Washington's “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2010

Interesting list.

We should have an S2 list of fraudulent posters.

 

Yeah, right. I look at the right side and I see

 

According to MediaTransparency, itself a subsidiary of the progressive Media Matters for America, "Judicial Watch is essentially a tool of Richard Mellon Scaife, who provides almost all its funding."

Scaife is identified with his contributions to conservative and libertarian causes. The Washington Post dubbed him "funding father of the Right" in 1999.

Richard Mellon Scaife (born July 3, 1932) is an American newspaper publisher and billionaire.

Scaife owns and publishes the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. With $1.2 billion, Scaife, a principal heir to the Mellon banking, oil, and aluminum fortune, is No. 283 on the 2005 Forbes 400.

Scaife is also known for his financial support of conservative and right-wing public policy organizations over the past four decades. He has provided support for conservative and libertarian causes in the U.S., mostly through the private, nonprofit foundations he controls: the Sarah Scaife Foundation, Carthage Foundation, and Allegheny Foundation, and until 2001, the Scaife Family Foundation, now controlled by his daughter Jennie and son David.[1][2] Scaife also helped fund the Arkansas Project, which ultimately led to the impeachment proceedings of President Bill Clinton.

Scaife's interest in politics was influenced by several factors.
His father served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II and the family lived in Washington, D.C. for a time. (The various functional units of the OSS were reconstituted in 1947 as the Central Intelligence Agency; see How the OSS became the CIA in the OSS article.)
He was influenced by Robert Duggan, his sister Cordelia's fiance who later became her husband. Scaife worked on Duggan's political campaigns and Duggan was twice elected Allegheny County District Attorney. Duggan helped Scaife become a committeeman in the Allegheny County Republican Party in 1956. In 1974, however, Duggan killed himself with a shotgun, hours before he was indicted by a grand jury for income tax evasion and racketeering.
Scaife involved himself in the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, with whom his mother was acquainted.

The inherited Mellon fortune allowed Scaife to pursue his political activism. In 1965, when Sarah Scaife died, Scaife inherited not only financial increase but also a new influence over the family foundations.

Scaife gained notoriety for making an end-run around weak campaign finance laws to donate US$990,000 to the 1972 re-election campaign of U.S. President Richard Nixon. Scaife was not charged with a crime, but about $45,000 went to a fund linked to the Watergate scandal.



According to campaignmoney.com, from 1999 through 2006, Scaife has, under the name "R. Scaife," made 10 contributions of over $200 to political campaigns, for a total of $19,000. Under the name "R.M. Scaife" he made 4 donations, for a total of $22,000. Under the name Richard Scaife, he made 23 donations over this period, for a total of $142,904. Besides donations to the Republican National Committee and various political campaigns such as Santorum 2000 and the Santorum Victory Committee for Rick Santorum, he has also supported Political Action Committees such as the Pro-Growth Action Team, the Free Congress PAC (formerly: Committee For the Survival Of a Free Congress), and the Club For Growth Inc. PAC. Scaife also funded the Western Journalism Center, headed by Joseph Farah. He was named to the PoliticsPA list of "Pennsylvania's Top Political Activists."

Scaife's publications were substantially involved in coverage against then-President Bill Clinton.
Scaife was the major backer of The American Spectator, whose Arkansas Project set out to find facts about Clinton and in which Paula Jones' accusations of sexual harassment against Clinton were first widely publicized.
In a 1999 series of articles on Scaife and foundations that support conservative causes, the Washington Post named a close Scaife associate, Richard Larry, and not Scaife himself as the man who drove the Arkansas Project[16][17]

Regardless of his role, the project not only accused Clinton of financial and sexual indiscretions (some later verified, others not), but also gave root to conspiracist notions that the Clintons collaborated with the CIA to run a drug smuggling operation out of the town of Mena, Arkansas and that Clinton had arranged for the murder of White House aide Vince Foster as part of a coverup of the Whitewater scandal. The possibility that money from the project had been given to former Clinton associate David Hale, a witness in the Whitewater investigation, led to the appointment of Michael J. Shaheen as a special investigator. Shaheen subpoenaed Scaife, who testified before a federal grand jury in the matter.

On 8. February 1999 former military intelligence specialist turned progressive writer Steve Kangas committed suicide less than 60 feet from Scaife's office door inside the One Oxford Center, Pittsburgh. He had been an outspoken critic of Scaife and believed that Scaife-funded initiatives posed a danger to the nation. Scaife hired Rex Armistead and a reporter from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review to investigate whether or not Kangas had been out to kill Scaife. Conspiracy theories concerning the death of Kangas continued to flourish in the period afterwards, with some commentators noting the irony when compared with Scaife's own material support of conspiracy theories regarding the suicide of Vince Foster.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife

Maybe a guy who helped finance Watergate, chose as a mentor a felonious District Attorney who was guilty of tax evasion and racketeering, bought his way out of a campaign financing charge, and is suspected of offing his chief critic and making it look like a suicide, shouldn't throw stones.

 

That was post number 10,000!

Maris, you will always be my buddy, no matter how far you stray. By the way, I just passed a milestone myself, and it has to do with the evil number 6.

 

It amounts to getting rid of the dead weight losers who have managed to make the entire world hate America.

 

Despite having met scores of homeowners who have lost their homes to foreclosure, I have never met one who could not afford the home when they bought it, under the contract terms as they were verbally explained to them by their lender or mortgage broker.

In Oregon, Realtors do not give financial advice to clients unless they want to lose their license. Ever. Under any circumstances.

Mortgage brokers and banks do that. During the boom, MOST major banks and many mortgage brokers operated illegally and flat out lied to buyers about hidden rate increases, pre-payment penalties, and where the market was bound to be heading.

People lose their homes because of fraud by banks/lenders, because they lose their income due to the Bush crash, or due to sudden unsurmountable debt (almost always medical expenses).

I have never heard of anyone who blames their Realtor for the loss of their home.

Realtors don't "get people into homes". We find them their dream home, hopefully, and then it's up to other professionals in the lending, home inspection, appraisal, and insurance fields to "get them in". In Oregon, just as with Oregon Realtors, these professionals all have stringent rules and laws they must follow or face prosecution.

 

This isn't news. A comparison to Bush era stats would be news. I see no statement that Obama is worse than Bush.

Carter was an idealist. Republicans ridiculed his choices and hustled him out of office. By the time of Clinton, Democrats played Republican realpolitik. No more ethical self-limiting on campaign contributions, as had been common to Democrats which caused them to lose races. Your article's writer feels some kind of entitlement to Democrats being more ethical than Republicans in such matters. That line of criticism is way passe.

 

You Republicans (PapaG does this too) claim that Democrats promise to be more ethical than Republicans. I just answered that in the 2nd paragraph of my last post.

Here is the pattern: During races, I never read of the Democrat claiming to be more ethical than his opponent. A year later I often see on a conservative site, an article showing how Democrats have been no more ethical than Republicans for the last year but look, they promised to be better. Yet no such promises were printed before the election (to avoid giving Democrats some extra votes from religious voters? Or simply because such promises were never made?), and the reader is left thinking, to what promises is this article referring?

 

link?

 

If Republicans are so moral, why did they prevent the Ethics committee from operating while they had the majority in the 2000s? When the Democrats regained their usual majority, Pelosi immediately reinstated it (she had to fight Republican leadership to do so), and it went after Democrat Rangel. Are you jealous of Pelosi's record on ethics or something?

 

There most certainly were. Articles about each Republican scandal plaintively mentioned that with no functioning Ethics Committee, investigation would be limited to the legal system, not Congressional investigation. Republicans would gloat, "No one has proved he did anything illegal, so nothing will come of it." Rangel, Weiner, etc. did nothing prosecutable, either, but are out because of Pelosi bringing back the committee.

No, I'm implying that