Posted on 01/06/2011 8:44:06 AM PST by Graybeard58
As the final days of his long congressional career were falling from the calendar, corrupt Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd was uplifted as one special interest after another heaped praise upon him. They were the beneficiaries of his years of generosity with other people's money and his advocacy of federal mandates that enriched them. And for all those years, they completed the quid pro quos by delivering copious sums and manpower for his re-election campaigns. In another context, prosecutors would call this extortion or racketeering; in this context, however, it's just called government.
The news media, new and old, also kissed his, um, ring with their rote recounting of the official Chris Dodd narrative. It speaks glowingly of all the purported good the selfless, courageous Mr. Dodd did on Capitol Hill for Connecticut and America before his 36-year tenure ended Wednesday. The media's tributes focused primarily on his most recent roles in ramming Obamacare and ill-considered and -conceived financial-services reforms down America's throat. Minimized or ignored were the reasons for the ignominious end of his reign, but absent was his true legacy as a menace to national security, America's economic well-being and government ethics. To wit:
Early in his freshman year in the House in 1975, Mr. Dodd gave the world its first glimpse of what would become his trademark wrongheadedness on foreign policy. In a floor speech, he famously advocated the end of U.S. military aid to civil-war-torn Cambodia. His view, that communist Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge would bring peace to long-suffering Cambodians, prevailed, and the infamous Killing Fields were born. Over the next four years, Pot's regime exterminated about a quarter of the defenseless Cambodian population.
Mr. Dodd became communism's most reliable voice and ally in Congress. Cuba's Castro brothers and so-called socialist revolutionaries in the Western Hemisphere had no better friend and anticommunists no more formidable foe. Flying under the radar while Americans were obsessed with the war against Islamic terrorism, Mr. Dodd greased the skids for communism's resurgence in the Latin America. Most notably, he stonewalled then-President Bush's key diplomatic nominees for Western Hemispheric affairs solely because they saw Fidel and Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez and other leftist tyrants as threats to liberty and justice. Thanks to Chris Dodd, oppression, economic misery and body counts are rising across the region.
n Believing the dream of homeownership was a right the government could bestow on all Americans, especially those lacking the wherewithal, Mr. Dodd in concert with Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., pushed through ruinous national housing and banking policies. Through political manipulation, they enlisted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their scheme to have private lenders write what essentially were worthless taxpayer-backed mortgages for millions of Americans. Ultimately, the housing bubble they created collapsed, birthing the worst financial crisis in generations and the Chris Dodd Bear Market and Recession. Nest eggs were crushed. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, and economists expect unemployment will remain stubbornly high for years. More than three years out, foreclosures continue to rise and the housing glut shows no sign of abating.
Mr. Dodd's responses to these crises included rewarding the least-qualified borrowers with new mortgages they still can't afford and with forgiveness of huge chunks of huge credit-card debts rung up by the most irresponsible spenders. These remedies and more were financed by ruinous government borrowing.
That debt, of course, will be apportioned among Americans who borrowed and spent sensibly and otherwise pursued the American dream responsibly. But to Mr. Dodd and the Democratic Party, nothing succeeds like punishing the successful.
n Mr. Dodd intended to seek a sixth term until a niche publication exposed him as the ethical miscreant we've long known him to be. As a member of the Senate Banking Committee, he accepted sweetheart mortgages from the mother of all subprime lenders, Countrywide Financial. He shook down financial institutions in exchange for tens of millions in donations for his senatorial and presidential campaigns. He traded a presidential pardon for a felon's help in buying an expensive Irish "cottage" for pennies on the dollar. The Senate Ethics Committee's whitewashings of his criminality created the Dodd Standard, by which present and future senators' liberties with the law will be measured. It is not the yardstick of good, honest government.
So while the wags and special interests lament the loss of the power and influence Chris Dodd so freely peddled for political and financial gain, thinking people should count their blessings and join us in bidding him good riddance.
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Thank God! We’re rid of Dodd!
Corruptocrats take a hit longer list to ensue.
And there will never be a dam named after him. Can you imagine a "Dodd Dam"?
I was there for 4 years of that, 1963-1967.
I pulled a 3 year tour in France during that time period.
He can go caucus with Teddy.
Now that Ireland real estate has plunged..he may even be upside down with his retirement home in Ireland. It would serve him right. At any rate it is worth a whole lot less than it was 3-4 years ago.
Good riddance!
I’m just an average American boy
From an average American town
I believe in God and Senator Dodd
And keeping old Castro down
Being a criminal scumbag runs in that family. His father introduced the Gun Control Act of 1968 after being censured by the Senate for corruption. I have read that he got the text for the Gun Control Act of 1968 by translating Nazi gun control laws which he had access to as a Nuremberg trials prosecutor. Father and son were both freedom hating turds.
That would be true justice. As it is we'll have to settle for good riddance to bad rubbish.
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