Teri Buhl’s already hard at work at Greenwich Time

Nice link to a Dodd appearance on Meet the Press where he explains why the right and responsible thing to do is to help out his hedge fund pals who had paid him so handsomely.

UPDATE: Mother Jones put up a detailed posting back in April of some of the many, many financial types giving money to the this awful man. I’ve said before that his entire presidential “campaign” was nothing more than a fund grabber from the industry he regulated and nothing that’s happened since has convinced me I was wrong.

Update Update: I went searching for my first anti-Dodd posting but it was lost when Google banned me and I switched to WordPress. I did discover this post from April Fools day, last year, passing on my very first boss’s guarantee that Dodd was not going to run and that Blumenthal would. I’m obliged to keep that gentleman’s identity secret, but, for a Republican, he’s pretty plugged in to Demmerkrat politics.

One crook replaced

Back to the Old Country

Dodd quits. He’ll probably be replaced by Dick Blumenthal which is no improvement, but at least the new boy won’t have the seniority, and thus the clout, of Dodd.

UPDATE: Business Insider has the same thought on Bluementhal. I’d say they like him less than I do, but that’s impossible.

UPDATE UPDATE: I missed the link – Blumenthal has already announced his candidacy.

The accolades just keep pouring in

Dodd voted most corrupt politician of 2009. He certainly has my vote, but why limit it to just 2009?

Politco: Dodd primes pump for his re-election

By the hundreds of millions of dollars. Think of the ego of this man, who believes he is justified in taking huge sums of money from taxpayers in other states so that he can be re-elected. Only he could think he’s that important – I sure don’t.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is using every last bit of clout he has accumulated during three decades in the Senate, calling in favors, winning sweetheart deals and steering hundreds of millions of dollars to his home state.He’s one of the most politically vulnerable Democratic senators, and he’s not being shy about using his influence to insert into 2010 spending bills dozens of earmarks for senior citizen centers, low-income heating assistance, education programs, new buses and highway funds in Connecticut.

Dodd is pushing the Pentagon to buy more Connecticut-built aircraft engines, and he’s pressing for more federal dollars for high-speed rail in the Nutmeg State.

And his earmark largesse doesn’t include a $100 million provision he anonymously stuck into the Senate Democratic health care package, money that Dodd wants to go to the University of Connecticut’s medical center.

Do you feel richer? Dodd sells his vote for $100,000,000

Well not really, because this whore was going to vote for ObamaKare anyway, but it’s nice to see his fellow thieves passing out goodies to their pal during a tough election campaign. As someone else pointed out, at least when you bribe a cop you have to dig into your own pocket to do so. Our Congress bribes itself by digging into our pockets. What a country.

Selling rope to the hangman

 

Rope provided by SAC

Isn’t this delicious. In searching the web for information about a Mark Adams, the latest SAC employee to be sucked into the inside trading scandal, I came across this link of political contributions made by SAC  folks: Stevie hisself, plus all sorts of dummies living in Greenwich, all of whom made the maximum ($4,600) contribution to – wait for it, Christopher Dodd.

Stevie, you know that the definition of an honest judge is one who, once bought, stays bought. Chris Dodd is not an honest judge and if you couldn’t figure that out well, you may be a financial genius but your street smarts are those of a five-year tot brought up in Greenwich. What the hell’s the matter with you, Boy?

 

Somebody robbed the Springfield train

Stimulus!

Cos Cobber calls the New Haven – Springfield rail project a boondoggle and he’s surely right. It’s a pet project of our upstate legislators that was slowly going nowhere until Dodd got hisself some Stimulus funds and breathed life into it. Oh joy. I can find almost no information on the train, but common sense suggests that the ridership from Hartford to New Haven or New Haven to Springfield is limited at best. The one “study” I did find is preposterous. In order to come up with a significant ridership pool the study’s authors had to go out to a two-mile walking radius and even then could only find 6,500 imaginary hikers.

Even a Greenwich real estate agent would blush if he were to describe a house two miles from the train station “within walking distance” but when trying to establish a need where none exists, these economists have no shame.

The entire project is about politics and payoffs, not transportation – Connecticut’s legislature will happily divert money from the New Haven line because that serves Fairfield County, the resented golden goose, while feeding themselves up north. Happy feasting.

Posturing? Our man from Iowa, Christopher Dodd? Nah.

Dodd pushes his idiot scheme to redesign our financial industry’s regulation structure under the oversight of a White House political appointee. No one appears to think it’s a good idea or that it will go anywhere, but that’s not the point:

Mr. Dodd’s proposal stakes out an extreme position, and is likely to face major resistance, especially from the banking industry. His effort comes as he prepares for a tough re-election battle in 2010. Mr. Dodd has been criticized for being too cozy with the banking industry in the past. This year he has advanced various proposals attacking banking practices, such as a new law limiting certain credit-card fees.

Even if his regulatory-overhaul plan runs aground, it could help Mr. Dodd position himself as a populist lawmaker willing to wage war on powerful financial institutions

Chris Dodd: you borrow at a rate we approve of or you don’t borrow at all

Given Mr. Dodd’s sordid connections with the banking industry you could explain away his proposed credit card freeze as just plain old Machiavellian politics, but I believe the man is as dumb as this plan is. He really has no clue how business – any business – works, and his being chairman of the Senate banking Committee is just about as insane as Charlie Rangel being placed in charge of writing our tax laws. What a country.

With maybe a little help for Ireland to get his cottage’s price back up

Senator Dodd urges continued government intervention in housing market to keep prices up. Not so long ago, the Man from Norwich was weeping crocodile tears over the plight of the poor who couldn’t afford to own their own homes. Now he’d like to keep those prices unaffordable but with government subsidies, of course, to put people into houses they can’t afford. It’s a win-win for everybody, except for the dwindling percentage of people who still pay taxes.

Dodd’s exquisite sense of timing

While federal investigators are still trying to round up the terrorists who planned to bomb New York City Chris Dodd has introduced legislation repealing the immunity the Senate gave to telephone companies who assisted the government in wiretapping those same people.

“We make our nation safer when we eliminate the false choice between liberty and security. But by granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies who may have participated in warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, the Congress violated the protection of our citizen’s privacy and due process right, and we must not allow that to stand.”

I personally would feel much safer if the citizens of Connecticut would throw this deceitful, awful person out of office on his fat thieving ass and replace him with anyone else – anyone at all.

Dodd: Call me Rosemary

I'll take care of it, Senator!

Dodd Countrywide VIP mortgage tapes are disappeared. Darn, isn’t that a shame?

No further word on the Senator’s Irish cottage fraud, either. I guess we’ve “moved on”.

Here’s a surprise: Dodd pocketing huge sums from big drug companies

As a self-proclaimed champion of the people, Connecticut’s Friend of Mario expresses dismay that the big guys are dumping money on his head. “No no no, I don’t want it!” he cried yesterday as yet another pharma employee arrived pusing another wheelbarrow of cash. “It’s too much, I just don’t deserve it”. Dodd denies that this surprising influx of cash has anything to do with him taking over the ObamaCare program on behalf of his co-conspirator Ted Kennedy. Asked if he intended to return any of the loot the Senator clutched a wad of bills to his chest and said, “it’s mine. I earned it,I want it. Screw off.”

Charles Rangel wants you to pay higher taxes, not him

NY Post - sleeping it off

The fat pig pictured here is the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Comittee and thus responsible for drafting our tax code. So when he calls for a higher tax rate, he’s got more clout than that idiot-kin Rep. Conyers and his own demand that whites pay slavery reperations. The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today outlining some of the graft and deceit of Rangeland just in case you missed it, I reproduce most of it here.

Ever notice that those who endorse high taxes and those who actually pay them aren’t the same people? Consider the curious case of Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel, who is leading the charge for a new 5.4-percentage point income tax surcharge and recently called it “the moral thing to do.” About his own tax liability he seems less, well, fervent.

Exhibit A concerns a rental property Mr. Rangel purchased in 1987 at the Punta Cana Yacht Club in the Dominican Republic. The rental income from that property ought to be substantial since it is a luxury beach-front villa and is more often than not rented out. But when the National Legal and Policy Center looked at Mr. Rangel’s House financial disclosure forms in August, it noted that his reported income looked suspiciously low. In 2004 and 2005, he reported no more than $5,000, and in 2006 and 2007 no income at all from the property.

The Congressman initially denied there was any unreported income. But reporters quickly showed that the villa is among the most desirable at Punta Cana and that it rents for $500 a night in the low season, and as much as $1,100 a night in peak season. Last year it was fully booked between December 15 and April 15.

Mr. Rangel soon admitted having failed to report rental income of $75,000 over the years. First he blamed his wife for the oversight because he said she was supposed to be managing the property. Then he blamed the language barrier. “Every time I thought I was getting somewhere, they’d start speaking Spanish,” Mr. Rangel explained.

Mr. Rangel promised last fall to amend his tax returns, pay what is due and correct the information on his annual financial disclosure form. But the deadline for the 2008 filing was May 15 and as of last week he still had not filed. His press spokesman declined to answer questions about anything related to his ethics problems.

Besides not paying those pesky taxes, Mr. Rangel had other reasons for wanting to hide income. As the tenant of four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem, the Congressman needed to keep his annual reported income below $175,000, lest he be ineligible as a hardship case for rent control. (He also used one of the apartments as an office in violation of rent-control rules, but that’s another story.)

Mr. Rangel said last fall that “I never had any idea that I got any income’’ from the villa. Try using that one the next time the IRS comes after you. Equally interesting is his claim that he didn’t know that the developer of the Dominican Republic villa had converted his $52,000 mortgage to an interest-free loan in 1990. That would seem to violate House rules on gifts, which say Members may only accept loans on “terms that are generally available to the public.” Try getting an interest-free loan from your banker.

The National Legal and Policy Center also says it has confirmed that Mr. Rangel owned a home in Washington from 1971-2000 and during that time claimed a “homestead” exemption that allowed him to save on his District of Columbia property taxes. However, the homestead exemption only applies to a principal residence, and the Washington home could not have qualified as such since Mr. Rangel’s rent-stabilized apartments in New York have the same requirement.

You probably are thinking, “this is no worse than what Chris Dodd’s been up to and no one’s picking on him” and you’ be right. But maybe Pelosi and Reid should begin to make good on their promise to “drain the swamp” and eliminate the “culture of corruption” and do something about both Rangel and the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee this year. Will that happen? The odds are far greater that you’ll be enjoying a tax increase next year.

Chris Dodd cozies up to lobbyists on Martha’s Vineyard

How much you wana bet his campaign won’t be delivering video of this soiree? In Connecticut, our fighting Senator is the champion of the little guy and sworn enemy of “special interests”, unless those interests include submarines, labor unions or have bundles of cash. Up on the Vineyard, away from voters, it’s time to kiss and make up. What a guy.

Real estate value soars – Dodd astonished at his good fortune

The Irish cottage that Christopher Dodd bought for a song from his campaign donor has been appraised at $660,000, 6.6X more than the Senator had thought. This appraisal come after the colapse of real estate values on the Emerald Isle so the new found wealth astonished and delighted Connecticut’s most corrupt (federal) politician.

“Who knew?” crowed Dodd. “Boy, do I have the luck of the Irish or what. – I just keep receivig God’s blessings, from special mortgage rates from CountryWide, 98% of my campaign funds from banker friends I’ve never met and now this. I’m a blessed man and I owe it all to my good character.”

Connecticut Dems to Dodd: “Drop Dead!”

Connecticut Democrats are rushing through legislation that will strip (Republican) Governor Rell of her power to appoint a replacement if ahem, a certain senator were to quit or something. What could that be about?

Chris Dodd; “I’ll give you a law you like and two weeks at my Irish cottage – please?”

No one in Connecticut will give him money any more so Dodd meets secretly with “payday lenders’ to solicit funds.

Of all the Senators facing reelection in 2010, Connecticut’s Chris Dodd is clearly the most vulnerable. He’s deep in the pocket of an industry (finance, hedge funds) that no  longer has the money to bankroll him, he’s tied to the AIG bonus brouhaha and he made a quixotic run for President that did not endear him to residents of his own state.

Desperate for funds, Dodd has now turned to the absolute dregs of the financial industry: payday lenders.

And what’s more, it appears that the fundraising event was designed to look like an industry dinner that members of the Online Lenders Assocation (OLA) just happened to be at.

Here’s some change that’s better

John P. Murtha under fire for his corruption. The old fraud has endured in Washington since just after Lincoln’s assassination, though – if it takes that long to weed out all the crooks, Chris Dodd could die in office of old age.

Now, however, a string of federal criminal investigations of contractors or lobbyists close to Mr. Murtha, the top Democrat on the defense appropriations subcommittee, are threatening to undermine his backroom clout.

In the weeks since the news that prosecutors had raided the offices of the PMA Group — a lobbying firm founded by a former Murtha associate that became a gateway to his office and his biggest source of campaign money — about two dozen rank-and-file Democrats have risked his wrath by calling for a House ethics investigation of the matter. One Democrat has even foresworn seeking earmarks for the military contractors in his district because of ethical concerns about the process.

In a private meeting with the chairman of the House appropriations committee, Mr. Murtha, the unofficial leader of the “old bulls” who oversee the subcommittees, was forced to accept a series of new restrictions on his authority to grant earmarks, Democratic aides briefed on the meeting said. In previous weeks he had already acquiesced to another steep cut in the volume of earmarks he dispenses, down by half this year from a few years ago. He had also accepted new disclosure requirements, including public hearings, that cramp his ability to cut last-minute deals.

[snip]

While past presidents often courted Mr. Murtha with phone calls and private meetings,President Obama has extended to him no such courtesies. On a visit to the White House, the lawmaker told senior defense officials that it would be “foolish” and “ridiculous” to cancel all of a $13 billion contract to buy new presidential helicopters, as he later recounted to a defense industry newsletter. But Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has insisted on scrapping the deal as a symbol of waste.

And in a recent meeting with the secretary, Mr. Murtha pushed a plan to divide a $35 billion contract to build a new airborne refueling tanker between two rival contractors — a compromise that pleases both but would cost the government much more. Mr. Gates listened with little response, several people briefed on their conversation said, but he later came out firmly against it.

[snip]

Mr. Murtha has continued his spring tradition of summoning military lobbyists to a big-ticket fund-raising breakfast just as he begins to oversee the year’s military spending bill. And he has vowed to continue steering military contracts to his constituents. “If I am corrupt,” he recently told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “it is because I take care of my district.”

That last line says all you need to know about Washington.

Maybe he’ll retire there, with his friends

Chris Dodd: “what are friends for?”

Dodd’s cottage an unreported gift, says Judicial Watch.