RIP Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii

It's not just earmarks -- for which all kinds of corruption ran rampant. It's that the earmarks (more than 25 percent) consistently found their way into his buddy's pockets. That number I posted meant that he consistently sent more money to the people who gave his campaigns money than any other senator.

 

I understand this. It's why he's of the same generation as Robert Byrd -- and they both managed to hang around for decades, even if anyone honest felt like taking a bleach shower whenever they came within a few feet of them.

But how is this not corruption? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/30/AR2009063004229.html

And do you really think for a second that it ended there with a guy who played the game the way he did? I'm not singling him out. It's rampant in Congress and the Senate. He epitomized it, though, and his colleagues even acknowledged it.

My original post simply said that among the "great man, shining role model, humble guy, war hero" tributes, shouldn't there be at least one acknowledgment of this being who he was as a Senator?

 

Yeah. Major distinction. I wasn't making a blanket comparison about their characters. I was talking about what they did as Senators -- I talked about their generation in the Senate. I didn't make a comparison of them as people.

 

Most of his quid pro quos were tied to the defense industry. It wasn't just about greasing him to get Federal handouts to your Hawaiin business. Boeing, Lockheed Martin were big ones, I know. He brought a lot of money into Hawaii, but it was just a fraction of the money he shuffled around in backroom deals as head of appropriations--which essentially made him the most powerful man in America, because he had billions of dollars at his disposal to play with like monopoly money. Yes, he was a WWII hero, but I hate when someone like him dies and he gets cannonized without acknowledgment of the full picture. Dan Inouye was what is wrong with the Senate, and it is the reason why we have massive debt problems today. If you were having trouble getting some government contract, all you had to do was grease his campaign war chest. Or if you wanted some government money, a little well placed cash and he'd get $10 million thrown your way on the back of whatever bill was coming up for a vote. The guy drove me batty. We're sitting with a corrupt political culture that ran away on itself and now can't reign itself in because everyone always laughed it off, like, "Oh, that's just old Dan Inouye. Yeah. Earmarks. Pork. Ha ha."

Even with the TARP money I posted about that he used his clout to get thrown at the bank he had 2/3 of his personal assets in. ... he used his clout to avoid an ethics investigation. Maxine Waters did the same EXACT thing to get her husband's bank a handout (when thousands of other similar banks didn't get a sniff), and she (rightfully) ended up mired in an ethics probe. Inouye, on the other hand, was able to make it all go away without the scrutiny -- because he had built up that much power.

He presided over a culture of corruption as a Senator. He actually contributed to Ted Stevens campaign and stood right beside him, even as the disgusting criminal ethics violations came to light one by one.

That doesn't change the fact that he was a WWII hero. And if that is what everyone wants to celebrate, so be it. But I read that Dan Inouye died and my first thought was of one of the most corrupt politicians of our time dying. I'm not saying that to spit on his grave. I am just being honest about what he did for our country as Senator.

 

In this case, the pork happened way more for interests Dan Inouye showed interest in -- for years -- than for any other politician. He was single-handedly adding handouts to bills (unrelated to his quid pro quos) to the tune of $400 billion a year or more -- made easy because of his tenure and the fact that it bought him chairmanship of the appropriations committee. In 2009, he was responsible for half a trillion dollars of pork himself. Our country ran a deficit of $1.4 trillion that year, which is now sitting like a bad burrito in your stomach as part of our overall $16 trillion debt.

And the reason I called it all corrupt was that more than any other Senator, there was a strong appearance of impropriety, due to the fact that his pork was consistently tied to campaign contributions more than anyone else.

On top of it, you are correct, he was never indicted, but there were way too many instances of dirty dealings in which his power allowed him to skate free. He wasn't indicted for this, but I am sure we can all agree this is just not Kosher and it was an obvious case of an elected official using his power to line his own pockets:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/30/AR2009063004229.html