Pennsylvania Democrat indicted on charges of bribery, money laundering

[Revmitchell]

Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) was indicted Wednesday on more than a dozens federal charges surrounding his unsuccessful run for Philadelphia mayor in 2007.

The 11-term Democrat and four associates were indicted on 29 federal counts, including bribery, money laundering, falsification of records and multiple counts of bank fraud, among other charges.

Fattah faces 16 charges related to conspiracy, mail fraud and falsification of records, each carrying sentences up to 20 years in prison. Another six charges, including bank fraud, carry a combined 100 years in prison if he’s convicted.
The longtime lawmaker maintained his innocence while speaking with reporters on Wednesday and insisted he will run for reelection next year.

“I will be on the ballot in my district,” said Fattah, who appeared relaxed when speaking after his indictment was released.

“We’ve moved from an investigation to an actual allegation,” Fattah said at the Capitol. “I think I’ll stand by my original position, which was, as an elected official, I’ve never been involved in any illegal activity or misappropriation of funds.”

“We’ll have to live with the judgment that they make,” he added, referring to his constituents.

Just a few weeks ago, Fattah was photographed on Air Force One giving a hug to Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Obama. Fattah traveled with Obama to Philadelphia, where the president gave a speech on criminal justice reform.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...ennsylvania-rep-indicted-in-racketeering-case

 

[carpro]

It was posted a few days ago. Nobody cared then.

I doubt they do now.

 

[wpe3bql]

Growing up only 30 mi. from Philly, I became interested in its politics.

Most any big city in the US has had a checkered past with regard to some of its leaders. They may not have actually been office holders. Sometimes they were the "behind the scenes" power brokers.

An example of this was the notorious Boss Tweed of NYC back in the mid-late 1800's. If you wanted merely to run for any city office in NYC, you had to pass Boss Tweed's "litmus test"--which usually meant donating money to him or one of his hidden accounts in some institution that may not have been located anywhere close to NYC.

Boss Tweed was so corrupt that even if a person tried to investigate--much less actually try to reform Tweed's machine--that person was often found dead due to "undetermined causes," or maybe his house (which may not have even been located in NYC) mysteriously burned to the ground--and with the FD NYC strangely unaware of the fact that there was a fire in this person's house (even if his house was only a block or two from the firehouse).

Chicago had the Mayor Daily machine, & Memphis TN had the Crump machine. New Orleans wasn't always the cleanest politically city in the US either.

What about Philly? I remember the 1970 mayor's race. Democrat Frank Rizzo won with a rather steady margin. Rizzo was its no-nonsence police commissioner, the liberals hated him, but most of the people loved him because he cut the inner-city's crime rate considerably. Rizzo won in 1970 & again in 1974.

But something happened about mid-way through his 2d term. Audits of some of Philly's city offices showed that not everything was above-board. Rizzo fought tooth-&-nail, claiming that the auditors were merely carrying out a vendetta against him. His attempted cover-ups managed to delay Rizzo from being recalled while in office, but the auditors and the city & state prosecutors finally caught up with him.

By this time the once macho Police Commissioner in his black leather jacket & motorcycle boots who strutted into City Hall was, by now, a broken man & his health went steadily down hill.

And Rizzo wasn't the only mayor with questionable tastes. Later on, one her first black mayors was scandalized when he allowed the police to drop a bomb on on some houses that'd held up the police in a stand off over drugs and weapons that had been stashed in these houses.

The dropped firebombs subsequently almost burned a third of that project's houses ablaze.

So, both liberal and conservative politicians in Philly have been subjects of scandals in PA before, and I doubt seriously whether some of the politicians in PA will be any less ethical in the future.

They sure weren't cleaner in TN during in the mid-1970's under Gov. Ray Blanton.

 

[Salty]

The Salt City had its troubles as well

I joined the Army 3 months before the election - and was on active duty the entire time he was mayor; so I was not up to date on all the goings-on

 

[Aaron]

Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) was indicted Wednesday on more than a dozens federal charges surrounding his unsuccessful run for Philadelphia mayor in 2007.

The 11-term Democrat and four associates were indicted on 29 federal counts, including bribery, money laundering, falsification of records and multiple counts of bank fraud, among other charges.

Fattah faces 16 charges related to conspiracy, mail fraud and falsification of records, each carrying sentences up to 20 years in prison. Another six charges, including bank fraud, carry a combined 100 years in prison if he’s convicted.
The longtime lawmaker maintained his innocence while speaking with reporters on Wednesday and insisted he will run for reelection next year.

“I will be on the ballot in my district,” said Fattah, who appeared relaxed when speaking after his indictment was released.

“We’ve moved from an investigation to an actual allegation,” Fattah said at the Capitol. “I think I’ll stand by my original position, which was, as an elected official, I’ve never been involved in any illegal activity or misappropriation of funds.”

“We’ll have to live with the judgment that they make,” he added, referring to his constituents.

Just a few weeks ago, Fattah was photographed on Air Force One giving a hug to Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Obama. Fattah traveled with Obama to Philadelphia, where the president gave a speech on criminal justice reform.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...ennsylvania-rep-indicted-in-racketeering-case

The charges won't stick. It's only wrong for Republicans.

 

[wpe3bql]

A follow up on my post #3 would include the late PA US senator Arlen Spector.

Spector was a die-hard liberal for practically all of his political career (Much like his formerly near-by neighbor former PA GOP senator Richard Schweiker [sp?] {If you'll recall, Schweiker was also Reagan's VP choice in his failed 1976 short-lived attempt at the '76 GOP convention to oppose incumbent GOP POTUS Ford}.

Prior to being chosen as a GOP US senator from PA, he was also my home area's US congressman for several years--so I was fairly familiar with his political leanings for a long time.

Anyway, back to Spector. He was Philly's leading DA during part of both Rizzo's Police Commissioner's and Philly Mayor's tenures.

Spector did his best to frustrate Rizzo's tough-on-gang-based crime (especially in the south Philly's southern [i.e., "south of the Schuylkill River area"]-based tactics. Every time Rizzo sent a hoodlum from that area to jail, Spector would do his best to get that hoodlum released on some far-fetched technicality, & several times he succeeded, often because many of Philly's city judges were as liberal as he was.

Eventually, Spector succeeded in winning for the PA GOP a seat in the US Senate. Naturally his senate voting record mirrored his liberalism. Then he decided that the GOP senatorial caucus wasn't liberal enough. As it happened, one of the 2 PA senate seats became vacant with the death of an incumbent Dem.

Spector jumped at the chance to become a member of the Dem. US Senate caucus by switching from the PA GOP to the PA Dem. party...And he succeeded.

Shortly after that there was a general election in PA for Spector's senate seat. Of course, incumbent Dem. senator Spector ran as the Dem.'s choice. Opposing him was conservative GOP congressman from Allentown PA, Pat Toomey.

The race became neck-&-beck for weeks. However, the really amazing thing was incumbent PA GOP senator Pat Santorum--who always presents himself as a pro-family conservative--would not endorse Toomey in Toomey's race against Spector. Why Santorum choose not to endorse Toomey in that election race is a mystery to me.

When the ballots were cast, Spector won by a slim margin--a fact that many PA GOP voters attest to his failing to endorse Toomey back then.

Eventually Santorum stepped down from his PA GOP seat to run for POTUS in the 2008 race. He lost, and the victor in PA's race to win Santorum's US Senate seat was Dem. Casey.

Casey was more pro-life than hardly any PA Dem. official, but he was the son of the late PA Dem. governor who came into office after PA GOP governor Tom Ridge resigned as PA governor to become G. W. Bush's first Homeland Security Secretary in the aftermath of 9/11.

Overall, as a state, PA is somewhat more conservative in some localites, but in eastern PA, it's still quite liberal. Case in point is that our current VPOTUS Biden hails from the rather liberal Scranton Wilkes-Barre area in NE PA.

 

[wpe3bql]

Yikes!

Now rumors are floating around that VPOTUS Biden is being primed to take his boss's mantle that many WH operatives (lackies?) believe will be necessary because the crown princess Killary....I mean Hillary....No, I was right the first time when I recalled the Benghazi 4 were killed during Mrs. Clinton's tenure at the State Department.

Even though "What-does-it-matter?" is her mantra, she hopes that with all the other various and sundry scandals that are swirling around her (Thus hoping America's collective attention span about the misdeeds [About which she's admitted that she perjored herself before the select congressional subcommittee--a felonious act which, by law, makes her ineligible to hold any federal {and probably also in most states}] will be forgotten--like the reams of misplaced e-mail transcripts she conveniently forgot to submit--even after they were subpoenaed by the congressional subcommittee.

With all these crimes on Mrs. Clinton's rap sheet--none of which she'll probably ever be held accountable in a federal court since most of the higher level federal court judges are liberals (&, therefore Dems.), it's quite possible she'll be on the losing stick come the early caucuses & primaries--most of which are held in relatively conservative states.

Even the projected polling surveys point to Killary not doing very well, & maybe even dropping out of the race (What a shame that'd be for die-hard Clinton fans!)

At any rate, should that happen, POTUS BO will need a replacement, & need one quickly. That's why Biden is being primed to step in should crown princess H. stumble as many predict she will.

And what if the Jackass party loses in November, 2016?

I don't think PA--the state from which Biden originally hales--surely won't want a loser like Biden to come home to rule and reign as some elder statesman. I don't think even Delaware, his state of record and from which he held one of its two US Senate seats will want him either.

It's almost like the story of the man without a country, only this time it might be termed a VPOTUS without a state.

Don't you just love politics of the 2d decade of the 21st century? :smilewinkgrin: