Tom Delay, “the Hammer” found guilty as charged.
They were charged with conspiring to funnel $190,000 in corporate donations to state candidates through the Republican National Committee.
The main facts of the case were never in dispute.
In mid-September 2002, as the election heated up, Mr. DeLay’s state political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, gave a check for $190,000 to the Republican National Committee. The money had been donated earlier in the year by various corporate lobbyists seeking to influence Mr. DeLay, several witnesses said.
On Sept. 13, the check was delivered to the R.N.C. by Mr. Ellis, who was Mr. DeLay’s top political operative in Washington and headed his federal political action committee.
At the same meeting, Mr. Ellis also gave the Republican director of political operations, Terry Nelson, a list of state candidates and an amount to be sent to each. Mr. Nelson testified that Mr. Ellis had told him the request for the swap had come from Mr. DeLay.
Of course, Delay is appealing. And of course, he says he is innocent of any wrong doing and the subject of a Democratic Vendetta.
It is uncontested that the $190,000.00 is only SOME of the money in a single year that lobbyists gave to DeLay to curry favor and influence him, along with lavish junkets and fawning dinners, and all the trimmings.
My guess is despite the possibility of 5-99 years, DeLay will get some form of probation, however, at sentencing in Texas.
Instead, I point to the following:
Mark:4:22: There is nothing hidden save it shall be revealed.
With the probation department situation… I wouldn’t be tossing many rocks.
It is not “tossing rocks” to wonder just what those lobbyists thought they got for their $190,000 – or have you never heard of K Street and its relationship with Tom DeLay?
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p>I have been fighting for Open Meetings, proper procurement laws, and state FOIA type laws to apply to Beacon Hill starting back when Romney was governor, and still fighting for this, today.
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p>Oh, and just for you, more about K Street – imagine, not having lobbyists serve on advisory boards and commissions! The shame.
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p>Or K Street Millionaires
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p>There is a difference between educating about policy and providing factual background and what K Street and its alliance with DeLay did. It makes Joe OBrien and Probation look like a bookie ring.
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p>Just my .02
There is a ratio I read about that says that for every single crime conviction, eleven crimes go unpunished. I think of that every time I see one of these convictions. Who are the others? It is said “government corruption is always spoken of in the past tense.” Yet we give our trust and safety to the glorious unindicted.
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p>Monday we will relinquish the choice of growing and selling the foods we eat to the notoriously political FDA under the “Food Safety and Modernization Act.“. (I’m always amazed how the better sounding the name of the bill is the less it helps the people.)
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p>The same organization, famous for allowing people to be poisoned for the sake of corporate profits, will determine the foodstuffs you eat. Surely they will run the program as the government runs the economy and military and the transportation safety program.
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p>No sense contacting your elected on this. Certainly the lobbyist was there first and had better persuasion tools than you. (Is that what they mean by “going green”?)
Why are you posting under a different handle?
And one of those is that the District Attorney of Austin has jurisdiction over crimes involving the Texas Legislature, like funneling corporate donations to candidates.
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p>Here’s the best part about it:
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p>DeLay knew it was against the law for that money to from corporations to Texas candidates, but he thought it was legal to send that money through an intermediary to them.
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p>I thought Dick DeGuerin would be able to finagle an acquittal. He is the best defense lawyer in Texas. He once defended a man who shot his neighbor, cut the body up into pieces, dumped it in the Gulf, and fled to Pennsylvania in disguise. The jury found the man not guilty of murder but guilty of the dismemberment and bond-jumping. Dick Deguerin is that good.
Christopher, don’t misunderstand my “happiness” about Delay’s conviction. Maybe we need to establish some rules about this type of thing. I am happy when people who commit crimes are caught and/or punished for their crimes. I am not giddy and overjoyed to simple see another human incarcerated, I am “happy” because people like Delay belong in jail and I am annoyed knowing they all aren’t in jail.
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p>So in the future when I make a “happy” comment abut a bad guy getting caught, please don’t insinuate that I have some sadistic pleasure seeing people getting hurt.
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p>Delay should go to jail.
There are plenty of Republicans who think that Delay’s prosecution and conviction were politically motivated.
I think wrong is wrong. We both know that some people will support people even when they are wrong. Here we go again with Charlie Rangel or Sal DiMasi, both of whom had very serious evidence against them and yet won reelection by overwhelming number. I can’t explain why some groups of people will support “their guy” even when the evidence shows they are breaking rules.
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p>I posted here shortly after his conviction how Charles Yancey was openly defending Chuck Turner, after a lightning fast conviction of all charges. How can people do that?
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p>So yes, there will be Republicans, and maybe a lot of them, who will defend Delay, but I am not one of them.
So you might regard it as strange if I wrote comments as if, of course, you objected to Delay’s conviction because I think you’re some kind of stereotype of a Republican.
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p>Yet, this is what comments about liberals hating CEOs because they’re CEOs sound like from our side.