Amgen: A Classic Example of Lobbying Washington At Taxpayer Expense

We have covered political class corruption many, many times in this blog. It has gotten so bad that it seems that finding, creating, and profiting from government corruption is more important to our Washington politicians than actually doing their Constitutional jobs, e.g. developing and living up to sane budgets, researching, developing, READING, and voting on legislation, etc.

Just a very small handful of political class corruption that we have covered include the following examples:

• The Obama administration gave out billions of taxpayer dollars to its crony capitalists partners and political fundraisers and donors in the alternative energy industry. All of which provided no societal benefit and many of whom went out into bankruptcy and out of business. The almost endless list of failures included Solyndra, Spectra, Beacon, Evergreen, Ecotality, A123, and many others.
• The Obama administration also gave out hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to its crony capitalist partners and political fundraisers and donors in the alternative transportation industry with no societal benefit in return. The major companies that received taxpayer wealth because they were Obama fundraisers for his elections include Tesla and Fisker Motors.
• Barney Frank used to be the chairman of a powerful House of Representatives committee that oversaw the financial industry. However, that did not prevent him from accepting massive reelection campaign donations from the various companies his committee was responsible for regulating along with top executives from those companies. Blatant conflicts of interest.
• Former Speaker of The House Nancy Pelosi participated in about nine company IPOs, one of which was the VISA IPO that happened after the House mysteriously postponed legislation that would have been detrimental to the company and its IPO. Within a matter of days, Ms. Pelosi, who was then responsible for scheduling the House’s legislative schedule, made a hundred thousands dollars from her IPO access.
• A number of Congressional people made investment decisions and choices shortly after being briefed by Treasury Department people in the run up to the Great Recession, trying to leverage this insider information in their personal financial portfolios before the deteriorating condition of the economy was pubic knowledge.
• Many Congressional members and members of their staffs got sweetheart mortgage deals from Countrywide Financial, one of the prime reasons for the housing and economic collapse.

We could go on and on about Washington political class corruption. However, today we will look at the latest, classic example of corporate interests being used to leverage and basically bribe politicians to get what both need, financial rewards, all at the expense to the American taxpayer.

What makes this instance of corruption classic is that it was done as part of the fiscal cliff deal, a deal that was supposed to prevent the economy from crashing on January 1, 2013. This was a very important piece of legislation, the failure of which would have caused economic harm to most Americans. However, the prideless Washington political class viewed it as just another legislative opportunity to enrich themselves and take care of their business cronies.

The details of this latest classic of political class corruption was outlined in a January 19, 2013 New York Times article:

• In early January, Amgen, which is the world’s biggest biotech company, pleaded guilty in a major Federal fraud case.
• However, that did not prevent the Washington political class from presenting the company with a belated Christmas gift, buried deep within the fiscal cliff deal.
• In that deal, Congressional members insisted on a paragraph that while it did not mention Amgen explicitly, the paragraph was very financially friendly to one of Amgen’s major drug products.
• The paragraph was inserted into Section 632 fiscal cliff final legislation and it delays a set of Medicare price restraints on a particular type of drugs.
• That category of drugs includes Sensipar, a top performing Amgen pill used for dialysis patients.
• This giveaway allows Amgen an additional two years to sell Sensipar without government price and cost controls.
• It must have been a big deal since according to the Times article, “the company’s chief executive quickly relayed it to investment analysts.”
• Good news for Amgen and its investors but bad news for Medicare since its cost for the product will not go down and save the American taxpayer up to $500 million over the next two years.
• Congressional aides were reported surprised by the inclusion of the delay since Amgen was the only company to lobby for the delay, leveraging its 74 Washington lobbyists for the effort, and this was on top of a previous two year delay that critics found unnecessary to extend another two years.
• Supporters of the delay and the legislative paragraph, mostly leaders of the Senate Finance Committee who, according to the Times, “ have long benefited from Amgen’s political largess,“ defended the action, saying it was necessary to allow regulators to prepare properly for the pricing change, even though no one expected the pricing change to be delayed and the pricing changed had already been delayed two years previously.

Okay, that is “what” happened, political cronyism results in an unneeded relief package to political donors, costing the American taxpayer about half a billion dollars. Before we get into the “how” of this disgrace, keep in mind that just before this deal was passed, Amgen pleaded guilty to marketing one of its drugs illegally. It had to pay criminal and civil penalties totaling $762 million, a record settlement for a biotechnology company. Thus, not only are the politicians dealing away taxpayer money, they are dealing it away with a company that just pleaded guilty to massive fraud.
The following summarizes the “how” of the corruption, taken right out of the lobbyists’ playbook:

• Amgen has deep historical, financial and political ties to lawmakers like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Kentucky, and Senators Max Baucus, of Montana, and Orrin G. Hatch, of Utah. who hold serious power over Medicare payment policy as the leaders of the Finance Committee.
• Amgen also has extensive ties with the Obama administration, with its lobbyists visiting the White House more than a dozen times since 2009.
• Amgen’s employees and political action committee have donated almost nearly $5 million to political candidates and committees since 2007.
• Not surprisingly, these donations include $67,750 to Baucus and $59,000 to Hatch.
• An additional $73,000 went to McConnell, some of it at a fund-raising event for him that Amgen helped sponsor in December while the debate over the fiscal legislation was under way.
• More than $141,000 was also donated from Amgen employees to President Obama’s reelection campaigns.
• Additionally Amgen and its foundation have given hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable contributions to powerful organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus and groups like the Utah Families Foundation, which, surprise, surprise, was founded by Senator Hatch, an organization that provides positive coverage to the Utah news media.
• Amgen has also contributed to Glacier PAC, a PAC sponsored by Baucus in Montana, and OrrinPAC, a Hatch PAC in Utah.
• When Hatch was facing difficulties in his reelection bid in 2012, group called Freedom Path paid for advertisements in Utah that attacked his opponent. The group was backed and financed by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade group that includes, wait for it,….. Amgen.
• And finally, one of Mr. Hatch’s top Finance Committee staff members on health and Medicare policy, Dan Todd, actually worked as a health policy analyst for Amgen’s government affairs office from 2005 to 2009.

Now, all of this could have been a coincidence. The Senators and the rest of the politicians that stood by when this piece of legislation was introduced might actually be truly thinking that this was a good deal for the taxpayer…but probably not. The money goes round and round and when the music stops, the American taxpayer is the one without a seat even though we funded the whole party.

That is why two steps from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” need to be implemented right away:

1. Step 5 would allow only individual American citizens to contribute to election campaigns. No more PAC, union, corporate, or lobbyist money could be used to bribe political figures.
2. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federally elected officials. If you review the corruption cases over the past few years, the ones listed above and others, it is usually the longest serving politicians who are the most ingrained to the culture of corruption. Pelosi, Frank, Baucus, Hatch, etc. have been around for decades. They have not resolved any of the major issues facing American during that time so how much worse could be without them, ousted from office because of term limits.

Without these two steps, the corruption train keeps on rolling and we are not longer a government by the people and for the people, we are a government by the lobbyists for the lobbyists.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Selling and Buying Of America, Part 3: The Gangs That Control America

This is the third post on the topic and insult of the “Buying and Selling Of America.” Two days ago we reviewed the recent history of politicians helping themselves to taxpayer wealth to enrich themselves, enrich their families and friends, and continuing to finance their reelection campaigns with taxpayer dollars.

Yesterday, we reviewed the disgrace of the Washington political class asking for/demanding citizens and businesses contribute to Obama’s inauguration festivities and parties and how taxpayers will likely pay over $150 million to support the inauguration parties for the politicians in D.C.

Today’s examples come from a new book written by Jeffrey Sachs, a highly respected economist from Columbia University. The book is titled "The Price of Civilisation" and Mr. Sachs says the US economy is caught in a feedback loop: ''Corporate wealth translates into political power through campaign financing, corporate lobbying and the revolving door of jobs between government and industry; and political power translates into further wealth through tax cuts, deregulation and sweetheart contracts between government and industry. Wealth begets power, and power begets wealth,''

Well said. In about fifty words Mr. Sachs has summarized how the buying and selling of America works. We no longer live in a democracy, we live below a tier of elitists that trade taxpayer wealth and freedoms for their own reward, greed, and enrichment. That is why no major issue ever gets resolved in this country. There are powers and “gangs” that do not want them solved, it would upset the cozy arrangements that these elitists have established.

I use the word “gangs” because that is what Mr. Sachs calls them, as outlined in an article by Ross Gittins of The Sydney Morning Herald. Mr. Sachs categorizes the gangs as follows:

1) The first gang is the military-industrial complex, i.e. the relationship between the Pentagon and the private businesses and contractors that live off of its massive annual budget. Here are is a famous quote from President Eisenhower from over fifty years ago: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."

As a result, Sachs concludes that “America has been condemned to militarization, useless wars and fiscal waste on a scale of many tens of trillions of dollars since then.'' I would say he has gotten that right:

• Useless wars: Vietnam, Granada, Yugoslovia, Lebanon, Iraq I, Iraq, II, Afghanistan, and probably a few I have forgotten.
• Fiscal waste: you cannot spend over $600 billion a year on a world wide operation and not have fiscal waste. Rather than run down the many examples that we could list, let me refer to our most popular blog post ever regarding the Navy nonchalantly wasting over $300 million of taxpayer wealth:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/07/us-navy-ships-for-sale-cheap-never-used.html

Additionally, if you go to the website www.simplywired.com you will find that the average salary for an individual defense contractor is about $64,000. Since the average American household annual income is just under $50,000, you begin to see why defense contractors want the status quo to be maintained.

2) The second gang, according to Sachs, the Wall Street-Washington complex, a complex which has steered the nation’s financial system towards monopoly control by just a handful of politically connected Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and a few other financial firms. Despite the financial meltdown of the Great Recession, despite the useless, but long and cumbersome, Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation, despite the public’s disgust with the banking industry in general, these few banks control as much or more of the financial industry than they did five years ago. These few banks control over 50% of banking deposits, banking assets, and just about any other measure of banking value.

How were they able to do this? Let’s look at just two examples of how the “gang” works:

- Congressman Barney Frank used to be a powerful chairman of a House banking committee. His committee was supposed to oversee and make sure banks did not get out of control. But how motivated was he in this role when:

• According to an October 22, 2010 article in the Boston Herald by Dave Wedge, Massachusetts Congressman, Barney Frank, accepted $40,000 in reelection campaign donations from financial institutions that received bailout/TARP from the government. Two things make this action so despicable. First, Congressman Frank was at the center of the whole taxpayer bank bailout activity since he was chairman of the lead House of Representatives committee that was determining which institutions got how much taxpayer money, if any.
• Second, in 2009, Mr. Frank told the Washington publication, Roll Call, that he "won't take any PAC money from banks that took TARP funds, nor would I take it from the top executive." However, according to Mr. Wedge's research he did not fulfill this statement.
• According to Mr Frank's own campaign disclosure reports, he accepted a campaign donation of $7,000 from top executives from Bank Of America. Bank of America received $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funds."
• He received $5,000 for Bank Of America's Federal PAC fund.
• He received $10,000 from the Bank Of New York Mellon Corporation which received $3 billion from the bailout fund.
• He received $2,000 from the Financial Services Roundtable PAC that includes representatives from TARP recipients Bank of America, JP Morgan, Chase, and Wells Fargo.
• He received $1,000 from U.S. Bancorp's PAC which received $6 billion in bailout funds.
• These details and further discussion of “gangster politics” can be found at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/10/conflicts-of-interest-and-lies-that-are.html

Let’s move on to another example, this one where Congressional members got sweetheart mortgage deals from Countrywide Financial, the poster child for the bad  mortgageloans that were the underlying cause of the Great Recession. The following members of Congress and their senior staffs received this preferential treatment, as outlined in an Associated Press report:

1. Former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.
2. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.
3. Mary Jane Collipriest, who was communications director for former Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, then a member of the Banking Committee.
4. The AP report said Dodd referred Collipriest to Countrywide's VIP unit. Dodd, when commenting on his own loans, has said he was unaware of the discount program.
5. Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
6. Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., former chairman of the Oversight Committee. Towns issued the first subpoena to Bank of America for Countrywide documents, and current Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., subpoenaed more documents. The committee said that in responding to the Towns subpoena, Bank of America left out documents related to Towns' loan.
7. Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif.
8. Top staff members of the House Financial Services Committee.
9. A staff member of Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, a member of the Financial Services Committee.
10. Former Rep. Tom Campbell, R-Calif.
11. Former Housing and Urban Development SecretariesAlphonso Jackson and Henry Cisneros; and former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. The VIP unit processed Cisneros' loan after he joined Fannie's board of directors
12. Former Fannie Mae heads James Johnson, Daniel Mudd and Franklin Raines. Countrywide took a loss on Mudd's loan. Fannie employees were the most frequent recipients of VIP loans. Johnson received a discount after Mozilo waived problems with his credit rating.

Details of this corruption and more can be found at the following link:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/07/washington-corruption-train-keeps-on.html

Still do not believe the Wall Street/Washington gang exists? Consider the following graphic that shows the incest that exists between the Federal government and Wall Street banks (double click on the picture for a larger view):

The overlap is the incest of the government/Wall Street gang.
Maybe President Wilson had it right about a hundred years ago when he said: "The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy."

Are you beginning to see how the feedback loop works? Corporations support incumbent politicians via financial donations and once back in office, incumbent politicians cut special deals for those same donors and their businesses and interests. Everybody gets wealthy and secure, the gang and their loop keeps rolling along, an invisible empire above the forms of democracy.

Unfortunately, it is all subsidized by American taxpayers, who are not getting wealthy and secure. In fact, if anything, they are getting less secure (high, chronic unemployment) and declining household income and wealth (less secure). That is why there is no urgency on any politicians to upset the process since they do not pay for the process, we do. And that is why our national debt is $16.4 TRILLION and climbing, and cuts in government spending would make the gang members less wealthy and less secure even if it helped save the country’s economy and democracy.

That’s enough bad news for today. We will continue with the selling and buying of America tomorrow when we reveal the identities of the last two gangs and provide some common sense suggestions on how to bring the gangs down, restore our freedom and bring some sanity to our out-of-control government spending and get it under control. In the meantime, see if you can name the other two gangs.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and
others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

the Slime, The Sleaze, the Immorality, and The Corruption Of The American Policial Class -Part 2

Yesterday we slimed our way through 20 different instances of the American political class members who had acted in less than statesmanship ways. From cheating on their wives, one of whom was dying of cancer, to cronyism to encouraging false testimony to using the the processes of government to improvement their own personal lives, the slime, the sleaze, the immorality and the corruption of the political class was on full display.

Unfortunately, we could not fit all of the bad behavior into one post. We will need at least four more posts to get it all covered, certainly a sad commentary on what passes for leadership in Washington and elsewhere within our politics today:

1) Let's start today with a former governor from my home state of New Jersey. Jim McGreevey was the 52nd governor of New jersey but was forced to resign in 2004 after admitting lying about an extramarital affair with an Israeli citizen.

One disgusting aspect of the affair was that by naming his lover as the homeland security interface for the state government of New Jersey, he placed the citizens of New Jersey in potential danger from terrorist attacks since the FBI and Department of Homeland Security were forbidden to share its intelligence information with non-citizens, temporarily leaving the safety of New Jersey citizens in the dark relative to the latest intelligence information.

2) Let's stay in New Jersey and talk about a former U.S. Senator, Robert Torricelli. After getting elected to the Senate from New Jersey in 1996, he was forced to withdrawal from a reelection effort in 2002 after it came to light that he knowingly received illegal campaign donations from a North Korean businessman. 
His problems continued in 2007 when he was again the subject of controversy in 2007 when it was revealed that he spent some of the $2.9 million left over from his Senate campaign on donations to political candidates with ties to his business interests.

3) But can New Jersey really hold a candle to Illinois when it comes to political slime and corruption. First, three out of the past five governors of Illinois are currently or have already done prison time for their convictions on numerous counts of kickbacks, corruption, etc.

But consider the following news item from the March 2, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, reporting on a Chicago Tribune article: since 1976, 1,531 public officials from the Chicago area have been convicted of corruption. This simple math works out to the following, depressing conclusions:

•On average, more than one Chicago area public official was convicted every week for 27 years in the Chicago area for corruption.

•These are CONVICTIONS, not arrests, no indictments, but  CONVICTIONS.

•This conviction rate was only in the Chicago area, it did not include the entire state of Illinois or any other sub part of Illinois, just the Chicago area.

This number does obviously not include those corrupt public officials that got away with their crimes and corruption.Very depressing but a simple math explanation of why our government at all levels, is ineffective, inefficient, and a disgrace: those that are in office are ineffective and inefficient because they are looking out for only their self interest which makes them a disgrace relative to being a public servant. Hats off to Illinois politicians: they do corruption better than anywhere else in the country.

4) In a July 1, 2009 Washington Post article, U.S. Senator Sen. Daniel Inouye's Senate staff directly contacted Federal Treasury regulators to ask about the bailout application of an ailing Hawaii bank that Inouye had helped to create and into which he has invested the bulk of his personal wealth.

The bank, Central Pacific Financial, was not a prime candidate for a Treasury program designed to support healthy banks. The bank's losses were depleting its capital reserves and its primary regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., already had decided that it didn't meet the rules for receiving a favorable recommendation for a bailout. 

Nonetheless, two weeks after the inquiry from Inouye's office, Central Pacific announced that the Treasury would inject $135 million into the ailing bank. Coincidence or corruption, I'll let you decide.

5) Apparently, if you are a member of the U.S.Congress, you are not allowed to receive direct cash gifts or many other kinds of gifts from unions, businesses, lobbyists, etc. These types of gifts are seen as potential bribes to get legislators to vote favorably on pending legislation relative to the gift givers, even if it is not in the best interests of the American public. I wholeheartedly agree with this type of restriction.

However, as a member of Congress, you are allowed to participate in what is usually lucrative IPO offerings of a company, i.e. Congressional members can be on "the inside" when it comes to IPOs. According to a recent piece on "60 Minutes," no one in Congress has leveraged this loophole any better than Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House.

"60 Minutes" reported that Ms. Pelosi participated in upwards of nine corporate IPO opportunities, including one for the VISA IPO. VISA was somehow able get revenue restriction legislation delayed in the House Of Representatives when Pelosi was the Speaker of the House until after the IPO happened, resulting in a $100,000 profit for Ms. Pelosi's insider IPO participation in just a few days.
6) That same "60 Minutes" expose' reported that Congressman Spencer Bachus had successfully shorted the financial sector of the stock market just after getting warnings of a financial meltdown from the Secretary Of Treasury and head of the Federal Reserve Board, days before the information became public.

7) The "60 Minute" corruption piece also showed how former and current members of Congress, including Dennis Hasert, John Boehner, and Harry Reid, had also used their insider information positions to influence government behavior that benefited themselves personally.

8) According to an October 22, 2010 article in the Boston Herald by Dave Wedge, Massachusetts Congressman, Barney Frank, accepted $40,000 in reelection campaign donations from financial institutions that received bailout/TARP from the government. Two things make this action so despicable. First, Congressman Frank was at the center of the whole taxpayer bank bailout activity since he was chairman of the lead House of Representatives committee that was determining which institutions got how much taxpayer money, if any.

Second, in 2009, Mr. Frank told the Washington publication, Roll Call, that he "won't take any PAC money from banks that took TARP funds, nor would I take it from the top executive." However, according to Mr. Wedge's research and article:

•"According to Mr Frank's own campaign disclosure reports, he accepted a campaign donation of $7,000 from top executives from Bank Of America. Bank of America received $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funds."

•He received $5,000 for Bank Of America's Federal PAC fund.

•He received $10,000 from the Bank Of New York Mellon Corporation which received $3 billion from the bailout fund.

•He received $2,000 from the Financial Services Roundtable PAC that includes representatives from TARP recipients Bank of America, JP Morgan, Chase, and Wells Fargo.

•He received $1,000 from U.S. Bancorp's PAC which received $6 billion in bailout funds.

9) According to an article in the June 30, 2009 edition of the St. Petersburg Times, Florida Congresswoman Ginny Waite-Brown invested in various banks based on non-public, secret information she received as a result of her membership on a House banking committee, the very committee that approved taxpayer bailout money for the very same banks the Congresswoman invested in.

10) Oh, we are just getting warmed up. Consider a whole slew of corruption and slime that came to light in a Business Week magazine article within their Spring, 2011 Government Insider Special report:

•New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez recently "championed" a plan to provide a temporary tax cut for small companies, a tax cut that would allow them to offset investments these companies might make in research on therapies to prevent and treat chronic diseases. Oh, by the way, the pharmaceutical industry in New Jersey just happened to contribute $434,043 to his 2010 reelection campaign and PAC.

•Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow sponsored a bill to give a tax rebate for consumers who purchase a gas/electric car or truck. The recently available Chevy Volt from General Motors certainly falls within this category. Oh, by the way, General Motors employees contributed $84,635 to Stabenow's reelection campaigns between 1995 and 2010.

•New York Senator Charles Schumer has been accused by other Congressional members of making a proposed tax on carried interest of private equity managers so difficult that the measure never was passed into law. Oh, by the way, Schumer has received $8.8 million from the security and investment industry since 1989, an industry that certainly includes private equity managers.

•Montana Senator Max Baucus obtained a provision in a recent farm bill "for tax exempt forestry conservation bonds to help purchase a 500 square mile patchwork of land owned by Plum Creek Timber." Oh, by the way, Plum Creek Timber has spent $3.7 million in lobbyists fees from 2006 to 2010 and its employees have contributed $19,100 to various Bachus reelection campaigns.

•Iowa Senator Charles Grassley has backed tax credits for domestic production of corn based ethanol and tariffs on imports of ethanol. It just so happens that his home state has 40 ethanol plants that generate 3.5 billion gallons of ethanol each year. Oh, by the way, Grassley received $290,250 in reelection campaign donations from agriculturally based PACs in his 2010 election run.

•Arizona Senator John Kyl is a major proponent of cutting taxes on inherited wealth, having been instrumental in the one year hiatus of the inheritance tax in 2010 and cutting a deal with Obama to keep the reinstatement of the tax at 35%. Oh, by the way, eliminating the estate tax is a major priority of the Club For Growth, which just has happened to donate $155,753 to the Senator's election campaigns since 1989.

•Texas Senator John Cornyn has opposed Obama's attempts to repeal oil and gas industry tax breaks besides opposing the President's ban on Gulf oil drilling. Oh, by the way, oil and gas industry components have given the Senator $1.7 million since 2001.

10) A Bloomberg.com report, that was reprinted in an October, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, reported that six dozen Congressional staffers had traded in stocks of companies that their political bosses were actively involved in. One staffer heavily traded in Bank Of American stock when he found out early, before the rest of the world, that Bank of America had successfully passed its so-called "stress test," i.e. it was deemed a healthy company. Conflict of interest, being a parasite off of a politician style.

11) Former Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, was caught in an adulterous affair with an Argentinian woman while still married and still governor. The sad, but funny part of this escapade was that for a while no one knew where the Governor was, giving the excuse he was out in the woods in the U.S. on vacation by himself when he was eventually caught in Argentina with his lover.

12) Former U.S. Senator from Nevada, John Ensign, resigned his Senate seat after it became known in June, 2009 that he had an affair with Cynthia Hampton, who was his political treasurer and was married to Doug Hampton, Ensign’s administrative assistant. The Ensign and Hampton families lived in the same neighborhood outside Las Vegas and were considered the best of friends. 

In an interesting twist to the whole genre of political adultery, Ensign’s parents, wealthy casino executives, paid the Hamptons $96,000 in what was labeled gift income for tax purposes, the precise amount legally permissible without triggering taxes. Conincidence or cover-up money? 

13) John Kerry is a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and probably one of the richest members of Congress, having married into the Heniz family fortune. Despite living in Massachusetts, serving the state of Massachusetts in the Senate, and being filthy rich, he decided to bypass his legal tax obligations to the state of Massachusetts relative to his yacht.

According to a July 23, 2010 Boston Herald news article by Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa, the Senator had recently purchased a luxury 76 foot, New Zealand built boat with "glossy varnished teak interior, two VIP main cabins and a pilothouse fitted with a wet bar and cold wine storage." Obviously, this is not a row boat.

However, rather than berth the yacht in Massachusetts where he lives, wealthy Senator Kerry decided to berth the luxury ship in Newport, Rhode Island. This action allowed him to avoid paying almost $440,000 in Massachusetts sales tax and an annual Massachusetts excise of about $70,000. Rhode Island does not levy those types of taxes on boats. Nice example of non-integrity from a ranking member of the Washington political class.

14) Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri also has had some corruption and integrity problems. In late March, 2011, she announced she was selling her private plane and paying the owed back property taxes on it of over $287,000. Apparently in Missouri, an airplane owner has to pay property taxes on any plane that they own, something that the Senator did not do.

But that is not her only potential integrity problem. First, according to Politico, she also had to write a check to the Federal government when she billed her Senate expense account for purely political trips she made using the plane. This cost her to refund over $80,000 to the government.

Second, the plane is registered to a shell company that is registered as an LLC in the state of Delaware, a state that does not charge property taxes on private planes. Was this an attempt to shelter the plane from Missouri property taxes? Given that the Senator lives in Missouri, is a Senator from the state of Missouri, used to work for the state government of Missouri, and keeps the plane in a hangar in Missouri, it certainly gets suspicious when her plane gets registered in Delaware.

Finally, the Senator served as the state of Missouri auditor from 1999 to 2007 so claiming ignorance of the state laws on property taxes is not a viable defense. Makes you wonder how a smart, educated, politically savy individual could forget or neglect to pay over a quarter of a million dollars of property taxes. Corruption or incompetence, neither being a good adjective to describe a U.S. Senator.

In a final bit of irony, earlier in 2011, McCaskill signed on as a co-sponsor of Senate legislation that would fire Federal employees if they are “seriously delinquent” in paying their own Federal taxes. Looks like maybe we can add hypocrite onto the charges of incompetent or corrupt.

  Ashleigh Brilliant once insightfully said: "I either want less corruption in government or more of a chance to participate in it." Based on just the two past days of political class corruption, it appears most of politicians opted for the participation option offered by Ms. Brilliant. The sleaze train of corruption continues rolling along tomorrow.

Please visit our Presidential website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/