Maxine Waters: Another Congressperson with Ethics Problems
The Caucus blog reports that Maxine Waters, D-CA, who “has been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegations that she helped steer government money to a bank in which her husband owned shares, is asking for an investigation into the committee that has been investigating her.”
On Tuesday, Waters
said she would introduce a resolution calling on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to appoint a bipartisan task force to investigate the ethics panel’s decision last month to place two of its lawyers on paid administrative leave. On Nov. 19, the day the committee announced it was delaying Waters’ trial, it also placed Cindy Morgan Kim, the committee’s deputy chief counsel who was leading the investigation, and Stacy Sovereign, a committee lawyer, on indefinite leave for reported problems with their handling of the case against [her].
The resolution warns that the delay in Ms. Waters’ trial violates her “due process rights and the rules of the committee,” and says that the committee’s handling of the situation has subjected it to “public ridicule” and served to “unjustly impugn the integrity” of Ms. Waters.
I personally have my ear pretty close to the ground on this and I haven’t heard anything from the public at large ridiculing the Ethics Committee. I have, however, received many emails calling for the ousting and/or outright imprisonment of the likes of Ms. Waters. As for her integrity being “unjustly impugned,” I have to agree with those who argue that the thing that mostly impugns her integrity is that she sought bailout monies to specifically benefit a bank predicated on its being black owned.
Indeed, Waters argued that her actions were taken not simply to help one black-owned bank that her husband had an interest in. Instead, she argued, her intent was to help a group of black banks. It is not unfair for reasonable minds to expect elected representatives to act in the interest of all Americans equally.
“Whereas all of these actions have subjected the committee to public ridicule, produced contempt for the ethics process, created the public perception that the committee’s purpose was to unjustly impugn the integrity of a member of the House, and weakened the ability of the committee to properly conduct its investigative duties, all of which has brought discredit to the House,” reads one clause in her resolution.
Here again we see the over-inflated opinion and unwashed arrogance of someone who holds public office. Need I remind taxpayers who foots the bill for the lavish lifestyles and perks that Waters, her family, and those in public office enjoy? If anything, the public should be outraged that more attention hasn’t been given to the untoward and highly questionable actions of House members long before this.
I don’t think Congressgirl Maxine has ethics problems…since she doesn’t have any to begin with
Charlie Rangel gets a slap on the wrist for what I would have been sent to prison. Reminds me of the Brer Rabbit story “please don’t throw me into the briar patch”. Anyone who thinks anything more serious is going to befall Ms. Waters dosn’t live in the real world. This is one of the countless reasons we in the real world are angry.
Is Congress corrupt to its foundation?
Yes it is! It will be forever, unless there is a revolution and all of the bums are thrown out and lobbyists declared outlaws.
By and large it seems that a lot of our representatives are either corrupt before they get there or were pretty shaky if not actually corrupt. Some seem to be drunken on the power they hold or hope to hold. Somehow we need to find a way to get more people into office who don’t actually want to be there. There’s no way I’d want to run for office, they way the MSM treats conservative candidates. Although if I won a bazzillion dollars in the lottery I might support a “None of the Above” campaign as done in the movie “Brewster’s Millions”. Besides, I refuse to wear a tie. Stupidest garment ever.
The subcaption is of course rhetorical .
We should however recognise that Congresspersons, etc. could not, would not be corrupt if those who are the owners of the entreprise the USA, did their duty. Holding them responsible for their mis- and malfeasance. RESPONSIBLE not a slap with a wet noodle And since the electorate do not hold them accountable suggests Congresspersons are truly “representatives of the People”, who do not care about ethical behaviour in their “representatives”. Phil Hare, erstwhile Democratic Congressman from Illinois said “we in the Congress do not care about the Constitution”. Pete Seeger said a long time ago: “Our leaders are the best of men and We elect them again and again”.
A sad conclusion, a sad development (ending?) for the HOPES, and the costs to attain them, of the founders of the nation.
HOPES that the CHANGE to freedom from obeisance to “elites” and instead to SELF-determination, which the progeny of the founders sold for a mess of pottage.
Term limits. Two terms (12 years) for Senators and six terms (12 years) for members of the House of Representatives. And all members have to sign a contract when they come to Washington that states specifically that, once they are elected, they are NOT allowed to become a PAID lobbyist for anybody. Anybody who wants to stay in Washington for more than 12 years is either corrupt or are selfish, conceited, egomaniac who wants to maintain his or her perks forever. If you really, really, just want to serve government, have your stab at it and then go back home and get a real job. Public Service should be just that, public service, and not a career opportunity. Trust me, take the massive opportunity to make money in Washington and you will eliminate most of the corruption.
12 years is WAAAAY too long! I’d go for 6 for senators, and 4 for reps, and make that one term each. Yes, amend reps terms to 4 years. NOBODY runs for re-election to Congress.
And no, no contracts. LAW. We need a LAW prohibiting lobbying by former elected officials.
Make it a felony, of course. No provision for it to be charged as a misdemeanor.
‘Black Caucus’ ‘Hispanic Caucus’ ‘Gender Balance’ ‘Affirmative Action’ ‘Equal Employment Opportunity’ ‘Diversity Officer’ on and on..
THESE are but a few of the monikers given in allowing the Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel’s, William Jefferson’s, Marion Barry, Kwame Brown’s, and THOUSANDS of other incompetents/grifters to obtain employment in our Government body.
These caricatures are so glaringly divisive in their everyday affairs – ANYBODY else would have been 86′d from their respective jobs if flirting with the type of criminality these aforementioned bathe in..
But wasn’t that the intent of AA? To bring opportunities of unbridled wealth and corruption to the “disenfranchised” too? Well the voters have given their representatives at shot at the brass ring, AA has succeeded as no other government assisted / instituted program before it ever has.
The chance to be equally corrupt, arrogant, obnoxious, apathetic, detached from the mainstream of Americans as never before. Does anyone recall Cynthia McKinney’s admonishment to being ID checked?
“DON”T YOU KNOW WHO I AM!!!!?”
Indeed, these hustlers, pimps, charlatans, poseurs, fakes, frauds ( of every color ) need to be woodshedded, fired, jailed, deposed and run out of office.
A dream I realize. Sadly, these hustlers are always re-elected by more nefarious hustlers that dream of the ultimate scam…public service.
Members of Congress investigating each other for ethics volations is like getting the foxes to guard the henhouse; it is a joke.
In the early days of our country members of Congress were businessmen, lawyers, farmers and other citizens, amateur legislators who, out of “civic duty”—what an outmoded concept that is today!—periodically did their duty by making what was then an arduous, uncomfortable, and often lengthy trip to Washington, D.C., stayed in uncomfortable, crowded hotels and boarding houses, did the minimum of legislative business that was required of them to keep things going, then left town to return to their real lives, all for the princely sum of $6.00 per Diem (http://www.thecapitol.net/FAQ/payandperqs.htm ). I am not saying that they were all saints, but my impression is that they were, on the whole, trying to do what was best for our newly founded country, had no pretensions to be a “ruling class,” nor were they a parasitic bunch of corrupt power seekers.
Then, as time went on we developed professional, full time legislators who had residences in the Washington, D.C. area, and who could, thus, spend a lot more time wheeling and dealing and “legislating.”
As time went on, too–especially in the last few decades–our legislators saw to it that their salaries and benefits kept expanding, until we have the spectacle we see today.
Members of Congress currently have an annual salary of $174,000, with the Speaker of the House and other members in leadership positions getting even more, and have set up their periodic pay increases to be automatic, so that they occur unless Congress specifically votes them down, they participate in the very good Federal Health Benefits program,have exempted themselves from having to follow the wage, hour, discrimination, and benefit regulations that all other Americans have to follow, have set things up so that their federal retirement benefits are higher than other federal retirees who work for the same time get, because they are calculated, not using the regular multiplier normally used to calculate federal retirement benefits, but by using the special, highest multiplier used only for the federal government workers-–like CIA agents—who do the most stressful and dangerous jobs, have free medical care on call 24/7 on Capitol Hill, have restaurants and cafeterias that serve good food, a barber shop, beauty salon, recording studio, stationary store, travel office, free parking, and gym on Capitol Hill that charge low, subsidized rates, get generous office, telephone, staff, and mailing allowances, a travel allowance, an allowance for a second residence i.e. one in the District, and one in the State they represent, have large staffs and the research staff and resources of the Library of Congress at their beck and call, etc., etc.
And, yet, as we have all too amply seen in these last few years, today’s members of Congress–our professional politician class–are arrogant and out of touch, and, all too often, corrupt and, apparently, from how they act and what they say, they do see themselves as a “ruling class.”
Why were the two attorneys relieved of duty? Was it because they did something wrong, or is this a way of making people think the committee is corrupt, when it may have been a political decision to save the Rep’s hide? Seems like an important detail either way.
Maxine Waters is the poster child of Affirmative Action.
If there wasn’t a single other Dick Tracy character in Congress, she should be enough to shut down the whole body and start over. In an unimaginable twist of fate, SHE has the power to rule over the CEO’s of the most complex financial institutions in human history. It’s as if your cat somehow gained control over your life. It is simply, simply beyond imagination.
And yet, here she is, instead of diving into a tunnel of shame, mocking the process that purports to reveal her.
Bizarro World doesn’t do it justice.
As frequently happens, Mark Twain said it best:
“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
- Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar
“It is the foreign element that commits our crimes. There is no native criminal class except Congress.”
- More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927
“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
- Mark Twain, a Biography
“Congressman is the trivialist distinction for a full grown man.”
- Notebook #14, Nov. 1877 – July 1878
“All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.”
- Mark Twain’s Autobiography; also in Mark Twain in Eruption
How is it that these people in congress have the unmitigated gaul to do the things they do? Simple enough: we allow them and it’s our fault. Why do we keep electing, or rather, let them elect themselves by massive voter fraud, these people when there is clear evidence that, spoken or unspoken, they are thieves, philanderers and God only knows what else? I am so sick of paying my taxes into a system that allows the likes of this individual and so many others to make laws that apply to us and not to them. The alarm clock bell has wrung and it’s about time for us to wake up and get these people out of our elected body of, so-called, representatives.
Can you imagine how many are on the payroll????? Lets say two union bosses in each districtand the electoral staff.Then go up the chain to the bigger union bosses and the Dem district council andunion members that could be in the thousands.Then go to state and the Dem state council with state union workers and state electoral staff ,lobbyists and acorn members and local SEIU chapters controlling state services.WOW,, the list gets bigger and bigger and finally to the Dem national party. this whole thing could probably end up with so many that if they had all voted,they would have won anyway.
I forgot the small union bosses that bus their members to the polls.
The SEIU bus the retired folks to the poll or just vote for them.
The Hispanic and Latino councils getting illegal s to vote.
THEN ,we get to the Supreme Court that disallows states to check ID of voters.
AMERICA IS SO CORRUPT. We can officially change the name of the country to”UNITED STATES OF CHIGAGO” , and just let everyone do what they want,with no laws.
Maxine on Morning Joe
Host: “What exactly outlandish behavior? Specifically what do you mean by that?”
Waters: “The shouting, the over-running of the Capitol, the sneaking in of Tea Party participants into the basement of the Capitol, the name calling, the spitting, all of that.”
“But I was out on that balcony. I went out to stand and watch to see what was happening. … I was amazed, I really was. I didn’t say anything to anybody. I just watched. The Republicans were out there having a great time. They were laughing, they were waving the American flag, they were egging them on, and I thought that was outrageous behavior. I really did.”
– Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Mar 31, 2010
Maxine 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.
America has to once and for all get over the “racist slur” guilt trip.
If Americans were allowed to call a spade a spade, a corrupt black a corrupt black, then it might have a chance. IF the new house gets rid of the LIBEL LAWYER SCUMBAGS , then people will start telling the truth about what they know.They are just tooo scared at the moment,and it’s showing in the way Congress gets away with all.
America could be a great nation,BUT , at the moment it is NOT built on truth and honour.
Gee, a black American politician who wants to help out people based on skin color. What a frickin’ surprise that is.
ohhhhhhhhh sounds like affirmative action at it’s best…you black?..no qualifications?..you got the job babe. the rest of you qualified folks drop dead. and i’m gonna give my relatives a lotta gov help, so there.
It seems that all the ones with moral and ethic problems of late are either Democrats, black or both. Am I missing something?
Maxine, a self proclaimed prog. socialist, Castro loving moron, elavated to her position by a gerrymandered district she helped to create.
This is just Maxine playing the Race Card a common first response by any Black caught with their hands in the till and one which the left wing moonbats fall for every time.
The single best thing we The People could do to root out the money whores and power idolators from Congress is force term limits on Congress. Most politicians see a seat in Congress as a permanent place at the public money/power trough, and like greedy pigs, they are loathe to give it up. We need to have a mechanism in place that returns congressional scumbags to the private sector on a regular basis.
2 terms Senate
4 terms House
10 years on the federal bench, up to and including SCOTUS
send the bastards home!
If it appears that congress is irreparably corrupt, and the replacements we elect seem to acquire the same immoral set of ethics shortly after they arrive, consider who offers to take the job, and why. Those who have strong morals, meaning they actually live by the ethics they espouse, have long since found they can be extremely productive people, can earn much money, and become someone of value and merit in their community, and never have to deal with most of the rats that live in the recesses and corners of “our ship of state”.
Those who naturally look to government, and particularly to congress, as a way of getting well paid to do very little work, and get great benefits, and pave the way to become policy determining power brokers, getting to know all those with millions to invest in controlling the laws and the direction of Congress must arrive there without any solid moral foundation, or their first act upon arrival would be a display of the extremes of dismay at finding themselves among dens of thieves, rather than the delight of finding themselves among like minded manipulators of the work of others.
We can easily continue to focus on them, and hold hearings, make recomendations, but if we wish an honest government, we must ourselves choose to want nothing more than we’ve earned, we must be electing representatives, not “leaders”, and we must hold higher moral standards than we expect our elected representative to have, and thus be ready to impeach and actually remove those who violate those ethics, even when they are our own representative, making the effort for our own benefit, as well as their own, and not merely charging those who’s efforts are not for our own community.
We, as communities, must want true, honest, and entirely confined to the Constitution, representation in Congress, because anything less is exactly how we arrived here, now. In truth, today, without change, substantial parts of our Nation desire these acts for self interest in their own community, and only hold it wrong, when the benefit goes to others, who we percieve as benefiting at our own expense, and this ideation requires we be corrupt and immoral ourselves, in thinking our desires are “needs”, and government should in any situation, ever “give” charity which is abjectly absent from the Constitution, precisely because of the way such efforts naturally corrupt those who handle them.
No attempt is made today, which hasn’t been made even as early as two decades after the Constitution was ratified, the real difference then, was the neophyte was quickly apprised of the fact that there is no rightful place for “government charity” because it cannot police the results of such, and in truth, no community goes long without having a disaster of some level of its own, and self responsible, self governing people gather together as a community and fix their own problems solve their own emergencies, and prepare for such things by having fire departments, emergency responders, and such a moral and ethical people have cause to put savings in the bank, when they have a good harvest or business year, and are prepared to help themselves, and their neighbor, and understand that if the government expands to cover all these things, it must by natural law, become too large to manage its self, and far too large to be managed by “Sovereign Citizens” who have businesses to take care of, and work to do, in order to be the productive and growing Nation we were, and could be still, simply by maintaining our moral standard, and living up to the convictions we enunciate. Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel are the symptoms of our own lack of responsibility over those we choose to represent us, and emblematic of our lack of will to hold them to account. No, it is not just Blacks, and affirmative action, but such stand out because the conservative side of America tends to hold those caught among our own, accountable, and remove them, and we start with the fixed belief the government has no business in the role of handing out money, but is limited to some sixteen or seventeen exact purposes and actions, and everything done beyond those things are both illegal and morally wrong.
Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel stand out precisely because they have done the same things, over and over again, yet their actual constiutencies re-elect them, specifically, without qualms, or reference to moral codes and ethical standards, and thus all the blame goes directly on The People who are the, in this case, district electorate. If Waters and Rangel are immoral, it is because they represent districts of people who are not outraged by their actions, and find justification for their breaking the law, and we, the rest of the Nation, should be angry about the communities which are destitute of moral teaching, and which are devoid of ethical standards. Term limits are for an electorate which is too lazy to do the responsibility part of being a Sovereign Citizen, ruled by our personal consent, and that is our problem and we don’t have term limits on “Sovereign Citizenship”, which is the only real fix to the very real source of the problem.
A Moral and Ethical community will not accept representation by criminals, and those who represent each of our communities is a direct reflection on the general standards of the community, and ultimately, all put together, reflects the general state of moral and ethical thought in our Nation. John Adams said specifically, self-governing is only possible for a moral and religious people, all others require a tyrant to drive them to do their proper duties, and this is exactly what he meant.
John McClain
GySgt, USMC, ret.
Vanceboro, NC