I hope you saw Grayson's epic take down of the Koched up Keystone Pipeline project yesterday. (If you missed it… take a look here.) A few days ago, Harry Reid was even clearer about these two fascists who have wormed their way into control of the imbecile teabaggers: "It's too bad that they're trying to buy America, and it's time that the American people spoke out against this terrible dishonesty of these two brothers who are about as un-American as anyone I can imagine," Reid said on the Senate floor. Reid's right of course, and one of the Koch brothers' political tentacles, Americans for Prosperity, just rated every Member of Congress. Only 5 had "perfect" scores: Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ron Johnson (R-WI), the greed and selfishness avatar the Kochs used to defeat Russ Feingold in 2010. They were Feingold's #1 contributors in that election and he has never-- not even once-- deviated from the strictest Koch party line. It is unknown how much the Koch brothers contributed to Johnson’s effort to defeat Feingold through third-party advertising. The Kochs have spent heavily on anonymous third-party advertising for other Wisconsin GOP candidates, including in last summers’ recall races.
In some of those races, they used the anti-gay group Wisconsin Family Action to front a mail campaign that sent fraudulent ballot applications to voters. The ballots listed a return date after the election had ended.
“It’s a disgusting charade of money,” said Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Graeme Zeilinski.
“Ron Johnson would be the big story in Wisconsin right now, if it wasn’t for Scott Walker,” Zielinski added. “He was willing to let America’s credit rating be downgraded just so that he could get deep cuts to Medicare. It’s been a long time, dating back to Joe McCarthy, since we had a senator this extreme. He’s doing McCarthy proud.”
McCarthy was censured by the U.S. Senate after using trumped-up charges of communism during the “red scare” to ruin the careers of politicians and people in the entertainment industry.
In addition to the five senators, 39 members of the U.S. House received perfect scores from the Kochs for their performance in the first half of the 112th Congress. Scores were based on votes that benefitted Koch Industries’ petrochemical empire, reported ThinkProgress Green. Specifically, those votes included approving measures to repeal health care reform, end Medicare, eliminate the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, and overturn regulations.
Moving away from just this past session's scores and looking at the lifetime scores, we find a dozen or so House Democrats voting frequently for the Koch brothers toxic and unAmerican agenda. The highest rated Democrats by AFP: • Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC)- 38%
• John Barrow (New Dem-GA)- 33%
• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)- 34%
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 32%
• Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX)- 30%
I don't go to many movies, especially not movies that wind up nominated for Oscars. This year I saw The Wolf of Wall Street and complained ever since that the movie whitewashed the real life story about how the antihero, Jordan Belfort, bribed New York's crooked Senator Al D'Amato and the Republican Party. Last night a friend wanted to "do something." I suggested Lucha VaVoom, street mixed martial arts or one of the dollar-a-dance joints downtown. That all scared my friend-- he's from the East Coast-- so we went to see American Hustle, the dramatization of the Abscam sting in the late '70s that netted bribery convictions for Senator Harrison Williams (D-NJ) and 6 congressmen, John Jenrette (D-SC), Michael "Ozzie" Myers (D-PA), Richard Kelly (R-FL), Frank Thompson (D-NJ), Ray Lederer (D-PA), and Jack Murphy (D-NY) as well as the Mayor of Camden and 3 members of the Philadelphia City Council. Jack Murtha wasn't indicted or charged because he kept insisting that the bribes he was interested in were for investments in his district and not for his own pocket, as you can see on the actual FBI video below.
The film didn't deal too deeply with the political aspect of Abscam. It was more about the relationships between the characters in the movie-- romance, sex, drugs, disco, dysfunctional family interactions, petty crime… The movie starts with a disclaimer plastered across the screen: "Some of this actually happened." I can't imagine it's going to win any Oscars tomorrow… but what do I know? I don;t go out much.
Last cycle it seemed unlikely that the Mafia's corrupt Staten Island congressman, Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm ®-- already enmeshed in half a dozen serious scandals after just one term-- could be reelected. But who did the Democrats find to oppose him? Mark Murphy, whose father, Jack Murphy, was the Staten Island congressman convicted of taking a $50,000 "gratuity" in the Abscam scandal. He served nearly 2 years in prison. Voters did a lot of ticket-splitting and while Obama beat Romney 67,524 (50%) to 66,420 (49%), Grimm prevailed over Murphy 72,102 (55%) to 58,193 (44%).
The real-time footage of Murtha (below) was more interesting to me than the movie, especially in light of how high up the Democratic leadership ranks he climbed. Pelosi picked him to be her #2 when she became Speaker, although House Democrats defeated his bad and picked the even shadier K Street whore Steny Hoyer. More recently, House Dems elected another egregiously corrupt Member, JOe Crowley, fresh from a Wall Street bribery escapade for a top Caucus position. That's Beltway politics and it's more revolting than anything portrayed in the film.
