As you Americans have no real control over the
financial sector, and seem to have no intention of so
doing, don’t complain if these institutions carry on
behaving in the same manner as before.
I would, personally, take these financial institutions
into public ownership as being paramount for the
Government in the process of actually being able to
control the direction of the American Economy and to be
able to run the Country for the benefit of the vast
majority of the American people.

I love that all these Capt. Queeg’s are in a deep shit tizzy over (apparently) missing strawberries.

I think the only connection between that charges against Wrangel and Waters is they are both prominent Black Congresspersons.

The Waters thing is like the strawberries, but I think Wrangel is gone.

And then there’s the fanatic Prole totally wrapped up in irrelevancy because the ONLY thing in his world is how much he hates Israel….

John,

While a man can be rich in many ways, family, friends, bountiful soil, it still comes
down to the issue that the banksters have convinced everyone in the population
that they can’t survive without money ..... and yet they’ve manipulated the
markets and our perceptions, and they control all the money.

We don’t need them, but they’ve done a damn good job in convincing us that we
do.

Patrick Henry,

Although there are a few (a small few) who truly deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt, I can’t say that I would disagree with you. The others have created such a mess that there doesn’t seem to be any other way.

You know, everyone keeps talking about “corruption”, but I really think we have to look a little deeper as to why this issue keeps haunting mankind. We can talk about what motivates evil people to do evil things, but in the end, it really comes down to a near total lack of spiritual connection ........ and I’m not talking about religion or the church, here. I’m talking about these individuals’
being so dysfunctionally disconnected from their own spiritual growth process and the rest of humanity that, in essence, they are a cancer; rogue cells in a body struggling to stay healthy.

Healthy cells recognize their own function and the functions of other cells; cancer cells only recognize themselves and they are so short sighted that they’ll kill the host body while they adhere to their myopic solution to staying alive.

When all these wealthy ne’er-do-wells run like rats to their survival bunkers, I’d like to see George Soros arguing with David Rockefeller and Queen Beatrix about why each of them should not have to empty the garbage. These people couldn’t run a lemonade stand. The only reason they are where they are is because they’ve convinced everyone in the population that they can’t survive without money ..... and they control all the money.

But back to the elections ...... sigh, I have to agree with you.

BR549

No matter how much I admire those multi-term congresspeople who vote my positions, I believe we have to start afresh with new a congress.

Send a message.

Patrick Henry

Sorry to say, we can’t always be following the voting records of every politician.
It sounds like you think Donna Edwards may qualify as one of the “good guys”.

Does anyone else have any nominees that they feel could be good
Constitutional role models for those politicians with only half a backbone who
are still sitting on the fence?

I’m not so much worried about those that fell into Bush’s Patriot Act trap the
first time, but any politician with a brain and a conscience should have voted
AGAINST the Patriot Act after it became apparent that something was really
starting to smell at the White House.

THOSE are the people we all need to focus on ....... and hopefully they’ve
actually read the Constitution, know WHY it exists, and their voting records are
sufficiently consistent. Any other nominees?

prole, good point.

Donna Edwards in Maryland has also spoken out against Israels practices and been blasted by AIPAC for doing so.

A woman of conscience and of color.

Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters were not elected by black Americans from the troubled districts of Harlem, New York and South Central Los Angeles, respectively, as some social experiment to see if black congressmen/women can get away with the same kind of corruption and lax ethics as whites. They were elected to help them get though this thing called life. 

I can’t recall any treatise; any essay by Frederick Douglass in which he states that the road from slavery to citizenship should result in black criminals getting away with stealing like everyone else. Whether in Congress of not. This widely held position is utter foolishness only surpassed by those that use race as an excuse as to why it’s unfair to charge them as traitorous criminals they are! 

It’s the height of disloyalty.

“To me, this looks like a double standard”...which shouldn’t trouble the double-talking Boyarsky in the least since it’s the hallmark of Amerika’s relations with the doubly destructive state of Israel that he so enthusiastically admires. Why should OneUnited or Goldman Sachs for that matter be expected to be any different when neither, as badly as they behaved, even come close to the gold standard of double standards in Amerikan politics, the outlaw Jewish State that the bloodthirsty Boyarsky so ardently approves. “Goldman Sachs, whose connections to past and the current administration officials are deep and old”…and are very similar to those of the venal zionist entity, where Goldman also enjoys very close connections. “Goldman received billions”…and Israel received tens of billions despite its unremitting violation of international and domestic law. The Israel Lobby has contributed millions to influence the pol’s of both parties for favors and target any representatives deemed to be contrary to its interests. In 2009 The Lobby spent their largest total ever of $3.7 million and in 2010 already $1,854,013. “Waters is being punished for arranging a meeting, conduct considered acceptable when done on behalf of the well-connected Wall Street giants” - and Israeli terrorists - “that met often and secretly with lawmakers and the Bush and Obama administrations”. But does this look like a double standard to the blinkered Boyarsky? At least Waters to her great credit, whatever her other lapses, has avoided the Middle East double standard better than most in Washington. In fact, she was one of only two members of the Congressional Black Caucus (along with Milwaukee’s Gwen Moore) to vote against the despicable House Resolution endorsing the murderous Jewish state’s massacre in Gaza in January ’09. The same bloodbath that the odious Boyarsky was cheering on with his zionist double standards. So if you want to see double standards bifurcated Boyarsky, go look in the mirror!

compared to the big bank bailouts the Waters Story is small time. The daily show did a nice riff on the Waters, Rangle story. and I also found Waters from 1995 speaking about the ethical problems of then house speaker Newt Gingrich. A bit ironic now…

Race Card Is Maxed Out
As Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters head to separate trials for ethics violations, Larry Wilmore tries to use the race card. http://www.newslook.com/videos/237244-race-card-is-maxed-out?autoplay=true

Rep. Maxine Waters on Newt Gingrich -1995
From 12/7/1995: C-SPAN coverage of the US House floor, where Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) remarks on House ethics committee charges against then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. http://www.newslook.com/videos/236032-rep-maxine-waters-on-newt-gingrich-1995?autoplay=true

“Bill Boyarsky on Corruption in Congress”
THAT is the title of the e-mail directing me to this story. May I please remind you that Ms. Waters has not been convicted of being corrupt and I urge you to choose your words more carefully.

Gerard,

I have no desire to let the big guys off the hook. 
Their crimes are exponentially larger in scope and
destructiveness, and their crimes are quite literally
destroying the very fabric of our country.  If I
could invest my own times in resources in the pursuit
of justice against Waters or Wall Street, I would
undoubtedly and unapologetically chose Wall Street.

But we are still left with what appears to be a very
public, open-and-shut case against Waters.  It’s that
simple.  To now walk away from this case in the
pursuit of “bigger game” would border on the
criminal.

Realistically, how would one explain such a decision
to the public?  “Um, we caught a Congresswoman
abusing her office for monetary gain, but have
decided to look the other way.  Our sights are set
elsewhere.”

That just isn’t realistic.

If the rest of Washington’s level of corruption were of Maxine Water’s level, I
doubt we’d even be needing to discuss corruption. The fact is that there is so
much more going on in DC and this could be seen as Washington’s own attempt
at due diligence. I think they’re just throwing the American public a bone here.

Maxine may be getting a token slap on the wrist, but other politicians should be
hung.

Just my opinion.

The double standard rules!

In an era when white collar criminals have stolen trillions from our children and grandchildren, when our elected officials are complicit in that theft, this attack on one of the few remaining liberals in office seems more than a bit fishy.

If one cannot await the evidence to determine guilt or innocence, if one is unable to see the dichotomy present in our governance, with those who steal billions getting off ( poor Bernie Madoff just didn’t contribute enough to campaigns I guess) then just read the comments of our resident right wing wacko, call me Roy and see if that seems honest to you.

P.S. I have another name I call him….

Justin Wileski:  Please tell me how letting the big guys off the hook and holding the small guys responsible “gets us off the hook” or has any effect whatsoever on enormous corporate crime and Wall Street shenanigans that ruin the entire economy, take people’s homes away from them and leave them penniless and jobless.  “A foolish consistency is the bane of small minds,” or words to that effect. Who said it?  I forget.  But there’s yet another—
“swallowing an elephant and gagging on a gnat.”

I like Maxine better than Steney Hoyer by a mile. 

I encourage everyone to vote out the encumbents this election, no matter who is running and how much you like them.

Mitchum22:  Exact.  You got game.

It doesn’t just look like a double standard, it is a double standard based on this thread’s information.

Waters didn’t attend the meeting so it wasn’t her that actually processed the money to the bank, but she did request help, if possible, and I can’t see any harm in it; after what Henry Paulson did walking on his knees before Nancy Pelosi begging for money, which he got, but Waters trying to save a Community Bank in her area is unethical, there is something badly wrong with this type of ethics, as saving the community she had been sent to represent would be her priority.

Waters’ offense is clearly small potatoes when
compared to the culture of corruption that surrounds
Wall Street, but it is an offense, nonetheless.

Waters and her husband stood to loose up to
$1,000,000 if OneUnited went bankrupt.  She then,
indirectly or directly, engineered a bailout which
“just so happened” to preserve her and her husband’s
$500,000 to $1,000,000 investment.  That is
inexcusable.

Yes, this corruption occurred in the context of
racial disparity, poverty, homelessness,
unemployment, etc., but we can’t let that cloud our
judgment (as I’m afraid that Mr. Boyarsky nearly
does).

It’s unfortunate that relatively minor cases of
corruption (like this one) tend to receive the most
attention while cases of institutional corruption,
i.e., Wall Street and practically all aspects of life
and nature which it wraps its slithery tentacles
around, tend to get off without the slightest
reprimand.  But that doesn’t excuse the former.

Honestly, I “get” your argument, but I just don’t see
how letting Waters of the hook gets us anywhere.

I’d vote for Maxine Waters for President.

GREAT piece.

Just more bad news from the era of Uncle O. Piling on Charlie Rangel. Piling on Maxine Waters. Demonizing Shirley Sherrod. Ignoring the Senate candidacy of the great Kendrick Meek in Florida. Ignoring the Congressional Black Caucus’s general needs for autumn 2010. The continuing humiliations of New York Governor David Patterson. The slapdown of Alabama Congressman Artur Davis, who came to the defense of Rangel, Waters, Sherrod & Patterson. What a man Obama is!—struttin’ his stuff and pickin’ on all the right (or in this case Left) people.

To paraphrase Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now: “Charging a politician with corruption in 2010 DC is like giving out speeding tickets at the Indianapolis 500.”

Eat this, Ruth Marcus.

There was nothing unclear about Mr. Frank’s admonition. It was foolish of Mrs. Waters to ignore his straightforward warning. Even if your hands are clean you must avoid the appearance of dirty hands especially when you are a politician in the search lights of the opposition.

Ray, if you are going to try and use fancy words, at least spell ad hominem correctly.  But to your point, if you read the charges, they are very serious and to think that these are racist show trials makes one wonder who is psychotic.  Don’t you remember Massa, Foley, Delay, Newt, they were all white and had to resign.  My point is that most of congress is corrupt and to play the race card or the race “deck” in this case is just silly.

Swanman,

You might consider a less ad homimen edge to your
psychotic ranting. You seen to have failed to notice
that although the ethics committee might well be
“investigating” 17 Representatives, there are only
two who are going to be publicly humiliated in show
trials in September.

To Truthdig Management: Is “Swanman” abiding by your
comment policy? I dare say he may have stepped over a
line here.

TO Ray DuRay: There are at least 17 white congress members currently under investigation so is that “Reverse Racism”?  Give me a break, Obama even threw Rangel under the bus and I think he’s kinda Black isn’t he?  Why do some people, like Waters (and obviously you) always play the race card when there is no excuse for their actions?  It’s like, Oh, I’m a crook and I got caught…lucky me, I’m black so I can cry racism.  Grow up.

The rightwing trolls have a lot of fun with this one.
Reminds me of the trumped up case aganst Acorn. Funny how this kind of stuff always comes up around election time…..

Maxine Waters is one of the most corrupt politico’s in history. In its 2009 report, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) named Waters one of the 15 most corrupt members of Congress. She was also included in their 2005 and 2006 reports. On February 24, 2010, in congressional hearings with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Waters, despite serving on the Financial Services Committee, revealed she is completely unaware of the difference between the Federal Reserve ‘discount rate’ and ‘federal funds rate’.  (Above from Wikipedia) So she is stupid and corrupt.  She finds racism in EVERYTHING and it’s a shame that she will only get a slap on the wrist instead of 10 years behind bars where she belongs.

Anyone who has ever seen Ms. Waters speak would never accuse her of being a mental giant but that is why only she has been charged. It has nothing to do with race but rather that she was not smart enough to engineer this transaction without it coming back to her door step. The real fault here is the ignorance and apathy of the electorate. We just keep on putting them back in office so they can gain enough knowledge and power, through tenure, to bring home the bacon. We are all on trial here not just Maxine.

I wonder if One United ever gave money to Ms. Waters’s campaign, either before or after the bailout. I think that almost everyone in Congress had stock in Goldman Sacks prior to the bailout, (I know Senator Obama did according to his financial disclosure) and they all knew that if AIG folded that Goldman Sachs was in trouble because they had insurance against their derivative gamble that would have caused them to go bankrupt if AIG went under. My point being, that Maxine was only doing what the rest did but on a smaller scale and that is, trying to protect her family’s investments at the cost of the tax payer. So should she be tried for being unethical? YES-and so should the entire Congress, Republican, Democrat and Independents. The Ethics Committee will not dispense justice, they almost never do. The only justice will be from; “We the People”, when we vote them all out of office and then impose term limits. Term Limits will drain the swamp before they can spend enough time in office to learn how to steal from us. It may also cure the attitude Congress develops over time that they are above the law because they are the ruling class. Everyone who has ever seen Ms. Waters speak would never accuse her of being a mental giant but that is why only she has been charged. It has nothing to do with race but rather that she was not smart enough to engineer this transaction without it coming back to her door step. The real fault here is the ignorance and apathy of the electorate. We just keep on putting them back in office so they can gain enough knowledge and power, through tenure, to bring home the bacon. We are all on trial here not just Maxine.

One of the more colorful expressions in the American
political lexicon was uttered by Supreme Court
Justice Potter Stewart attempting to define
pornography when he said “I know it when I see it.”

I think the same thing came to my mind regarding a
new, insidious and malicious form or racism creeping
into our politics. When Charlie Rangel was being
pilloried by the white leadership of the Democratic
Party a couple months ago my radar went up. Now that
both Rangel and Waters have been brought up on
extremely flimsy charges not worthy of a Soviet show
trial, then I sense a racism that I know in my soul
when I see it.

Tolerate billions of dollars stolen from taxpayers to bailout huge banks and corporations but pounce on a minority bank, tiny by comparison, and throw an erring (if she did err—it’s not proven yet)  pro-black Congresswoman under the bus.  That’s equality, American style!.  $50 million isn’t even one peanut compared to, let’s say, Bank of America, Citibank and Wells Fargo for a total of $8.5 trillion.

Maxine “Dirty” Waters has been an embarrassment and a detriment for the longest time. Her now famous praise of Franklin Raines running of Fannie Mae should say enough to most folks. Waters always looks to be an accuser or a finger pointer so that she can say to here constituants that she is their champion. She championed the lending practices that led us to where we are. Her lines of questioning and clarifications in these exchanges are legendary and a constant source of something to laugh at. No longer a mystery why California is handing out IOU’s with ignorant representatives like Mrs. Waters? California has Waters, Boxer, and Pelosi all as high ranking members of government. That is an SNL skit that could go on forever! Behold the intellectual brainpower that our Congress puts in charge of our money. Do you really want someone like this in charge of your healthcare?
Maxine’s most famous “braindead” moment has to be when she said to the president of Shell Oil during a House hearing: “And guess what this member* would be all about? This member would be all about socializing — er, uh. [Pauses for several moments] …. would be about … [pause] … basically … taking over, and the government running all of your companies.” As soon as the word “socialization” exits her lips, she knows she made a big blunder, not the least of which is that the actual term is “nationalization”. Waters just declared a socialist policy of total confiscation in the House hearing room, and she looks for an exit strategy, finally winding up with the slightly more ambiguous idea of Washington “running” the oil companies. Two people in the background try mightily to stifle laughter at Waters’ predicament.
Theres a reason why she earned the name Maxine “Dirty” Waters out here in California. Here is a prime example why. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.,
She helped steered millions of dollars in bailout funds to a bank on whose board her husband served. The bank also didn’t appear to meet the requirements for receiving the money. Waters, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, arranged a meeting in September between Treasury officials and the chief executive of OneUnited, one of the country’s largest black-owned banks, which requested $50 million in special bailout funds. Waters pressured Treasury officials to bail out the minority-owned bank whose executives have donated heavily to her political campaigns. At the time she and her husband, Sidney Williams, held big financial stakes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in One United and her husband had just been the bank’s director and still served on its board. The conflict was so blatant that even the scandal-plagued chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, her good buddy Barney Frank, urged Waters to “stay out of it,” assuring her that he would see to it that her precious bank got bailout money. Earlier this year Judicial Watch uncovered documents that Congress, especially Frank, for years ignored corruption at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so it’s not surprising that he took no action when Waters ignored his suggestion. The One United case was hardly the first time that Waters, California’s most influential black lawmaker, used her political clout to benefit her family financially. In 2004 Waters’ hometown newspaper reported that her relatives made more than $1 million by doing business with companies, candidates and causes that the well-connected and powerful congresswoman had helped. Waters has also made international headlines for her frequent trips to communist Cuba to visit her convicted cop-assassin friend, Joanne Chesimard, who is also known by her Black Panther name of Assata Shakur. Chesimard was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted by a jury of the 1979 murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. With the help of fellow cult members, she escaped from jail and fled to Cuba.