Replies

Some nepotism, some hispanic caucus latina (from Calif.) who loaned her campaign $150k and then charged it 18 percent interest to repay the loan to her. She got near quarter mil in interest back on the loan. She said because she's a woman and a minority she couldn't get a bank loan. LOL! Also there was some other democrat who's under an ethics investigation who took his whole family to Scotland to meet with some potential hiree. They stayed at some nice golf resort and not the Holiday Inn.

Then there was some republican guy who hired his two daughters to work on his campaign. They were paid around $75k each. "If you can't trust your daughters, who can you trust," he said.

They also mentioned some republican guy from Ohio(?) who died while in office and his staff used the rest of his PAC money to get together and eat pizza. They said they were grieving and having meetings to figure out where to get their next jobs.

Basically, the story highlighted that all these leadership PACs that these people set up are their own private slush funds, funded by lobbyists but also you and me who believe in the causes these elected officials claim to represent us on. The PACs aren't affected by the regular law against officials using campaign funds for personal expenses, etc. They also mentioned John Edwards paying his mistress $100K+ from his PAC. Other than Edwards, all the examples of corruption were lesser-known Congress people that the public's never heard of. They also mentioned David Vitter of La. who brought forth a motion to get a bill going to end the loophole that allows the abuse of these PACs. The bill has no co-sponsors.

Then the illustrative B-roll started over the voiceover and it showed the names of several PACs, all starting with the letter C, such as Conservative this, Conservative that :-) They also interviewed that liberal group CREW. It was a fairly even report and the main go-to guy was the Breitbard editor who wrote the book about the corruption.