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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.
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.
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.