ||
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#19
Funny how the upper crust is _sure_ they don't need American workers to do IT, but they're all absolutely sure they'll be better than the average Hakka at managing a business!
#20
That's why I was asking the other day how much it would cost to buy a four bedroom, three bath, three car garage, two-story, 2500 square foot home in Bangalore. Instead of the US granting H1-B visas to foreign workers to come to the United States, we're going to have India granting similar types of visas for Americans to go to work in India. Mrs. Uluque will miss her family and friends but it might be interesting to work in an environment where hard work, brains and initiative are respected and rewarded.
I'm kidding, or course, Mrs. Uluque won't even let me leave San Diego. Er, at least as long as I can keep my job. But it doesn't really sound all that far fetched anymore. Our politicians are willing to let our computer industry go the way of textiles. Morons. Criminals.
#21
The worst part is the strategic vulnerability this will bring to the US, becasue IT skills are vital as a force multiplier. That's where my charge of "treason" comes into play - why are we not building up our capabilities with this money instead of pissing it away overseas on people that will take jobs - and SKILLS - out of the country?
For my use of the word "execute" let me supply some context - its meant to be in the context of "after a trial for treason" once the Republic begins to collapse under the weight of these sorts of actions, not meant as "assassinate" extra-judicially. I don't want Fred to be in trouble.
Best course of action is to clean out State Dept and DC with the ballot box while we still can, otherwise it will eventually fall to the ammo box, with all the horrible bloodshed and anarchy that implies (note: Gettysburg, McVeigh, etc).
#22
I'm with you, OldSpook. We have one chance - this November - of stopping mob rule at the ballot box. After that, as you said, there's only one option. Between cutting the PORK and the OUTRIGHT GRAFT from the Federal budget, there are about 40 government offices that need to be closed, and some 270 more that need to be reduced in size and consolidated into about a dozen - if that many. My major concern is there isn't enough rope in DC, and we may have to make an emergency order to India to finish the job.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
08/07/2010 19:05 Comments ||
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#23
The only way to ensure the government cannot exceed its designed powers is to reduce the size of it. Starve the beast. Nearly to death. This will destroy a lot of what's wrong - along with a few things that are not wrong.
Se we need to be prepared as individuals to pick up the slack when we starve parts of it that are needed for keeping some people from going under - Charity begins at home, and we need to bring back that virtue instead of delegating it to the government. Personally give a private hand up, instead of government handout.
#25
No way. The decks that are flooded are filled with those who believed FDR and not the Founders. They're dying rapidly. And ultimately the boat will right itself and go on to greater glory. But perhaps not until we have made our final contribution to righting it.
One New York representative said he could not make it because he had to march in a local firefighters parade. Another said that, as much as she wanted to go, she had to visit family out of town. Yet another just sent his regrets, saying he would be traveling that day in Connecticut.
It was supposed to be the grandest New York political party of the year: a rousing birthday tribute to the powerful dean of the states Congressional delegation, Representative Charles B. Rangel, a Democrat from Harlem.
Organizers reserved the gilded main ballroom at the Plaza Hotel, booked Aretha Franklin to serenade Mr. Rangel and sent out an elaborate video invitation featuring a testimonial from Bill Clinton (who, as it happens, was also invited but said he had to be in Arkansas that day).
But far from being a moment of celebration, the gala, planned for next week, is becoming a painful and public embarrassment for the 80-year-old congressman, and a brutal test of friendships and loyalties that are decades old.
High-profile guests have either bailed out or are publicly agonizing about whether to show up at all. In a striking illustration of the discomfort coursing through political circles over Mr. Rangels soiree, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he did not know if the party was still on when asked recently if he would attend.
I dont know what the facts are, Mr. Bloomberg said. I was planning to go, but....
It is a humbling experience for Mr. Rangel, a proud and pugnacious man in his 20th term in Congress. Even at the depths of a two-year Congressional investigation into his conduct, he has been largely spared public rebuke in his hometown, where he is widely regarded as an institution and is still hailed as a hero on the streets of Harlem.
It is hurtful to him, said H. Carl McCall, a close friend of Mr. Rangels and a former New York State comptroller. He is frustrated.
For those who sought to honor the congressman, the snubs and equivocations are infuriating. They point out that Mr. Rangel has been very generous to many of the Democratic lawmakers now turning away from him, that he campaigned for them, raised money for them and offered counsel to them, even in tough times.
Loyalty counts, Mr. McCall said. They have to live with the fact that they were helped, but when somebody else needed help, they were not there.
The shrinking guest list is perhaps the most stinging measure of how far Mr. Rangels standing has tumbled in the months since the House of Representatives began investigating him for alleged financial improprieties.
Last week, a committee laid out the evidence behind 13 charges of ethics violations, including failure to pay taxes and asking lobbyists and corporations for millions of dollars in donations for a college center to be built in his honor. Rather than settle the case, Mr. Rangel has vowed to fight in an unusual public trial.
To many of his colleagues, the timing of his birthday party, which will double as a campaign fund-raiser, could not be worse, coming as many of the lawmakers face a hostile campaign climate. Several are privately fuming that Mr. Rangel is forcing them to choose between their gratitude to him and their shot at re-election.
Republicans, and even some Democratic challengers, are making the gala an issue. On the Upper East Side, Reshma Saujani, a Democratic candidate for Congress, criticized Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, who was on the partys host committee, for planning to attend.
These 13 charges against Congressman Rangel are serious allegations, not cause for a lavish birthday celebration, and our elected officials should not be joining him, Ms. Saujani said in a statement from her campaign.
A few hours after the statement was issued, aides to Ms. Maloney let it be known she would not attend, citing a family commitment in Virginia. I wish I could be at his birthday party, Ms. Maloney said in an interview, adding that her plans to skip the event had nothing to do with the ethics charges.
Some of her colleagues are being less diplomatic. When asked why he would not attend, Representative Michael E. McMahon of Staten Island, a freshman Democrat in a conservative-leaning district that Republicans are eyeing, responded: All I am saying is I sent my regrets and I will be out of town. Thats my answer.
Explanations for why others will not show ranged from the plausible to the strained. Take Representative John Hall, a Democrat from the northern suburbs of New York City, who has attended a birthday party for Mr. Rangel in the past but is facing a potentially tough race in the fall.
He said he would appear at a high-profile event in his district that day: the Fire Department parade in South Salem, a hamlet of 7,000 people.
Its too bad the party is scheduled for the same day of the parade, Mr. Hall said. This was scheduled way in advance.
Representative Edolphus Towns, a Brooklyn Democrat, will be just across the border, at a fund-raiser in Connecticut, but aides said it would be impossible for him to make it back in time.
Several prominent Democrats simply refuse to say whether they will attend generally a signal that they will not. Aides to Andrew M. Cuomo, the state attorney general and the leading Democratic candidate for governor, threw up their hands, saying he had not finalized his schedule even though the party is five days away.
Asked repeatedly if Senator Charles E. Schumer would make it, his aides declined to comment.
Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television and chairman of the event, said the wavering invitees needed to search their conscience.
There is no reason for them not to show up, Mr. Johnson said. He complained about what he called sunshine patriots now abandoning Mr. Rangel, saying: When Charlie is riding on top, they are there. But when there is a cloud overhead, they dont show up.
Mr. Rangel clearly does not want to discuss the no-shows and the might-not-shows. Asked about them on Thursday after an event in Harlem, he said tartly, Well, its not a birthday party for them really; its for me. (His actual birthday falls on June 11.)
There is no question the congressman has been kind to his colleagues in the delegation. Since 1989, he has showered $250,000 in campaign money on New York members.
The party is a much-anticipated annual rite, usually drawing huge crowds of elected officials, business leaders and celebrities (including Tony Bennett and Chevy Chase). The Clintons are regulars. The retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark was the special guest at Mr. Rangels 75th. The congressman generally makes brief remarks, then mingles for hours.
Of course, this year was supposed to be especially memorable, because many believe Mr. Rangel is in the final stretch of his career.
And still, many luminaries will appear. Aides to Mr. Bloomberg said Thursday that he was simply confused in his earlier response and would, in fact, show.
So will Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand; Representative Jerrold Nadler; the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn; and Gov. David A. Paterson, a friend and Harlem neighbor of Mr. Rangel.
We have had a strong response, and we think its going to be a good party, said Bob Liff, a spokesman for the Rangel campaign.
A few lawmakers scoffed at the notion that Mr. Rangel was being deserted. Representative Anthony D. Weiner, who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens, said many of his colleagues were overbooked during the August recess, traditionally a time when they crisscrossed their districts. I would not read too much into the attendance of members of Congress, he said.
Is Mr. Weiner going? He made no promises.
My August days and nights are just jammed, he said. I will do everything I can to get there.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that Jesus's Golden Rule inspired him to vote to confirm Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court and suggested it would be a good thing for his Senate colleagues to also ponder Jesus's words as they prepared to vote on Kagan.
"It is divine in its orientation, and it is probably something that would serve us all well if we thought about it at moments such as this," Sen. Graham said on the Senate floor, as he pointed his colleagues to the Golden Rule and counseled them to look to the wisdom of "somebody far wiser than I am" as they cast their votes on Kagan.
As an associate counsel in the Clinton White House, Kagan was an architect of the legal and political strategy that President Bill Clinton used in vetoing the ban on partial-birth abortion. Her nomination by President Barack Obama in May was instantly endorsed by Planned Parenthood, one of the nation's leading advocates of legalized abortion.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/07/2010 10:48 ||
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#1
Not scrappleface or the onion! Graham's a truly unique piece of sh*t.
#2
A vote to put a woman who has never so much as judged a pie-eating contest onto the Supreme Court of the United States for life has exactly WHAT to do with "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?"
#4
...as he pointed his colleagues to the Golden Rule and counseled them to look to the wisdom of "somebody far wiser than I am" as they cast their votes on Kagan.
I have six year old neices and nephews who are far wiser than he is...
#5
and some of you guys think things will change after November! Sure, change is inevitable in any case. Whether the US electorate will act in its own best interest, is another question entirely.
#10
I wonder.... the Senate must "advise and consent". Is there anything to prevent the Senate from later rescinding it's consent? Hasn't been done as far as I know, but is it technically feasible?
#11
The Constitution provides for the impeachment of any federal judge for 'bad behavior'. What constitutes bad behavior? Well, if we take the 'progressive' approach to the Constitution, it would be anything Congress wanted it to be. I'm sure the 'social justice' loving judicial class would have a cow if it wasn't anything but the strictest precedent so far acted upon.
#14
Maybe not Glenmore, but I would prefer a "judge AND jury of my peers" not some fringe, activist championing her personal causes and crusades. I think we're enjoying quite enough of that thanks to the Clinton legacy of appointments.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that Jesus's Golden Rule inspired him to vote to confirm Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court and suggested it would be a good thing for his Senate colleagues to also ponder Jesus's words as they prepared to vote on Kagan.
