Want an easy way to funnel corrupt cash to a congressman? Buy his house for more than it's worth, include him on a sweetheart land deal (or baseball team purchase), or watch for that classic where a congressman buys land where a freeway or public works project is to go.
Harry Reid is the latest (of many) corrupt congressmen to be uncovered. And you know there are many more out there.
Remember the HP recommendation - vote every incumbent out of office this November. We are being run by a cesspool of corrupt men. When will America wake up to this fact and call for change? Or will they?
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn't personally owned the property for three years, property deeds show.
In the process, Reid did not disclose to Congress an earlier sale in which he transferred his land to a company created by a friend and took a financial stake in that company, according to records and interviews.
The Nevada Democrat's deal was engineered by Jay Brown, a longtime friend and former casino lawyer whose name surfaced in a major political bribery trial this summer and in other prior organized crime investigations. He's never been charged with wrongdoing _ except for a 1981 federal securities complaint that was settled out of court.
Land deeds obtained by The Associated Press during a review of Reid's business dealings show:
_The deal began in 1998 when Reid bought undeveloped residential property on Las Vegas' booming outskirts for about $400,000. Reid bought one lot outright, and a second parcel jointly with Brown. One of the sellers was a developer who was benefiting from a government land swap that Reid supported. The seller never talked to Reid.
_In 2001, Reid sold the land for the same price to a limited liability corporation created by Brown. The senator didn't disclose the sale on his annual public ethics report or tell Congress he had any stake in Brown's company. He continued to report to Congress that he personally owned the land.
_After getting local officials to rezone the property for a shopping center, Brown's company sold the land in 2004 to other developers and Reid took $1.1 million of the proceeds, nearly tripling the senator's investment. Reid reported it to Congress as a personal land sale.
October 11, 2006
HP calls on lazy MSM to investigate ever member of Congress' real estate dealings 1995 - 2005: Harry Reid latest corrupt congressman to be caught
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41 comments:
Wasn't Harry one of the main cheerleaders for "culture of corruption?". Can you spell hypocrite?
Sorry, this isn't corruption, just a good business deal. I did the research, everything was reported (though it was not updated when the property was put into a trust).
Just a good business deal, because its smart to get out of Las Vegas real estate now.
Nearly every member of congress is a hypocrite. The place wreaks.
Denny Hastert buying land and then steering a highway to jack up the value...thats some corruption for ya.
You think he falls in the
HOUSEHOLD CASH LESS LIABILITIES CHART.
http://tinyurl.com/mo944
Doubt it.
Might I add the reset chart is some scary shit..friggin fools, I tried to warn my friends, but its to late the rate reset tsunami is at their backdoor IO ARM january 07..
2 sisters who had to get a house IO ARM
2 friends HELOC to the max's, but that nice harley with the custom paint looks good in his driveway.
Not!
I see that it's not corruption when the 'pure as the driven snow' democrats do it, just a good business deal!
A Democrat in a controversy, say it ain't so!
Sounds like Hillarys 100,000 cattle future's deal!
Not sure what they are going to announce but could be interesting.
Media Advisory : October 11, 2006
FTC Competition Director to Announce Real Estate Law
Enforcement Sweep
The Federal Trade Commission will hold a press event on Thursday, October 12, 2006, at 11 am EDT to announce the results of a real estate competition sweep that will include seven law enforcement actions. Jeff Schmidt, Director of the Commission’s Competition Bureau, will host the event, and will be available to meet with reporters to discuss the cases after the announcement, put them in the context of previous real estate-related enforcement actions, and take case-specific questions.
WHO:
Bureau of Competition Director,
Jeffrey Schmidt
WHERE:
Federal Trade Commission, Headquarters Building
600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.,
Washington, DC
Room 432
WHEN:
Thursday, October 12, 2006; 11 am EDT
CONTACT:
FTC Office of Public Affairs
202-326-2161
Call-in Information
Reporters interested in this event, but who are unable to attend, can call in
using the following information:
Call-in Number: 866-210-4135
Conference ID Number: 8713864
NOTE: In order to join this conference call, all participants will
be required to provide the Conference ID Number.
The call-in lines, which are for press only, open at 10:45 am.
(http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/10/relawsweepma.htm)
Works for me. Nice timing, though... takes attention away from Hastert's goat hunt... or does it?
He is not a pedophile and he hasn't had any homo gay queer sex with any other homos( as far as we know), so I fail to see how this is any biggie. Compare that to the Bushco inner circle who is responsible for the deaths of 600,000+ Iraqi women and children.
If bush turd gets to murder babies, there should be no concern over some fraud in an RE transaction.
This AP article is from the same hack reporter who tried to find a scandal in Reid's accepting tickets to boxing matches when regulations prohibited Reid from buying the tickets. He bought land in '98, transferred it to a holding company with his investment partner in 2001, and sold for a profit in 2004. Where is the fraud? Where is the abuse of power? Where is the crime?
It's just like Whitewater, Vince Foster, Travelgate, and the slew of other "scandals" invented by the conservative smearmongers.
Now, there is one legitimate current Democratic scandal -- William Jefferson is a criminal. There. That's one.
On the Republican side, Jack Abramoff, David Safavian, and Duke Cunningham are already in jail. Bob Ney and Tom Delay are close on their heels. Mark Foley and Scooter Libby will likely be going that way too. And then there is a lot of smoke surrounding Denny Hastert, Conrad Burns, Ted Stevens, as well as a federal investigation of Bill Frist and recent allegations against George Allen. And the Abramoff and Cunningham probes are just getting rolling!
This isn't even close folks -- the Democrats have had some bad ones, but for the Republicans there has been a pervasive and consistent pattern of criminality at the highest levels of their leadership.
Your whining reminds me of people who said in the 2000 election season that there was no difference between George Bush and Al Gore. That was comical false equivalence and so is this.
Neither party is perfect, but the Republicans as an organization have gone badly astray.
Oh I forgot Reid is a Pro Amnesty kind of guy so we need to get off his case.. sarc=on
Well Said Bake McBride!
Hey Bake McBride,
I couldn't agree with you more about term limits.
That was one plank of the Contract with America that I really supported back in 1994 too. It really is too bad that they didn't get that done.
I will give the Republicans some credit for trying on that one.
" Shady deals with the gaming commission now this. "
what shady dealings?
seems his land deal is just a product of the bubble. are we really going to argue on a RE bubble blog that nobody has made money on LV land deals?
Term limits won't work. The problem is that politicians are for sale, both dems and repubs alike. The ordinary people and working joes can't afford to buy off a politician, but halliburton and labor unions can. Term limited politicians will still be for sale, and perhaps might be more brazen in selling their services since they only have one shot.
The solution is to mandate the death penalty for crooked politicians. If they didn't report income, off with their head. If they banged an intern, its the firing squad. The only way to keep them honest is to threaten them with their lives.
"When will America wake up to this fact and call for change? Or will they?"
America has the government it deserves.
When our greedy corrupt mentality changes - so too will our government.
Until then you are piss'n on a forest fire.
Here's the story:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001782.php
Reid did not have any unreported income in 2001. When he sold the property to a third party in 2004 (as opposed to changing the way he and his partner held it in 2001), he reported the sale.
The AP's reporter is a stupid tool.
That is all.
Hey I am sorry but 400K to 1.1 million in 25 years? It actually sounds like he is kind of a lamo when it comes to investment. I would estimate that due to inflation the money is worth less than if he had put it in bonds.
Dailykos says Solomon is lying about Reid. He is clean as a whistle.
Good ol' Harry Reid. He escaped from the poverty of his childhood. Boy has he escaped...Nothing like good old-fashioned hard work, right Harry?
If the complete truth were ever told about the politics in NV, we'd all probably go and drown ourselves.
Metroplexual, the issue is disclosure. The Dems threw such a hissy fit over Cheney's holdings he had to dump shares at a personal loss of millions of dollars. Now we see Harry Reid with an undisclosed deal and we're supposed to shrug our shoulders?
Does anyone remember Dick Gephardt's little RE snafu where he obtained loans by lying on the application that the house was owner-occupied?. That's supposedly a federal crime, but the Dems swept that under the rug too.
This isn't Reid's only "interesting" venture in real estate. Try Googling "Reid" and "Coyote Springs."
Anonymous said...
Metroplexual, the issue is disclosure. The Dems threw such a hissy fit over Cheney's holdings he had to dump shares at a personal loss of millions of dollars. Now we see Harry Reid with an undisclosed deal and we're supposed to shrug our shoulders?
Does anyone remember Dick Gephardt's little RE snafu where he obtained loans by lying on the application that the house was owner-occupied?. That's supposedly a federal crime, but the Dems swept that under the rug too.
Thursday, October 12, 2006 5:03:03 PM
Yeah it is small potatoes compared to the crap that the Republicans have been up to as of late.
Oh the only thing Reid was guilty of in this instance was not disclosing the fact the he converted the type of ownership stake he had. A little sleazy but nothing like Hastert and that little Highway bill earmark making him a cool couple of million.
BUSH’S SECRET ADVISOR HAS BLOODY PAST
BILDERBERG LUMINARY NOW HAS EAR OF THE PRESIDENT
By Richard Walker
http://www.american freepress. net/html/ bloody_past. html
As more U.S. soldiers die in Iraq, and President Bush tells Americans he will “stay the course” even if his only supporters are his wife and their dog, Barney, reports have come out that Bush is getting advice from a man who knows all about failure.
That man is Henry Kissinger, 88, who served as national security advisor and secretary of state under Richard Nixon and then Gerald Ford.
According to Washington Post editor, Bob Woodward whose new book State of Denial is giving the White House a political headache, Kissinger has been advising Bush behind the scenes for some time during his regular visits to the White House.
The presence of Kissinger within the Bush White House should be no surprise to those who have studied his political career, including his influence on the neo-conservative movement and his membership in the shadowy group known as Bilderberg. His role as advisor to this president may help explain some of the president’s view about the war in Iraq and also some of his language.
One of Kissinger’s favorite sayings is, “the absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.” In other words, never seek alternatives, or as he told some of the most notorious regimes during his stint as a national security advisor, “succeed and get the job done quickly.”
According to Woodward, Kissinger thinks he is fighting the war in Vietnam all over again, except that this time he intends to win it. Likewise, Bush has made it clear that he will seek victory in Iraq—whatever that may mean—no matter how many American soldiers lose their lives.
Kissinger has emerged from the background this year to make a series of statements furthering the neo-conservative agenda about rebuilding the Middle East and creating a new world order. He has been especially active in articulating views that dovetail with Israel’s perceptions of how America should develop its Middle East strategy.
Born a German, of Jewish origin, Kissinger has made no secret of his support for Zionism and his close links to Israel. On Sept. 3, he publicly declared that European nations should put aside their differences with the United States because both sides were facing a possible “war of civilizations” that “dwarfed transatlantic mistrust left over from the war in Iraq.”
Mankind was facing a “global catastrophe,” he warned, and that meant America and its allies had to start constructing a “new world order.”
If Kissinger’s past teaches anything about his “new world order” it is that he will get into bed with dictators and the cost of his policies in human lives lost will not mean too much to his sensibilities. A brief examination of his days as national security advisor and secretary of state under Nixon and Ford, confirm his taste for dirty, clandestine wars, as well as an ability to hide the truth from Congress and the American people.
In 1969, he advocated the secret “carpet” bombing of neutral Cambodia that led to the killing of half a million innocent lives and is believed to have contributed to the subsequent rise of the dictator, Pol Pot whose Khmer Rouge militias massacred millions in what became known as “the killing fields.” In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for negotiating a ceasefire with North Vietnam, even though the war in Vietnam continued for another two years.
If Cambodia was an example of his ability to operate in the shadows so was his support for the invasion of East Timor by the corrupt Indonesian regime of General Suharto. Documents have now surfaced showing that a day before the invasion on December 7, 1975, Kissinger told the dictator:
“It is important whatever you do, do succeed quickly.” Kissinger was concerned American public opinion would not favor a brutal or prolonged occupation of East Timor that nine days earlier had declared independence from Portugal. The invasion led to the death of almost a quarter of a million Timorese and a subsequent occupation killed almost a third of the population in what Amnesty International called genocide.
Twist,
Interesting, sleazy but not quite illegal imo. Maybe I didn't get to the specifics on it, I just seemed to mostly get right wing blog sites which I just can't take seriously.
Politicians should not be allowed to hold land as an investment. Looks like Reid may not have done anything to increase his investment quite as directly as Hastert did with his highway earmark, but in a general sense, politicans can influence land investment value way too easily which leaves them with way too much temptation to do so. If a politician is elected, they should have to auction their investment real estate holdings, it's that simple. No putting it into blind trusts or transferring ownership, auction it off.
This is baloney.
Reid is honest---he transferred his ownership share of the property into an LLC which he and his partner owned.
This is perfectly normal, and for tax purposes he still owns the economic interest in the property, and he reported it.
He didn't do any legislative actions---unlike Hastert with his own property---which abnormally increased its value.
The only thing that surprises me is that some people still act surprised about government corruption. But, I guess some people still believe there is a "left" and a "right", "democrat" or "republican".
And diego, I agree with your semtiments about the death penalty for corrupt polititions, if we got started today, we might be able to get through the thousands and thousands of them by the weekend (some deserve much, much worse than a quick death). The only thing I would like to add, is that we include the treasonous ones that have aided and abetted the criminal invasion and criminal invaders, but, that should go without saying.
And Richard, yes, kissinger is surely one murderous jew indeed. What was it he said about our military service men during vietnam? "Military men are nothing more than stupid animals.... tools to be used for political gain"........ Yes, often times the most damning qoutes about the jews, come from jews themselves.
Here are some other good Kissinger quotes:
on depopulation
quote:
"Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries."
- National Security Memo 200, dated April 24, 1974 link
on democracy:
quote:
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." (1970?)
link
on American imperialism:
quote:
"The US must carry out some act somewhere in the world which shows its determination to continue to be a world power."
-The Washington Post, April 1975 link
quote:
"Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs."
link
on wagging the dog:
quote: "I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target overseas. And I believe George W. Bush will quickly unite the American people through his foreign policy."
-Henry Kissinger, appearing on CNBC, 2000-Dec-13 link
quote:
"Today Americans would be outraged if U. N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government."
- Henry Kissinger address to the Bilderberg organization meeting at Evian, France, May 21,1992 link
quote: "Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy."
-Henry Kissinger statement to Bob Woodward "The Final Days (1976)
Holy crap - did kiss say all that??
Yeah - this one is really freaky.
The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government."
- Henry Kissinger address to the Bilderberg organization meeting at Evian, France, May 21,1992 link
Keith-
Try looking a little closer and stop being such a chump for the MSM. The AP has had a hard-on for the Democrats for awhile now. I guess the "liebral bias" of the Media is as big a lie as Century 21 talking points. All Harry Reid did was transfer the deed of the property from his name to an LLC. The only item in the LLC was the property. And the only thing he did wrong (and I use the term loosley) was claim ownership of the property instead of the LLC. All of this was an attempt to shift the bad news from the GOP to the DEMS. It was a hamfisted attempt and I am sure the story will resolve itself quickly. It is interesting though that someone who is so skeptical of the Housing News is so gullible with the political.
Oh Jesus..... After reading all those kissinger quotes, I..... feel..... an...... ANTI-SEMETIC RANT COMING ON!!!!!!!!!
Why do people turn anti-Jew?
What is the commonality between all the losers?
Right-Wing, manipulative, jingoistic Arrogant RepublicanGOPism.
Who opposes all of this? Well, there's a Jewish liberal known as Russ Feingold.
When people learn the truth about the jews, they turn "anti-jew"...... And by the way both liberals and conservatives are fully jew infiltrated and con-trolled.
How come I couldn't get away with what Reid did?
No democrat would ever do Anything underhanded!
I'm Shocked!
Hmm, Chip... I'm not sure you would consider my debate very intelligent, but answer me this. Why don't libertarians get more funding than they do when running for office? and... Who are the people who do the bulk of the funding?
Jesus-K-God! HK really is Dr. Strangelove!
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