Donated in that sense is a legal term. No reason you would understand that.
there is no indication that zoning authorities were influenced in any way
You mischaracterize what I said. I said the article does not report that there was "undue influence" exerted. It does say that the partner mentioned Reid's name in a public hearing, to lend credibility to the project. Pretty slick, but not illegal. Undue influence would involve money or threats or promises that derive from the Senator's power. Give some evidence of that and you would have something.
Knowing that an area is going to go up in value is a sign of a good real estate investor. The interest wasn't buried, it was recorded. What was buried was the continued interest after the land was "donated" by Reid to the partnership. To what effect, though. Would he have still gotten the $1.1 million if everyone knew that it was his land and the partnership's expertise that was developing the land? Yes, most likely. The development was built out, and unless someone determines that it was not really worth $1.6 million when sold, there is not much "there" there. As opposed to the Cunningham house sale, where a $900,000 house sold for $1.6 million, evidencing a bribe of $700,000.
The fact that Reid was continuing to pay property tax all along evidences that he was NOT trying to hide his continued ownership interest in the land. I don't know what you are trying to get at with that fact.
I fully accept the likelihood that Reid is dirty as sin, as many people from Nevada report. You need more than this, though, to stir up a lot of trouble for him. Something that involves him receiving UNEARNED money for favors or for lending his clout to a project. Or failing to report the income, not failing to report that a partner paid property tax one year, when Reid paid him back from the proceeds of sale.
In fact, didn't Reid do something corrupt for an Indian tribe? How did that discipline action go? Not too well, right? Better get some goods on these guys if you want to make it stick.
Well I don't suppose there's much to be gained by us locking horns over something about which we pretty much agree.
These corrupt congress critters have every manner of legal beagle at their disposal and these sorts of bribes are buried way deep so that it's an ordeal for investigators to sift through and even if investigators bother, the public's eyes start going back in its collective head from the confusion.
They bank on this, the corrupt ones.
I do think that the bit about an "informal" agreement with that LLC is very damning and this is the part the public will understand. Perhaps such informal partnerships are legal, I don't know. But it's not the way the American public perceives such big business deals are made and THIS factoid will resonate.
As for the property tax angle, by me the fact that Reid paid some of the property tax is further proof that he was involved with that LLC, although, hey, it was an "informal partnership" and I suppose that will be the defense.
That Reid didn't report this properly per Senate rules, well that will probably resonate only slightly on the American public. And then only if the pubbies keep beating the band wagon on it. The Dems have it all over the pubbies when it comes to manipulating sound and sight bytes.
What it looks to me like the pubbies are doing now is throwing down a gauntlet. The Dems arranged that Foley attack and for a moment forget how the emails and IM's got to be public knowledge, the bottom line is that the pubs lost a seat in congress most likely. That was damn costly.
Now we got Shays mentioning Chappaquidick and the silly notion that congress should investigate Sandy Burgler's papers from three years ago. Hey, the pubs got it right for the time being. They need to do what the Dems and drive-by media do. Throw the damning sound bytes out there and get the hype going.
That's all the pubs are doing and right now, I think it's just a challenge. In the end the good ole boys club of congress needs to keep their dirty laundry private. Throwing around sound bytes tends to make the American public tune it all out, at best, hate the whole lot of them at worst.
BTW, to read a good Foley analysis, I say ever so modestly, check out my post on those x-rated IM's. Warning, my Blog post itself it X-rated but I'd argue I'm right on the money on how this all came down.