Wednesday, May 24, 2006
The FBI raided the offices of a U.S. Congressman on Saturday after recieving tips that told them there were incriminating documents and cash in his Capitol Hill office. Democratic Congressman William Jefferson is under investigation related to bribery charges and damning videotape evidence of him accepting cash payments. It was reported in the media that the search was legal and carried out properly- and netted nearly $100,000 in cash hidden mostly in the office's kitchen area in the freezer. Speculation is the $100K is the reason why the Democratic Louisiana Congressman commandeered a National Guard rescue boat and it's crew shortly after Hurricane Katrina in 2006.
While other rescue boats and crews worked around the clock rescuing New Orleans residents, Congressman William Jefferson, (D- La), ordered a boat and crew to take him to his flooded New Orleans home to retrieve personal items, while hundreds of residents waited outside the city, unable to check on their personal property, and others, who's very lives laid in peril, were made to wait while their means to higher ground and safety was taken away for the service of the elite.
After this Congressman's embarrassing behavior in post-Katrina political mud-slinging, and after the U.S. Justice Department issued investigations into bribery allegations, and the recent explosive revelations regarding large sums of money hidden away, certain elements of the legislature question the powers of the FBI when investigating elected officials.
Laws originally written to keep White House or Justice Dept. officials from intimidating lawmakers by launching politically-motivated investigations are being invoked in regards to the Jefferson investigation by Democrat lawmakers, citing the 'Separtation of Powers' act.
Call me jaded and cynical, but the only politicians complaining about the raids are Democrats and liberals. No mention has been made by these polititcians regarding the charges, or the alleged contraband that was seized. Should I conclude the Democrats are closing ranks around Jefferson to defend " one of their own"?
The level of corruption in the New Orleans/Katrina debacle continues to escalate. After last week's shameful re-election of Ray Nagin as New Orleans' Mayor, and after being subjected to the massive influx of Louisiana residents here in the Houston area, I have a low opinion of the common New Oreleanite. Possibly undeserved.
Maybe I will never understand, you see: I'm not black. I haven't been spoon fed a defeatist diet by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. I haven't been told over and over that I've been beaten down, and kept down and boy how I am owed. I hate to hear the stories of groups of black, New Orleans kids here in high school, pushing their way to the front of the lunch line every day, just daring any other kids to challenge them. Fights in our schools broke out daily, and never were our schools as unsafe, and the Houston area students and teachers paid the price.
It is clearly a diminished sense of morality, and a questionable sense of right and wrong. There is widespread loss of integrity from the gutter to the hollowed halls.
From the outside, it looks like no decent white person would want anything to do with New ORleans, and can you blame them?
For their compassion, they are swindled. For their charity they are abused. Their contributions to help those in need went instead to a misguided attempt to put the money in the hands of those most in need. Hurricane evacuees in Houston had all their bills paid: Hotel was paid, the nearby shelter served food twice a day: served by mostly white volunteers and cleaned up by, you guessed it, more mostly white volunteers. I take nothing away from the non-white volunteers, of which there were dozens. All of the volunteers felt the attitude of the evacuees: demanding, and feeling entitled to help.
With nothing to spend their money on, most chose to buy big ticket items such as big screen t.v.'s, X-boxes, or just go to the topless bars with the government issued debit cards.
After all, there was virtually nothing left in New Orleans to go back to, and that $1,500 was burning a hole in their pocket(s).
The people of this region are kind and giving of themselves. When Katrina left so many people with nothing, we all felt terrible for them: we put ourselves in their place.
Ironically, it looks like the unseemly majority came to Houston and 'put themselves in our place'. Crime spiked here in Houston. Murders, rapes and robberies. Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was the murder capital of America. In 2006, it's Houston by a mile.
On the several occasions I have gone way out of my way to help someone and been tricked, swindled or ripped off, I can tell you, by intimate knowledge, that you feel real rage. When you realize your kindness and selflessness has played right into the hands of a user, criminal, punk or miscreant who has just ripped you off, it's easy to imagine never extending yourself again. And that is what's most unfair: Those who are genuinely in need tend to suffer the most from this type of fraud.
-Ian Carroll
please visit my other web logs:
racing diary
civcompnet
...all w/ .blogspot.com
and leave a comment! ¶ 4:10 PM
While other rescue boats and crews worked around the clock rescuing New Orleans residents, Congressman William Jefferson, (D- La), ordered a boat and crew to take him to his flooded New Orleans home to retrieve personal items, while hundreds of residents waited outside the city, unable to check on their personal property, and others, who's very lives laid in peril, were made to wait while their means to higher ground and safety was taken away for the service of the elite.
After this Congressman's embarrassing behavior in post-Katrina political mud-slinging, and after the U.S. Justice Department issued investigations into bribery allegations, and the recent explosive revelations regarding large sums of money hidden away, certain elements of the legislature question the powers of the FBI when investigating elected officials.
Laws originally written to keep White House or Justice Dept. officials from intimidating lawmakers by launching politically-motivated investigations are being invoked in regards to the Jefferson investigation by Democrat lawmakers, citing the 'Separtation of Powers' act.
Call me jaded and cynical, but the only politicians complaining about the raids are Democrats and liberals. No mention has been made by these polititcians regarding the charges, or the alleged contraband that was seized. Should I conclude the Democrats are closing ranks around Jefferson to defend " one of their own"?
The level of corruption in the New Orleans/Katrina debacle continues to escalate. After last week's shameful re-election of Ray Nagin as New Orleans' Mayor, and after being subjected to the massive influx of Louisiana residents here in the Houston area, I have a low opinion of the common New Oreleanite. Possibly undeserved.
Maybe I will never understand, you see: I'm not black. I haven't been spoon fed a defeatist diet by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. I haven't been told over and over that I've been beaten down, and kept down and boy how I am owed. I hate to hear the stories of groups of black, New Orleans kids here in high school, pushing their way to the front of the lunch line every day, just daring any other kids to challenge them. Fights in our schools broke out daily, and never were our schools as unsafe, and the Houston area students and teachers paid the price.
It is clearly a diminished sense of morality, and a questionable sense of right and wrong. There is widespread loss of integrity from the gutter to the hollowed halls.
From the outside, it looks like no decent white person would want anything to do with New ORleans, and can you blame them?
For their compassion, they are swindled. For their charity they are abused. Their contributions to help those in need went instead to a misguided attempt to put the money in the hands of those most in need. Hurricane evacuees in Houston had all their bills paid: Hotel was paid, the nearby shelter served food twice a day: served by mostly white volunteers and cleaned up by, you guessed it, more mostly white volunteers. I take nothing away from the non-white volunteers, of which there were dozens. All of the volunteers felt the attitude of the evacuees: demanding, and feeling entitled to help.
With nothing to spend their money on, most chose to buy big ticket items such as big screen t.v.'s, X-boxes, or just go to the topless bars with the government issued debit cards.
After all, there was virtually nothing left in New Orleans to go back to, and that $1,500 was burning a hole in their pocket(s).
The people of this region are kind and giving of themselves. When Katrina left so many people with nothing, we all felt terrible for them: we put ourselves in their place.
Ironically, it looks like the unseemly majority came to Houston and 'put themselves in our place'. Crime spiked here in Houston. Murders, rapes and robberies. Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was the murder capital of America. In 2006, it's Houston by a mile.
On the several occasions I have gone way out of my way to help someone and been tricked, swindled or ripped off, I can tell you, by intimate knowledge, that you feel real rage. When you realize your kindness and selflessness has played right into the hands of a user, criminal, punk or miscreant who has just ripped you off, it's easy to imagine never extending yourself again. And that is what's most unfair: Those who are genuinely in need tend to suffer the most from this type of fraud.
-Ian Carroll
please visit my other web logs:
racing diary
civcompnet
...all w/ .blogspot.com
and leave a comment! ¶ 4:10 PM
