After reading Senator Bill “Insider Trader” Frist decry:
The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership. They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas.
I was astounded to the extent of Senator Bill Frist’s arrogance and hypocrisy. The real “slap in the face” to the Senate is Frist’s personal behavior over the past few years, comprising of an ongoing investigation into his recent stock sales after subsequent inaction and allegedly lies about his conflict of interest; his politically calculated flip-flop on stem cell research; and, his pandering to the religious right in his shameful pronouncements about Terri Schiavo’s condition based on videos.
Could the investigated Senator be relating his true feelings since the flames of scandal are rapidly spreading wider within the Republican Party and upward towards the White House? Hopefully the supercilious, right-wing, reactionary regime that is currently monopolizing Washington will undergo severe, if not fatal, political damage.
The fundamental truth is Bush and the Radical Right Republicans who are running this troubled country to involuntary bankruptcy are so drunk with power they would do anything necessary to establish their perfect control over their universe.
It is ironic that in the recent days right after their house of cards immediately began to collapse, they successfully developed a case of selective amnesia of their own malfeasance that is currently running ramped in their party.
The lavish corruption and the underhanded methods of the greedy mob-like politicians and their corporate profiteers that fund them must be exposed in our struggle to regain our democracy.
FRIST’S TRUST: Was never blind
How convenient for Frist to forget about his investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice for ordering his portfolio managers in June of this year, – a month before its price fell sharply – to sell his family’s shares in Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), the nation’s largest hospital chain, which was founded by Frist’s father and brother.
For years, Senator Frist and his staff has lied about his limited or no contact with members of his family or the HCA executives when it came to business issues or current policy matters. Frist has vigorously alleged that he has consistently stayed at “arm’s length” when it came to HCA and the family business. However, according to the records obtained by AP, from 1994 until 2002, Frist had a substantial amount of HCA stock in Bowling Avenue Partners, a business that was started by his brother. Interestingly, the company’s mailing address is conveniently the same address as Frist’s home address. During his term in the Senate, his company’s stock have earned him over $200,000. And the cash has also pouring in, over $170,000 in soft money has poured into Frist’s campaigns, PAC and 527, from top executives in HCA since 1993.
Bowling Avenue Partners, LP. Thomas Frist created Bowling Avenue Partners in 1994. Before it was dissolved in 2002, Bill Frist held $775,000 to $1.57 million worth of HCA stock in the company, outside the Senate approved blind trust. The company’s mailing address is the Frist family home, Senator Frist’s current home address. Frist advisors confirmed that the Senator’s brother could influence investment decisions in the partnership. [TN Secretary of State Business Filings for William H. Frist – Business ID#: 0284911; Business Type: Limited Partnership; Status: CANCELLED]
Frist’s malfeasance is so blatant the SEC is so afraid it would lose any credibility if it did nothing. All eyes are on the newly Bu$hCo appointed SEC chairman, former Rep, Chris Cox, who was appointed a couple of months ago.
The Congressional Shake Down
Elizabeth Drew’s, “Selling Washington”, presents a portrayal that sheds light to the complexities between the corporate America, the Bush administration, and its right-wing lobbyists political machine.
Drew also discusses how the aggressiveness of Radical Right wing lobbyists have become towards anybody who is in favor of the Democratic Party. She quotes a close friend who is also a lobbyist:
There are no restraints now; business groups and lobbyists are going crazy – they’re in every room on Capitol Hill writing legislation. You can’t move on the Hill without giving money.
She goes on to discuss the infamous K Street Project. The situation after the neocon toke over Congress in the 1994 election is so stereotypical that observers could easily draw comparisons with bad mob movies, in which heavy-handed ruffians intimidate a juror so that he won’t rule against the mob boss. In a mob-like tactic, neocon enforcers were quick to warn all “Washington lobbying and law firms that if they wanted to have appointments with Republican legislators they had better hire more Republicans.”
The Republicans don’t simply want to take care of their friends and former aides by getting them high-paying jobs; they want the lobbyists they have helped place in these jobs and other corporate representatives to arrange lavish trips for themselves and their wives, to invite them to watch sports events from skyboxes; and, most important, to provide a steady flow of campaign contributions.
The K Street project is intended to push Democrats out of the lobbying firms and immediately replace them with crony Republicans.
The Republicans don’t simply want to take care of their friends and former aides by getting them high-paying jobs; they want the lobbyists they have helped place in these jobs and other corporate representatives to arrange lavish trips for themselves and their wives, to invite them to watch sports events from skyboxes; and, most important, to provide a steady flow of campaign contributions.
Rep. Tom DeLay, Sen. Rick Santorum, and their associates have organized Congress in a systematic campaign to keep a close eye on those Republicans who step out of line on Capitol Hill. Grover Norquist and the Republican National Committee are also the muscle to put the shake down pressure on firms not just to hire Republicans but also to fire Democrats.
A Republican lobbyist told me, “Having the White House” has made it more possible for DeLay and Santorum “to enforce the K Street Project.” Several Democratic lobbyists have been pushed out of their jobs as a result;….The Republican lobbyist I spoke to said, “There’s a high state of sensitivity to the partisanship of the person you hire for these jobs that did not exist five, six years ago – you hire a Democrat at your peril.”
Last year, a shake down was taken against Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) when they decided to hire Dan Glickman, an 18-year Democratic congressman from Kansas and a former member of the Clinton cabinet, as president and chief executive, after MPAA was told not to hire the Democrat by Grover “The Enforcer” Norquist. Then in bizarre turn MPAA and Glickman hired an aide to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, who is part of the congressional leadership. And it gets worse:
[Glickman] has made campaign donations, from his own pocket and Hollywood coffers, to the conservatives who ousted him from Congress a decade ago. And he volunteered to help President Bush twist arms on a White House priority, the free-trade pact with Central America, that passed the House last month by just two votes.
The shake down began when the “Congressional Crew,” led by Sen. Rick ” The Stoolie” Santorum and Rep. Tom “The Hammer” DeLay, withdrew a $1.5 billion tax relief measure to the movie industry. Soon after, Glickman had no choice but comply with Bu$hCo.
THE WHITE HOUSE TRUTH POLICY
As Bush and the Radical-right wing continue to line their pockets from their corporate funders; Corporate America, in return, are given huge tax breaks that benefit their profit interests. However, those who work for Dubya are encouraged to sweep unfavorable numbers under the rug if they would like to keep their appointed positions.
On Sept. 15, President Bush finally admitted something he’s been trying to avoid. Speaking of the Gulf region in his nationwide address, he said
As all of us saw on television, there’s also some deep, persistent poverty in this region… [P]overty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality.
This acquiescence by Bu$hCo was an effort to quell the moral outrage publicly being declared around the world to the government’s handling of the hurricane crisis. Bush, however, still did not address the racist treatment of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
Three days before, he responded to accusations that the slow response to the hurricane was tinged with racism by saying, “The storm didn’t discriminate and neither will the recovery effort. The rescue efforts were comprehensive.”
The out right denial that racism doesn’t exist comes as no surprise. Lawrence Greenfield was appointed the director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in September 2001. By refusing an order to to manipulate data on a press release that confirming racial profiling at the hands of local enforcement, Greenfield was later demoted.
In August, 2005, a congressionally ordered study that was based on 80,000 interviews obtained three years earlier found that Hispanic (11.4%) and Black (10.2%) motorists stopped for traffic violations were three times more likely to be searched or have their vehicles searched and were more likely to be subjected to force or threats of force than were whites (3.5%).
In addition, the report found that police were more likely to issue more tickets to Hispanic drivers and arrest, search and use of force against Black drivers.
Greenfield refused to comply when his supervisors crossed out this information on the draft of a press release about the report. Greenfielf was given the option of being terminated or receive a demotion – with retirement only a six months away, he accepted the demotion to protect his pension. No press release was ever issued on the report, and it was quietly posted to the bureau’s website.
Issues of racism isn’t the only thing the Bush administration has tried to cover up by bullying tactics. Bunnatine Greenhouse, the top contract procurement officer for the Army Corps of Engineers, was forced out of her job on Aug. 27 after denouncing the signing of a no-bid contract with a Halliburton subsidiary for oil field repair work in Iraq this past June. Greenhouse told Congress that the oil contract “was the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career.”
It is more than ironic that in the immediate days following Hurricane Katrina, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root was awarded a no-bid contract for reconstruction in the Gulf area.
The real “hijacking of the Senate” as Frist puts it, was already carried out against the interests of the middle class and the oppressed, who oppose the corrupt right-wing reactionaries that Sen Bill First belongs to. Although the Democrats have every right to fight the current Neocon Mafia on grounds of corruption, they too are on notice. A large majority of them have been playing politics too. Some of them are for the occupation in Iraq with “Stay the course” as their motto. The seven members of the “Gang of 14” have already set back the civil rights movement when they secretly worked out their plan to end the “Neocon Nuclear option.” It is very troubling when half of the Democratic Senators voted for the right-wing, racist, anti-abortion, anti-worker, pro-big business John Roberts for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. So far, they have yet to help the victims of Katrina and Rita, except play politics and criticize.
We the people will no long settle for subtle or outright form of corruption from both parties who refuse to serve the interests of the majority of the people they were elected to represent – the middle class, the working class and the oppressed. And for those who want to continue –
GET READY TO RUMBLE AS WE BEGIN TO TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY NOW!!!
