I have now read the indictment of New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez in its entirety. It’s not fun reading. To be honest, though, I spent most of the time cringing but still wondering whether or not what I was learning really constituted a crime or crimes.
It looks like Menendez is clearly guilty of filing false financial disclosure forms, so he has a criminal problem no matter what. There’s one count that has to do with causing pilots to make illegal communications with air traffic control that I never found an explanation for, so I can’t really offer any analysis of that.
Most of the indictment focuses on four areas: helping expedite travel visas for the girlfriends of a friend and donor, advocating in favor of enforcement of the friend and donor’s contract with a port in the Dominican Republic, pushing back on a Medicare fraud case filed against this same friend and donor, and financial contributions and gifts from this friend and donor that are supposed to constitute bribery.
The details are unseemly, to say the least, but we should also look at this within the proper context. The donations were not illegal in and of themselves, but only as part of an alleged quid pro quo arrangement. It’s scandalous that one rich individual can legally give so much money to a U.S. Senator, but that’s an indictment of our campaign finance laws, not of Senator Menendez.
The question should be what a senator is legally entitled to do for a friend, regardless of whether or not that friend routinely fills their coffers with cash. I say this because it is clear that Bob Menendez and Salomon Melgen were more than mere acquaintances or political allies. Menendez spent much of his vacation time with Melgen, and presumably not just because Melgen provided free accommodations. Can you not call up your friend, the senator from New Jersey, and ask him to help make sure your girlfriend can get an entry visa to visit the United States? Is it a crime for a senator to inquire about a contract at a foreign port on behalf of a friend?
These are the arguments than the senator will be making in court, and working against him will be the financial contributions and gifts his friend bestowed on him, the timing of those gifts, and the fact that Menendez sought to hide those gifts by filing false disclosure statements.
On the other hand, most of what Menendez did he did in plain sight by communicating or having his staffers communicate with other government agencies like the Departments of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security.
Do other senators not do the same on behalf of people who are both friends and big donors?
As I said at the top, Menendez is clearly guilty of filing false disclosures and, as part of that, he accepted illegal gifts in the form of free air travel and hotel accommodations that he only belatedly paid for. He has a big problem.
But the other 99 senators must be looking at this indictment with great concern. Our system is rotten, but most of what Menendez is accused of doing is certainly not unique to him.
What I am willing to say is that the people of New Jersey should be very displeased with how Bob Menendez prioritized his job. He spent a tremendous amount of time looking out for the interests of his close friend, a person who had clearly defrauded the Medicare system, and he should have been spending that time helping more humble and ethical people who were actually his constituents.
One too many “is”s in the title me thinks
Is the System is as Guilty as Bob Menendez?
He spent a tremendous amount of time looking out for the interests of his close friend, a person who had clearly defrauded the Medicare system, and he should have been spending that time helping more humble and ethical people who were actually his constituents.
It is a system-wide problem. Why is it so hard to get a $15/hr minimum wage effective almost immediately? As just one example. Who are they really looking out for?
Bit of an understatement. I venture to say that it is near universal if not actually so.
The tell is right in here:
“Can you not call up your friend, the senator from New Jersey, and ask him to help make sure your girlfriend can get an entry visa to visit the United States? Is it a crime for a senator to inquire about a contract at a foreign port on behalf of a friend?”
No, you can’t do that because it is preferential. If you are going to do this level of “constituent services” then you either have to offer it broadly and/or make sure that the person on the other end is not a campaign donor beyond a small amount.
There is a pattern here and it is telling. Man with power does things for other man with power. We can allow it but it’s the royal road to corruption.
And yes, this standard ought to be applied to all Senators. Period.
So, I can call my representative and ask him to help me out but not if I’ve given him more than a nominal amount of money?
So, we contribute to campaigns to lose influence?
Context and scale, yes?
What is it you want done? There are gray areas but there are also things that are not gray at all. So it depends on the specifics. We can have rules and regulations and oversight. That beats corruption.
Why should money buy influence?
How about this model: politicians stand for certain policy positions and philosophical ideas. You contribute because you want to support, say, less income inequality rather than more. The “influence” you buy is general and principled and not about getting Dominican ladies into the country so that you can fuck them without having to travel.
It is utterly naive to assume that money does not corrupt. It always has and always will.
who is being naive, though?
obviously money buys influence. That’s the whole purpose of political money. Friendship also brings influence. Politicians have friends, and those friends get to ask for crap just because they are friends. Maybe they don’t have to go through staff. Maybe they get their calls returned. These things are not crimes.
The “purpose of political money” is not monolithic. When a hedge fund dude gives big money he wants very specific results that benefit a very narrow class of people (and at the expense of others, I would argue). When AFSCME gives big (or medium big) money, it wants specific (and general) results that benefit a wide class of people (and not at the expense of others, or at least not to the same extent). So this is a matter of degree and the impact it has on policy in terms of magnitude.
Asking for a favor should be on the order of “Help get my kid into Annapolis” or “Here is an economic development initiative we badly need.” These work much better at lower levels where there is real constituency services. Senators represent an entire state. They ought to have different standards. Why is that controversial?
I’m not saying they should not have friends or that they should not be sensitive to why people elected them and supported them. But that can’t be so narrow that it turns the office into a business transaction.
Is wanting to get money out of elections naive? If so, then that’s what I am. It warps the system, and not just in a trivial “Come on, let the guy have friends” sort of way.
You’re making an interesting moral contrast between a hedge fund manager and someone trying to get his kid into Anapolis.
Remember the ethics experiment asking about pushing someone in front of a train to save two lives, vs switching a train from a track with two people on it to a track with one person? Something similar is happening here.
We are upset about Anapolis becuse we understand that there is an individual person involved, an individual person we can identify with (even if we’ve never applied to a competitive school). That raises our moral outrage meter. But when a hedge fund manager wants a change to a regulation somewhere that makes hedge fund managers more money, we don’t think much of it. But, in fact, that hedge fund manager is screwing many more people — where is that money coming from, after all? But we don’t identify with them as individuals — its an amorphous mass of people — so we think it’s acceptable.
Corruption on a large enough scale becomes morally invisible. For instance: let’s say your home-based business takes off, and you start hiring a few people to come into your home and help you out. Non-conforming use! You take your P&Z commissioner out for a weekend in NYC and the next week you have a variance. Corruption!
Now let’s say you’re Walmart and a own four thousand stores. You don’t like the way a regulation is written, so you fly out a few House Reps to tour your offices in Belgium and put their children on an advisory board ( where they’re paid a few hundred thousand dollars for a day’s work). Out of it comes a law carefully tailored to national retail organizations that sell a variety of home goods with more than 3,999 locations. But that’s not corruption.
It’s the difference between a street walking prostitute and an escort: one gets paid more, and that’s all there is to it.
you know, a few years ago a friend of mine and of this blog was having bureaucratic problems as they tried to adopt a baby in Kazakhstan. Because he was friends with many of the top bloggers, he had a team of allies (lobbyists) talking to everyone from his representative in Congress to his senators to as far up the State Department ladder to Hillary as we could get. What we were really trying to do was influence a judge who was afraid to let the adoption go through because of some stupid woman in Tennessee who had sent her adopted baby back to Moscow on a plane.
We had some impact, I believe, and the adoption was successful.
This is how friendship and influence work in the real world, and it might not be fair that someone else didn’t have friends in the right places, but that’s kind of just too bad for them.
Now, the reason you give a senator tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars is generally not because you have completely altruistic motives, although that can certainly be part of it. At a minimum, you expect your phone call to be returned.
So, the (legal) problem here is fuzzy at best. Does it matter that the visas were for girlfriends instead of tourism? Does it matter than the Medicare case was valid? Does it matter that the port issue was a private business dispute? Legally, I don’t know that it does matter.
The problem seems to be that one man can given so much money to one politician, but that’s a general problem. Menendez is a filthy politician, but everyone already knew that.
Other than accepting gifts and filling out deceptive forms, I’m not sure he did anything that is all that out of the ordinary or actually a crime.
There is a hole in your logic here. Your example is lovely and I’m glad it worked out, but it wasn’t done by greasing the wheels with money in the form of a bribe or campaign contributions.
I’m glad politicians can actually help people. But if we have regulations that separate this from money then I think that’s a good thing, since, as you note, the negative examples are just as likely as the positive ones.
Aren’t we agreeing that we want to catch crooks and bad, corrupt politicians? Well-crafted regs ought to be able to do this. We will see where Menenedez falls in terms of the law.
Yes, corruption is rampant in government, and of course a Senator who spends his time helping the wrong people shall be punished.
There is no way to understand our “system” as anything other than a painstakingly contrived series of mechanisms in which powerful elected officials give preferential treatment to the 1%ers who pay the expenses for their election. The fact that we keep upping the amounts rich vulgarians like this Melgen clown may give to moneygrubbers like Menendez makes this very clear. If not “bribery”, it’s legally sanctioned undue influence. Which is the (obvious) backbone of the system.
So without ever reading the charges, there’s no doubt the “system” is as guilty—hell, it’s MORE guilty than Menendez! In the words of King Claudius, “Oh my offence is rank, it smells to heaven!” Unfortunately there’s no way to put the “system” on trial, haha!
Is it possible to eliminate the fuzzy edges of line between “professional” and “personal? Probably not. However, those “fuzzy edges” are very small and not as ragged as many in business and government pretend they are.
It’s difficult for anyone not to do minor or modest professional favors for those one has some level of friendship with. Also not uncommon for the individual receiving the favor to want to reciprocate in some way. The general rule in business is not to accept any personal “gift” of more than nominal value. A sleeve of golf balls is okay and a paid-for weekend golf outing isn’t. But there’s nothing wrong with accepting such a golf outing from a friend, but not if one is a public official or the friend is also a business client.
The line Duke Cunningham crossed was in taking substantial gifts from a donor constituent. A line Menendez crossed was doing services for a donor non-constituent and friend. Would it have been okay for Menendez to introduce Melgen to his Senator(s) and Rep and ask them to look into the matter?
Why is it okay for public officials to have private meetings with lobbyists who are rarely constituents? Or private meetings with substantial campaign donors? That’s where the ugly stuff happens. Well, except for Sheldon Adelson because there’s no mystery as to what he expects for his donations.
Menendez is the system as it now stands, Booman. In fact, it appears to me that the way he conducted his business has always been “the system” throughout most of human history and certainly throughout most of American history.
To paraphrase John Sterling, the radio voice of Yankee baseball:
The truly talented ones amass more and more power. Sometimes they overstep their act and go down, only to be followed by another thief. So it goes. When people come along to truly challenge them…say someone who teaches the things that Jesus Christ taught, seeing as how it’s Easter weekend and all…the thieves in one manner or another almost always manage to string them up. RIP Martin Luther King Jr. So that goes as well.
“I saw my opportunities and I took ’em” said the crooked 19th century NYC ward heeler/bagman George Washington Plunkitt. I wonder if Menedez read that book. (Plunkitt of Tammany Hall
A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics, Delivered by Ex-senator George Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany Philosopher, from His Rostrum — the New York County Court House Bootblack Stand) Probably not. It’s a genetically-driven talent, I think. Saaaaay…if we are not to discriminate against people with other genetically defined characteristics, maybe we’re violating Menedez’s civil rights as well. Hmmmm….
Just as it’s always been. Just as it’s always been.
Just as it’s always been.
Menendez will or will not go down hard. If he does go down someone will surely soon fill his middling place in the pantheon of hustlers.
Just as it’s always been. Just as it’s always been.
And the greater talents will continue to rise to the top. Like the Clintons and the Bushes.
End of story.
Happy Easter.
AG
P.S. Keep on bashing them Libertarians and edging towards accepting the seemingly inevitable HRC candidacy, Booman. You’re doing your job, too.
Bet on it.
Says Hillary’s most relentless booster from 8 years ago.
We learn by doing.
And watching.
Where you been?
AG
Damn you, Bob Menendez.
Link