Posted on 06/09/2010 10:42:21 AM PDT by jazusamo
Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (D-OH) introduced legislation at the end of May, which was co-sponsored by 19 other members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The bill would restrict the Office of Congressional Ethics -- which is a bipartisan board staffed solely with private citizens -- from releasing the results of its investigations in cases that the House Ethics Committee decides have no merit. The OCE would also be barred from initiating investigations of its own, and would instead have to wait for a complaint to be filed by a citizen with intimate knowledge of the alleged malfeasance.
According the June 2 Cleveland Plain Dealer:
Last year, the Office of Congressional Ethics found that Fudge's chief of staff, Dawn Kelly Mobley, "improperly influenced" information that a group called Carib News Foundation provided to the House Ethics Committee. The Ethics Committee was trying to decide whether a yearly Caribbean trip the group sponsored for Congressional Black Caucus members violated a newly implemented ban on corporate-funded travel.
Its report found that Mobley gave "internal committee communications" to Carib News Foundation that helped it mislead the committee about the trip's corporate sponsorships. Mobley's actions occurred in 2007, while she was an ethics committee counsel to former U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Cleveland, who then chaired the Ethics Committee and went on the trip. The report indicated Mobley acted at Tubbs Jones' direction. Tubbs Jones died in 2008, before the improprieties came to light.
The House Ethics Committee, also known as the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, is comprised of congressional members. It has the power to conduct investigations, subpoena witnesses, make official rulings and recommend penalties for lawmakers deemed guilty of ethical violations.
In comparison, the OCE only has the power to conduct investigations and refer cases to other boards or agencies for further examination.
The OCE has investigated at least eight members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and referred four cases to the House Ethics Committee, which dismissed all of them except one. That was the case of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), who was admonished by the committee for accepting corporate-funded junkets. OCE acted on news reports resulting from NLPC's expose of a 2008 St. Maarten trip funded by Citigroup and other large corporations.
The Congressional Black Caucus says that transparent OCE investigations have unjustly damaged the reputation of lawmakers, and that new rules will make the process fairer.
"This proposal brings Congress in line with America's judicial system by creating a process truly free of politics, avoiding trials in the court of public opinion, and stopping the premature release of reports," said Fudge in a statement released last week.
Other ethics watchdogs are also concerned that the legislation could allow congressional members to escape prosecution for ethical violations.
"The main elements of her proposal are that only people with direct knowledge could file complaints, so that would mean groups like [Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington] couldn't file complaints [and] they would be prohibited from initiating investigations without complaints," Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group CREW told Talking Points Memo.
How quaint. The public MUST not know what the Congressional Black Caucus has been up to, even if the ethics committee decides it’s not worthy of sanctions...however the public does have a right to know what these folks are doing.
What’s really quaint is that even lawyers in whose states have given the state bar association the right to police itself, you can go to their website and look up an attorney you are considering hiring and find out how many complaints have been filed against them, and how many have been referred to court. At least in my state. But if the commiecrats ever come back to power, I’m sure could change.
Clearly, what's needed is ethical standards reform.
Hate to wander into race-card territory, but this seems like further proof that the vast majority of blacks are simply unfit for public office. The majority of the worst hellholes on this earth (just about every sub-Saharan nation, numerous major US cities, etc) are run by majority black politicians. Now we have US politicians asking the government to make sure that their rules enforcement isn’t so strong, basically admitting that they are rule violators. For the life of me, I cannot name one majority-black city, state or country, nor one large majority-black-led entity, that is sustainable, prosperous and stable.
C'mon. I'm about to get my posting privilege revoked.
Really? Marsha L. Fudge?
ROFLMFCWAO!!!
;-/
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