Swamp Draining

House Ethics Panel Finds Rangel Broke Rules With Trip

"We're going to drain the swamp!" ~Nancy Pelosi. I guess the bilge pump failed?

The House Ethics panel has found that Rep. Charles B. Rangel of New York broke Congressional rules by failing to properly disclose financial details of a trip to the Caribbean, a House official said.

Rep. Charles Rangel, the most powerful tax-writing lawmaker in Congress and a 40-year veteran of Capitol Hill, acknowledged Thursday that an ethics panel has accused him of accepting corporate money for Caribbean trips in violation of House rules.

The findings are certain to raise questions of whether Rangel, a New York Democrat, can continue as Ways and Means Committee chairman in an election year. Democrats took over the House in 2006 on a campaign promise to "end a culture of corruption" in Congress that they blamed on 12 years of Republican rule.

The ethics panel also ended another widespread investigation Thursday, saying it found no violations of House rules by seven lawmakers who steered government money and projects and contracts to favored companies that donated to their re-election campaigns.

A copy of the letters and an accompanying report on them were obtained by The Associated Press. All seven — five Democrats and two Republicans — are or were senior members of the House Appropriations Committee.

The most prominent of the them was the late Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., the former chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee who died earlier this month. Convenient? The other six lawmakers exonerated in that probe are Reps. Norman Dicks, D-Wash.; Jim Moran, D-Va.; Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio; Peter Visclosky, D-Ind.; Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan.; and C.W. "Bill" Young, R-Fla.

The appropriations went to companies represented by a now-defunct lobbying firm known as PMA Group — formerly Paul Magliocchetti Associates.

The Justice Department was conducting an investigation of its own into PMA. It is unclear whether that inquiry is still alive. At one point, a federal grand jury subpoenaed documents from Visclosky's office, campaign committees and some of his employees. The chief of staff for the Indiana Democrat resigned after the subpoenas were delivered.

When a politician says they are going to "clean house" it really means boot out the other guy's corrupt members and install my own.

Food Inc. Doc.

Fast Food Nation, the best-selling book by Eric Schlosser, exposed the seamy side of the all-American meal. A documentary follow-up of sorts, Food Inc., goes further back in the food chain to show how animals are raised in squalor, slaughtered en masse, bathed in ammonia and served to us with a "Farm fresh" label. Let's just say brands like Tyson, Perdue and Smithfield don't fare so well in this independent film, opening in New York and Los Angeles on June 12 from Magnolia Pictures.

The companies' advertising can try to keep spinning the pastoral fantasy, but anyone who sees this film won't be swallowing that notion anymore. (None of the marketers, who control the majority of food production in the U.S., would appear in the doc.) Monsanto, the chemical company responsible for Agent Orange, might take it on the chin the hardest, as filmmaker Robert Kenner follows the plight of some small farmers who dared to stand up to the DDT-maker-turned-agribusiness. Guess how that turned out?

Yes, yes. Meat is murder... However, the other side of this coin is whether anyone bothered to ask "Why?" Why has food become mechanized? "Evil?" What are the end results? Are people eating and not starving? Are we past subsistence farming - and how much more? Are fewer people needed to toil the land to feed the rest of us so that we can all concentrate on stepping up the grand Maslow's Pyramid? It may have become more about marketplace and greed, but the original goal was to modernize the business of agriculture.

And, correct me if you can find other evidence, wasn't the entire Industrial Revolution was based upon making our lives toiling in the agrarian industry just a little easier?

Perhaps there's a middle ground of discovering how your food is made and shrink wrapped, and what alternatives we might have - and also a frank discussion of costs. Would beef be a couple hundred dollars a pound if it was all free range grass feed in the great state of Oklahoma and walked to the Chicago slaughter houses like in 'the good-ole days?' How many people in the inner cities would die of starvation because a hand full of people didn't like the industrial process that chops the heads off of live chickens and then turns them into nuggets? Must we all grow vegetables on top of our garages and edible flowers in our front yards while we recycle our urine into dandelion wine? Isn't that the same kind of intolerance that you'd expect from that guy listening to Rush Limbaugh holding up the line at the KFC drive thru window? I'm all for a change - but let's be realistic about it.

What's the end game, and what is the compromise? You tell me?

Contaminated Colonoscopies Exposes Vets

CNN is reporting a possible contamination at VA - thats our Veterans - facilities!

Contaminated colonoscopy gear may have exposed THOUSANDS of Florida veterans to hepatitis, and HIV!

Florida lawmakers are seeking inquiry, and are raising concerns about other facilities.

The VA sent letters to people who may have had colonoscopies May 2004 to this month. Five YEARS, this has been going on!

Officials say tubing was rinsed but not disinfected, but say the risk of infection minimal.

This is how we treat our veterans?

You hosed it off a little?

"President Obama has listened to the concerns expressed by veterans' leaders and veterans' service organizations," Nancy Pelosi said. "We will leave no veteran behind."

But apparently we'll leave hepatitis and HIV IN our veterans behinds?

This is unacceptable!

I have always looked at how a society treats its soldiers and veterans as a reflection of that society. Too much emphasis or none at all tells a story. God help those men and women who are getting such unspeakable treatment.

Also, I will be tossing this story around to share with you my thoughts on Socialized Medicine -- the practice of medicine run by the state. THIS is exactly how I expect "care" to be administered once the profit is taken away - you get goddamn idiots who reuse the colonoscopy gear on people who served our country.

(okay, I took the Nancy Pelosi quote out of context, that was in reference to the Obama Administration trying to charge insurance companies for Veteran care - trying to pass the buck... but it just worked too damned well there)