Jesse Ventura Quotes

Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.

Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault

The senator had accused Galloway of taking campaign money from criminals

The George W. Bush administration was trying to get its prescription drug plan through the House, but when the voting time ran out they did not have enough votes. The Republican leadership, for the first time in American Congressional history would not let the vote end and kept it open for another 3 hours while they persuaded some members to switch their vote. Smith was one of those. He had announced his retirement and his son was running for his seat. Tom Delay promised to support and campaign for his son, if Smith would switch his vote. Cunningham who was being given funds from companies, threatened to finance an opponent and hurt his son’s chances. In addition Cunningham was taking large bribes to steer contracts to incompetent contractors.

Norquist, Abramoff, and Congressman Tom Delay had created a shakedown scheme to extract money for Republicans from lobbyists and to punish any who donated to Democrats. Although Norquist wanted 50 more, Abramoff was convicted and sentenced to jail in one of the biggest political scandals in modern times. Delay also was indicted.

ANWR stands for the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve. The oil companies want to drill for oil in the reserve and feel that the risk to the pristine natural area is justified by the value of the oil to the nation. At the beginning of their efforts, they maintained that drilling was "no risk" to the environment. However, after the BP oil spill that did so much damage and could not be controlled for months, most oil companies admit there is some risk, but argue that the benefit is worth it. Opponents do not think the benefit is sufficiently great to risk the wildlife and the rest of the ecology, and some argue that the oil itself is just more fossil fuel that will increase the rate of global warming. The “legal bribery” to which President Carter refers is the loophole in the existing laws and rules of trhe House and Senate which allow members to take money from companies or rich individuals and in return give special access to them and their staffs, provide them with early copies of proposed legislation of committee reports, allows them to draft laws or amendments or statements for their speeches, supports their bids for government contracts, makes inquiries to government agencies on the company’s behalf and provides other services that the company executives will bring them more money that the “campaign contributions” cost them.

Abramoff had bribed over 100 Congressional offices by a combination of campaign donations, paid golf junkets all over the world, free elegant meals at his own fancy Washington Restaurant, free tickets for the Congressmen, their staffs and their major constituents, to Concerts and sporting events including his own Skyboxes, and promises of future employment at very high salaries. Ironically, we was convicted of cheating some of his lobbying clients and did a jail term, but his “bribery” was technically usually legal. In addition to Abramoff, only one Congressman was charged and convicted of corruption, when many if not most had engaged in these corrupt practices. Congress makes the rules with loopholes so that what is bribery and corruption in any other setting is often not against the law if Congress is involved.