The Smoking Gun has put up a gallery of people muggin’ for their mugshots. Go to number 8 and see if you recognize the slimeball.
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Category Archives: Stinking Scumbags
Foggo’s Fooked
Ah, the escapades continue. From YahooNews:
The CIA’s third ranking official, Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, has been under
investigation by the FBI, IRS, Defense Criminal Investigative Service,
the CIA’s inspector general and the U.S. attorney’s office in San
Diego, said FBI spokeswoman April Langwell in San Diego.Under a sealed warrant, officials searched Foggo’s Virginia home and
his office at the CIA’s Langley, Va., campus, Langwell said. She could
provide no other details.The FBI and other agencies have been investigating whether Foggo
improperly intervened in the award of contracts to a San Diego
businessman and personal friend, Brent Wilkes, who has been implicated
in a congressional bribery scandal…Wilkes has been described in court papers as an unindicted
co-conspirator in a plot to bribe then-Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a
California Republican who is now serving time in a federal prison for
taking $2.4 million from government contractors.FBI agents also have been investigating whether Wilkes provided Cunningham with prostitutes, limousines and hotel suites.
Foggo has acknowledged participating in the poker parties at the
hotel rooms, but he has said there was nothing untoward about that. “If
he attended occasional card games with friends over the years, Mr.
Foggo insists they were that and nothing more,” the CIA statement said.
Lovely. So anyway, I’m watching the History Channel with my oldest son (he’s 13) and we’re watching a documentary about fighter pilots and dogfighting in particular. While the documentary goes into the history of aerial dogfights they focus on one in particular during the Vietnam War and it features fighter pilot Randall “Duke” Cunningham. Of course during one segment of the interview I point out to my son that the pilot is now in jail and when he asks me why, and I tell him, I can see in his eyes that I’ve helped speed him along the road to disillusionment. If my kids make it to adulthood without being overwhelmed by cynicism I’ll consider it a minor miracle.
Important Reading About the NSA’s Phone Call Data Collection Program
Lex has written a great, extensive, article on his work blog about the newest NSA scandal. After reading it my first reaction is this: because what the NSA is doing isn’t actually listening to the conversations on all the calls they are tracking I guess the NSA (and the President and Attorney General) can claim they weren’t lying when they said earlier this year that they were only tapping calls between folks in the US and overseas. And that is exactly the kind of hair-splitting I’ve come to expect of the President and all his little people. Will we ever find the bottom of the pit that this Administration has dug?
Graduating from the Ridiculous to the Absurd
According to this article if you pay a large chunk of your credit card bill off you may grab the attention of the Department of Homeland Security. Here’s the relevant paragraphs:
They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they
learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account
had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but
the amount available for credit on their account hadn’t changed.So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.
"When you mess with my money, I want to know why," he said.
They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the
little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call
center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their
normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage
higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified.
And the money doesn’t move until the threat alert is lifted.Walter called television stations, the American Civil Liberties Union
and me. And he went on the Internet to see what he could learn. He
learned about changes in something called the Bank Privacy Act.
If I understand this correctly the government is essentially able to freeze a portion of your assets without justifying itself. Think about it: you send in a check to pay a bill so you can’t very well use that money for other purposes because it is already spoken for, but at the same time it is not being used for its intended purpose which is to pay down your debt. Since you don’t know when the funds will be freed you can’t write another check against them, and if you don’t have your credit available to you then you can’t use it, even if you have a sudden emergency like being sick on vacation and needing to visit an urgent care center, or need to buy an airline ticket to visit your dying father…whatever.
I’d also be interested to find out what happens to your balance while your check is being held. Are you accruing more interest? I’d hope not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you were. After all banks have a lot better lobbyists and have contributed more bucks to lawmakers than we civil libertarians.
One could argue that none of us has a right to credit, which is true, but once we make arrangements with a company to grant us credit we expect to be able to use it. If this story is accurate then the government is infringing on our business relationships with our creditors and is doing so without having to show cause.
Are There Any Smart, Crooked Politicians in NC?
To provide further proof that many politicians resemble crooks more than any other segment of the populace I point you to the shenanigans of former NC State Rep Michael Decker and his patriarch NC House Speaker Jim Black. These two, along with their friend M. Scott Edwards, the treasurer of the NC Optometrist’s PAC, commited some of the dumbest rule-breaking you’re ever going to find. And like most common criminals they did it for chump change, relatively speaking. My middle-schoolers could come up with a better scheme than theirs, although I assure you that my middle-schoolers have much better ethics than these scabs of society. Sheesh.
Who’s Behind the Medicare Drug Plan?
Since the NY Times made their op-eds pay-to-read Ed Cone as been doing a review of them called Dark Times. In this post he looks at a column by Krugman re. the Medicare drug plan. The main points:
- The guy running Medicare when the drug plan was pushed through, Thomas Scully, was a health care lobbyist before he was appointed by W. After the plan went through he left medicare and is now a lobbyist for drug companies.
- The US Representative who was a co-sponsor for the bill on the Hill was Billy Tauzin, who is now the president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA).
Huh.
Introducing Stinking Scumbag Number One
Well, I’ve finally had all I can take from the stinking scumbags we call leaders in today’s society so I’ve created a category just for them. As I come across stories of greed, avarice and unethical behavior involving our leaders in politics, government, business and popular culture I’ll post them under the "Stinking Scumbags" category/tag. It should contain the most posts on this blog in very short order.
Our first "Stinking Scumbag" is actually two people, Tom Delay and his wife Christine. She was paid $115,000 over three years by a firm tied to the Abramoff scandal. Here’s a description of the hard work she did for that money:
An attorney for
U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay on Monday said that $115,000 was a reasonable price
to pay the congressman’s wife to determine favorite congressional
charities and compile information on each one…“She was paid
by Alexander to work on a project and the project enabled her to do it
from Houston,” Richard Cullen, one of Tom DeLay’s attorneys, said
Monday. “She would contact the … members of Congress to determine which
charity in the congressman’s district was the congressman’s … that he
thought was the best-run or was his favorite charity in that district.Christine DeLay then tracked down those charities in each
of the nation’s 435 congressional districts. She learned such facts
about them as what their tax status was, what geographic districts they
operated in and what projects they were working on, Cullen said.Cullen said he didn’t know how many hours it took for Christine DeLay
to complete the project, nor did he know what Alexander Strategy Group
did with the information.Cullen said Christine DeLay was not the sort of person to do the job haphazardly.
"She’s not a superficial person,” he said. “She’s going to do it right.”
Now that’s what I call soft money. Read the whole story here.
Befuddled 