Joe Barton has been in Congress for 25 years, longer than Eddie Bernice Johnson’s 17 years. On Sunday, the NYTimes looked at how some members of Congress use charitable foundations to collect extra cash when, presumably, their campaign committees don’t need it. In 2008, Barton’s took in $107,000 and paid out $48,000 to one Amy Barton, who happens to be the Congressman’s daughter-in-law.
Me, I’m thinking about becoming a Tea Partier.
18 comments
I’m no cowboy, but I do know how to use a rope.
“I’m thinking about becoming a Tea Partier,” says the man who supported the man who exacerbated the need for a Tea Party movement.
Dick Armey? Glenn Beck? I don’t remember Wick supporting them…
Until a “Tea Party” Politician is found to be corrupted? How about working to elect honest and good politicians instead of moving from movement to movement when disillusioned, Reform not Retreat
Wick, I have been thinking along similar lines. Right now my most serious remaining hesitation about the Tea Party is their look.
@JimS: could you elaborate on the phrase you use”look” please?
“Right now my most serious remaining hesitation about the Tea Party is their look.”
So if we dressed a little more metrosexual you might join?
TERM LIMITS !!!
They say these things come in three
Which I think we all can see
From Double Dip Joe
To Eddie B’s dough
Now “So Sorry” Barton’s family!
Taxpayers are just plain fed up
With tax revenue a neverending cup
Of waste fraud & scam.
What would Uncle Sam
Think of this integrity hiccup?
So now the result, party three
Handed a golden election opportunity
I’m more of a Pepper
Than political eavesdropper,
But there’s something bitter in that tea!
I have no solution, I confess
To deliver us from political excess.
But economics does say
That competition does pay
In making changes to the political noblesse.
Joe Barton deserves the same type of venom that EBJ is getting.
The difference between Dems and Repubs is that at least we Dems try to kick our trash to the curb. The Repubs just try to brush it over thinking that everyone will forget about it……..Ensign, Armey, Barton, Cornyn, Hutchinson, Delay, Vitter etc. They are all crooked as a barrel of snakes.
The look? Sorta like, what if, years ago when they were teenagers, Christopher Lloyd and Betty White met, fell in love and had children? What do you think they’d look like today?
Here’s to hoping that no one is implying moral equivalence between this story and EBJ’s (potentially criminal) misuse of CBC Foundation funds. As the story said, this situation has previously been investigated and no charges were brought.
The Dem flacks must have been working overtime lately. The current piece mostly looks to be a recycled story from the Washington Times in April 2009: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/06/congressmans-foundation-not-so-charitable/?page=1
DMN covered the story the next day:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/local/stories/DN-barton_07nat.ART.State.Edition2.4a4b639.html
Here’s the Foundation’s website:
http://www.joebartonfamilyfoundation.org/Default.aspx
The website makes no secret that Amy Barton serves as the Executive Director. “Certainly, (s)he can present a bill for such services. After all, we’re not Communists.” [Barzini from The Godfather, 1972]
I note that 40 percent of Tea Party members are age 55 and over. I don’t know if this is relevant or not, but that means they were born before 1955, which might put most of them squarely in the waning days of the youth movement of the 1960s and ’70s. Hippie and Yippie wannabees, perhaps. In love with street action, addicted to political drama. Impatient. Used to demanding their way. A strong tendency towards libertarianism if not anarchy.
That the majority are Republican, according to some studies, does not at all contradict the picture, inasmuch as so many of those street protesters of the ’60s and ’70s took an abrupt right turn in later life.
In their unwillingness to compromise and their view of government as overbearing and sinister, their constamnt harping on what they call “freedom,” they seem in many ways the inheritors of the the ’60s and ’50s. I think a close sociological study of the movement would turn up some interesting correlations.
Tea partiers don’t look like politicians….which is why they are appealing to me.
SEIU takes it’s thuggery to peoples houses to intimidate….but no mention because of venom for people who are fed up with the d’s and r’s.
Odd…
@JimS #2: So you are talking about color of skin? Christopher Lloyd (Taxi) and Betty White (too many series to count)? Haven’t we outlawed that discrimination (does anyone remember when someone of “discriminating taste” was considered cultured?) long ago?
So it costs his non-profit $45,000 to raise $107,000. Lightweights. I know volunteers who raise this for zero pay for charities in a week.
Can I raise tax-deductible money to pay to my daughter-in-law or relatives? NO.
That is what is not passing this vomitous test. My score for JB’s usage: halfway up the throat. My score for EBJ: up to the mouth. Both still leave me with a stomach ache.
Fortworthguy: there’s no such thing as white people.
@Mike Ramsey – It is absolutely possible to equate the barton and ebj items morally.
Just because ebj’s actions were illegal but barton’s weren’t, it doesn’t mean they aren’t equally immoral.
It is less hypocritcal to hold all politicians to the same standard.