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“President Makes Top 10 List of Corrupt Politicians”
by wnd   
December 30th, 2009

President Obama has been named to a "Top 10" list he'd likely be grateful to avoid: Judicial Watch's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians," for 2009.

"The Obama White House believes," said the report from the organization that monitors government for corruption, and sues when it chooses, "it can violate the privacy rights of American citizens without any legal consequences or accountability."

The report released yesterday said Obama joined the likes of Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.; Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; Attorney General Eric Holder; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa.; and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., on the list.

"Even before President Obama was sworn into office, he was interviewed by the FBI for a criminal investigation of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's scheme to sell the president's former Senate seat to the highest bidder," the report said.

"Moreover, the Obama administration made the startling claim that the Privacy Act does not apply to the White House. The Obama White House believes it can violate the privacy rights of American citizens without any legal consequences or accountability," the report said.

President Obama boldly proclaimed that 'transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,' but his administration is addicted to secrecy, stonewalling far too many of Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act requests and is refusing to make public White House visitor logs as federal law requires," the organization said.

The White House did not respond to a WND e-mail request for comment.

Judicial Watch also cited efforts by the Obama administration to use the National Endowment of the Arts, as well as the agency that runs the AmeriCorps program, as "propaganda machines" and use tax dollars to persuade "artists" to promote the Obama agenda.

Further, he's installed a long list of "czars" in the government.

"Too many of these individuals are leftist radicals who answer to no one but the president. And too many of the czars are not subject to Senate confirmation (which raises serious constitutional questions)," the report said.

"Under the president's bailout schemes, the federal government continues to appropriate or control – through fiat and threats – large sectors of the private economy, prompting conservative columnist George Will to write: 'The administration's central activity – the political allocation of wealth and opportunity – is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.'"

"Government-run healthcare and car companies, White House coercion, uninvestigated ACORN corruption, debasing his office to help Chicago cronies, attacks on conservative media and the private sector, unprecedented and dangerous new rights for terrorists, perks for campaign donors – this is Obama's 'ethics' record – and we haven't even gotten through the first year of his presidency," Judicial Watch said.

Chris Farrell, the chief of research for the organization, told WND the list is not just about wrongdoing – whether the actions are immoral, illegal or just fattening.

These are issues dealing with an abuse of office, or the abuse of the public trust, he said.

He said the Top Ten list is listed on the Judicial Watch website in alphabetical order because it is not intended to represent that one case among the "Top 10" would be worse than others.

"What they've done has broad repercussions," he said.

According to the report others on the list are:

  • Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who also was on the list last year for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for allegedly accepting preferential treatment for himself. In 2009, the report said, the scandals kept coming. He faced an ethics complaint this year for undervaluing a property he owns in Ireland on his federal disclosure forms.

  • Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who might be considered one of the year's worst offenders for admitting to an extramarital affair with the wife of one of his staff members, who then allegedly obtained special favors from him in exchange for his silence. "It looks as if Ensign misused his public office (and taxpayer resources) to cover up his sexual shenanigans," Judicial Watch said.

  • Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who is being investigated by Judicial Watch in connection with a $12 million TARP cash infusion into the Boston-based OneUnited Bank. He was the congressman who infamously in 2003 announced, "the two Government Sponsored Enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis." The comments came as he worked against GOP efforts to rein in the GSEs, which later created an economic tidal wave through the economy because of their financial losses.

  • Another is Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, who admitted to failing to pay $34,000 taxes he owed on his lucrative salary at the International Monetary Fund.

  • Attorney General Eric Holder also is on the list. His record includes obstructing an FBI investigation of the theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory; rejecting multiple requests for an independent counsel to investigate alleged fundraising abuses by then-Vice President Al Gore in the Clinton White House; undermining the criminal investigation of President Clinton by Kenneth Starr in the midst of the Lewinsky investigation; and planning the violent raid to seize then-six-year-old Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint in order to return him to Castro's Cuba, Judicial Watch said. He also has dropped a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party stemming from members' actions on Election Day 2008.

  • Joining the others is Illinois State Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., who was in the center of the scandal in which Blagojevich reportedly tried to sell Obama's vacant Senate seat. "According to the Chicago Sun-Times, emissaries for Jesse Jackson Jr., named 'Senate Candidate A' in the Blagojevich indictment, reportedly offered $1.5 million to Blagojevich during a fundraiser if he named Jackson Jr. to Obama's seat."

  • Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is named for her "sense of entitlement," which is "at the heart of the corruption problem in Washington," Judicial Watch said. "Politicians believe laws and rules (even the U.S. Constitution) apply to the rest of us but not to them. Case in point: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her excessive and boorish demands for military travel. Judicial Watch obtained documents from the Pentagon in 2008 that suggest Pelosi has been treating the Air Force like her own personal airline."

  • Also, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who "made headlines in 2009 for all the wrong reasons." Judicial Watch said Murtha is under investigation for his relationship with the now-defunct defense lobbyist PMA Group. That was founded by a former Murtha associate and has been his largest campaign contributor.

  • Also, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-New York, who has been unable to explain how he forgot to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income, or how his congressional office was able to raise funds for his private Rangel Center by reportedly swapping a tax loophole for donations. Further, he's accused of making financial donations to other members of Congress who are assigned to investigate his actions.
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