Radley Balko at Reason Magazine has issued a challenge to Democrats and the Left-o-sphere:
Here’s the challenge: Mollahan is, to say the least, “ethically challenged.” There’s no sensible reason for him to retain his seat on the most powerful committee in the House of Representatives. If Nancy Pelosi is serious about “draining the swamp,” she’ll kick Mollohan off the appropriations committee before she pounds her first gavel.
As for Byrd, his history of earmarking excesses makes Ted Stevens look like Ron Paul. Earmarking is little more than legalized corruption. It’s buying votes. Not only did Robert Byrd perfect the practice, he’s the one who put a “secret hold” on a bill that wouldn’t have even eliminated the practice, but would merely have added a bit of transparency to it. Democrats who rightly railed against the “Bridge to Nowhere” can’t be taken seriously if they sit back and let Byrd resume diverting millions of taxpayer dollars to wasteful pork projects in West Virginia. Harry Reid should remove him from the Senate Appropriations Committee.
I can get behind a Democratic Congress and Speaker Pelosi if they truly are concerned with rooting out corruption — as long as it also includes the corruption in their own party.
But if Mollohan remains and Byrd now has the power to pull even more pork to West Virginia, then we’ll know that it’s going to be business as usual in the crooked and corrupt halls of Congress. Just a different set of drapes in the Speaker’s office.
Additionally, if Speaker Pelosi caves to the Congressional Black Caucus and appoints the most corrupt person in Congress (and that’s saying A LOT) to chair the Intelligence Committee — then we’ll know that Nancy Pelosi’s rhetoric about cleaning up corruption really means “exacting revenge politics on Republicans”:
Pelosi is set to pass over Rep. Jane Harman to make Rep. Alcee Hastings chair of the Intelligence Committee. Hastings is of course a formal federal judge who was impeached and removed from the bench by a Democratic Congress in 1989 for taking bribes. Apparently, the Congressional Black Caucus is demanding a chairmanship for Hastings to compensate for the loss of influence caused by Rep. William Jefferson’s removal from the Appropriations Committee — also due to corruption.
Robbie-
I agree. I’ll be very disappointed if corrupt politicians are put in positions of power. There is a movement among activists to keep the back room negotiations from annointing these people but it’s a tough go…
O/T
Dianne:
Maybe you can un-retire:
Democratic leaders this week vowed to make the alternative minimum tax a centerpiece of next year’s budget debate, saying the levy threatens to unfairly increase tax bills for millions of middle-class families by the end of the decade.
The complex and expensive tax was designed to prevent the super-rich from using deductions, credits and other shelters to avoid paying the Internal Revenue Service. But because of rising incomes, the tax is expected to expand to more than 30 million taxpayers in 2010 from 3.8 million mostly well-off households in 2006.
Fixing the AMT has long been a top priority for Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who is in line to head the Senate Finance Committee. Last year, Baucus co-authored a bill to repeal the tax with Senate Finance Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).
Thanks Preston, but my little stints at consulting are enough for me.
However, having been the unhappy payer of the AMT in the 90’s, I wholeheartedly support that this tax problem is fixed. Ya know, we weren’t rich when we had to pay this tax. We were making about 200K a year at the time and got hammered. I really don’t understand this tax but apparently it hit us because some of our biggest deductions were state taxes. We owned our home so had no mortgage deduction but the state taxes are so high here in Kansas, they alone qualified us for itemized deductions. But, the AMT apparently didn’t allow these state deductions.
By the way, I know Clinton didn’t “start” the AMT, but he upped it to 28% (just heard that on C-span this morning) in 1993.
In any event, it must be fixed but that revenue is going to have to be made up elsewhere…the fight is on.
Hmm.
I wonder if the Dems are really interested in cleaning up Congress Perhaps they should ask Newt to come out of retirement and tell everyone where the bodies are as he has threatened to do.
I’m afraid that the Dems and the Repubs would much rather see business as usual than to really clean things up even though corruption was the number 1 issue on folks minds.