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"Tubes" Senator Being Investigated For Corruption
DragonTHC writes "Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, is being investigated in a federal corruption probe that has implicated his son Ben. Part of the case involves a fishing co-op whose members allegedly paid Ben Stevens $500,000 to get a federal bailout from his father." The other Alaskan senator, also a Republican, is under a cloud as well.
"Earmarks are good for the country and good for the people you represent. That is the role of a congressman. If you can't get money for your district, you shouldn't be in Congress."
This is a quote FTA from Republican representative, Don Young.
This is the "party of smaller government?"
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Corrupt politics in Alaska? You don't say. Anyone who has ever had to live and work in Alaska can tell you that political corruption is inevitable since you have so many natural resources, so few people, and so much money to be made.
The reason this is relevant is ONLY because Ted Stevens said that the internet was a series of tubes. Slashdot reports news for nerds, and I'm sure a lot of us nerds are amused when anything happens involving Ted Stevens.
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
My working theory: Slashdot is really a political discussion forum. The whole "News for Nerds" thing is just here to scare away the unwanted.
Oh dammit I gave it away... Somebody silence me next time.
Aside of snide tube jokes and I'm pretty sure the "down the tubes" comment I read wasn't the only one, do you really think this is funny?
I mean, it may be selective journalism (ya know, you only hear about the bad ones), but why do we have corrupt politicians? Hell, don't we pay them more than enough? Why the corruption? I can see why a politician in Roman times had to be corrupt. Politics was a sport for the upper class because it was unpaid.
Today we're far from that. They usually have paychecks that make the average person go green in envy. Still that's appearantly not enough and they want more, more, more. And don't think it's an US phenomenon, you have the same greedy, bribable bastards all over the planet.
Why, I ask? Are politicians getting worse or do we just hear about it more often today?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm registered as a Republican, and I enjoy news like this. I can hardly wait for the entire edifice of the modern GOP to come crashing down.
I think we're way beyond the point of ever having "small government" (God bless Ron Paul just the same). I'm in favor of more limited and fiscally disciplined government, like we had under Clinton. I'm not against safety nets and some forms of social welfare and I'm not against public sector spending. Some public infrastructure projects can (and have) increase wealth for a larger amount of people rather than lining a few pockets. (I'm thinking of proposals for public access wifi and broadband expansion.) Some regulation of industry is necessary if history is any basis for judgement. OTOH, regulation of morals is overstepping the proper bounds of government. (Fuck you, Christian Right.)
It's not just Bush/Cheney. It's the whole national apparatus of the GOP that has been corrupted. I'd rather that we were a weak minority party acting as a brake on the Dems than to do what the GOP has done over the past 12 years.
Note: Other then Arnold for Gov., I haven't voted for a Republican for national office since 1999. I've even donated to Democrat campaigns. But I don't think I could ever consider myself a Democrat. I'm too much of a liberal in the old school sense. Really old school.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
we've been hearing about zero tolerance in schools and the workplace. and even in law enforcement.
why not POLITICS?!
really, they (the ominous 'they') need to taste a dose of their own medicine. see how it feels to make one mistake and be out on your arse.
I think this would be great to see - you get 1 chance as a politician (or law enforcement person) and once you screw up, you're out - period. and your record is permanently ruined (like what happens to normal regular people).
do you think that if the guys in office are NOT above the law, they'd maybe start following them better? or maybe make BETTER laws if they, themselves, are held to the same standards?
lets also include widespread wiretapping and 'tube monitoring' (ha!) in that, for all folks in office. afterall, they all work for US - we should see and hear how they run their jobs, down to the tiniest details of their lives. just like they are trying to do to us.
you think that would go over well? no? really? (why is that?)
the fact that our gov goes unchecked for so long before something bubbles up means we are not watching them enough. we should install cams in their offices and tap their lines, just so we can ensure we have an honest politician.
(yeah, I expect a LOT of support on this idea. yeah.)
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Ah, relax, the "we're the persecuted minority" is the new racist/religious/sexist/whatever bigotry propaganda. Saying "dammit, I want to have an advantage of group X" doesn't gain much traction in this day and age, so the way it _invariably_ gets presented is, "auugh, they're persecuting us by not staying our slaves! we're the oppressed minority! help! Someone stop group X now!"
You can see it applied verbatim to almost any kind of bigotry. The white supremacists say they're oppressed by the blacks. The most mysoginist nuts say they're oppressed by any woman who even tries to have more perspectives in life than cooking, washing and raising kids. The religious nuts say they're oppressed by anyone who refuses to listen to their preaching, or, god forbid, manages to get a job without giving endless thanks to the Jesus for it. Rabid homophobes say they're oppressed by homosexuals. Etc.
It's pretty much the standard recipe for begging for some attention and compassion to what otherwise would be an abject and repulsive appeal to discriminate against someone else for personal advantages. Just fill in the details and you have your very own propaganda piece: Group X wants equal Y (rights, pay, education oportunities, etc). From there, you can:
A) Pretend that they were already equal, if not outright advantaged there. Statistics be damned. (Why, they already had more jobs as janitors, receptionists and nurses than us.) Hence any asking for more must be some unashamed grab for more power over the rest of us.
B) Find some disadvantaged low-pay/low-power/low-whatever niche into which that minority has been pushed, pretend that it's some enviable position and they're there just for the sake of pushing out poor white/christian/male/whatever folks who always wanted that job. (E.g., surely the only reason why women are nurses while guys are high paid doctors is that those evil women pushed off all the guys who wanted to be nurses.) Present it as some beach head and some trend that will obviously continue until none of us whites/christians/males/whatever have no place left.
C) If you somehow can't deny that they _are_ at a disadvantage and just want to become more equal, present it as some kind of slippery slope or a thing where the brakes don't exist. Once we start moving in that direction, surely there is no stopping until they've become hideously more advantaged than us! And they know it! That's their whole agenda in fact!
D) All the above.
So basically it's not as much that someone genuinely believes they're persecuted. (Unless they're paranoid schizophrenic, but then there's no point in arguing with someone driven by delusions anyway.) It's that they think they're extra smart if they present it as persecution instead of the "give me power over someone else" appeal that it really is. Surely noone will figure it out.
In other words, to put it nastier, that's your clue that they're not only bigotted fucks, but dishonest as well.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Generally speaking I'm with you, but I don't think the GOP is going to come crashing down. What I'm really praying for is a schism, where the religious right casts out the libertarian non-believers.
I really do think this split is inevitable, I just can't tell if it is going to happen by 2012 or 2020.
When the GOP can't count on the suburban doctor's vote because he feels some strange loyalty to Regan, then they might wake up and at least make an attempt at applying logic to their fiscal policies.
I think we could have a respectable debate between three parties, where O'Bama and Paul have a intelligent discourse, and ignore the rantings of Brownback.
The area I live in will soon stop growing if a major interstate isn't around the city, currently there is interstate access only on one side of town and that side can't grow much because of mountains. With an interstate on the east side of town the city could get around a LOT better and growth would continue at the current rapid rate which would be good for the local and state economy. This loop will cost less than $300 million and will help an area of 500,000+ people, how can you say that this city of 7,000 is more deserving? I'm sure there are many areas in this country far more deserving than ours as well.
So, how "free market" is it to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on a bridge to nowhere? :) I love how Republicans are treated as defenders of the free market, and do so... only when it suits them. Look at our government's policies as a whole. We ram free trade agreements down the throats of other nations, but only agreements that cover industrial products and government services. Agriculture? Nope! We have to protect our subsidies at all cost, because we couldn't compete with the low labor costs of many nations. Look at how we treat sugar, for example; it's just embarrassing. Even with the demand for cane sugar in ethanol production raising prices on the open market, it *still* costs twice as much in the US as it does on the open market.
More often than not, talk of "free trade" seems to be cover for little more than "protect what I support, but not what you support."
When I saw this article, my first thought was, "again"? This is the same guy who is already under investigation for bribes on the remodelling of his home. This guy is one big ball of scandal and jokes. Threatening to resign over the Bridge to Nowhere money being diverted to Katrina relief, the Series of Tubes comment, bribes, kickbacks, you name it. He crashed a jet at an airport and got the airport named after him. He runs the Ted Stevens Foundation, a "nonpartisan and nonpolitical" nonprofit run by his campaign treasurer whose purpose is " to assist in educating and informing the public about Senator Ted Stevens". He even plugs the Incredible Hulk for Marvel.
It goes on and on.
The yellowcake is a lie.