Corruption and ethical failures at the local level
Corruption and unethical behavior starts early in some public officials. For some, it takes a while. One thing is sure: bad behavior i's not limited to Congress, that's for sure. Two recent examples of local ethics scandals provide the evidence.
In San Francisco, Supervisor Ed Jew resigned after a short tenure marked by controversy:
Suspended San Francisco Supervisor Ed Jew resigned from his seat on the Board of Supervisors Thursday, and now it's up to the political novice who has been serving as his temporary replacement to decide whether she wants to enter the cutthroat world of local politics and campaign for the job this fall.
Jew's resignation - effective at noon Friday - ends a tumultuous period at City Hall and sets up a political fight in the city's sleepy Sunset District. His decision to step down almost eight months after FBI agents raided his office in connection with an alleged extortion scheme means the District Four seat he landed in a surprise victory in 2006 will be up for grabs in November's election.
In Houston, the long-serving District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal is facing a criminal investigation following the release of e-mails from his official account:
The Texas Attorney General's office agreed Thursday to investigate whether Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal should lose his job for sending and receiving inappropriate messages through his county e-mail account.
Republican officeholders and party leaders are calling for the GOP prosecutor's head following the release of hundreds of his e-mails, including love notes to his secretary, racist jokes and videos of men sneaking up to women and tearing their clothes off in public.
He also used the county e-mail account to plan his now-aborted re-election campaign. Those e-mails, while tamer, may be more damaging to Rosenthal's career because such messages may violate Texas laws barring the use government property for political activity.
Under Texas law, judges may remove district attorneys from office for incompetence, official misconduct or intoxication on or off the job. Official misconduct is defined as "intentional, unlawful behavior" relating to official duties.
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Regarding ethics: Clinton and Obama
Does the Citizens for responsibility for Ethics in Washington rate Presidential candidates on ethics? It should. One of these people will hold the highest office in the land. I wonder how the Clintons rank in terms of corruption and undue government influence? Certainly a lot worse than Obama, I'll say.
Barack Obama is still connected to reality. He is not awash in Dick Cheney level money, like the $70 million government service cashout for the Clintons with their bonus half billion dollar "charity" that employed their key campaign officials and was funded by their campaign donors. He doesn't take the lobbyist money. The 527 money. He takes money from American voters who support him in accordance with the law.
Cash may be king but it shouldn't make kings, at least not in this country if we have a say in it.
"We're going to put money in the pockets of hardworking Americans who deserve it. That's what I'm fighting for," Obama told hotel and restaurant workers packed into the steamy union hall of the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226. The Illinois senator said he identified with their economic hardships.
"I wasn't living large," he said. "I had an old, beat-up car and had a little, tiny beat-up apartment. I was wearing beat-up clothes. I had holes in the shoes, had holes in my car. You know what I'm talking about.">
"This endorsement is based on my belief in your leadership and vision and the fact that we need a new message of hope and solidarity of coming together in Washington, D.C.," Napolitano said.
The endorsement is a major gain for Obama. Napolitano, one of several female governors, is the most prominent Democrat in Arizona. Her endorsement could be significant in a state now regarded as winnable by a Democrat after decades as a near-lock for Republicans; the state holds its primary Feb. 5.
Questions from reporters focused on what role Napolitano could conceivably play in an Obama administration.
"I don't want to prejudge or put her on the spot. Let me just say this — I think she is enormously talented," Obama said.
Napolitano was elected governor in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. She previously was U.S. attorney for Arizona during most of the Clinton administration and then served a four-year term as the elected state attorney general.
She is regarded as a possible candidate in 2010 for the Senate seat now held by Republican John McCain, though she has been mentioned as a possible candidate for vice president or for a Cabinet post in a Democratic administration.>
http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/Obama_promises_relief_to_homeowners_01112008.html
Barack will fight for us. He will fight for women. He will fight for men. He will fight for ordinary Americans. He will fight for change. Real change. Barack will not give up the fight for change and throw people under the bus like the Clintons in the early 90s threw gay Americans under the bus in abandoning the fight to stop our military from discriminating against them. Barack will not stop fighting to reform our sick and broken health care system, even if he screws up on the first try like Hillary Clinton did in the early 90s (with the predictable result that our system is worse than ever a dozen years later).
And I am sorry to raise the Clinton sleaze issue but it needs to be raised. Yes it needs to be raised and considered before it's too late again. It needs to be raised because it goes to something Democrats care about - electability. It needs to be raised because, sadly, unlike the outrageous lies about Kerry's military service, there is too much truth to the many Republican dossiers on the Clinton sleaze stories. Character matters. So here it is. Bottom line. Barack will not ask a ready, willing and able spouse who later runs for President herself in an obvious Faustian bargain to cover up a bunch of dirty rotten lies involving abuse of government power, including countless State Troopers and his position as President, in what we all know what happened: repeated, unforgivable, disgusting, outrageous, illegal abuse of all those women inside the workplace or within the power of a Clinton-led and controlled government.
The Clinton past does not consist of a bunch of affairs in the JFK consensual sense - wife cheating but not illegal. They are about a President of the United States flat lying under oath to his victim plaintiff and to the American people about relevant evidence in a case stemming from a sordid crime of sexual abuse (one of many) which finally caught up with him. Yes, the Clinton victims were the very same women who Bill and Hillary hypocritically claimed to protect and defend. No way Barack engaged in that kind of rampant harassment of women to the extent that it was an open secret all over his state. And no way Michelle Obama would put up with that even if he did, much more go along with Barack in trying to cover it up. No friggin way. And yes, by the way, I hope that Michelle runs for President some day.
Isn't it ironic that the Clintons are running around claiming Barack is talking about false hope - maybe their hope had an element of falsity. Maybe the Clinton's hope that they preached about in 1992 turned out to some extent to be false hope. Maybe it was false hope in not ending discrimination against gay people in the military, false hope in not fighting relentlessly to fix our broken health care system, false hope in failing to achieve all the really big goals they had aimed for, false hope in, essentially, being another good "Republican" President (former Fed Chief Greenspan's words, not mine), and false hope in secretly trashing unfortunate victim members of a gender - and I don't mean Lewinsky, I mean the ones where it wasn't so consensual - a gender and another class (like the gays) the Clintons falsely claim to so protect and defend. Maybe this false hope was a key part of the Clinton's vast "experience" which they now claim makes Hillary so qualified. Maybe their "experience" in the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton cycle and their hope bashing are precisely NOT what America needs more of right now.
Sorry to sound shrill, but these things are real, not just made up right wing propaganda like so much of what Fox runs today. These things need to be said in view of the Clinton's kneecap comments accusing Obama of "false hopes" and trashing Dr. King's legacy. Clinton said Dr. King doesn't deserve most of the credit for what Dr. King obviously accomplished through, yes, you guessed it, REAL HOPE. False hope for some I guess, but not for others. Not for Dr. King. And not for Barack Obama.
OBAMA '08!!! We want change. Yes we can!