Ethics Anyone?

A one sided ethics truce in the House of Representative is handing the GOP a license to pillage and plunder.

While the Democrats are pointing a finger at the deplorable ethics of the GOP, are they actually doing anything to rein in abusers?
The answer is no.

While Democrats are minority in the House of Representatives, they
can still file complaints with the House Ethics Committee
Under current house rules, an investigation will automatically
be triggered when an ethics complaint is filed.
Only members of the House have standing to file an ethics complaints.

Last October, after nearly a year of inaction by the House members, CREW drew up ethics complaints against Congressmen Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney. They made them available to supporters and ask that they be delivered
to their respective members of Congress with a request to file.

In spite of the greatest politcal scandal in living memory unfolding in the House, to date ( March 24th, 2006), not one House member of either party has filed an ethics complaint.

When a tearful Duke Cunningham was hauled off to jail in November 2005, Nancy Pelosi wrote Dennis Hastert, requesting an investigation of Cunningham. Hastert could and did refuse.

If the House Minority Leader was serious about tidying up the House, all she had to do to open an investigation was to download the complaint off the CREW website and hand it to Doc Hastings, the Chairman of the House Ethics Committee.

If the Committee failed to respond, a sub-committee is automatically triggered and an investigation would have been launched.

As one of the participants in this exercise of direct democracy, I wanted to know why
my Congressman Jay Inslee (D-WA) hadn't filed the complaints I delivered last
October and if he planned to do so in the near future.
I wanted to alert him to additional complaints against
Reps. Roy Blunt, Jerry Lewis and Sam Johnson.

I contacted Inslee's office in both Washingtons and spoke with
Kennie Endelman, his district manager in Washington State, his
his chief of staff and his legal advisor Beth Osbourne in DC.

After speaking with Kennie, Inslee sent me an email explaining that filing an ethics
complaint would be futile because the committee was evenly divided.

I sent his email to Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW after reviewing it said that
Inslee was referring to outdated House rules and she found this very troubling.

Then it was on to Inslee's chief of staff in DC who directed me to Beth Osbourne, Inslee's
LA.

I told her what CREW had told me; that their version of House Rules was incorrect. I
referred her to CREW and requested that Inslee file the ethics complaints I had
delivered.

In a follow up email, Beth expressed an interest in meeting with Melanie Sloan or
another member of CREW. I passed that information on to Melanie and a meeting
was arranged for the following week.

After the meeting Beth contacted me and said in future all letters would reflect the
updated information and thanked me for calling this to her attention.

While I am pleased they are no longer mis-informing constituents, the purpose of my
contact was filing ethics complaints. I responded with a request for more information
about the meeting and a query about Inslee's intentions regarding ethics complaints.

Her response was that they will continue to work with CREW but have no plans to file
any ethics complaints at this time.

I responded by saying I was glad they were going to continue working with CREW
but that I was deeply disappointed they were not going to f ile any ethics
complaints.

An associate of Sloan's contacted me and said the "meeting went well".

I received no response when I asked for clarification.

CREW recently delivered a complaint drawn up against Rep. Sam Johnson directly to the House, citing an "ethics truce" in which members of both parties had agreed to refrain from filing any complaints.

While I understand why the Republicans might find such a truce helpful, I fail to understand how it is the interests of Democrats to turn a blind eye to wholesale corruption.

Exposing the dirty underbelly of the GOP corporate shakedown racket on C-SPAN
is a real barn burner of an election issue.

They have a chance to partially derail the GOP money machine by making it unhealthy
for corporations to be seen buying members of Congress.

Sitting on the sidelines will not brand Democrats as an alternative to the 24/7
depravity of the GOP.

I have read rumors that the Democrats fear having their own foibles exposed.

As the Democrats have very little to offer in the way of political favors, it's
highly unlikely that their sins are going to rival this particularly piggie
of GOP.

Recently the Repugs enlisted all the dominant members of the MSM in an effort
to tar the Democrats with the same brush in the Abramoff scandal and failed.

Another rumor is that Rove will wind up his mighty Wurlitzer and take them all out with the mother of all smear campaigns.

That trick seems to be past its sell by date.

I have little patience with Democrats cowering before the "genius of Rove".

If the Democrats haven't figured out how to counteract the third rate dirty
tricks of an chubby social deviant after more than five years, I question whether
they are a real party or just an adjunct of the GOP?

Then there is the "self destruct" strategy.

The GOP are doing such a great job of destroying themselves that it doesn't make sense to interfere.
Add to that the danger that if you do your job, someone might call you a partisan. Ouch!

The GOP have broken all records on scandal, crime, abuse of power etc. In case
the Democrats haven't noticed, it hasn't destroyed them.

Hundreds of "tipping points" later, they are still sucking the life out of the country.

The primary reason these weasels are still looting and pillaging is the inaction of the Congressional Democrats

By not holding the GOP accountable or making them pay politically, the wages of sin are limitless and irresistable.

These power mad men and women simply do not have the moral fiber to resist
the bags of money, the corporate jets, membership in an elite club and the limitless
power that they can acquire so easily.

So what if the after school programs get cancelled and a few confused elderly
hospital patients can't pay their bills and get put in taxi cabs to nowhere.

So what if the food and drug supply aren't safe.
So what if someone else's kids are going hungry.

So what if the water isn't fit to drink and breathing the air makes you sick.

We're doing just fine.

It is a certainty that if the positions were reversed, if the GOP had the goods on the Democrats, they would reframe the word "truce" to mean "kick the Democrats asses down the Capitol steps".

If the Democrats wait long enough, the GOP will use them for hockey pucks "just because they can."

Carol DW