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The Hammer drops
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OldManMac
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Nov 24, 2010, 11:16 PM
 
Wonderful news! One of the many sleaze bags in Congress (on both sides of the aisle), Tom "The Hammer" DeLay, could spend life in prison!

Jury Convicts Tom DeLay In Money Laundering Trial : NPR
     
Doofy
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Nov 24, 2010, 11:44 PM
 
Whatever that is, it ain't money laundering. To be laundered, the money must start dirty. It wasn't.

But then, laundering is the crime they tag you with when they can't get you for anything else, ain't it?

Yet another demonstration of Amerika's complete alienation from any kind of valid justice system.
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besson3c
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Nov 24, 2010, 11:46 PM
 
Is this two convictions in a span of one week?
     
The Final Dakar
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Nov 24, 2010, 11:47 PM
 
I think people are more excited to post this so they get to come up with "clever" thread titles.
     
imitchellg5
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Nov 25, 2010, 12:20 AM
 
Stop...


Hammer time!
     
subego
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Nov 25, 2010, 12:48 AM
 
Tack hammers are awesome.
     
Doofy
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Nov 25, 2010, 01:01 AM
 
Originally Posted by imitchellg5 View Post
Stop...


Hammer time!
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turtle777
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Nov 25, 2010, 01:09 AM
 
LULZ.

-t
     
ebuddy
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Nov 25, 2010, 11:23 AM
 
That's crazy, Doofy beat me to it. I was going to jokingly suggest that perhaps The Hammer and Sickle dropped in this case.
ebuddy
     
ghporter
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Nov 25, 2010, 09:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
Whatever that is, it ain't money laundering. To be laundered, the money must start dirty. It wasn't.

But then, laundering is the crime they tag you with when they can't get you for anything else, ain't it?

Yet another demonstration of Amerika's complete alienation from any kind of valid justice system.
It IS laundering because the INTENT of the money was dirty-to violate Texas laws on who could contribute how much to what kind of political campaign. Processing funds so as to avoid the appearance that the money is dirty is still laundering.

The jerk could get as much as 99 years for this. I hope he does.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
Doofy
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Nov 25, 2010, 09:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
It IS laundering because the INTENT of the money was dirty-to violate Texas laws on who could contribute how much to what kind of political campaign. Processing funds so as to avoid the appearance that the money is dirty is still laundering.
Nah man. To be laundering, the money has to have been generated by crime in the first place. Concealment of source isn't enough - the money must have been generated by illegal activity.

I don't know what it is, but it ain't laundering. I ain't even sure it's illegal - your supreme court has already ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals with regard to supporting political parties.
Even logically and morally it's incorrect.

Let's say you want to buy a $10k car but you've only got $12k to spend and you need to spend $8k on house repairs pronto. If I give you $10k for Christmas, you'd then have enough to buy that car and get the house repairs done. So you buy the car. Did I buy the car? No, I didn't... ...you bought it because you had the extra funds available to do so.

If I give you a fiver for your birthday and you then give a different fiver to your son to spend on sweets, am I guilty of "grooming a minor"?

Society is going to become a whole sh*tload of complex if we follow the logic in this case.

The only thing that's dirty here is Amerikan justice.
Don't worry - BrShitish justice is just as dirty. When it bothers to get out of bed, that is.
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ghporter
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Nov 25, 2010, 10:25 PM
 
State laws at the time strictly prohibited the kind of funding that DeLay facilitated. For the relatively paltry amount of money involved, DeLay enabled expensive local television and other advertising to be purchased for HIS chosen candidates. He subverted the ability of the electorate to trust the election process. It was most certainly against the law here because state laws, which can be stricter than federal laws, prohibited exactly the kind of financial support from corporations and groups to specific candidates and their campaigns. The SCOTUS ruling allows support of ISSUE advertising by anonymous groups, and was issued after the charges had been filed against DeLay.

If you take money from Joe, who is prohibited from buying advertising for Product A, then yourself buy advertising for Product A just like Joe would have wanted, you have participated in an effort to conceal the source of the funding for that advertising, which is effectively (though not literally) "laundering" that funding. I like how the Belfast Telegraph calls the scheme a "shell game" to sidestep state laws prohibiting corporate donations to candidates. DeLay feels that he would have had a better outcome if he'd been tried closer to home, say in Houston-but there's enough anti-Republican sentiment in the Houston area's counties that I think he's quite wrong, and it's possible that he'd have been convicted after even less deliberation.

There is a potential for Governor Perry to take executive action on this conviction. If he does anything to insulate DeLay from actually being punished for being the driving force behind this level of cynical and mercenary subversion of our political process, Perry's hopes of going beyond the Governor's Office are effectively finished-nobody will forget that "Rick let his buddy off scot free after he was convicted of being crooked."

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
Doofy
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Nov 25, 2010, 10:55 PM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
State laws at the time strictly prohibited the kind of funding that DeLay facilitated.
Ummm. They prohibited direct funding of political advertising by corporations.
Where do they prohibit donations by corporate entities to federal political entities?
Where do they prohibit federal political entities funding state political entities?

There's nothing but circumstantial evidence to prove that it was the same money which was transferred both times. If you're going to convict on this, you're in for a very dark future. I mean, let's go for the welfare folks who might have taken a small amount of their welfare and donated it to the Dems - that's just the Corporation of Texas (or US, or whatever) giving money to a political party via a middle man, ain't it? Wait. What about the corporation someone works for - they've given money (say, a Christmas bonus) to an individual who's then donated some of it to a political party? LAUNDERING! 99 YEARS! Can of worms, right there.
Not to mention the betrayal of property rights inherent in said law. If a corporation wants to give money it's legally earned to a political party, what's it got to do with anyone else? Sure, have a rule which says it's got to be on public record (so anyone disagreeing with their donation can shop elsewhere), but a rule which states that an entity can't do what it likes with its own money? In the land of the free?

While we're at it, can someone point me to the actual law which states 99 years for money laundering? I can only find the 2005 code, which states "maximum 20".
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Chongo
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Nov 26, 2010, 12:06 AM
 
It will get thrown out on appeal.
45/47
     
turtle777
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Nov 26, 2010, 12:51 AM
 
I'm sure in the end they get him for tax evasion and drug possession.

-t
     
OldManMac  (op)
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Nov 26, 2010, 01:29 AM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
Whatever that is, it ain't money laundering. To be laundered, the money must start dirty. It wasn't.

But then, laundering is the crime they tag you with when they can't get you for anything else, ain't it?

Yet another demonstration of Amerika's complete alienation from any kind of valid justice system.
It's good to see that you know American state laws and the specifics of this case. I didn't realize you were a lawyer. How long have you been practicing law in America?
     
ebuddy
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Nov 26, 2010, 09:31 AM
 
Originally Posted by OldManMac View Post
It's good to see that you know American state laws and the specifics of this case. I didn't realize you were a lawyer. How long have you been practicing law in America?
What is this, sour grapes? Are you saying he's wrong?
ebuddy
     
Doofy
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Nov 26, 2010, 11:37 AM
 
Originally Posted by OldManMac View Post
It's good to see that you know American state laws and the specifics of this case. I didn't realize you were a lawyer. How long have you been practicing law in America?
I hang with people who offshore everything, for privacy. As you probably can't imagine, offshore privacy often has to be designed so that authorities can't claim money laundering. So it's not like I'm not aware of the laws regarding it.
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turtle777
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Nov 26, 2010, 12:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by OldManMac View Post
It's good to see that you know American state laws and the specifics of this case. I didn't realize you were a lawyer. How long have you been practicing law in America?
As if common sense wasn't enough to reach that conclusion.

Alas, there ain't no common sense in Amaraca these days.

-t
     
OldManMac  (op)
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Nov 26, 2010, 12:25 PM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
I hang with people who offshore everything, for privacy. As you probably can't imagine, offshore privacy often has to be designed so that authorities can't claim money laundering. So it's not like I'm not aware of the laws regarding it.
That explains why you're an expert on the subject, then.
     
OldManMac  (op)
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Nov 26, 2010, 12:25 PM
 
Originally Posted by ebuddy View Post
What is this, sour grapes? Are you saying he's wrong?
An American jury said he's wrong.
     
Doofy
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Nov 26, 2010, 01:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by OldManMac View Post
That explains why you're an expert on the subject, then.
Yep.
Plus, of course, I went and read the actual state and federal laws on laundering last night - just to double check.

Originally Posted by OldManMac View Post
An American jury said he's wrong.
Amerikan juries are never wrong. There are no innocent people on death row in Texas. Amerika is truly the land of the free!

If you think a GOP bloke can get a fair trail in a Dem area, or a Dem get a fair trial in a GOP area, you're delusional.
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subego
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Nov 26, 2010, 03:59 PM
 
Do mallets count as hammers?

After your tack hammer, get a good rubber mallet.
     
OAW
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Nov 29, 2010, 01:45 PM
 
I'm not going to get into semantic games about whether or not DeLay's actions constituted "money laundering" or whether the "origins" of the funds were criminal. Because that is beside the point. The key facts that came out during the trial are as follows:

1. DeLay's Texas based PAC sent 190K in corporate money to the RNC. In and of itself ... legal.

2. The RNC then sent an identical amount to the campaigns of 7 Texas House GOP candidates. In and of itself ... legal.

3. DeLay's attorney stipulated to the "money swap" and claimed it was "common practice". In and of itself .... legal or illegal, depending on what the money is used for.

So it's not about whether these individual acts were illegal ... the jury found that the acts in combination showed that DeLay illegally circumvented Texas campaign finance law by using nominally legal money swaps to funnel corporate political contributions to political candidates.

Now having said that, I'm no fan of Tom DeLay ... but fair is fair. And there's no way he deserves life in prison because of this. If anything, it appears that Mr. DeLay got sloppy. So caught up in his power and ambition that he did some pretty stupid things perhaps thinking that he was untouchable. The exact same dollar amount man? Really? When a guy's nickname is "The Hammer" he's undoubtedly made plenty of political enemies in his career. Yet this guy didn't even try to cover his tracks on this one. And apparently it came back to bite him in the ass.

OAW
     
Laminar
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Nov 29, 2010, 03:52 PM
 
I wonder how many more creative spellings of "America" we can get in this thread.
     
   
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