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By Dennis Byrne
RealClearPolitics
Instead of talking in sweeping platitudes about "ethics reform," Senate Democrats might want to prove they mean it by dumping their ethically challenged majority leader, Harry Reid.
The Nevada lawmaker has been implicated in yet another land scheme that this time could net him a tidy $50,000 to $290,000. Los Angeles Times investigative reporters Chuck Neubauer and Tom Hamburger, this week revealed that Reid paid $166 an acre for valuable northern Arizona land whose market value, according to the county assessor, four years ago was worth $2,144 an acre.
Who would be a big enough fool to sell Reid the land at such a ludicrously low price? A long-time pal who would financially benefit from some obscure legislation that the senator has often sponsored.
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3 comments:
Dennis:
Your politics are real clear. No matter. Reid may yet be proven guilty of taking bribes. Who knows. If he is, it won't involve the land transaction in Nevada. As I understand it, the rest of the story --the part omitted from your summary --goes like this: Reid and his partner bought the parcel of land in the late 70's or early 80's for around $240,000. They tried unsuccessfully to develop it over the years. In the early 90's they found an interested purchaser for $1.3 million but the deal fell
through. By 1999 Reid was tired of trying to make money on the land
and offered to GIVE it a local developer. The local developer
apparently confirms that he didn't want the property and declined Reid's offer. The land apparently has a steep wash and is adjacent to a gravel pit. Finally, in 2002 his friend wanted out and asked Reid to purchase his share. Reid offered $10,000 and his partner accepted. So Reid COULD make something off the deal if and when he finds a buyer (apparently pretty unlikely). Are you really so naive -- or underpaid -- to think that a Senator's head would be turned by possibility that way down the road a piece or two he or his heirs could make, maybe $50K? The attack on Reid -- coupled to another one on Barack Obama -- reveals your political leanings: well right of middle-of-the-road.
RB Scott
Boston, MA.
What makes me gag and want to vomit is that the Vice President of the United States invited all his oil company cronies to make National Energy policy, while at the same time pocketing enormous sums from Haliburton, then claims executive priviledge to hide their deliberations from public scrutiny. "I'm the Vice President and they're not" is a hugely disgusting sentiment which is intolerable and undeniable hubris plainly on the basis of such words being spoken out loud.
I hear no similar outcry over such clearly aggregious abuses of public trust and power, while smears and innuendos are being flung over financial transactions of the new Senate Majority Leader which can be understood in terms of fair capitalist investments.
I am a member of the U. S. Military for over thirty years, my home state is Nevada. I know from personal experience from living there through the 70s, 80s, and 90s that there are an enormous number of $10,000 deals for standard 160 acre BLM sectors of land for which ordinary Americans can net far more than a quarter million dollars of profit. This has been the fastest growing State of the Union for decades. Such profits have been realized within my own working class, blue-collar family.
Throw out your hypocritical standards of measure for corruption which have been learned over the past six years of Republican hogs at the trough ... those measures don't fit this new Congress, this new Democratic representation, this new spirit of taking voter's serious concerns directly to the face of Executive Branch arrogance and demanding accountability.
-PCWolf
Master Chief Petty Officer
USCG
Couldn't agree with you more Mr. Byrne. Reid and any number of other Democrats are are a crooked as a mountain road, yet the MSM refuses to fall into the breathless indignation they reserve for anyone in the conservative or Republican camp. Look at the Sandy Burger debacle, if it weren't for the rightwing bloggers and FOX News we would not hear another word about it. Surely Tim Russert and Chrissy Matthews don't think it's anything serious.
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