Posted: 11/14/06

The New Democratic Majority Can Address Corruption and Scandals in their Own Party

J. Michael Sharman

Three-fourths of the Election 2006 Democratic voters said they voted out of a disgust over "corruption and scandals" by the elected officials in power.[1]

We need to cheer on the new Democratic majority because, boy, they really have their work cut out for them in the next two years.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the new majority leader in the Senate[2], has a relationship with the corrupt and convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff that needs investigating.

After one of Sen. Reid's employees went to work for Abramoff, Reid's campaign began receiving $66,000 in Abramoff donations, such as the $5,000 Abramoff contribution that came in the day after Reid blocked a new Indian casino that would have competed with an Abramoff client's casino.[3]

Also, Sen. Reid tripled his investment in a "questionable" land deal after his partner (who was recently named in a bribery scandal) got local officials to re-zone it for a shopping center. Senators are required to report those type of transactions. Reid didn't.[4]

Just before the election, Sen. Reid admitted he used campaign funds to pay $3,000 in Christmas bonuses to the employees at his Ritz-Carlton condo in Washington. After the news broke, Mr. Reid wrote a personal check to cover those costs.[5]

Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) recently made the Democrats' reform job a little easier by stepping down from his position as the ranking Democrat on the House Ethics committee after the Wall Street Journal broke the story  that Mollohan gave millions of dollars in appropriations to nonprofit groups run by contributors to his campaigns.[6]

Then, of course, there is Rep. William Jennings Jefferson (D-La.) being videotaped taking a $100,000 bribe for a Nigerian telecom deal. Rep. Jefferson immediately turned the money into cold cash by wrapping it in tinfoil and putting in his freezer, where the numbered bills were later seized by the FBI.[7]

But the Democrats first reform target absolutely must be Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.), the soon-to-be chairman of the Committee on Intelligence, which exercises oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and our other spy agencies.

Rep. Hastings used to be a federal judge in Florida until he was impeached for perjury and bribery.

 It seems the Ramano brothers were in prison on 21 racketeering convictions when they worked a deal with Judge Hastings: If he would return to them $845,000 of the $1.2 million which the government had seized, they would give him $150,000 cash. The taped conversations between the judge and his co-conspirator, attorney William Borders, got Borders convicted, but the attorney refused to testify against the judge, and Hastings beat the criminal rap against him.

After his impeachment, Hastings decided to get elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. "I bring with me the added notoriety of being impeached and removed by the same body that I now get to serve in," he told The Washington Post.[8]

Congressman Alcee L. Hastings is still in-your-face unrepentant.

He hired Patricia Williams, whom Time Magazine described as "the girlfriend and co-counsel" of Hastings on his criminal case.[9] Hastings owed her hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees[10], and so when she was disbarred for misusing clients' funds and lying to the Florida State Bar[11], it probably seemed mutually beneficial for her to be Rep. Hastings' "staff assistant" with an annual salary of  $129,000. His chief of staff, Fred Turner, makes half that amount.

 Rep. Hastings also pays another "staff assistant", Vanessa Griddine, more than he pays his chief of staff[12] to accompany Hastings[13] to such places as Austria, Italy, Russia[14], Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain[15], Portugal[16], Belgium[17], Italy[18], Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia[19], and Lebanon[20].

Let's face it: If Judge Hastings was willing to take a $150,000 bribe from a couple of U.S. racketeers, then Congressman Hastings could certainly be tempted to take a $1.5 billion bribe to give helpful intelligence to oil-rich racketeers like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.[21]

Yes, the ethics reformers in the new Democratic majority have a lot of work to do between now and 2008 when the voters will be asking them what was done about the corruption and scandals of 2006.

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By J. Michael Sharman Click here for bio and archived articles