Eleanor Holmes Norton Voicemail: Norton Asks Lobbyist for Contribution

D.C. Delegate to Congress, and privileged to use the moniker "Congresswoman" Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) called a lobbyist and left a voicemail directly and very clearly asking for a contribution sent directly to her. In the audio below, she leaves her P.O. box, so you can contribute to her also, if you want to do so.

Nancy Pelosi and Eleanor Holmes Norton

Norton seems perplexed that this particular lobbyist has never given her a contribution, and she mentions that donations have been made to other members of her committee. As a senior committee member, Norton brashly asks to paid for her "long and deep work" on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

(Isn't that the Taj Mahal Pelosi and Norton are standing in front of? I think it is. No doubt we taxpayers paid for that trip.)

BigGovernment broke this story and they some analyzation: At the beginning of the tape Norton mentions other on her committee who have received contributions from this lobbyist.

Beyond being a bit heavy-handed, where did she get this information? Such donations are listed in FEC reports, but it is a violation to use that information to solicit campaign donations.

More serious, however, is her frequent mention of her seniority and her Chairmanship of a subcommittee. She is attempting to solicit funds based on her past actions taken in her official capacity in Congress. She is implying to the lobbyist that, should he decline to donate, he will be turning down a senior member of Congress who Chairs a subcommittee highly relevant to his “sector”. 

Worse than that, she details her role overseeing a large economic development project in the District, funded by “stimulus” funds. It would appear that either the lobbyist has an interest in this project, or the Congresswoman thinks he does, as she states she is “frankly surprised” the lobbyist hasn’t given to her. Especially, she notes, because of her long and deep work …in fact it has been by major work on the committee and subcommittee it’s been essentially in your sector

According to BigGovernment, it is a misdemeanor to ask for a "reward" via a contribution (18 U.S.C. § 600),  and a misdemeanor to threaten to deny anyone government benefit if a contribution is not made (18 U.S.C. § 601).
Then there are House Ethics rules that she seems to have breached.

p. 147: “[N]o solicitation of a campaign or political contribution may be linked to an action taken or to be taken by a Member … in his or her official capacity. … The Standards Committee has long advised Members … that they should always exercise caution to avoid even the appearance that solicitations of campaign contributions are connected in any way with an action taken or to be taken in their official capacity. … 

p. 150: “[A] Member may not accept any contribution that is linked with an action that the Member has taken or is being asked to take. A corollary of these rules is that Members … are not to take or withhold any official action on the basis of the campaign contributions or support of the involved individuals 

It is considered unethical to solicit funds on federal property. From where did she make the call? As a "delegate," Norton can sit in the House chamber, but can only vote in committee. Norton, of course, is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus.

The Lonely Conservative acknowledges "crooked" Democrats as the norm, but asks if the party will "mind one that's crooked and stupid?" I don't think they will, LC. Maxine Waters and Hank Johnson are still around.

Read the entire text of the phone call at BigGovernment, along with more on the corruption, and listen to it below.


Eleanor Holmes Norton Call to Lobbyist (video)

Adrienne's Corner
RightPundits - some good commentary
TheHotJoints

Maxine Waters Blames Bush for Ethics Woes

Maxine Waters, following the strategy of Charlie Rangel, held a rambling 90-minute press conference at a time when the House of Representatives is on hiatus. Waters is defending herself on charges of inappropriately intervening with the U.S. Treasury on behalf of her husband and OneUnitedBank in which he owns stock. Waters said she had to do it because the Treasury (in the Bush administration) would not schedule the appointment without her influence.

Maxine Waters

Waters' defense:

"The question at this point should not be why I called Secretary Paulson, but why I had to," she said. "The question at this point should be why a trade association representing over 100 minority banks could not get a meeting at the height of the crisis."

OneUnitedBank received $12 million of the requested $50 million TARP bailout.

Maxine's grandson, Mikael Moore, is her Chief-of-Staff and it seems his emails are a point of contention with the Ethics Committee. 

The report highlights e-mails Moore sent and received from OneUnited executives and suggests Waters should not have allowed him to send them when her family had a specific financial stake in the bank. The congresswoman has said she was aiding a group of minority banks that includes OneUnited.

Waters did not attend the eventual meeting between Treasury and the National Banking Association, but here grandson and Chief-of-Staff did.

The Washington Post wryly says (or maybe not so wryly) this scandal is "not expected to affect her ability to win reelection in her heavily Democratic district." Can we blame her habitual presence in The People's House on George W. Bush?

More on Maxine Waters:
Bulldoze Maxine Waters and her Housing and Community Opportunity Subcommittee
The Genius of Maxine Waters

Bulldoze Maxine Waters and her Housing and Community Opportunity Subcommittee

An ethics watchdog is calling for Maxine Waters to give up her chairmanship of the Housing and Community Opportunity subcommittee. The House Ethics Committee says they will charge Waters with ethics violations for her cozy relationship with U.S. Treasury officials and the National Bankers Association involving the minority-owned bank, OneUnited Bank. Waters' husband served on the bank Board of Directors, was a "significant" shareholder. OneUnited received $12 million in TARP monies and donated $12,500 to Maxine's election campaign war chest.

Maxine Waters

Maxine is the Chairwoman of the Housing and Community Opportunity subcommittee of the House Banking and Finance Committee. She controls a type of housing affirmative action. Here is a portion of what Maxine's subcommittee does:

Committee Democrats place a high priority on fighting discrimination and expanding homeownership opportunities for minorities, low-income families, and those living in rural, urban and under-served areas. They support strong fair housing enforcement, the preservation of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA),

The CRA, a program mainly devised to make home loans to people perceived to have been discriminated against, and to force lenders to make loans considered riskier than usual, is the direct line to the housing market crisis. CRA likes to be known as enforcing fair lending standards. As Maxine crowed that Fannie Mae, especially, was as sound as could be, the house of cards came tumbling down, and none of it affected Ms. Waters and her husband Sydney Williams.

From Michelle Malkin via The Wall Street Journal:

Waters (along with Rep. Frank) participated directly in pressuring the feds for OneUnited’s piece of the bailout pie. She personally contacted the Treasury Department last December requesting $50 million for the company– and failed to disclose her ties to the bank to them. The government ended up coughing up $12 million in TARP funding for OneUnited — despite another government agency rapping the bank in October 2008 for “operating without effective underwriting standards and practices,” “operating without an effective loan documentation program” and “engaging in speculative investment practices.”

And directly from Malkin:

Oh, and get this: The favored bank of Maxine Waters was also penalized for alleged excessive executive compensation. The FDIC ordered the bank to “sell all bank-owned automobiles,” require reimbursement for executives’ car purchases (according to the Boston Business Journal, OneUnited CEO Kevin Cohee was cruising around in a 2008 Porsche SUV), and cease payments on a $6 million Santa Monica beachfront home purchased by Cohee, his wife who served as bank president, and others.

Responding to scrutiny of the bank’s special treatment, Cohee is now accusing critics of — yep, you guessed it — racism.

From LewRockwell.com 

The thousands of mortgage defaults and foreclosures in the "subprime" housing market (i.e., mortgage holders with poor credit ratings) is the direct result of thirty years of government policy that has forced banks to make bad loans to un-creditworthy borrowers. The policy in question is the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which compels banks to make loans to low-income borrowers and in what the supporters of the Act call "communities of color" that they might not otherwise make based on purely economic criteria.

The original lobbyists for the CRA were the hardcore leftists who supported the Carter administration and were often rewarded for their support with government grants and programs like the CRA that they benefited from. These included various "neighborhood organizations," as they like to call themselves, such as "ACORN" (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). These organizations claim that over $1 trillion in CRA loans have been made, although no one seems to know the magnitude with much certainty. A U.S. Senate Banking Committee staffer told me about ten years ago that at least $100 billion in such loans had been made in the first twenty years of the Act.

While the House Ethics Committee makes a shallow show of determining whether Maxine Waters, her relationships and receipts were illegal, let us think about razzing the Housing and Community Opportunity subcommittee. If we take back the House, can we do that? The first video below shows the timeline of the housing meltdown and the second is Maxine Waters saying "we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly at Fannie Mae...."See links to background below the video.



Financial and Housing Meltdown Timeline (video)


Maxine Waters No Crisis at Fannie or Freddie Under the leadership of Barney Frank's boyfriend, Franklin Raines (video)

Related and Background:

Tracking the Mess of Fannie and Freddie
Three Ways the CRA Pushed Countrywide to Lower Lending Standards

The above article says CRA regulators believed the lax lending practices were the wave of the future, democratizing the glories of home ownership. 

Video of Maxine Waters saying the government will take over and run all the oil companies

Charlie Rangels War: Rangel Negotiating or On Trial?

Apparently Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) is trying to negotiate a way out of the thirteen ethics violations he is charged with, even as the trial is underway. Reports are varied. Some say he struck a deal, others say they don't think so, but as news pops up by the minute, it seems today there is no deal.

Charlie Rangel

After pushing his opportunity to negotiate to the limits, House investigators "read out the thirteen alleged violations of ethics and federal law...." Here's a synopsis:

The charges involve four areas: Mr. Rangel’s solicitation of contributions to a school to be named in his honor at City College of New York; his errors and omissions on his House financial disclosure forms; his acceptance of rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem, including one for his campaign office; and his failure to report and pay taxes on rental income on a beach villa he owns in the Dominican Republic.

To add to the confusion, Rangel was not present when his misdeeds were publicly named. If he has cut a deal, it is not clear how many of the thirteen charges he has agreed to acknowledge.

The Democrat was trying to thread the needle by admitting to misconduct while insisting it was not on purpose, sources said.

His attempts to save his own skin by dragging out the negotiations infuriated many of his Democratic colleagues, some of whom said he was operating under the delusion that he might recapture the Ways and Means Committee chairmanship he was forced to give up last spring.

"If he were to be cleared, then it might have been possible, even in a lame duck session after the elections, to get it back," a source said, noting that Rangel always said giving up his gavel was temporary.

Rangel was hoping to convince probers that he did not deliberately avoid paying taxes, hide assets or trade legislative favors for donations to City College's planned Rangel Center, the sources said.

Read background on Rangel's culture of corruption here.

Rasmussen Survey Tea Party Understands Issues Better than Congress

Rasmussen reports that 52% of U.S. voters believe the average member of the Tea Party movement has a better understanding of the issues facing America today than the average member of Congress, and they believe Tea Party members are more ethical.

Tea Parties on the Issues

Not that Congress cares, of course:

When it comes to those issues, 47% think that their own political views are closer to those of the average Tea Party member than to the views of the average member of Congress. On this point, 26% feel closer to Congress.

Finally, 46% of voters say that the average Tea Party member is more ethical than the average member of Congress. Twenty-seven percent (27%) say that the average member of Congress is more ethical.

 Tea Parties on Socialism

Scott Rasmussen, author of a new book In Search of Self-Governance, says:

“The gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and politicians who want to rule over them may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century,”

Listen up Karl Rove, John Cornyn, Newt Gingrich, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, even 28% of Democrats say their own views are closer to the average member of the Tea Party, and:

On all questions, Republicans overwhelming prefer the Tea Party. Unaffiliated voters also prefer the Tea Party by wide margins...

...a plurality of women prefer the Tea Party over Congress on every question in the survey. 

Welcome news - sort of a nah na, nah na, nah nah moment.

Lunching with Obama: Executives Asked for Credit Card

Visiting industry CEO's dined over lunch with President Obama in his private dining room recently. They were asked for their credit card and were charged for their lunch. It begs the question: Did Sgt. Crowley and Henry Gates pay for their beers? Did they pay for the President's beers?

Around the table with Barack Obama that afternoon were Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox Corporation; Muhtar Kent, CEO of The Coca-Cola Company; AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson; and Honeywell International CEO Dave Cote.
“From time to time, White House guests are asked to reimburse for their, meals the reasons include ensuring there is no conflict or appearance of a conflict,” said White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki. “That is consistent with our tough ethics rules and we will continue the practice when appropriate.”

Tough ethics? Bwwwwaaaaahahahahahahaaaaaaa! What ethics? If you think it a cheap-shot to note the lack of ethics but not list the lack of ethics, my apologies. We've talked about them ad nauseum. Let's move on and just acknowledge what we know in our head and see with our eyes.