Why is Paul Ryan smiling? Because he got paid.
House Speaker Paul Ryan collected nearly $500,000 in campaign contributions from Charles Koch and his wife after helping usher through a massive tax reform law. According to a recent campaign finance report filed Thursday, Koch and his wife Elizabeth each donated $247,7000 to Ryan’s joint fundraising committee… The Republican tax overhaul plan passed in December benefited Koch Industries, as it cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, among other cuts. The legislation then got a boost from the Kochs’ multimillion-dollar public relations campaign to highlight its benefits. And 13 days after it passed, Charles and Elizabeth Koch made the near $500,000 donation to Team Ryan, which raises money for the congressman, the National Republican Congressional Committee and a political action committee run by Ryan. On the same day, Charles and Elizabeth Koch also each donated $237,000 to the NRCC.
There’s a word for this: corruption. Ryan is a bought and paid for stooge for billionaires, and he has received his quid pro quo. It’s gotten so bad they don’t even try to hide it any more.
Just half a million? Considering the money he just gave Koch, he is a very cheap stooge.
…and this is what I mean:
” Billionaires earned enough to end world poverty in 2017: report ” https://www.rawstory.com/2018/01/worlds-billionaires-earned-enough-end-world-poverty-2017-report/
That’s all we know about. But yeah, I expect that stooge is cheaply bought.
They keep trying to pretend that the money doesn’t influence the politics.
USA! USA! USA! It’s the best democracy money can buy!
Christ, isn’t this the same asshole who jerks off to the idea of ending Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security? At this point I think he’d do it even if the payoff were 5 cents, let alone $500,000.
Unfortunately, I think we may be past the point where there are any non-violent solutions. We’ve become, as a nation, decadent. We know what happened in France last time…
This is why, of course, that the RWers were running around claiming Schumer just took a big payoff from Soros.
Why should they hide the corruption? They have both made it legal and it doesn’t seem to affect them getting the votes.
Oh pooh. I was going to guess “because somewhere a child is starving to death.” Or maybe “because somewhere a poor person is being refused much-needed medical care.”
Oh wait, this works out to the same thing. I really must protest- how’s a mere monster supposed to compete with that level of evil?
I believe Justice Roberts said, “Holy shit, guys! We’re all gonna be rich!” or words to that effect.
@ birgerjohansson
Just half a million? Considering the money he just gave Koch, he is a very cheap stooge.
American politicians are amazingly good bargains. Have a look at God’s gift to idiots, Lamar Smith.
Actually, I think that most politicians are pretty good buys, remember pay in cash, but the US ones seem remarkably so. Either they are thick as two bricks or the major payoffs are more subtle.
Well subtle for someone bribing an American politician which implies no Pampers diaper bags full of cash actually in the building.
Senator Flake seems to have managed some capital gains on the passage of the tax bill he, once opposed and then voted for.
It’s worse than corruption. Corruption is done in secret, for money. What today’s Republicans have done — and particularly Randroids like Ryan — is to adopt an ideology that tells them that rewarding the rich is the morally correct thing to do, and therefore, it need not be hidden. They’ll do it even if you don’t pay them!
But of course, you will pay them. Not to keep them doing your bidding, but to keep them in Congress, where their ideology ensures that they’ll do your bidding.
It’s a subtle distinction, to be sure.
#1 birgerjohansson
In “The Rich and the Super Rich” Ferdinand Lundberg exposed the profitability of “investment” in congress. Chapter nine as I recall, book mislaid. Written in nineteen sixty five and still quite topical about our national situation.
How can it be, even in the year 2018, that English has no handy & widely-recognized term for “corrupt person?”
(No, I’m not suggesting “paulryan”, or “trump”, or even “nixon” – but we do need such a word!)