Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

I was promised a recession.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Open Thread: *All* Repub Officials Are Corrupt, No Exceptions: Elaine Chao Edition

Open Thread: *All* Repub Officials Are Corrupt, No Exceptions: Elaine Chao Edition

by | 95 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Per NPR (because no paywall):

In her time as former President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary, Elaine Chao repeatedly used her position and agency staff to help family members who run a shipping business with ties to China, in potential violation of federal ethics laws, according to an Office of Inspector General report.

The findings were uncovered in the Transportation Department’s inspector general report released Wednesday that detailed the office’s investigation into Chao’s dealings as secretary.

The inspector general referred the findings to the Justice Department in December 2020. But with the Trump administration coming to a close, the DOJ declined to open its own investigation, citing “there is not predication” to do so.

Chao, who is married to Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced her resignation Jan. 7, saying she was deeply troubled by the previous day’s mob attack on the Capitol “in a way that I simply cannot set aside.” Her term was set to end at President Biden’s swearing-in…

Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Peter DeFazio of Oregon and Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform Carolyn B. Maloney of New York also requested an investigation into Chao following initial media reports.

Maloney on Wednesday called Chao’s use of her official position and resources to help her family a “flagrant abuse of her office.” The congresswoman added that lawmakers should use this report as evidence for further ethics and transparency reforms…

Bonus ‘such is the way of her people’ racism:

Secretary Chao made extensive plans to include family members in events during her official trip to China in November 2017. The itinerary included stops at Shanghai Maritime University and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and other locations that had received support from her family’s business.

Chao also requested, through the State Department, for China’s Transport Ministry to arrange for two vehicles for her delegation, which included her sister and father. Officials at the State and Transportation departments raised ethics concerns with the trip and it was ultimately canceled…

Transportation’s public affairs office also lent support to her father to help market his biography, to keep a running list of of his awards, and to edit his Wikipedia page, the OIG report said…

In defense of her actions, Chao’s office sent a memo dated Sept. 24, 2020, citing “filial piety.” The memo states, “Anyone familiar with Asian culture knows it is a core value in Asian communities to express honor and filial respect toward one’s parents, and this ingrained value of love, respect, and filial piety always takes precedence over self-promotion and self-aggrandizement.”

It went on to say, “As the eldest daughter, she is expected to assume a leadership role in family occasions that honor her father and her late mother.”…

Reader Interactions

95Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    And the really sad thing is that even with all this, she still was less corrupt than the average T**** Cabinet member.

  4. 4.

    Mike in NC

    Mitch and Elaine have been shamelessly grifting for decades. No wonder Trump hired her.

  11. 11.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    Don’t be dumb,
    Don’t be dumber,
    Don’t declare
    Your comment number.

    Here’s the nub,
    The nut, the gist:
    It’s now passé
    To write “I’m frist!”

  14. 14.

    dmsilev

    @Kent: I was going to say James Mattis, but then I remembered that (pre-T****) he was a board member and advocate for Theranos. I _think_ Rick Perry was just incompetent, not corrupt.  Entirely possible that I’ve forgotten some corruption of his; there are just so many to keep track of.

  17. 17.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mike in NC:

    Did she grift like this when she was Dubya’s Labor Secretary? Not saying she didn’t, but I don’t recall any talk, let alone significant accusations.

  18. 18.

    The Moar You Know

    @Patricia Kayden: CNN made billions off Trump clicks and eyes.  Every media outlet did.  Expect a huge thumb on the scales by non-Fox media to get his sorry ass back into the White House, even if by that point he’s able to say nothing but the words “man, TV, pussy” and needs to be hauled everywhere in a forklift.

    Dead serious here.  Biden isn’t making them any cash.  It’s going to be quite a problem for them

    ETA:  I might add that we – us – me personally and every one of you – caused this by clicking on every goddamn story about the fucker from day one.  It’s our fault.

  23. 23.

    brendancalling

    It must be nice to be untouchable crooks like Elaine and Mitch. What charmed lives.

    Meanwhile, I haven’t seen my kid in a year due to Covid. I came upon a few pics I shot of him learning to ride a bike 10-odd years ago, and it nearly broke me.

    Fuck these people. When they die I’m going on a road trip to use their headstones as my personal shitter.

  24. 24.

    schrodingers_cat

    Thought experiment: Is this quote from a left winger or RWNJ?

    Anyway, for all Mueller’s investigation, nothing has happened to Trump. Time will tell. However, it’s really worrying that despite change in party, nothing meaningful had changed in the US. Saudi Arabia got a slap on the wrist and its business as usual. Yemen war continues. Syrian bombing continues. Iran nuclear deal, unilaterally broken by Trump Biden wants Iran to give way ?, there are new plots against South American nation’s that don’t give in to exploitation by US MNCs. The 15$ minimum wage campaign promise broken, children caged by Obama & later Trump still caged, the $ 2000 cheques promised in Georgia have vanished into thin air, no college debt being forgiven, no move towards improving healthcare or lowering CoVID medical costs, no change in CoVID scenario, the list goes on & on.

  26. 26.

    Kristine

    Welp, I’m in a clinical study to evaluate a 2-shot regimen of the J&J vaccine. They test to see if you have antibodies–not sure what happens if that’s the case. But it’s been an interesting experience so far.

  28. 28.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Cocaine Mitch’s wife is corrupt! Who could have known.

    the Chao family, own a cargo shipping company, and a few years back, about 90 pounds of cocaine was found on one of that company’s ships as it was about to leave Colombia.

  31. 31.

    Ken

    The timing here is extraordinary.

    No, quite ordinary.  Someone’s not been paying attention to how the Republicans operate.

  34. 34.

    Uncle Jeffy

    I know Ben Carson was incompetent, but corrupt ( dining set notwithstanding)?

  35. 35.

    Ken

    @Parfigliano: If she broke the law why not prosecute now?

    Didn’t we just establish that once someone leaves office they can’t be convicted for crimes committed during their time in office?  You can’t tell me that important legal principle only applies to the President.

  36. 36.

    Benw

    @SiubhanDuinne: 
    Whate’er order,
    You’ve reckoned,
    Don’t exclaim
    “I’m second!”

    It’s loopy, silly,
    Just absurd,
    To keep going
    Past “I’m third!”

    :)

  38. 38.

    Bruuuuce

    @Ken:

    Didn’t we just establish that once someone a Republican leaves office they can’t be convicted for crimes committed during their time in office?

    There. FTFY

  39. 39.

    Shalimar

    @dmsilev: Rick Perry was deeply involved in the Ukraine scandal, attempting to force a Ukrainian energy company to add several of his Texas billionaire campaign donors to their board.  IIRC, he resigned to keep his involvement from being investigated.

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    @SiubhanDuinne

    (with apologies to G&S)

    My eyes are fully open to the comment situation
    At times edit and revise it ’til it reads a short summation
    Though some numbers here are deemed to be especially propitious
    Makes the sport of claiming those spots ancillarily ambitious
    Now I do not wish to perish by the sword or by the dagger
    But a jackal may indulge a little pardonable swagger
    Yet the magnitude of digit whether prior placed or latter
    Has naught affect on substance so it really doesn’t matter!
    .

  45. 45.

    The Moar You Know

    Well, he was the president of the country and we needed to know what he was up to.

    @zhena gogolia: You just made my point far better than I did.  Now Joe Biden is the president of the country, and yet nobody seems to need to know what he’s up to.  And we don’t.  He’s handling it.

    Don’t think that lesson is lost on the entirety of the media, who have gone from sirloin with champagne to dog food since January.  They have discovered that a foul-mouthed unstable pervert psycho clown in charge of America makes them money.  What do you think will happen next election cycle? That they’ll promote or even bother to give airtime to the guy who fixed COVID and didn’t cause a scene every day?

  50. 50.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    I wish Leo McKern was around to do a far lefty critique with his impeccable command of the Queen’s English.​

  51. 51.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @schrodingers_cat:

    the $ 2000 cheques

    left-winger and non American. That guy who moved to Florida from Britain when he was five and still has a British accent

    ETA: Nathan Robinson

  56. 56.

    JoyceH

    Maybe a faint glimmer of changing times? Remember how irksome it was when the major media would incessantly go hang around rural diners to interview Trump voters? Well, CNN was just out at an ice fishing venue in Minnesota to interview Biden voters. You could have knocked me over with a feather!

  62. 62.

    andy

    i would call this leverage if i didn’t suspect mitch would jettison her ass in a second if he felt he had to.

  64. 64.

    Patricia Kayden

    Covid is no joke. One former patient was so brain damaged afterwards he thought he won an election that he lost by 8 million votes.— Mike Bennett Blue Wave 2020 ? (@ImpeachTrump012) March 5, 2021

  66. 66.

    PPCLI

    @NotMax: That might be my favorite joke of all time.

    The version I heard has some misdirection:

    Freud often studied intermediate states: between anger and love, between passion and release. What did Freud believe came between fear and sex?

    A: Fünf.

    It also works in Danish and Norwegian, except you need Kierkegaard resp. Ibsen (for example) instead of Freud, and the answer is fem.

  67. 67.

    PPCLI

    @Ken: What’s extraordinary is that the IG hadn’t been replaced months before the report had a chance to be finished. Mitch is clearly slipping.

  68. 68.

    Martin

    Well, Netanyahu finally got his call, but it was with Harris and not Biden. Someone’s team got relegated.

  69. 69.

    jonas

    I happened to meet a businessman from NY a number of years ago who knew Elaine Chao well back in the day when she was the head of some agency that had to do with ocean cargo and the dockyards in NYC, which of course meant she dealt regularly with the very clean and transparent consortium of mafiosi and longshoreman unions who control that business. This was before she married McConnell and got into politics, but he said she was whip smart and knew the shipping business backwards and forwards.

    The point of the story? Chao is no dummy. She knows *exactly* how things work and what ethics rules are. She also knows they’re for shit and that she’s basically invulnerable, so sit on it, peons.

  70. 70.

    Martin

    Senate should reform the reading of a bill to require the person who demanded it to remain in the chamber. As soon as they leave, the clerk can stop and business can resume.

    Same should hold for the filibuster. Turn it into a speaking filibuster. Must stay on topic. All members voting against cloture must be present. This is kindergarden level policymaking. If you vote to extend debate, you have to be present for that debate.

  71. 71.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Martin: damn, Joe knows how to hold a grudge… and I couldn’t be happier about it. Bibi spent the last twenty years becoming an increasingly aggressive and partisan auxiliary Repubilcan, he fucked around, now he’s finding out.

    I wonder to what extent Biden’s rubbing it in because he believes, as I do, that Bibi is, among other things, a nasty racist.

  72. 72.

    Patricia Kayden

    OK, I've kinda tried to stay quiet recently about Glenn Greenwald because he's mostly a troll. But he's been headed towards Third Positionism for a while, and seeing him embrace that during an interview with The Daily Caller was just a little too perfect.— Nick Martin (@nickmartin) March 5, 2021

  75. 75.

    Ohio Mom

    Brendancalling:

    Your nym is so familiar — you were on another blog I used to read. Atrios? Susie Madrak? Someplace else?

    Anyway, you tug on my heart every time you talk about missing your son. Hoping the border opens soon for you.

  76. 76.

    Steeplejack

    @dmsilev:

    Here you go (for example):

    Alongside this political mission, Perry and his staff at the Energy Department worked to advance energy deals that were potentially worth billions of dollars to Perry’s friends and political donors, a six-month investigation by reporters from Time, WNYC and ProPublica shows. Two of these deals seemed set to benefit Energy Transfer, the Texas company on whose board Perry served immediately before and after his stint in Washington. The biggest was worth an estimated $20 billion, according to U.S. and Ukrainian energy executives involved in negotiating them.

  77. 77.

    Sebastian

    @dmsilev:

    Excuse me but Rick Perry was so corrupt, he had a whole more or less publicly known set of rules for quid pro quo while he was TX gov.

  80. 80.

    Mike G

    She’s married to Moscow Mitch, the only surprise would be if she wasn’t corrupt, self-dealing scum.

  82. 82.

    Another Scott

    ICYMI, Nick Caraway at JuanitaJean – The Gap:

    “In politics there are lags and there are gaps. Since elections happen every two years there are often lags in representation. It just takes time for legislatures and Congress to catch up to the will of the people. When those lags become consistent they become gaps and we have that currently with the Senate. It is becoming what I like to call the “frustration gap.”

    The frustration gap rears its ugly head in two distinct ways. Currently, the 50 Democratic senators represent 42 million Americans more than the 50 Republican senators. That’s certainly a gap. Gerrymandering has found a way to create a similar gap in the House, but the gap is not nearly as pronounced.

    The second gap finds its way into individual issues. For instance, the Pew Research Center finds that 66 percent of the country is in favor of the $15 minimum wage according to its polling. Yet, the Senate can’t take it up because of current parliamentarian rules. In theory, such a robust public support should render even the cloture rule moot. Yet, representation is not truly representative.
    We certainly know that all too well here in Texas.

    As someone that studies politics, the frustration gap concerns me. We have faux outrage like we saw on January 6th, but this has the potential to turn into genuine outrage. What happens as the frustration builds and nothing seems to happen.
    The minimum wage is only the beginning. We have voting rights legislation, environmental legislation, gun control legislation, and infrastructure upgrades that a majority of the population wants. As it currently stands, they may not get any of it.

    What concerns me is that most people are educated only enough to know they aren’t getting what they wanted. Demagogues like the last president take advantage of that frustration. They feed off of it. They know good and well that they have no intention of fixing the source of it. After all, their party is the source of it. Yet, as long as most people don’t educate themselves as to who is behind their frustration, they will continue to put the same idiots back in charge. Then what?”

    Nick

    I think he’s right to be worried.

    I think Nancy and Chuck and Joey B and Kamala understand this. I often wonder if Joey M and Kyrsten and their colleagues do though…

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  83. 83.

    karen marie

    @Sebastian: I’ve been waiting my wole life (63 years) to see even one Republican criminal get what they deserve, and it hasn’t happened yet. I’m not going to hold my breath that it will happen any time before I’m dead.

  84. 84.

    Another Scott

    BREAKING/SCOOP: FBI has arrested 1st Trump appointee in connection with #Capitol Riot. Freddie Klein worked on Trump 2016 campaign then landed a 'special assistant' job at State. 'Fred's politics run a little hot,' his mother said https://t.co/nCSBQR6VHA

    — Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) March 5, 2021

    And it’s not even Friday yet.

    (via NotLarrySabato)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  91. 91.

    Steeplejack

    @Martin:

    Norman Ornstein was great on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show tonight about how the filibuster could be brought to heel (if not gutted) without destroying its time-honored tradition. ?

  93. 93.

    Captain C

    @andy: If there’s anything to be had on Moscow Mitch, I’m sure his wife’s family has it.  He’s not leaving this marriage of convenience unless things get much worse.

  95. 95.

    evodevo

    @Bruuuuce: ​
      Yes…no mention of ‘bortion or immigration or cancel culture…dead giveaway that it is TwitterRose or a Villager…

Comments are closed.