Caroline Kennedy's supporters say she could raise tons of money as a senator, but when it comes to writing checks to New York Democrats, she's been largely AWOL.
This decade, other than a $1,000 donation to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the Camelot heiress has not financially supported any Democrat seeking city or state office in New York, records reveal.
Some say Kennedy, who is worth at least $100 million, missed an opportunity to curry favor among Democratic pols to establish herself as a serious political player as she lobbies Gov. Paterson for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat.
Doesn't that sentence speak volumes as to what's wrong with our politics today?
She has already been asked to explain a spotty Election Day voting record over the past 20 years.
"Voting is the minimum thing that you can do, and she hasn't done that. The next thing you can do is you could donate money, and she hasn't done that," said Doug Muzzio, professor of public affairs at Baruch College. "It calls into question her commitment to politics and to government."
On the federal level, Kennedy doled out roughly $30,000 in the past decade, but Clinton was the only New Yorker to benefit. Kennedy gave to Clinton's Senate and presidential campaigns. The former First Lady returned $2,300 of Kennedy's cash after she endorsed Barack Obama.
Stefan Friedman, Kennedy's spokesman, said she is a "lifelong member of the Democratic Party" and "has always supported New York Democratic elected officials and Democrats seeking office."
She "has also given her time and energy to many causes that New York Democrats hold dear."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/26/2008 10:44 ||
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#1
"On second thought, let's not go to 'Camelot.' It is a silly place."
Posted by: Mike ||
12/26/2008 12:30 Comments ||
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"she is a 'lifelong member of the Democratic Party' and 'has always supported New York Democratic elected officials and Democrats seeking office.' She 'has also given her time and energy to many causes that New York Democrats hold dear.'"
In other words, give it to her because she WANTS it, you ungrateful peons.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
12/26/2008 12:43 Comments ||
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The former First Lady returned $2,300 of Kennedy's cash after she endorsed Barack Obama.
Ouch. I don't know about the rest of New York State, but my darling in-laws seem to like her about as much as they do Mr. Wife's girlfriend before me, Mindy (Poor Mindy). I don't think my parents like her even as much as that.
#4
Ouch, TW, that's going to hurt, all I could add is that having consorted with Embassy off-spring early '80s, the more things change, the more they stay the same, spoilt ignorant brats, all of them in the wonder-land of arrogance and avarice of their parents.
If times do repeat themselves, I would invest in fantasy,
;-)
#7
ION PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > US ARMY PREPARES FOR NATIONAL CIVILIAN UNREST, + PLANNED US SUPER-EMBASSY A COVER FOR MASSIVE PERMANENT MILITARY BASE IN IRAQ?
More like: "where the hell have you been during the last couple decades?"
She hasn't done squat for Dem candidates. Forget about donations from her extensive fortune. She hasn't campaigned for anyone or supported candidates in any other way either. Now she wants to bump Mario Cuomo's son out of the running for this seat. The senior Cuomo's well liked and respected still, one of the better governors the state has had. She's a socialite outsider with the Massachusetts name.
There is a new Blago Sphere, at least in the short term. This scandal is so rich, not only in vocabulary, but in the ever widening ripples as each day passes. Initially, I thought he was a Republican. No! NO! NO! He's a Democrat. Maybe Obama is the rose that rose from the dung heap of Chicago politics, maybe. But if you are surrounded by manure how do you walk through the stockyards without getting any on your loafers? Gov. Blagojovich sounds like Jerry Lundergard from Fargo. "A finder's fee won't do it for me, Wade. No, no, I, I need, I need the prinicipal." In the middle of our financial crisis (real or manufactured) a public servant can only think of himself and his wife. In a recessional market Gov. Blagojovich is, apparently, selling a senate seat.
Ah, the industry of ink, or rather key strokes and blogs and articles and pundit punditry grind out the meat of, or more correctly, the sausage of political scandal. But we really want to see how it is made. Come on, let's go see what they put in the sausage and where did they get all of the stuff: meat, fat, spices, left overs, bits of bone, anything left over from the slaughter house floor. City of big muscles, er, make that muscle. Lean on folks to get what you want from them. Get what you can for your public service and put it on Ebay, finally.
But in this age of key strokes, where did the email trail go along with the phone taps? Who said what and when? Who wrote what and when? Delete. Delete! DELETE! Meanwhile, key strokes multiply as the story grows fatter than a sow on an Illinois farm. And the Blago sphere is a bubble growing like a tick filling with blood. And like Jerry Lundergard Blogojovich is probably having his fits of foul vocabulary at home because his plan has been undone and is now exposed to the acute slant of winter light.
Posted by: Mike ||
12/26/2008 10:33 ||
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Take Michelle Obama's 300 thousand dollar PR (community organizing) job at a hospital that had received a ton of government hand outs due in part to efforts by Barack and his connections. Classic "pay to play" crony capitalism. While she was in that job, she managed to "create" 21 new organizing jobs at that same hospital. (and we thought health care money was supposed to be used to treat sick people - what dupes we are). That's 22 crony health care jobs and not one person was healthier as a result and not one job created by the market forces of supply and demand. The Obamas, however, were both richer and more powerful as were a handful of their friends. Not exacly how the Huxtables practiced medicine.
Governor Blago surely was aware of this arrangement and he obviously expected the power to appoint Barack's replacement to pay off big. While he was simply practicing pay for play, he was simply not as elegant in his plan as say, Chris Dodd. Dodd's pay for play example does show, however, how a senate seat can be a gold mine, not to mention how devastating the resulting policy tentacles can be.
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- An attorney who won an award for representing Terri Schiavo's husband Michael in his efforts to kill his disabled wife is now an advisor to the transition team of incoming president Barack Obama.
Thomas Perrelli, who raised over $500,000 for the pro-abortion presidential candidate and is the managing partner of a Washington law firm, Jenner & Block LLP, is helping advise Obama on putting together a Justice Department team.
However, Perrelli provided Michael Schiavo with legal advice during his response to the Congressional bill that President Bush signed allowing the Schindler family to take their lawsuit seeking to prevent Terri's euthanasia death from state to federal courts. Perrelli led the Jenner & Block team that developed the legal briefs opposing appeals for Michael and he ultimately received the Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Pro Bono Award in October 2006 for representing Terri's former husband at no cost.
On Michael's legal team, Perrelli worked with infamous pro-euthanasia attorney George Felos as well as lawyers from the Florida chapter of the ACLU.
Obama's selection of Perrelli to participate on his Justice Department transition team is no surprise given his comments on Terri's painful 13-day starvation and dehydration death during the presidential campaign.
During his debate with Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary, Obama said his biggest mistake was voting with a unanimous Senate to help save Terri.
In March 2005, just weeks before Terri died, Congress approved legislation allowing her family to take its case from state courts to federal courts in an effort to stop the euthanasia from proceeding. Terri was not on any artificial breathing apparatus and only required a feeding tube to eat and drink. Her family had filed a lawsuit against her former husband to allow them to care for her and give her proper medical and rehabilitative care.
The Senate unanimously approved a compromise bill, which the House eventually supported on a lopsided bipartisan vote and President Bush signed, to help the disabled woman.
Obama said he should have stood up against the life-saving legislation. "It wasn't something I was comfortable with, but it was not something that I stood on the floor and stopped," Obama said. "And I think that was a mistake, and I think the American people understood that that was a mistake. And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better," he added.
That wasn't the first time Obama said he regretted supporting the bill to protect the disabled woman. During an April 2007 debate, Obama said, "I think professionally the biggest mistake that I made was when I first arrived in the Senate. There was a debate about Terri Schiavo, and a lot of us, including me, left the Senate with a bill that allowed Congress to intrude where it shouldn't have."
"And I think I should have stayed in the Senate and fought more for making sure [Terri's parents couldn't take their case to federal court to save her life]," he explained.
Since Terri's death, the Schindler family has established a foundation to help disabled and elderly patients obtain proper medical care and legal and other assistance when they are denied it.
Top lawyers for Sen. Norm Coleman's (R-Minn.) campaign said Wednesday that a lawsuit challenging the results of one of the closest Senate races in history is all but assured. The statement comes after the Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously rejected a suit filed by Coleman's campaign. The lawsuit that sought to prevent a state board from certifying election results that Coleman had alleged includes errors.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/26/2008 00:00 ||
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As a punishment for all involved, let's put this senate seat on ice while we do an in-depth study of how absolutely this f*cked up this election became. I think that there is enough criminality and idiocy around to make a movie about this.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/26/2008 0:44 Comments ||
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I strongly recommend the Oklahoma elections model. Simple, stright forward, and nearly 100% bugger-free.
#3
You assume they don't want it buggered. There are 50 experiments going on out there. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that checking back to the one(s) that have the least amount of trouble would become the model for the others, but oh no. Now why would that be? /rhetorical question.
Federal prosecutors are urging an appeals court to get on with Rep. William Jefferson's corruption trial, saying his appeal to the Supreme Court does not have enough chance of success to justify further delays.
Jefferson. D-La., was indicted on bribery charges after agents found $90,000 in his freezer. He has pleaded not guilty and his lawyers argue that his trial should be delayed pending his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jefferson argues that the charges are invalid because a grand jury got access to information about his actions as a member of Congress. That, Jefferson claims, runs afoul of a constitutional clause that shields members of Congress from civil or criminal action stemming from the performance of their legislative duties.
But in a brief filed this week in Richmond, Va., with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, prosecutor Mark Lytle said delaying the trial would cause "further prejudice," or harm, to the government's case against the nine-term congressman. The government brought the charges 18 months ago.
Jefferson, Lytle wrote, has not shown the required "reasonable probability" of success with the high court on the merits of his case. "And, at trial, the District Court will scrupulously guard against any possible violations of the Speech or Debate Clause" that Jefferson cited, Lytle wrote.
The 2005 discovery of the money in Jefferson's freezer led to an indictment on charges that he took bribes, laundered money and misused his congressional office for business dealings in Africa. Jefferson has promised there is an "honorable explanation" for the money in the freezer, although he has yet to make it public.
He lost his bid for re-election in December to Republican Anh "Joseph" Cao, who will become the first Vietnamese-American in Congress.
Jefferson faces up to 235 years in prison if convicted on all charges.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/26/2008 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Caroline Kennedy's supporters say she could raise tons of money as a senator, but when it comes to writing checks to New York Democrats, she's been largely AWOL.
