2022 U.S. Congressional (and Other) Elections

[RoseMorninStar]

Rep. Matt Gaetz was the only congressperson to vote against the Anti-human Trafficking Bill.

[elengil]

This is my shocked face.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

A little more detail about the Gaetz investigation:

The DOJ is investigating if Matt Gaetz misused campaign money to fund travel

[RoseMorninStar]

Why does this not surprise me. What is the old saying about he who speaks loudest/points fingers has the most to hide?

[River]

My dad said once that people tend to criticize in others where they are weakest themselves. People who howl and scream about morality tend to have messy personal lives. People who make a huge deal about sensitivity tend to be jerks. People who demand respect fail to see it as a two-way street. Etc. It takes some attention but it's a pretty reliable method for sussing out a weakness. This leads to some pretty sad and spooky places. What you do with what you learn is, of course, entirely up to you and the situation you're in.

I think about that whenever a particularly loud and obnoxious public figure falls from grace.

[N.E. Brigand]

The second story I've seen today about how Gaetz's colleagues have long viewed him as disreputable (whether or not this week's allegations are true):

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/01/politics ... index.html

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Full Onion.

Sent from my VS988 using Tapatalk

[RoseMorninStar]

Full onion? I'm not familiar with the phrase.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meaning there is no difference any more articles that would appear in satirical publications like The Onion, and real media outlets like CNN.

[RoseMorninStar]

Ah.. gotcha. Truth is as strange as fiction should be, or in this case, satire.

[N.E. Brigand]

The second story I've seen today about how Gaetz's colleagues have long viewed him as disreputable (whether or not this week's allegations are true):

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/01/politics ... index.html

Other reporters are pointing to photos like this to argue that Gaetz was hardly being ostracized by his colleagues. In other words, now they don't want to be associated with him, but before, despite the lurid stories in the CNN article, they were fine with him:

[RoseMorninStar]

I really don't like to judge people based on how they look, but he strongly reminds me of a televangelist.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I have often thought that. Looks can sometimes be deceiving, but in this case I think that is an apt observation.

[N.E. Brigand]

"Not all televangelists."

Meanwhile, the New York Times tonight reports that Matt Gaetz is also being investigated for solicitation of prostitution (possibly using official funds?), and the Times reporters have seen receipts for payments that Gaetz and his associate, former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg (who has been charged with numerous other offenses in a series of idictments that started last July and continued through yesterday), and that those women say the payments were for sex with the two men and some other unnamed Florida Republican official. The women also say that Gaetz used ecstasy during these encounters.

Chris Hayes points out that these would be significantly lesser crimes than sex trafficking of a minor, which was reports from a couple days ago indicated Gaetz was being investigated for. (Even so, it shoudl be noted Gaetz denies to the Times that he ever paid anyone for sex.) And yet there is the hypocrisy to consider: Gaetz has championed efforts to drug test people who receive financial assistance from the government.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/us/p ... d=tw-share

[yovargas]

Investigators believe Joel Greenberg, the former tax collector in Seminole County, Fla., who was indicted last year on a federal sex trafficking charge and other crimes

Hey, that's where I live! Woohoo, my town is in the news! Oh wait....

So I only really started hearing about the Gaetz scandal yesterday and I'm trying to understand what's going on. Am I correct in saying that the mai8 accusation is that he hired a prostitute under the legal age? Or is there more to the story?

[Frelga]

I think those are separate charges. Sex with a minor, compounded by taking her across the state lines, resulting in a federal sex trafficking charge. Also using official (campaign?) funds to pay for sex. It is not clear if the person involved in the second one was of age.

[N.E. Brigand]

One or more of the crimes that former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg has been charged with pertains to his apparently having made improper use of out of state or expired driver's licenses that were surrendered to his office by people getting new licenses.

And now reporting from the Orlando Sentinel suggests that Gaetz may also have been involved:

Joel Greenberg and U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz on at least one occasion several years ago were recorded together entering the Seminole County Tax Collector’s Office when it was closed on a weekend night, according to a person familiar with office operations who saw the videotape.

The person said the footage showed Greenberg and Gaetz walking into the Tax Collector’s Lake Mary office on Primera Drive. Greenberg was seen going through baskets where driver’s licenses, turned in by residents for disposal, were stored and later went into a back room, the person said.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politic ... story.html

[Dave_LF]

I really don't like to judge people based on how they look, but he strongly reminds me of a televangelist.

I thought crooked used car salesman, but it's basically the same thing.

[N.E. Brigand]

And apparently it was text by Greenberg about IDs that first led investigators to look into Gaetz?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/these-tex ... matt-gaetz

[River]

Not sure where to put this, but Boehner on the GOP freshmen class of 2010 or, how we got here.

In the 2010 midterm election, voters from all over the place gave President Obama what he himself called “a shellacking.” And oh boy, was it ever. You could be a total moron and get elected just by having an R next to your name—and that year, by the way, we did pick up a fair number in that category.

Retaking control of the House of Representatives put me in line to be the next Speaker of the House over the largest freshman Republican class in history: 87 newly elected members of the GOP. Since I was presiding over a large group of people who’d never sat in Congress, I felt I owed them a little tutorial on governing. I had to explain how to actually get things done. A lot of that went straight through the ears of most of them, especially the ones who didn’t have brains that got in the way. Incrementalism? Compromise? That wasn’t their thing. A lot of them wanted to blow up Washington. That’s why they thought they were elected.