Posted on 01/03/2017 5:19:16 AM PST by huldah1776
The House Republican Conference voted Monday night to approve a change to House rules to weaken the independence of the Office of Congressional Ethics and place it under the jurisdiction of the House Ethics Committee — a panel controlled by party leaders.
It will be part of a broader House Rules package voted on by the full body on Tuesday, after the 115th Congress officially convenes and the House elects a speaker.
It's a move that is already causing a backlash among Democrats, who say it's hypocritical given that President-elect Donald Trump was elected vowing to "drain the swamp" in Washington.
The Office of Congressional Ethics was established in 2008 under House Democrats, in response to the era of lobbying scandals made notable by Jack Abramoff, the former lobbyist who went to prison on corruption charges.
It is the first independent body to have an oversight role in House ethics. There is no Senate counterpart. The OCE independently reviews allegations of misconduct against House members and staff, and if deemed appropriate refers them to the House Ethics Committee for review. The OCE cannot independently punish lawmakers for any ethics violations.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
So from 2008 till last week we had a clean congress?
Here’s the crucial bit:
‘Office of Congressional Ethics was established in 2008 under House Democrats’
In other words, it was and is a fan-dance prop used to convince someone they’re seeing something (more) that they’re not.
The Democrats are about as interested in ethics as they are in lumberjack competitions.
And the Republican interest in ethics is at about the same level. Trump has vowed to drain the swamp and the swamp is fighting back.
The staff is probably full of partisan Democrats.
In other words....it was an Obama Board. Maybe look at who got brought up before it instead of the existing Board.
That was my thought. Why would they want to keep a holdover watchdog that might have loyalties to the previous administration?
Of course, Nancy Pelosi promised the most ethical Congress ever, donchaknow?
The issue is determining how it is staffed and what are its guidelines. Like with all things swamp related, a pretty title is intended to deceive; for example, “Affordable Care Act”.
Saying Congressional Ethics is an oxymoron!
I agree. Why do we need a separate “office” of congressional ethics (which is of course a lie in it’s title) when the House already has an Ethics Committee?
That NPR and the NYT are clutching their pearls, and Nancy Pelousy is raising a stink, over this move tells me all I need to know.
The OCE has had an eight person Board of Directors: four Democrats and four Republicans.
Look at the number of people that the OCE referred to the Ethics committee for investigation and look at the number of people the Ethics committee investigated without an OCE referral and there's your answer.
The reason the Dems want the panel independent is the professional staffers who people these things are reliable Leftists. NO agent of Government should be independent of oversight unless specifically appoint such powers for a targeted, and limited, duration.
I think Trump likes the Platinum, Gold and Silver levels. Even Bronze is okay.
The Republicans correctly figured out that this office would soon be getting of deluge of complaints from Democrats about *everything* the Republicans did, with zero regard to any genuine complaints. All done as an effort to slow down or even halt what the Republicans are trying to do.
Remember back to the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill fight? The great Democrat quote to come out of the melee was from Nina Totenberg, from NPR, who said during the hearings, “It’s the seriousness of the charge” that matters, not the truth.
Even in the last election, Democrats tried to create an obviously bogus, and even impossible, rumor that Ted Cruz was a serial killer. The Zodiac Killer who operated in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Utterly ridiculous in that Cruz was *born* in 1970.
This was done with the typical Democrat assumption that the public are utter imbeciles, and would disdain Cruz because of “the seriousness of the charge”.
This is why the Republicans limited this “independent” group to just reporting to the House ethics committee, which is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, so the Republicans can kill any nonsense or slanderous accusations made against them.
The Democrats are about as interested in ethics as they are in lumberjack competitions.
Being from the Republic of Illinois I would have to say I agree with this assessment.
I have a cousin who is a small college English prof.
Like clockwork she posts any and every huffy NY Times article with equally huffy or preachy headline. Despite the skill with the written word (?) that earned her place she falls into the annoying internet habit of prefacing her posts with things like:
Yup. (this is especially grating)
Boom.
Mic Drop.
...and the ominous ‘So It Begins’ as she did when posting a link to this article as if the Putsch or Kristallnacht were taking place.
In reality, she had never heard of this Ethics Committee and couldn’t name a single thing they had done (assuming any events exist) but it sounds sinister and mysterious and involves the GOP so that’s good enough for her.
"The OCE was created by House Resolution 895 of the 110th United States Congress in March 2008.[9] It was created under the leadership of then-Speaker Pelosi as part of her effort to "drain the swamp" of corruption in official Washington that had garnered so much attention in the preceding congressional sessions and led to across-the-board Democratic victories in the 2006 and 2008 elections."
"Drain the swamp"? The mosquitoes and alligators and snakes in DC have never had it any better!
"The OCE opened dozens of reviews, based on publicly available information, submissions from the public, press accounts and other sources of information. This included the multiple ethical and criminal violations stemming from, among others, disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and former representatives Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, Mark Foley and William J. Jefferson."
I think you can guess the political party of most of those prosecuted.
Or persecuted.
The Republicans in Washington are hopelessly corrupt, of course. But eight times as corrupt as the Democrats? That's impossible! It only proves that the office is partisan.
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