October 2006

Shimkus’ sweet sweet whine

He wants an apology from Pelosi and Durbin.

This was not, I repeat was not, in The Onion.

WATB, indeed.

“People, like Sen. Durbin and Nancy Pelosi, who are using this for partisan gain, they ought to be ashamed of themselves,” Shimkus said on WJPF-AM radio in Herrin.

Republicans increasingly fear the scandal may help the Democrats regain the House and Senate after the Nov. 7 general elections.

Rather than issue apologies, spokespeople for Durbin and Pelosi counterattacked.

“Republicans just don’t get it; every mother in America is asking how Republicans could choose partisan politics over protecting kids, and the Republicans are still asking who could have blown their cover-up,” Pelosi spokeswoman Jennifer Crider said.

It’s perhaps fair to say the facts aren’t all in, however, the facts that are in are pretty damn bad. There used to be some shame in American politics.

Statement from Kildee on House Page Committee and Shimkus

Kildee Statement on Speaker Hastert’s October 5th Press Conference

Congressman Dale Kildee (D-MI), the Democratic Member of the House Page Board, released the following statement today:

Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Page Board Chairman John Shimkus have recently asserted that they did exactly the right thing in their handling of former Congressman Mark Foley’s inappropriate emails to a former House page.

The facts are:

* The Speaker and Page Board Chairman Shimkus did not inform me as the only Democratic Member of the House Page Board.
* They did not inform Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, the other Republican Member of the House Page Board.
* They did not inform the House Ethics Committee, which is charged with regulating the conduct of Members of the House.
* It appears that they did not inform the House Sergeant at Arms, the top law enforcement official in charge of security for the U.S. House, including the pages.
* They did not inform the House Democratic leadership.

Had Speaker Hastert followed the traditions and past practices of the U.S. House, he would have immediately consulted with the Democratic House leadership. That is how then-Speaker Tip O’Neill and then-Republican Leader Bob Michel handled the previous page scandal in the 1980’s.

And if my colleague, Mr. Shimkus, had been allowed to do what he now publicly acknowledges that he wishes he had done, he would have informed me and the rest of the House Page Board. A formal meeting of the Page Board, with a bipartisan representation of the House and with the House Sergeant at Arms providing law enforcement advice, would have given guidance as to how to best address this situation with the well-being and safety of the pages being foremost in mind.

Denny Meet Fork, Fork Stick in Denny

Everything Hastert has ever done is now going to be under scrutiny. (behind subscription wall)

If I were the Illinois GOP, I’d be looking for an orderly transition to the new guy. I’m betting Lauzen makes a run. Let’s just hope we don’t have him trying to change his name again….

Speaker Hastert, however, is no passive figure. When it comes to running the House, Hastert has, in fact, been an aggressive partisan. Recall, for instance, that he personally fired the chairman and two Republican members from the House Ethics Committee after they had the effrontery to rebuke Tom DeLay for misconduct. And when it comes to real estate, he has been a downright wheeler-dealer. Virtually overnight, the speaker’s net worth went from approximately $300,000 to at least $6.2 million–thanks, in no small part, to an earmark he authored.

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Here are the essential facts: In August, 2002, Hastert bought 196 acres of land in rural Kendall County, Illinois for $2,125,000. According to the Chicago Tribune, Hastert bought the plot in two separate transactions. The first deal gave him a house, barn, swimming pool, and 17 acres of land for $1.2 million. In the second deal, he obtained an additional 179 acres on an adjacent property for a little less than $5,200 per acre. The least valuable portions of the second deal were two fields, separated from the rest of the farm by a stream and inaccessible by road.

That was a big deal for a life-long politician and wrestling coach like Hastert, but harmless enough. Eighteen months later, however, Hastert’s purchase took a new direction. The speaker entered into a real estate agreement with Dallas Ingemunson, the chair of the Kendall County Republican Party, and a campaign contributor named Tom Klatt. The three men formed a real estate trust and purchased an additional 69 acres of land adjacent to Hastert’s two inaccessible fields. The trust paid $1,033,000 for the land, or about $15,000 per acre–more expensive turf than Hastert’s plot in part because of its access to a road.

And here’s where the deal first begins to acquire a pungent odor: The trust then added Hastert’s two fields to the jointly acquired parcel and credited Hastert with 62 percent ownership apparently on the presumption that Hastert’s $5,200 land was equal in value to his partners $15,000 land.

These deals coincided with a protracted battle in Congress sparked by the expiration of the 1998 highway bill. Hastert’s purchase of his new home and the additional 179 acres of land took place the same month that the House Transportation Committee prepared for its first hearings on a new highway bill–a bill that would be rife with opportunities for members of congress to bring new roads to their districts in the form of earmarks, changes in infrastructure that could have a major effect on real estate values.

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It was, we now know, crucial to the speaker’s own economic development. In December of 2005, four months after the signing of the new Federal Highway Bill containing the $207 million inserted by Hastert for construction of the nearby Prairie Parkway, the 138 acres held by the trust were sold to a developer as part of planned 1600 home housing development. The trust received $4,989,000 or $36,152 an acre for the parcel of which 62.5 percent or $3,118,000 went to Hastert. Klatt and Ingemunson also did well. Their profit equaled 144 percent of their original investment. Hastert, however, received six times what he had paid for his investment, a profit equal to 500 percent of his original investment.

The Hastert earmark not only provided money for Parkway construction but mandated that the construction take place on the portion of the Parkway nearest his recently purchased property. While the money contained in the highway bill was sufficient to build only about one-third of the entire 36-mile road, the speaker insured that the right third would be selected by also earmarking funds for construction of a interchange in that portion of the proposed thooughfare.

The decision by the developer to build a subdivision in an area proximate to Hastert’s farm had financial implications for the speaker that ran well beyond the $2.5 million profit he reaped on the sale. The Tribune has calculated that the remaining 125 acres he still owns is now worth about $4.5 million. Even counting the mortgage on the property, Hastert’s net worth, according to the Tribune, appears to be more than $6.2 million. An estimate that Hastert’s office does not dispute, probably because it is extremely conservative.

Making Jim Wright and Newt look like pikers with their book deals.

Speaking of Not Being Fit to Be a Dogcatcher

Jerry Weller jumps in with both feet:

Fuller said the congressman also wants an investigation into who leaked the e-mails to the news media.

“The bigger question for my boss is, who sat on these messages for three years,” and leaked them just weeks before the Nov. 7 election, Fuller said. Particularly, he said, Weller wants to know “who put them up” to releasing the damaging information, and suspects Democratic sources. “He thinks it needs to be looked into.”

Weller’s stance was, in tone and substance, close to that of House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. Boehner, second in command to Hastert, also questioned the source of the revelations in a letter to the conservative Washington Times that responded to its call Monday that Hastert resign.

“We also need to know why these messages surfaced only last week, on the final day of legislative business before the November elections,” Boehner said, according to Congressional Quarterly.
.?

Who sat on the information? It sure looks like some young Pages who were harassed by a Member of Congress sat on it and given their age and the attacks on them by the right wing media outlets, I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t have come forward before…not to mention how difficult it is for young people of that age to deal with their sexuality.

Strangely, the evidence and by that I mean the very clear statements by ABC contradict this bullshit. It’s a hysterical failed attempt at jijutsu to try and say the Democrats must have been sitting on evidence of wrong doing when Republicans themselves refused to tell Democrats about the initial concerns.

Will the press do their job?

There are many Republicans who have taken responsible positions–I can point to below with McSweeney who I think is giving Hastert a pass, but is taking the story very seriously and wants a full report on it by election day. He even has some ideas about reforming the ethics committee that are interesting. What he and other decent human beings aren’t doing—trying to create fictional stories or blame the victims.

This didn’t need to be highly partisan. On Friday the 29th, a simple admissions that they screwed up would have killed the story by now. Perhaps a little bit of discussion about why Democrats weren’t included in the discussions 3 years ago, but not much else.

It’s no longer a hole being dug

It’s far more massive than that.

Note to the Illinois press who haven’t figured it out–Hastert’s lying and it’s up to you to make this crystal clear. Fornek had the better of the articles in the Sun-Times on Friday with a very simple point

The GOP leader also lashed out at the Democrats, suggesting that they orchestrated release of the political bombshell to impact the November mid-term elections.

“Our friends on the other side of the aisle really don’t have a story to tell, and maybe they’re resolving to another way to, to, to — another political tactic,” he said.

Hastert ended the news conference without offering any evidence that Democrats were involved.

I have to admit I’ve bought into the Denny is decent guy bit, but I think we can see what DC has done to him. It should have been clear when he claimed Soros was behind drug cartels. It is crystal clear now that Hastert believes he can say anything as crazy as he wants and not have to support it or be held accountable. It’s Soros! It’s the Clintons! It’s ABC! It’s Rahm! It’s the fucking tooth fairy!

Fornek and Rosek wrote a straight article that put the simple facts out there-some others, not so much.

You have a situation where a guy gets slapped on the wrist after multiple complaints and the information kept from other members of the relevant committee–both Democratic and Republican members and the House Leadership decides the way to defend themselves is to say the Democrats knew too and waited for the point of maximum impact to release the information.

There is no evidence of this at all. It’s not even smooth how they’ve tried to get this out there. On Hardball Kingston kept saying “he’s just asking questions about what Rahm knew and when”. Mathews almost burst the veins in his head it was so pathetic and unbelievable.

Even if there was even a shred of evidence the logic of it is bizarre–the Dems withheld information for a shorter period of time than the Republicans and so they are to blame…

Wait, no you see Rahm was letting these poor kids be at risk so he could release it right before the election and the Republicans are the victims of big mean Rahm because he released a true story that led to the very public scandal. So Rahm is really the one using the kids—never mind no one has any claims that Rahm did know, but several claims indicate Hastert and the leadership knew much more.

Wait, no you see Rahm and Pelosi really were part of a massive conspiracy in which Foley was a political Manchurian Candidate.

If the members of the press don’t call bullshit on all of this, they need new lines of work. Read what Hastert said yesterday. He didn’t take responsibility for anything and has continued to blame any handy Democrat for being at fault in this scandal. That’s either a gross lie or evidence that Denny is not mentally capable of being a dogcatcher let alone 3rd in line to the Presidency.

Update on McSweeney and Hastert

As I said the other day, I tend to think McSweeney is a decent guy, just a decent guy I don’t want near Congress. He contacted me about this post to fill in his whole position and I respect that.

My point was (admittedly snarky) point that backing Hastert right now when there were contradictory claims running around and putting your neck out there isn’t good politically. To his credit, his actual position is pretty decent in relation to how to deal with it–get an investigation out there and have preliminary findings before the election.

Politically, I think he’s making a mistake, but I have to admit he seems to be responding authentically and I think like many parents, he’s pretty angry about the whole deal. More in a bit, but while I think the political position is bad politics, he seems serious about what he thinks and he wants it to be investigated quickly instead of just shuffled off until after the election.