We aren't going to find this story anywhere else so I had to link us to Rush Limbaugh.
Barbara Boxer seems to have a serious ethics problem of her own. And even though it won't ever get covered by the MSM, we here have a right to know.
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Barbara Boxer Can't Pass the "Smell Test"
RUSH: We also have an interesting story today. It's, interestingly, September 15th, 2003, and it's from the Weekly Standard. "California Gambling," by David DeVoss, and this is about heap big casinos, Indian casinos in residential neighborhoods. "Politicians caught between the political correctness of supporting Native Americans and voters outraged by the proliferation of casinos don't know which way to turn." Poor politicians! For example, "Three years ago, Barbara Boxer..." So 2003. This would be in 2000. In the year 2000, "Senator Barbara Boxer pushed through Congress a bill providing federal recognition for Northern California's Coast Miwok tribe. Boxer circumvented the Bureau of Indian Affairs after receiving assurances from the Miwoks that they would not open a casino. But this past April [in 2003, three years later] the tribe hired a team of influential political advisers, which included Boxer's son Doug..." Now, we just learned that he was on her payroll because she couldn't find anybody she could trust but her own family, so she hired her son, Doug, and so the Indian tribe went and hired her son, one of her staff members, "and announced plans for a massive casino and resort operated by Nevada financiers.
"Miwok Chief Greg Sarris, a college English professor and Hollywood screenwriter, says he's just trying to lift his people out of poverty. But Sonoma officials say they'll remember Boxer's role in this double-cross when she runs for reelection [in 2004]. Once the BIA acknowledges a tribe's existence and 'federalizes' its property, the new reservation legally becomes a sovereign nation, exempt from local taxes, state labor laws, municipal ordinances, zoning restrictions, and environmental review. Some tribes have offered to pay mitigation fees for the disruption gambling creates, but the money seldom covers the amount counties spend on added police and fire protection.... Thanks to the Indian Gaming Initiative -- and the fact that tribes pay no property, corporate, or sales tax -- California's Indians have achieved self-sufficiency and more. Each of their 62,000 slot machines rakes in over $300 in profit a day. When added with revenue from bingo, cards, and video games, the state's 54 Indian casinos earn $5.1 billion a year, a sum that exceeds Atlantic City's and is more than half that of Nevada, a state with 401 casinos." So with 54 casinos in California the Indian tribes out there earn more than half of what Nevada's 401 casinos earn, and Barbara Boxer made it all possible for one tribe by skirting the law, then they hired her son after the arrangement had been made. Now, I want to ask -- that's the Weekly Standard, of course, so that's not the mainstream press. That's those neocons over there, neocons at the Weekly Standard. I want to see the mainstream media pick up on this story and the Harry Reid story, and I want to put them side-by-side with the allegations are against Tom DeLay and then I want to put them side-by-side with the allegations against George W. Bush, and then I want them to put side-by-side with the allegations against Dick Cheney and Halliburton and all this other stuff.
All these charges that have been leveled at Bush and Cheney and now DeLay and whatever other number of Republicans, let's see 'em side-by-side. Let's see who's been found guilty of these things and fined. Let's see who did what, and let's compare that to what's been charged, what's been alleged, what's been accused of Bush and Cheney and Tom DeLay. Now, don't hold your breath looking for this, folks. I doubt that it will happen. We could do it. We could do it on our website. We could do it in our newsletter. We could do it any number of places, and we might. We want to go back to the audio sound bites now. This was also this morning on C-SPAN. We're back now to the Washington Journal show. Rob Harlson is the host, and Representative DeGette, Democrat, Colorado, Democrat chief Deputy Whip is the guest, and they're talking about all these family members that are hired by members of Congress -- a story that would not have happened were it not for the New Media in this country today. The Old Media wouldn't be doing this. They're still focused on DeLay. So now they are being forced to look at others, and so the C-SPAN host says to the guest, "In the LA Times story, political payrolls include families. Dozens of members of Congress have paid relatives for campaign work, records show. The practice, though legal, coming under scrutiny. Now, I want to go to the jump page of this article and in it, it says, 'The Times analysis of two elections cycles were for California and the campaign fund of Representative Zoe Lofgren paid $251,000 to her husband's firm according to candidates campaign filings. She was followed by Representative Howard Berman of north California, or North Hollywood, $205,000. Representative Filner, 154 grand, Representative Buck McKeon, 152 grand. Altogether at least ten lawmakers in 53-member California House delegation have hired family members according to records and interviews,'" and Harlson says, "Is there time for legislation that more defines how relatives can be hired and what they can be paid for?"
DeGETTE: I absolutely think there is, and I don't think this is the partisan issue one way or the other. I think when family members are hired by campaigns, it does raise issues. Now, I could see hiring a family member, uh, for a specific purpose, but I think, I think just as members of Congress have to make a lot of ethics, uh, revelations. I think, I think the time is ripe for some clarifying legislation, but the bottom line, uh, with members of Congress is the smell test. If your constituents think that you're doing something wrong when you are campaign funds, they're not going to keep you in office.
RUSH: Ahhhhhh, "the smell test." I wonder who she's talking about here? The smell test. "Tom, he just doesn't smell right," and why? Because he's a Republican leader, because he's effective. That's why Tom DeLay doesn't pass the smell test. None of this, my friends, was addressed in campaign finance reform. Why? Why was none of this addressed in CFR? I thought CFR was about getting the money out of politics! I thought CFR was making sure politicians weren't influenced by money or their families weren't influenced by it. What about that what about CFR? What about it Senator McCain, Senator Feingold, Representative Shays? Oh, and, folks, it's either the New York Times or the Washington Post, one of the two has done a story today on Representative Shays. It's the Washington Post, yes. "The Loneliest Republican." It is a puke piece, puff piece profile -- as I pop my P's -- of Representative Christopher Shays, the lonely Republican. But I digress. How come none of this was addressed in campaign finance reform? Here is a congressman, "We ought to be looking into it but the smell test. That's a different thing," and so now she adds this, and she just got through saying, "Yeah, it's now pretty good. It doesn't look too good. I don't think we ought to be doing it," and then she said this.
DeGETTE: I think it's -- it's damaging to our institutions for people to assume that every member of Congress is corrupt, but this --
RUSH: Stop the tape! That was the entire basis, congresswoman, of campaign finance reform -- and the reason why you were all corrupt, according to Senator McCain, is the money. It is not that you are corrupt, he said, it is that the amounts of money in politics are corrupting good people, and because so many good people were being corrupted by so much money, we needed campaign finance reform (gasp!)"to get the money out of politics." You're not on the script here, Congresswoman DeGette. You're not supposed to say, "It's damaging to our institutions for people to assume that every member of Congress is corrupt," because that's already been stipulated by the people who were for campaign finance reform! Let's listen to the rest of this glittering jewel here.
DeGETTE: What happens sometimes when you're leadership is not up to the highest ethical standards and why we have to have strong ethics committees in Congress --
RUSH: Stop the tape. Uh, ethics only applies to leaders? Nancy Pelosi? (gasp!) Harry Reid? You want an ethics committee? How come you don't have an ethics committee in the House? Because you don't want a mechanism whereby DeLay could be exonerated. That's why there's no ethics committee. That's why the Democrats are stalling on an ethics committee.
DeGETTE: -- to really make sure that our leadership is -- is keeping to those highest ethics because once public confidence in the system erodes. Once people start thinking all politicians are corrupt that's when our constitutional democracy really is in a crisis.
RUSH: Let me give you a clue, congresswoman. You're about 30, 40, 50 years, maybe 200 years behind the times because the average American thinks you all are corrupt, and the more news that we hear about this, the more questions we have. I think a number of you, congresswoman, are having trouble passing the smell test today.
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