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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Because of wow. / How Corrupt Are These Guys?

How Corrupt Are These Guys?

by John Cole|  August 27, 20187:39 am| 55 Comments

This post is in: Because of wow., Dolt 45

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I looked over that list of potential investigations that Anne Laurie posted below, and one thing stuck out:

WILBUR ROSS LIED REPEATEDLY UNDER OATH IN HIS CONFIRMATION HEARING AND HAS COMMITTED WHO KNOWS HOW MANY FINANCIAL CRIMES AND IT DOES NOT EVEN MAKE THE TOP OF THE LIST.

Sweet jesus.

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55Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    August 27, 2018 at 7:44 am

    We’re going to need a longer list.

  2. 2.

    montanareddog

    August 27, 2018 at 8:00 am

    I think it is tactically-wise that the Democrat leadership is trying to suppress talk, pe-mid terms, of impeachment of Trump. But, if they do regain the house majority, they should go hammer and tongs after the likes of Ross including impeachment. Make the Senate Republicans go on record of not impeaching a cabinet officer who perjured himself in testimony to the Senate

  3. 3.

    raven

    August 27, 2018 at 8:02 am

    John at this time of day?? Well shut my mouth.

  4. 4.

    Kay

    August 27, 2018 at 8:09 am

    Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said half a million of the fake comments originated from Russian email addresses. She said the issue with the FCC comments calls into question the integrity of the entire public comment process, across the government.

    It is just an amazing coincidence how often the policy position of the Russian government is identical to the policy position of the Trump Administration.

  5. 5.

    sherparick

    August 27, 2018 at 8:21 am

    And 42% of the country is okay with it all as long as ICE is on the rampage, Blacks are told to get to the back of the line, and they get a Supreme Court that will reverse Roe, Griswold, and Oberfell, and perhaps even Lawrence. And so it goes.

  6. 6.

    montanareddog

    August 27, 2018 at 8:24 am

    @sherparick: Loving vs Virginia, too.

  7. 7.

    satby

    August 27, 2018 at 8:33 am

    How Corrupt Are These Guys?

    More corrupt than most normal people could even imagine.

  8. 8.

    sherparick

    August 27, 2018 at 8:38 am

    On the same theme, a story about Republicans in the Virginia, those great defenders of the “integrity” of the ballots, apparently were using ghosts and forgery to get an a “Black” Independent on the ballot (she had been the Democratic nominee in 2016, but is facing charges in Federal court for defrauding the Government on a summer meal program for children (first trial ended as a hung jury). Taylor, the Republican candidate, said his staffers had helped her because they thought the Democrats had treated her “unfairly.” Right. Local paper shows what actual reporters do. http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/08/great-virginia-2nd-congressional-district-rattus-rattus-intercourse-caper

    Also, they should change out the Republican animal symbol, replacing the Elephant with a Rat.

  9. 9.

    debit

    August 27, 2018 at 8:43 am

    @sherparick:

    Also, they should change out the Republican animal symbol, replacing the Elephant with a Rat.

    A rat fucking something.

  10. 10.

    clay

    August 27, 2018 at 8:44 am

    @montanareddog: Hell, why not thrown in Brown v BoE? I’m sure John Roberts will not that “our country has changed” and such “extraordinary measures are not longer justified.”

  11. 11.

    Kay

    August 27, 2018 at 8:48 am

    In criminal proceedings there’s this period where there’s the allegations and then the investigation and during that period there’s a lot of bullshit yammering from soon-to-be defendants. That’s the first period. Then there is an indictment or indictments and the thing changes to a much more realistic, fact-focused PLAN because “the bullshit period” is over and now it’s real.

    They run out of road- can no longer deny it or spin it, even to themselves. So in a very real way it doesn’t matter what Trump surrogates say on tv – the thing just moves under its own steam and they will all run out of road.

  12. 12.

    montanareddog

    August 27, 2018 at 8:54 am

    @clay:

    I’m sure John Roberts will not that “our country has changed” and such “extraordinary measures are not longer justified.”

    That always rubbed me up the wrong way. How can the SC’s reactionary majority, originalists to boot, say that a law was constitutional before but that is no longer true because “our country has changed”? What a bad faith argument that was.

  13. 13.

    PPCLI

    August 27, 2018 at 8:54 am

    @montanareddog:

    the Democrat leadership

    “Democrat” is not an adjective. “Democratic leadership” please.

  14. 14.

    rikyrah

    August 27, 2018 at 8:59 am

    Ross stole $120 million from ‘ friends’.

  15. 15.

    rikyrah

    August 27, 2018 at 9:01 am

    @sherparick:

    They want Brown, Dear.

    They’ve always wanted Brown.

  16. 16.

    PPCLI

    August 27, 2018 at 9:01 am

    @montanareddog: Indeed. The judge who wrote the original Loving v. Virginia decision (in the 1960s!) made explicit reference to biblical passages that were widely taken by “Christians” to show that interracial marriage violates God’s law. Such passages were also appealed to by Bob Jones University, and others, to justify their ban on interracial dating.

    Eventually, expanding the “religious liberty” exceptions will lead back to those questions.

  17. 17.

    rikyrah

    August 27, 2018 at 9:05 am

    Hope folks realize that Bobby Three Sticks has been playing the long game. One of the most important segments from Maddow last week was when she went down the list of all the cases that Bobby Three Sticks has farmed out to other legal jurisdictions. That the only one he’s actually kept – that we know of so far – has been the Manafort case.

  18. 18.

    japa21

    August 27, 2018 at 9:05 am

    @rikyrah: Does Rachel know?

  19. 19.

    dmsilev

    August 27, 2018 at 9:06 am

    @montanareddog: It helps to remember that originalism is fundamentally a fraud. It doesn’t mean “what the Founders originally meant”, it means “what I want, with a veneer of an argument that that’s what the Founders wanted too”.

  20. 20.

    JGabriel

    August 27, 2018 at 9:07 am

    John Cole @ Top:

    WILBUR ROSS LIED REPEATEDLY UNDER OATH IN HIS CONFIRMATION HEARING AND HAS COMMITTED WHO KNOWS HOW MANY FINANCIAL CRIMES AND IT DOES NOT EVEN MAKE THE TOP OF THE LIST.

    In any other administration, it would – but in the Trump administration Ross is running behind the criminal who sets the stage, who’s the role model for all his criminal lackeys and minions, one Donald Trump, aka Spanky McTraitorface.

  21. 21.

    clay

    August 27, 2018 at 9:08 am

    @montanareddog: I mean, it SOUNDS like they’re saying the Constitution is a living document whose meaning changes depending on the context of the current society… but SURELY they can’t be saying that… right?

  22. 22.

    OzarkHillbilly

    August 27, 2018 at 9:15 am

    @montanareddog: @dmsilev:

    “I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

    _Thomas Jefferson, Excerpted from a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816.

  23. 23.

    SiubhanDuinne

    August 27, 2018 at 9:32 am

    Randy Rainbow is back with a new song: “If You Ever Get Impeached.”

  24. 24.

    montanareddog

    August 27, 2018 at 9:36 am

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.

    I have long thought that this illustrates the distinction between conservatives, who recognise the inevitability of change but want it to be slow, incremental and prudent, and reactionaries who want to turn back the clock. Conservatism wants to be sure that the correct route is taken when you reach a fork in the road; reactionaries think we took the wrong route long ago; the modern GOP claims the former while exploiting the latter merely as a tactic for looting the commons.

    That conservatism I may disagree with but I can respect. The other mindset is just contemptible.

  25. 25.

    OzarkHillbilly

    August 27, 2018 at 9:42 am

    @montanareddog: Not a word there I would argue with.

  26. 26.

    Luthe

    August 27, 2018 at 9:47 am

    As long as Wilbur Ross controls Commerce and therefore is in position to slant the Census into undercounting brown people and the populations in the cities, the Repubs will ignore his wholesale looting.

  27. 27.

    rikyrah

    August 27, 2018 at 9:51 am

    Marinate on this ??

    Trump supporters continue to question if Arizona State Rep. Eric Descheenie, a Navajo American legislator, is here ‘illegally’. Let that level of stupid sink in for a moment. pic.twitter.com/C2kxKenqz1

    — James F. Haning II (@jameshaning) August 27, 2018

  28. 28.

    different-church-lady

    August 27, 2018 at 9:57 am

    @Kay: It’s well past time we woke up and realized we shouldn’t rely on the internet to do every goddamned thing in our lives.

  29. 29.

    J R in WV

    August 27, 2018 at 10:01 am

    And a little off topic, but returning to one of last night’s topics about corruption:

    For Catholic parents, choosing to raise kids in a church marred by sex abuse is a ‘painful thing’

    A headline on a CNN story about the Pope’s visit to Eire. For me, today, choosing to raise your kids in a church marred by sex abuse would be and is child abuse — failure to protect your kids from a situation you know or should know is dangerous.

    I wouldn’t let my kids near a “youth pastor” or priest unless I was right there watching like a hawk. The whole stinking morass makes me so glad we never had kids because that’s one more issue we never had to worry about. But how could someone who distrusts the institution, when it has proven to be so untrustworthy at the top Archbishopric level, trust your kids to that organization?

    I guess the same folks who join theocratic patriarchal institutions like the Republican party or the RC Church, huh? There, I got to today’s topic anyway!!

  30. 30.

    japa21

    August 27, 2018 at 10:22 am

    @J R in WV: Big advocate of home schooling, I presume.

  31. 31.

    Hoodie

    August 27, 2018 at 10:22 am

    Regarding Ross, I spoke with a newspaper reporter friend this weekend about layoffs at his paper that were due to a 30% increase in the cost of newsprint. TPM is reporting today that was a sweetheart deal for a single US newsprint manufacturer.

  32. 32.

    Emma

    August 27, 2018 at 10:25 am

    @rikyrah: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and a choir of angels.

  33. 33.

    Tokyokie

    August 27, 2018 at 10:30 am

    @Hoodie: And remember, most newspapers had already cut their news staffs by more than half before the jump in newsprint prices.

  34. 34.

    The Red Pen

    August 27, 2018 at 10:33 am

    Also missing: the Yakla Raid


    How the Trump Team’s First Military Raid in Yemen Went Wrong

  35. 35.

    Kelly

    August 27, 2018 at 10:46 am

    @clay: Let’s make federal clearance of election rules nationwide. That eliminates “extraordinary” from the discussion. It’d be worth a spot of bother to the honest states if it helps keep the crooked ones in line. Of course when the the Republicans are in control they’ll try to corrupt the process to invalidate easy registration, vote by mail etc in the blue states so there’s that to worry about.

  36. 36.

    ChrisS

    August 27, 2018 at 10:46 am

    @J R in WV:
    A very Catholic friend of the family is refusing to step foot in a Catholic Church again. She’s had enough of the abuses and thinks its rotten to the core.

  37. 37.

    MattF

    August 27, 2018 at 10:56 am

    Just to note, OT: The WH flags were lowered to half-staff last night, but now they’re back up to full-staff. Only one possible explanation for that.

  38. 38.

    Gin & Tonic

    August 27, 2018 at 11:04 am

    @MattF: The explanation is that Trump’s office couldn’t be bothered to issue the appropriate order that would have required it to be at half-staff until the funeral. I blame malice *and* incompetence.

  39. 39.

    Hoodie

    August 27, 2018 at 11:09 am

    @Tokyokie: I was wondering if that tariff, in addition to being a corrupt payoff to a crony, was also an attempt to screw Wapo and other Trump critics.

  40. 40.

    catclub

    August 27, 2018 at 11:10 am

    @montanareddog: Lochnerism here we come!

  41. 41.

    J R in WV

    August 27, 2018 at 11:12 am

    @japa21:

    “Big advocate of home schooling, I presume.”

    Nope — public schools with union teachers all the way.

    Teachers don’t typically do “confession” with their students, unless it is about “Who threw that spitwad?” There aren’t little rooms all around the church that are unmonitored by anyone, all private. Schools are overrun with kids and their projects. Good ones anyway.

    Our next door neighbors do home schooling – she was a professional teacher for some years, until she had the kids. Now she’s a custom small class professional for the two kids. No problem with that, she got the degree and the experience. Uneducated dumbasses shouldn’t be misleading their kids.

  42. 42.

    catclub

    August 27, 2018 at 11:15 am

    @JGabriel: Ross is behind Pruitt, Zinke, Carson and Perry, who are all more flamboyant than he is.
    No redecorating scandal from Ross, he is probably quietly stealing.

  43. 43.

    catclub

    August 27, 2018 at 11:18 am

    @J R in WV:

    Uneducated dumbasses shouldn’t be misleading their kids.

    I think running into dumbasses who are also teachers is educational for the kids growing up. Everybody has to learn how to deal with dumbasses.
    I would not purposefully assign my kid to the dumbass, given a choice, but since it happens, make it a learning experience.

  44. 44.

    J R in WV

    August 27, 2018 at 11:30 am

    @catclub:

    I agree, but one teacher that a kid runs into once is all different from being “home schooled” forever by someone who can barely read themselves. If you only ever have one teacher, Mom, who isn’t educated except by a “Preacher” on Wednesdays and Sundays, you don’t have a chance to have a good teacher next year.

    You’re ruined forever as far as learning how to learn!

  45. 45.

    Redshift

    August 27, 2018 at 11:35 am

    Yeah, I agree. My first thought on seeing that list was that Ross was the most glaring omission.

  46. 46.

    Redshift

    August 27, 2018 at 11:36 am

    @satby:

    More corrupt than most normal people could even imagine.

    To paraphrase Hofstadter’s Law, they’re more corrupt than you think they are, even if you take into account this law.

  47. 47.

    A Ghost To Most

    August 27, 2018 at 11:49 am

    Go long on hemp farms. We’re going to need the rope.

  48. 48.

    Tokyokie

    August 27, 2018 at 12:24 pm

    @Hoodie: WaPo and other big newspapers have diverse operations, so newsprint probably represents a smaller portion of their companies’ budgets than it does for papers in small towns with less than 5,000 daily circulation. You know, the newspapers in the areas that are most pro-Trump.

  49. 49.

    randy khan

    August 27, 2018 at 12:25 pm

    @Kay:

    FCC Chairman Pai has not exactly covered himself in glory on this one – he has thrown the former CTO of the FCC under the bus (conveniently noting that the guy was picked by the previous chair, and ignoring that Pai kept him on for more than a year), claiming that he was told not to discuss what actually happened while leaving the impression that the FCC had been the subject of a DDOS attack. (The actual problem was that the system didn’t have the capacity for all of the comments that were filed.)

    Of course, the real story is that Pai was going to reverse the old network neutrality regulations even if the FCC received comments supporting them from every man, woman, and child in the U.S. He and the other Republicans on the FCC hated the rules so much that they simultaneously reinterpreted the underlying law to claim that the FCC lacked any authority to adopt rules and also decided they would prevent states from adopting their own rules, even though that combination raises some tricky legal questions that could affect whether the FCC wins the appeal of the decision.

    Also, I work in the FCC space, and it’s become evident to me that Rosenworcel is just more clever than Pai. She has sort of an earnest suburban mom demeanor, but she’s playing the game differently than him, and it shows.

  50. 50.

    randy khan

    August 27, 2018 at 12:26 pm

    Ross is barely a scandal by this Administration’s standards.

  51. 51.

    Captain C

    August 27, 2018 at 12:59 pm

    @debit:

    A rat fucking something Uncle Sam.

  52. 52.

    TenguPhule

    August 27, 2018 at 1:05 pm

    @Baud:

    We’re going to need a longer list.

    And more tumbrels.

  53. 53.

    cain

    August 27, 2018 at 1:27 pm

    @montanareddog:

    I think it is tactically-wise that the Democrat leadership is trying to suppress talk, pe-mid terms, of impeachment of Trump. But, if they do regain the house majority, they should go hammer and tongs after the likes of Ross including impeachment. Make the Senate Republicans go on record of not impeaching a cabinet officer who perjured himself in testimony to the Senate

    In my opinion, we should keep Trump at bay while we go after the Republicans themselves and destroy his support from the family by actually jailing people who have perjured themselves or gotten involved with foreign powers, shady deals, and so forth. Hopefully add more democrats being elected and then have a super majority where we start doing things like focusing on free and open elections, national vote by mail.. eg destroy republican’s dirty tricks from stopping black voters from voting. Consolidate the power as much as you can. We win when we allow as much open access to the ballot as possible. It’s also shows a message that we’re not afraid of competing on ideas unlike the Republican party.. the party of white nationalists, nazis, and poor economic ideas.

  54. 54.

    cain

    August 27, 2018 at 1:29 pm

    @sherparick:

    Also, they should change out the Republican animal symbol, replacing the Elephant with a Rat.

    I think not. A gnat would be more appropriate. An annoying creature that should be swatted and killed on sight because it bugs you.

  55. 55.

    Dan B

    August 27, 2018 at 4:24 pm

    @ChrisS: The pope told a reporter on the plane back to Rome that parents should keep dialogue open with their gay kids and get them to a psychiatrist. And uf you get to them when they’re young you can help them but if it’s when they’re in their 20’s it’s probably too late.

    Almost 50 years after the APA removed homosexuality from tge DSM the head of the Catholic church believes that LGBTQ people are mentally ill. The damage this dies to young gay people is horrible.

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