PELOSI'S SWAMP
By
Jon Christian Ryter
May 27, 2009
NewsWithViews.com
One more of a myriad of Johnny Chung-type foreign-born scam artist fund-raisers for Democrats is preparing for even more free room and board at the taxpayers' expense when he's sentenced on August 19 in federal court in Manhattan for violating US election finance laws during last year's national election. Earlier this year Hong Kong native Norman Hsu pleaded guilty in a California state court to conducting a Ponzi scheme to defraud investors out of $20 million. Hsu was already serving time in California on other state bunko charges. He was convicted in federal court on May 19 of making hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to prominent Democrats. Foremost on the list of recipients were high profile names like Hillary Rodham Clinton [D-NY], Barack Obama [D-IL], New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson [D-NM], former Presidential candidate and US Senator John Kerry [D-MA] and Gov. Jennifer Granholm [D-MI].
Hsu was a major bundler for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. Early in her campaign, Clinton remarked that Hsu would singlehandedly bring her the presidential nomination. On Sept. 14, 2007 then President George W. Bush signed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 into law. Public Law 110-81 came from a measure proposed by Sen. Harry Reid as S.1, in January, 2007, as the new Democratic majority assumed the mantle of power on Capitol Hill.
The newly elected House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, contemptuously declared that it was "...a great day. Democrats in Washington," she said, "are draining the swamp to make this the most honest Congress in history." Which, of course, is why Pelosi fought so hard to have William J. Jefferson [D-LA] removed from office after he was caught in an FBI sting taking a $100 thousand bribe. Oh—wait a minute! Pelosi didn't fight to strip Jefferson of his seat. She fought to help him keep it. FBI agents, posing as businessmen from Louisville, Kentucky trying to get a contract from the Nigerian government. On July 30, 2005 Jefferson was videotaped by the FBI taking a $100 thousand bribe—in $100 bills. On Aug. 3 the FBI raided Jefferson's home in Northeast Washington and found $90 thousand in the freezer in his basement. The money, in $10 thousand increments, was wrapped in aluminum foil and stored in plastic food containers. The sequential serial numbers matched those given to Jefferson by the FBI during the taped sting. (Jefferson had already spent $10 thousand of what was supposed to be the down payment of a half million dollars in graft paid to the Vice President of Nigeria.)
As a Congresswoman, six months before the 2006 midterm election, Pelosi defended Jefferson as aggressively as she condemned Congressman Bob Ney [R-OH] who was accused of taking a $50 thousand bribe from lobbyist Jack Abramoff. So, yes, I can see how she might think enacting a law designed to keep Republicans from sipping the polluted nectar at the swamp the Democrats owned for over 100 years was a "great day" in the neighborhood. However, try as hard as I did—not beingg the naive idiot Democrats think all of the voters are—I couldn't find a laddder tall enough to reach Pelosi's verbal stretch about draining the swamp. In reality, the Democrats simply diverted the money-stream back to the new top dogs on the Hill. When it comes to money—even illegal money—regardlessess of the high-sounding, politically correct names they attach to the bills they pass in Congress, politicians never lock the "access-to-money-door." They leave the door slightly ajar so that the keeper of the keys and his or her minions always have silent access to the illicit river of green that pollutes the swamp.
Democrats are able to make themselves look pious only because Republicans don't do what Democrats do—point fingers across the aisle chanting, "Shame, shame on you." Democrats act like the rules of honesty don't apply to them unless they're caught redhanded and even then, not until they are convicted. Jefferson's lawyer, Robert Trout, fought hard to keep the Louisiana Congressman from his day in court. Indicted on 16 felony counts of bribery, fraud and racketeering on June 4, 2007, Pelosi was forced into an outward display of law and order sensibility. Jefferson has appealed his indictment twice. Jefferson even tried to get the US Supreme Court to vacate the indictment because the FBI raided his congressional office.
The Supreme Court rejected that appeal on May 19. Jefferson's bribery trial will begin in December even though he has once again petitioned the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to squash his indictment. This time, his lawyers are arguing that it is because the indictment violated the Speech or Debate Clause of the US Constitution (Article I, Section 6, Clause 1). His argument doesn't hold water since Jefferson was not arrested until he was removed from his congressional seat.
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The American people need to awaken, quickly, to the unpleasant reality that a majority of those who claim to "represent" them before the government of the United States on election day don't even try to represent them. They actively represent the big money donors who are allowed to actually write legislation that benefits them and obligates the taxpayers to foot the bill. (Legislation, by the way, that the donor paid for "at the door" with his contributions to the campaign coffers of the politicians whose name graces the bill, or who was the primary sponsor of the legislation.)
Which is precisely why the wannabe rich become bundlers, using donor dollars from a variety of sources—many illegal—gain access to politicians on the fast track to power. And, that's one of the peripheral reasons for Public Law 110-81. It requires political candidates to reveal the names of lobbyists who bundle campaign contributions when those packaged donation exceeds $15,000. (However, the question is: will it require the moles of foreign governments, acting as bundlers, use straw donors to funnel millions of illegal dollars into the campaign coffers of the designated winners of our national elections?) Hsu used straw donors, who were told the US election laws allowed him to reimburse them for the contributions they made. One such Clinton donor was also an Obama donor.
The lobbyist bundling provision was placed in the legislation largely because of the campaign finance scandals that implicated both of the Clintons and Al Gore with taking illegal money from Red China, and Barack Obama and scores of other politicians who feint ignorance when it's revealed that their bundlers are crooks—and perhaps worse—as they absolve their own complicity by donating the identified contributions of malefactors to charity. (Except in the case of Hillary Clinton when bundler Norman Hsu's past caught up with him. Hsu reported contributed $850 thousand to Hillary's presidential campaign. Hillary donated $23,000 of the money she received from Hsu to charity, claiming that was all the money she received directly from Hsu. The $850 thousand, Hillary claimed, came from bundled donors who wanted her to keep the money. So, she said, she was keeping it.) One of those straw "donors" was William and Alice Paw whom. At the time, lived in a 1,280 square foot home at 41 Shelbourne Ave., in Daley City, California. The Paw's bought the house from...yes, you guessed it...Norman Hsu.
It was unclear to those investigating the Paw's finances how they could afford contribute $213 thousand to national candidates and another $14 thousand to State candidates. A red flag popped up when the investigation revealed that then-64-year old Paw, a USPS union representative earned $49 thousand per year, had just refinanced his Daley City home?for $270 thousand. In common sense banking anywhere in this country, no one earning $49 thousand per year—regardless how well they pay their bills—can qualify for a $270 thousand mortgage since, even spread over 30-years, the monthly payment alone would exceed his debt threshold. So, who refinanced the Paw mortgage for $270 thousand? Hsu? In all likelihood, the loan papers are a sham and there is no repayment of that "loan" taking place...now or then. The politicians who benefited from Hsu's contributions would have the American people believe that, being good Democrats, the Paw family refinanced their home and gave almost all of the proceeds to their favorite candidates, saddling themselves with a mortgage they could never repay.
When Hsu was convicted in federal court, Obama Administration press secretary Bill Burton reported that his boss was donating the $7 thousand Hsu gave to his campaign to Habitat for Humanity. Obama's office said that State Senator Obama received $2,000 from Hsu on Oct. 19, 2004. US Senate candidate Obama received $5,000.00 from Hsu on Feb. 4, 2005. Yet, the Resident would have us believe that Hsu, who donated a small amount of seed money to help the budding career of a nobody community activist trying to steal a State Senate seat, and then gave even more money to that same Chicago huckster making his first stab at national politics, never gave a penny to the designated winner of the Election of 2008 when money means access—and political favors? Apparently all Democrats think we're stupid.
Prosecutors at Hsu's trial made no attempt to present any evidence to suggest that Democrats who were recipients of Hsu's largess, were aware of his criminal wrongdoing. They did, however, play a voice mail message left on Hsu's phone by Hillary Clinton in 2008. "I've never seen anybody who has been more loyal and more effective and really just having greater success supporting someone than you. Everywhere I go, you're there. If you're not, you're sending people to be part of my events. You know, we're going to win this campaign, Norman, because you single-handedly are going to make it happen."
Prosecutors were able to prove during the trial that the donors of hundreds of thousands of dollars given to both Clinton and Kerry in 2004 were reimbursed by Hsu, just as hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to Bill Clinton and Al Gore by the People's Republic of China from 1992 to 2000 were funneled through DNC by "bundlers" like Maria Hsia, Johnny Chung, Charlie Trie or through the Fo Kuang Shan Buddhist Monastery in Al Gore's famous Buddhist Monastery Outreach when Buddhist nuns, who had taken vows of poverty and had not a penny between them, donated $60 thousand to Gore in 1996.
The Hsu verdict followed the convictions of several Clinton-era bundlers who filled the Clinton Campaign Coffers will illegal money from Red China. Hillary Clinton, however tapped into a new revenue stream as she filled her presidential war chest. Her most important bundler was Indian financier Sant Singh Chatwal who reportedly owns Hampshire Hotels and Resorts. News archives suggest he earned his wealth by borrowing large sums of money from European banks and running out on the debt. Sant Singh Chatwal was one of Hillary's most important bundlers. The success of his fundraising on her behalf is affirmed by the outsourcing of the customer service industry of American business to India.
Chatwal was also one of Obama's key bundlers, reportedly raising over $10 million for Obama from his resources in India, which are increasing being used to divert large segments of the US economy to India. (Remember the millions of dollars in Internet donations received by the Obama Campaign? Did you really think Donald Duck, D. Duck, Minnie Mouse, and Mickey Mouse or M. Mouse actually contributed money to Obama?)
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What it all boils down to is this: if the United States government wants to get rid of illegal bundlers and illegal sources of contributions to greedy US politicians whose political careers are worth more to them than the continued life of their nation, we need to keep a battalion of independent prosecutors on staff. We need to make the politicians criminally responsible to make sure that the contributions they receive are legal. If they are not, both the politician and the bundler need to be charged with a crime in which both participate in since bundling is used to conceal the name and source of the actual contributors, and is used to ingratiate the politician to the bundler. (It would be far better for the people of the United States, and the country as a whole, if all political contributions of any type from anyone, were outlawed.
