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Confirmed: "Drain the swamp" is Washington-speak for "Let it fester." While House ethics watchdogs dither, it's shady business as usual for ethics scandal-plagued Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters.
Last summer, the House Ethics Committee charged the entrenched California congresswoman with three violations related to her wheeling and dealing on behalf of minority-owned OneUnited Bank in Los Angeles. The panel accused Waters of bringing discredit to the House for using her influence to seek and secure taxpayer-subsidized special favors for the failing financial institution.
Eight months have passed since the House ethics panel charged Waters. But to date, there has been no action. No trial. No consequences.
Instead, Waters is busy ginning up opposition to GOP budget and entitlement reform, introducing new regulatory crackdowns on the financial industry, and waltzing into political rallies as Aretha Franklin's "Respect" blares from the loudspeaker. The Swamp Queen has been playing her well-worn race card, stoking class warfare in the "community" and playing populist guardian of the "children, the poor, the disabled and the elderly."
Mad Maxine may have her "community" duped. But this corporate welfare fixer is just another corruptocrat of a different stripe.
To re-cap: OneUnited Bank received $12 million in federal TARP bailout money after Waters' office personally intervened and lobbied the Treasury Department in 2008. The minority depository institution was seeking a backdoor government rescue from its reckless decision to squander nearly $52 million of its bank capital on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preferred stock. Lavish spending by top bank executive Kevin Cohee, who boasted a company-financed Porsche and a Santa Monica, Calif., beachfront mansion, compounded the bank's problems.
After the federal bailout of Fannie/Freddie, OneUnited's stock in the government-sponsored enterprises plunged to a value estimated at less than $5 million. Only through Waters' intervention was OneUnited able to secure an emergency meeting with the Treasury and its then-Secretary Henry Paulson.
The bailout beggars did so under the guise of representing the "National Bankers Association." But records obtained by congressional investigators showed that OneUnited's legal counsel, vice president and president (the latter two are married to each other) spearheaded the meeting and its agenda and drafted the talking points/briefing material for Waters.
OneUnited executives had donated $12,500 to Waters' congressional campaigns. Her husband, Sidney Williams, was an investor in one of the banks that merged into OneUnited. His stock holdings were estimated at $350,000. Waters meddled despite warnings from fellow Democratic Rep. Barney Frank to keep her nose out of the case.
E-mails obtained by public interest legal foundation Judicial Watch and more recently by the Washington Post reveal that federal bank examiners were livid about the intervention of muddied Waters. "There are some really good people expressing very strong opinions regarding what they view as a travesty of justice regarding the special treatment" OneUnited is receiving, acting regional director John M. Lane complained in a March 2009 e-mail to Christopher J. Spoth, a senior FDIC consumer protection official.
On Jan. 13, 2009, Brookly McLaughlin, then-Treasury Department deputy assistant secretary for public affairs, e-mailed her shock at Waters' apparent conflict of interest regarding OneUnited: "Further to email below, WSJ (Wall Street Journal) tells me: ...Apparently this bank is the only one that has gotten money through section 103-6 of the EESA law. And Maxine Waters' husband is on the board of the bank. ??????"
Another government agency had rapped the bank in October 2008 for "operating without effective underwriting standards and practices," "operating without an effective loan documentation program" and "engaging in speculative investment practices."
Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president, reports that Waters' friend and fellow California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren helped delay her ethics trial by stalling subpoenas, "doing everything in her power to undermine the professional committee staff leading the investigation," and improperly firing two attorneys working on the investigation. Now, the GOP is mum on setting a date for the trial. Why?
This much is clear: Mad Maxine Waters' cronyism of color can't be whitewashed, no matter how long Washington stalls.
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
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April 27, 2011 @ 8:26 am
Talk about putting a Fox in Charge of the Henhouse. This old hen has outfoxed the public again with her feigned socialist clucking about those evil banks and rich industrialists, while secretly feathering her nest where SHE and Her people get to be created more equal than ours through redistribution of honestly earned wealth to her team, and stacking the deck against Americans who look to their Representatives for a fair deal, but only get dealt more Jokers from the bottom of her earmarked deck. Behold the face of the brave new One-World leadership of the socialist progressives, where the leaders prosper and the sheep get the wool pulled over their eyes and shorn.
April 27, 2011 @ 12:14 pm
Inluminatuo you got it exactly right.This arrogant broad is on a crudsade of vengence for some reason,but justice will prevail.She will eventualy cut her own throat,even with the help of her Washington insiders.These people are outright corrupt.They are under the premise they are helping their freinds.After all they can’t discriminate even if it is unethical what one does.
April 27, 2011 @ 2:18 pm
This is illustrative of the GOP in failing to go for the jugular, even when the opponent is wounded and on the ground. Expelling this vile woman and possibly putting her in jail should be a priority. Sure, her idiot constituency would elect another lefty to replace her but the example set might stand as a warning flag to other corruptocrats in DC.
April 27, 2011 @ 5:19 pm
It’s a real matter of a different moral view between them and us, Secular Progressive versus strict Constitutionalists. When their guys get caught with stain on blue dress and lie before a grand jury, they give them a medal and a slap on the back for their talent in dodging the bullet creating a world of situational morality where they are the ultimate rulers of themselves and us. We flush our betrayers of trust from the positions of power we entrusted them with that they have abused and usurped. They are the Self-Gods of personal licentiousness; we are the Lords of personal accountabilty.
April 27, 2011 @ 3:22 pm
MICHELLE GOT IT RIGHT, THE SWAMP QUEEN IS THE CORRECT TITLE FOR THIS RACIST AND SHE SURE CAN’T “WHITEWASH” IT. MAXINE WATERS IS A PRIME OFFSHOOT OF THE DICTATOR RACIST AND HIS RENEWAL OF THE 1960′S. OF COURSE, THE RACIST WATERS NEVER LEFT THE ERA. SHE’S A CRIMINAL, SO NOTHING WILL BE DONE BECAUSE NO ONE HAS THE GUTS TO TALK BACK TO BLACKS BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID OF BEING CALLED RACIST. STOP THE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND ARREST AND CHARGE THE DICTATOR FOR HIS CRIMES ALONG WITH HIS CRONIES, HOLDER, RANGEL, PELOSI, REID, FRANK OR ANY OTHER COLORS INVOLVED. IT’S TIME FOR HONESTY AND GUTS TOWARD THE CRIMINALS RULING THIS GOVERNMENT REGARDLESS OF COLOR, PARTY OR SOCIAL STATUS. THE SWAMP QUEEN’S CRIMES NEED TO BE TRIED AND SENTENCED, ASAP.
April 28, 2011 @ 8:23 am
muddied Waters…a good one
April 28, 2011 @ 9:24 am
she is the new poster child for racism in america.
along with sharpton,jesse jackson and farrahkan.they feed on racial hate like vampires at a blood drive.
April 28, 2011 @ 11:12 am
We saw how Charley Rangel laughed off being censured by the House! That inane act did absolutely nothing towards holding him accountable for the crimes he committed. So too, Maxine Waters! She tampered with an investigation of that Bank because her husband is a major investor in that operation. If a Republican…or even more clearly defined…a Tea Partier…had done the things this miscreant witch has done…the Liberal Media would have gone for their throat! They would have demanded this individual be held accountable! They would have demanded that person’s immediate resignation. All this from the Party of “Hope and Change” and the misguided Liberal/leftist Media bias…..
But, alas…we have corrupt Attorney General, Eric Holder…who doesn’t believe laws should be enforced racially neutral! After all, “White folks haven’t suffered like my people.” Right, Holder? Black Panther thugs stand in front of polling booths in Philadelphia, intimidating whites from casting their ballots during the 2008 election, and you don’t enforce the Voting Rights Act??? Because it was whites that were intimidated???
During WWII Hitler hired a thug from the middle east named al-Husseini to carry out his dirty work of killing Jews. The millions killed in the Middle East during that period are not included in the 6 million + total Hitler is given credit for exterminating. I liken Holder to al-Husseini. He is carrying out Obama’s methodical destruction of Whites in America. We are being punished by this Regime, led by a Muslim Marxist Chicago Thug. He wants a Civil War to commence…so he can put to rest any inkling of White dominance real or supposed.
I will be called a racist for these statements. I don’t have a racist bone in my body…despite what Pseudo-Reverend Al Sharpton and Barry Soetoro would want you to believe. I am simply pointing out truths they are suppressing.
April 29, 2011 @ 11:41 am
The saddest thought of all is – the Swamp Queen is kept in power by the very people she rips off.