One month ago, Eric Cantor was the highest ranking member of the House of Representatives. Now, Eric Cantor is one of the senior financial executives he railed against--while receiving millions of dollars in their lobbying money. Eric Cantor, the Republican House Majority Leader until 31 days ago, is now the Vice Chairman of Moelis & Company, a global investment bank. This is how Moelis & Company was formed. “[Ken] Moelis, Head of Banking at the UBS LA office, left to form his own firm, Moelis & Company. And he brought many of his stars with him, including Navid Mahmoodzadegan.” In 2009, UBS was fined $780 million for, according to the Department of Justice, “helping United States taxpayers open new UBS accounts in the names of sham entities… then transferring [their assets] to newly created accounts, as to which the U.S. taxpayer would not be identified as a beneficiary.” In the same month, Eric Cantor took $10,000 from UBS in campaign money. The fine came—with no exaggeration—exactly one day before he complained about AIG’s “stunning lack of accountability to the taxpayers” in the financial crisis. Again, one day after UBS pled guilty to helping Americans dodge taxes, here was Cantor: “Rewarding senior executives who created this mess is nothing short of an outrage.” One month ago, Eric Cantor was the highest ranking member of the House of Representatives. Now, Eric Cantor is one of those senior executives he railed against, who "created this mess" that is our broken economy and corrupt Congress. The only political entities Moelis & Company founder Ken Moelis has donated to in 2013 or 2014 are the National Republican Congressional Committee, Eric Cantor, or Eric Cantor’s creatively named PAC, ERICPAC. Cantor is now out of office, but he was the highest ranking Republican in the House up until one month and one day ago. This is the rule, not the exception. There is nothing stopping it from happening again, as it is surely happening right this second. This is nowhere near the end of the list for Cantor’s very public corruption. Eric Cantor’s assets were worth an estimated $3.6 million at the start of his third term in 2004. He is now worth a reported $9.3 million. Cantor received $784,650 in campaign donations from the securities and investment industries in 2013 alone. His largest donor, the Blackstone Group, is his wife’s former employer. His campaign received $908,900 from the securities and investment industries in 2011 and 2012, but his biggest donor in the 2012 cycle came from another industry entirely. Cantor accepted the most amount of campaign money ($71,650—including $10,000 in PAC money, which was the most allowed at the time) from Dominion Resources. Dominion Resources, it was announced today, won a $4.5-$5 billion bid to build a natural gas pipeline through Virginia and North Carolina. In November of last year, before he was ousted, Eric Cantor voted for and publicly applauded the passing of a bill that would expedite Dominion’s permit-seeking process and make sure ground was broken on a fracking deal, like this one, within 12 months. This was the highest ranking member of the House until last month. This is how it’s run. Congress is bought. The system is broken. It is rigged from the top down. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/cantor-congress
And before we get 4 different posts about how democrats are worse lets just agree that both parties are seriously corrupt.
Okay, now watch closely... [video=youtube;IFLa_tl4Rk0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFLa_tl4Rk0[/video]
Wikipedia says. "In the June 10, 2014, Republican primary, despite internal campaign polls placing him 30 points ahead of his opponent and his spending advantage (Cantor outspent Brat 40 to 1), Cantor lost to Tea Party candidate Dave Brat in a major upset. This made him the first sitting House majority leader to lose a primary since the position was created in 1899." When he lost, he immediately announced he'd quit his leadership post. Soon he announced he'd leave Congress before his term expired. I couldn't understand his rush to leave. Now I see that his new employer wanted him before Jan. 20, before some of his friends in high places are demoted.
America isn't over. Our political system is like an overgrown forest. We need to burn out the dead wood. Our Constitution is arguably the greatest document of political theory ever writeen. Limited government enforced by negative rights (i.e., what the government cannot do to you). Some power is given to the Federal Government, but what is not expressly written is given to the states, which become laboratories of the states. People call the Tea Party whackjobs, but an originalist interpretation is the only rational way to guarantee the individual liberties which we all desire. Put another way, the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. And vice versa.
There have been some very poor interpretations of modern issues though. The internet "rights" is my biggest concern.
Well I think the first step is campaign finance reform. [Roughly speaking] Determine the average income of a resident of each state. Every candidate after the primary is given by the state and only allowed to spend that much money (avg income) [adjusted somehow to make more sense, but uniform for each state] on a campaign for office. Or for a presidential campaign, it's a higher number, but also based on the current federal average income. Then change house of representative terms to three years, and limit their terms to three, unless they have held office in the senate, then only two terms. Senate, make a term limit of three as well, unless previous house member, than two term limit.
The first, best and only step we need to do to take the majority BS out of Washington - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_initiative
Seems like definitive proof that ex congressmen can get good jobs in the private sector. I'm not seeing any quid-pro-quo here. As representative, he publicly railed against the VC he ended up working for. Now he'll have a chance to change things from the inside. If he'd have taken campaign donations and then pushed legislation that helped the VC firm specifically, you'd have a point. The article takes a bunch of unrelated facts and makes out like there is some relationship and a bad one at that. Cantor's pay at his new job is great compared to mine, but peanuts compared to Al Gore (who is bought and paid for).
