Posted on 03/04/2010 5:41:44 AM PST by Kaslin
Before she became House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi promised that if Democrats won control of the House, she would "drain the swamp" in Washington. How is she doing?
Last week, the House ethics committee scolded House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel for corporate-sponsored travel to the Caribbean. In that the panel had yet to resolve multiple charges involving Rangel's personal finances, rank-and-file Democrats joined GOP calls for his ouster as Ways and Means chairman, while Pelosi remained publicly silent. Wednesday, Rangel temporarily stepped aside as chairman.
Now for the funny part: Next in line to chair the tax-writing committee is Rep. Pete Stark, D-Fremont, Calif. Or should I say, D-Maryland?
You see, Stark has his own ethics baggage -- and his mud may well stick to Pelosi. You may have read that the bipartisan House ethics committee cleared Stark in January after it conducted a probe into charges that Stark wrongly claimed a homestead tax exemption for his home in Maryland, where he is not registered to vote. (If he were registered in Maryland, he couldn't represent his California district.) As the committee wrote in a November report, Stark "did not receive a tax credit as a result of filing an application for the credit" and "he did not file a false application for the Maryland tax credit."
That's what the Pelosi Inc./GOP Inc. ethics committee found. But the independent bipartisan Office of Congressional Ethics -- established, Pelosi bragged, to demonstrate "a new element of transparency and accountability to the ethics process" -- may have shined too much light on the House ethics machine.
The OCE reported that it found "substantial reason to believe" that Stark misrepresented himself by filing a form in which he said he was registered to vote in Maryland. And after a news report about another congressman losing his primary-residence exemption, Stark called Maryland assessors and asked that the form be corrected -- which he denied doing during an interview with OCE staff in his office.
The report also noted that Stark "was extremely belligerent and frequently insulted" OCE staff, who soon realized he was videotaping them.
Oddly, the House ethics report that cleared Stark also backed up the OCE findings, in that the panel recognized that Stark did say he was registered to vote in Maryland -- although it called it an "inadvertent mistake regarding his voter registration, which was soon corrected."
Oh, and according to the House panel, Stark maintained that he may be "eligible" for the primary residence credit "because his Maryland home is the only home he owns."
In January, KTVU's Randy Shandobil interviewed residents living near the San Lorenzo, Calif. house that Stark claims as his residence. Folks who lived across the street, next door and down the street were shocked to learn a congressman said he lived in their neighborhood. Which tells you: Fremont is the post-office box; Maryland is home, sweet home.
The standard descriptive phrase for Stark, used most recently in the Washington Post, is: "has a history of erratic behavior." That's the polite term for: gaffe machine.
So out with Rangel and in with Stark, Pelosi's next ethics nightmare. The independent transparent ethics committee questioned Stark's truthfulness, but the Pelosi-GOP Inc. ethics panel gave him a pass.
The swamp is in session.
MD Ping
Stark is a lunatic single-payer plan advocate, and it’s because he’s “Dr. Health Reform” that Pelosi has put him where he is now.
The headline made me think that this was about their (U Maryland’s) victory over Duke last night...
Anybody know that address in CA or have a satellite photo?
They are handing the RNC issue after issue to use for ads in the fall campaign. I hope the Repubs take advantage of ALL of this and hit them hard with it.
Stark is going to be another gift that keeps on giving, if Conservatives will muster up the guts to use him. He’s a volatile and very nasty liberal who always did flash easily, and as he gets older he only gets nastier and even more volatile. A guy like Paul Ryan could run circles around him, and Stark is probably good for any number of inflammatory statements if he is poked with even a blunt stick...
I’ll be taking wagers for burgers via PM, on how many times Pete Stark will utter the “F” bomb on camera between now and November...
Bet me a burger....
And yesterday came the news of Massa’s quitting. For “health reasons” of course.
Pelosi didn’t drain the swamp. The swamp got more infested and the alligators got fatter.
Not much up on CA politics, I just did some googling of Fortney H. Stark. At http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/03/pete-stark-hous.html :
“...he and his wife Deborah are indeed not registered to vote in Maryland. He said they use her parents’ address in San Lorenzo to maintain their California voting eligibility.”
The CA house is just his in-laws’ place? And he’s been in Congress for 37 years. And he’s stepping into Rangel’s loafers. Makes sense.
"Atheist groups hailed Mr. Stark yesterday as the first member of Congress to declare that he does not believe in God. "With Stark's courageous public announcement of his nontheism, it is our hope that he will become an inspiration for others who have hidden their conclusions for too long," the executive director of the American Humanist Association, Roy Speckhardt, said."
May explain that erratic behavior...
I agree with you and decline your bet. Stark is among the thinnest of skins. The Republicans could provide good entertainment value for money by subtly, constantly baiting him (although poking with a blunt stick sounds like fun, too). If people like Paul Ryan play their cards right, Stark’s head will explode live on C-Span.
This man thinks the more national debt there is the more wealthier the country.
If the Dems had any real ethics..... (what was I thinking?, its the Dems!), Pelosi, Rangel, Reid, Stark, and a bunch of them would quit in disgrace. None of these Dems have any real ethics or consciences about spending taxpayer dollars for themselves, their constituents and their re-election campaigns.
I guess for a majority of voters in his district, pesky details like, oh, residency, don't really matter much.
One would hope, and I think is true, that a majority of American adults, if they actually viewed that taped interview posted on FR of Jack Stark, would see what an obviously awful person he is. (There are many, but hopefully less than a majority, who even seeing it would still deny his malevolence because they are blindly Left.)
But the majority of adult Americans will not see that video. Would it be on CNN? Would it be on CBS?
That is the power of the media. It provides the window through which a majority of Americans perceive (thus believe about) the world.
And "they" know it.
They can run ads in districts with vulnerable Dems highlighting the sleaze from Rangel, Stark, et al and hammer them with it. They should run nationally but if that is not an option then run them in targeted areas where they will do some damage. They have plenty of material to work with.
BINGO!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575011021604106924.html
EXCERPT
These are the men who have run Washington this past year, and they are Mr. Obama’s de facto cabinet. The nearby photos show some of the most powerful, clockwise from the top right:
• Ed Markey of Massachusetts, first elected in 1976, helped to ram the cap-and-tax bill through the House and has pushed relentlessly for the EPA to declare carbon a pollutant under the Clean Air Act that didn’t mention carbon.
• Wisconsin’s David Obey, elected in 1969, is the House Appropriations chairman who steered the $787 billion stimulus to focus on Medicaid expansion and other transfer payments that have done nothing for economic growth.
• Henry Waxman, first elected in the Watergate class of 1974, deposed John Dingell in 2008 as too moderate to run the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Hollywood liberal is co-author of the cap-and-tax vote that will cost numerous Blue Dogs their seats.
• Pete Stark, class of 1972, runs the health subcommittee on Ways and Means and has written most of the House health reform that has forced moderates to walk the plank on the “public option.”
• George Miller, class of 1974 and chief enforcer for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has pushed to nationalize the college student loan market. Like Mr. Stark, he’s from California.
• Barney Frank of Massachusetts, class of 1980 and chief protector of Fannie Mae, wrote the financial reform that would make too-big-to-fail the law for the largest banks. He has also pushed the mortgage foreclosure programs that have extended the housing recession by preventing home prices from finding a bottom.
Thanks Nancy.
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