Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Dollar Bill Jefferson Goes Bust

CNN is reporting that former Democratic Rep. William Jefferson has been convicted on 11 of the 16 charges he faced.
Jefferson, a 62-year-old Democrat, was indicted by a federal grand jury on June 4, 2007, on corruption charges, about two years after federal agents said they found $90,000 in his freezer. Authorities said the cash was part of a payment in marked bills from an FBI informant in a transaction captured on video.

Jefferson had pleaded not guilty.

The jury convicted him on four counts of bribery, four counts of racketeering and three counts of wire fraud. He was acquitted on five other counts including wire fraud and obstruction of justice.

Jefferson had faced a maximum sentence of 235 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

The verdict came on the fifth day of jury deliberations.

Dollar Bill's going away for a long, long time and rightfully so. Not all scumbags have (R) after their names, you know.

Still, you have to wonder. In Congress, $90,000 is basically ass-wipe money (as in "that pathetically small amount of money's not even worth using instead of toilet paper in an emergency to wipe my ass with.") Jefferson is going to probably go away for the rest of his days for that.

There are plenty of members of Congress who have collected ten, twenty, fifty times that much over the years in lobbyist contributions, and on both sides of the aisle.

Presidential campaigns last year netted hundreds of millions. McCain had $150 million, Obama raised over $600 million in his campaign.

The stimulus package was $785 billion. The Defense Department budget for 2010, $665 billion.

Total loan guarantees and liabilities for the economic crisis, $27.8 trillion.

Dollar Bill will probably go to jail for life for a lousy ninety grand.

Perspective is a funny thing.

1 comment:

StarStorm said...

You know, when I take over the world, I'm going to triple the penalty for any corruption charges if so much as one bribe was under 250 grand.

I mean, if I'm going to have corruption, I'm going to have high-quality corruption, dammit. Not a bunch of cheap whores that'll put themselves out of a job and into prison for fucking pocket change.

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