August, 2020, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Political Corruption From Minnesota To Pennsylvania To Georgia

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) Over the years we have reviewed dozens of cases of American politicians enriching themselves at taxpayer expense. More recently, we discussed the reality that U.S. Senators may have conducted some rewarding financial transactions based on insider information they had on the coronavirus. 

We discussed how Nancy Pelosi made sure that her husband’s company and her nephew’s winery, who just so happens to be the governor of California, were rewarded with economic stimulus money from the coronavirus funding that was supposed to help small businesses and unemployed Americans. About the same time we discussed how Pelosi’s husband made some very fortunate and lucrative stock trades and purchases that turned out to be very closely linked to her access to insider, secret government briefings.

The list of greedy politicians seems to never end, to which we add the following recent greedy money grab by a Congressman:

• Sanford Bishop is a Congressman from the state of Georgia.
• The Office Of Congressional Ethics (OCE), a government ethics watchdog, recently released a report that concluded there is “substantial reason to believe” that the good Congressman spent both campaign funds and official Congressional funds on his own personal expenses.
• Politico reported that the OCE believes that Bishop is likely to have spent about $90,000 on “fuel, golf expenses, meals, travel, tuition, and entertainment.”
• Specifically: “The OCE determined that Rep. Bishop and his campaign committee misspent campaign funds on various personal expenses. Specifically, the OCE found evidence that the Sanford Bishop for Congress campaign committee likely spent tens of thousands of dollars in campaign funds on fuel, golf expenses, meals, travel, tuition, and entertainment that likely were personal in nature.”
• In addition, the OCE analysis found “evidence suggesting Rep. Bishop may have spent Members’ Representation Allowance (MRA) funds on an annual holiday celebration in violation of House rules, standards of conduct, and federal law.”
• The OCE has recommended that the House Ethics Committee launch a formal investigation into this matter.
• In a formal statement, Bishop acknowledges that mistakes may have been made by his staff, heaven forbid he made any mistakes, and there has been some reimbursement for the misused expenses.
• Rather than keep his mouth shut at this point, Bishop tried to pawn off the golf course expenses with the ridiculous excuse that “his time at the club is campaign-related because it affords him the opportunity to ‘run into’ supporters and constituents and then discuss political issues over a round of golf or a meal.”
• It must have been a lot of meals and a really nice golf course because a whopping $70,000 of the $90,000 was spent on golf related expenses.
• Oh, by the way, the OCE found that Bishop kept no records of his expenses at the golf course.

Again, are politicians that stupid and actually believe the flimsy excuses they come up with for their misbehavior or do they think that we are that stupid and actually believe their wild lies? $70,000 spent on golf with no receipts or background documentation? That is not a legitimate Congressional expense.

2) The Congressional corruption train keeps on rolling, this time up in Minnesota:

• Ilhan Omar is a first term Congresswoman from the state of Minnesota.
• She has had a very contentious first term, showing that she is a devout enemy of Israel, accusing everyone who disagrees with her to be a racist and accused of marrying her brother in order to get him into the country.
• She also broke up the marriage of a gentleman that owned the marketing company she used for her election effort and then promptly, and allegedly, funneled campaign funds to his financially struggling company.
• This initial money funneling in 2019 has caught the attention of ethics investigators.
• Despite the possible shady funding from last year, she has continued funneling money to her husband’s company, to the tune of over $878,000.

Nice work you can get it. Get elected and use the money that people sent you for your election to fund your husband’s company. And the irony of this whole thing is that Omar is on record wanting to tear down the entire economic system in this country because she feels it is inequitable. And yet, she is allegedly and unethically enriching her family to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Again, nice work if you can get it.

3) Okay, it looks like this is going to be a totally “politicians unethically getting rich” post today. Consider what is going on in Pennsylvania:

• A recent story by Ryan Saaverdra of the Daily Wire reported that a Tennessee state senator has been arrested and charged with allegedly stealing over $600,00 of Federal government funds.
• State Senator Katrina Robinson supposedly used the Federal money for personal expenses including a wedding, honeymoon and, coming full circle, her divorce.
• Specifically: “Tennessee State Senator Katrina Robinson, 39, has been federally charged with theft and embezzlement involving government programs and wire fraud,” the Department of Justice announced. “According to the information presented in the complaint, Katrina Robinson is the Director of The Healthcare Institute (THI), a provider of educational and training programs for jobs in the healthcare field. She is also a Tennessee State Senator, having been elected to represent the 33rd District in Shelby County in 2018.”
• THI has received over $2 million in Federal government grants between 2015 and 2019.
• Robinson is accused of then taking over $600,000 from those grants and paying herself far more than what was allowed under the terms of her grants.
• Investigators allege that she used this excess payments to buy her daughter a vehicle, purchase clothing, accessories, and hair and beauty products for her wedding and honeymoon and then turned around and used some of the funds for her divorce legal fees, she paid off student loans, she paid for home improvements, and funneled money to a body aesthetics business she owned and a snow cone business operated by her kids.
• The case will be presented to a grand jury and if eventually convicted of the alleged misdoings, she faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

As always, she is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. But the Feds must be quite confident in their case if they actually went after a sitting politician for this kind of corruption and fraud. If she is eventually found guilty, then it is good news that a corrupt and criminal politician was taken to task for her greed and law breaking. The sad part is how many other politicians, from the halls of Congress to the local town politicians are still getting away with ripping off the American taxpayer.

That will do it for today: political corruption from Pennsylvania, to Minnesota to Georgia, from snow cone businesses to likely exclusive golf memberships to enriching your husband’s business, the greed, corruption, and gall of American politicians still know no bounds.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w