Politics As Self-Enrichment
I know that DC is Hollywood for ugly people but Sen. Feinstein is taking it a bit too far. I’ve seen more healthy looking corpses.
Feinstein has steered $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband’s real estate firm (CBRE) a lavish contract, in a move that the Washington Times describes as (understatement alert) “unusual.”
Diplomats use similar code language to justify the expulsion of foreign spies, on the grounds that they were pursuing “activities inconsistent with their diplomatic status.”
We all know what they really mean.
Rubbing salt in the wound is the fact that her husband, Richard Blum bought 10 million CBRE shares at the same time. He bought the shares at $3.77; after his wife’s intervention, CBRE stock rose to $5.14 at yesterday’s close.
As Ed Morrissey notes, Blum’s investment made a $14 million profit for Blum, Feinstein and their co-conspirators.
So, in addition to criminal ugliness, Feinstein should also be charged with corruption and her husband with insider trading.
Two trends have damaged the popular perception of politics more than anything else.
The first is allowing anyone to run (and, worse still, electing them) when they have manifestly not achieved nor sacrificed anything for their country.
The second is the reduction of politics to a self-enrichment scheme.
Feinstein is, alongside the president himself, the epitome of both.
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