Joseph Gershtenson Quotes
Pardons are risky …. They inevitably create at least some perception that there's some guilt. Why pardon if somebody isn't going to ultimately get convicted?
The Governor did not pardon himself. He was voted out of office at the next election. Kentucky has history of corruption under both political parties. In one year, all but one of the Kentucky County Commissioners were found by Federal authorities to have taken bribes and kickbacks on road construction contracts.
Joseph Gershtenson, Director, Center for Kentucky History and Politics, Comment on Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher, after a few members of his staff had been indicted for corruption and he issued a Blanket Pardon to all his staff who had committed crimes or might have committed crimes 2005
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He is not referring to campaign contributions but to actual cash bribes. Corporations and industry groups pay cash or provide goods and services to a politician in exchange for legislation favorable to the company or industry. Although his generalization about state officials being the most corrupt is generally probably correct, his state—Kentucky—is and has been one of the most corrupt in the country. See {623532} .
President Reagan had asked Ford, Nixon and Jimmy Carter to attend the funeral of assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sedat. In the plane flying to Egypt, Nixon was trying to play off the ex-presidents against each other, and making nasty remarks about various political figures. The others including Ford were offended.
Russia, under the Czar, had a brutal criminal justice system where criminals—often with their families—were forced across Russia to Siberia and Sakhalin. Stalin and the Communists did not invent the Gulag concept but then, although total enemies of the Czar and everything he stood for, emulated the worst of Czarist policies to deal with the Russian “enemies” of the state. The reference to “red-nosed prison supervisors” was to the image of the alcoholism that was (and still is) rampant among so many Russians—especially the prison supervisors who themselves were exiled to the harshest and remotest parts of the nation. They were notoriously heavy drinkers even be Russian standards.
Reaction to the indictments of several of his political associates who were subsequently convicted after this statement:
President Bush, who in 6 years had only pardoned or commuted the sentence of 2 people before, commuted the criminal jail sentence of Scooter Libby, the White House Vice Presidential Chief of Staff who had lied to the FBI and the Grand Jury in order to protect the role of White House officials in the illegally leaking the identity of a CIA covert operator to punish her husband—a critic of the administration.
