After the civil war, Northerners roamed the South taking advantage of the new federal control of Southern states. They were referred to as carpetbaggers.
Now that the Civil War is in the distant past (relative to our collective memory), we have a new type of carpetbagger roaming the land. I refer to them as politicians, and if I had to guess, I would say about 90% are dishonest and have sociopathic tendencies.
Which brings us to this story:
Californians elected San Francisco’s former Mayor Dianne Feinstein to the Senate in 1992. She was overwhelmingly re-elected in November 2006. She is well liked by both liberals and conservatives. She supports abortion rights and gun control laws. She politicked this year for renewal of the Patriot Act and sponsored a constitutional amendment to ban American flag burning. She is currently calling for President Bush to set a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq, but she strongly supported the invasions, occupations and "reconstructions" of both Iraq and Afghanistan. She sits on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, and she is a consistent hawk on matters military.
And she is wealthy. In 2005, Roll Call calculated Feinstein’s wealth, including Blum’s assets, at $40 million, up 25 percent from the year before. That made her the ninth wealthiest member of Congress. Feinstein’s latest Public Financial Disclosure Report shows that in 2005 her family earned income of between $500,000 and $5 million from capital gains on URS and Perini stock combined. From CB Richard Ellis, Blum earned between $1.3 million to $4 million. (The report allows for disclosure of dollar amounts within ranges, which accounts for the wide variance.)
A talented financier and deal-broker, Blum, 70, presides over a global investment empire through a labyrinth of private equity partnerships. His flagship entity is a merchant banking firm, Blum Capital Partners, L.P., of which he is the chairman and general partner. Through this bank, Blum bought a controlling share of Perini in 1997, when it was nearly broke. He named his close associate, the attorney Michael R. Klein, to represent his interest on the board of directors. Blum declined to comment for this story. Perini CEO Robert Band deferred to Klein for comment.
The story is old by Internet standards, but it just goes to show that it really doesn’t matter whether Democrats or Republicans hold sway in Congress. You can pick your ice cream flavor, but if you eat too much, you are still going to get fat, suffer health issues, and eventually die.
Americans today are fat, suffering health issues, and politically, we are dying under the two party system. It’s well past time for something new.
I am disgusted by the growth of the federal government in the last century. I am tired of the homogenous, simplistic rhetoric full of promises that are almost never delivered. My bowels clench when I read yet another story involving a member of our Congress taking advantage of his or her power. It’s enough to make me want to revolt.