Looking forward to Reid’s next campaign

“Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.”—Benjamin Franklin

As of this writing, the mid-term elections are just around the corner. It’s a shame that our own Sen. Harry Reid, D-NV, isn’t up for re-election. Minority floor leader Reid, is, I’m sure, anxiously waiting to see if he will get to be majority floor leader for the next two years. When last I heard of him, he was flapping his lips about the so-called “culture of corruption” being foisted upon the country by the big bad Republicans. That was until it was revealed that he’d managed to bag a cool million dollars over a land deal in Las Vegas. Oh, yes, and this was on land that he no longer owned. And did I mention that he conveniently failed to mention it in his mandated Senate financial disclosures?

According to the Washington Post: “Reid’s problems are said to have occurred due to his secretly pocketing $1.1 million from the deal on the property that he no longer owned. Reid violated Senate rules by failing to disclose the sale in his annual report and lying about his stake in his friend’s newly created company. In 2004, after local officials rezoned the area for a shopping center, the land’s value increased tremendously and was sold to developers allowing Reid to nearly triple his investment.”

Now as a capitalist myself, I fundamentally don’t much care if the man made a dollar on the deal or not. As we all recall from Reid’s last election, “Harry “Pinky” Reid grew up dirt poor in little Searchlight, the son of a hard rock miner. Pinky’s Mom took in a little extra laundry to pay the bills.” (That’s about the extent to which I recall the Senator’s cracker-barrel commercial during his re-election bid, wherein he tried to connect with the rest of the poor and downtrodden in the Silver State.)

You will perhaps forgive the sarcasm. I don’t fault the man for being born into poverty or for raising himself up by his bootstraps and getting himself elected to the U.S. Senate. What I find particularly galling is the fact that having spent all his life on the public dole, he’s managed to amass quite a chunk o’ change. According to www.opensecrets.org/politicians/pfds.asp?CID=N00009922, the Senator is estimated to be worth between $2,235,107 to $5,179,000.

That information is, perhaps, not so surprising. A 2003 Los Angeles Times article detailed all his family members making some nice change of their own, trading off the Senator’s position, to-wit: www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1718554/posts

“Reid’s sons—Rory, 40, Leif, 35, Josh, 31, and Key, 28—work for Nevada’s largest law firm, Lionel Sawyer & Collins.

“Rory Reid is a partner in the firm and was a Nevada lobbyist before his election to the Clark County Board of Commissioners in November. Leif Reid is a litigator who has represented mining and resort industry associations in Nevada.

“Key Reid was hired to open the firm’s Washington office in 2002 and help lead its federal lobbying effort with former Sen. Richard H. Bryan, D-Nev., who splits his time between the capital and Nevada.

“[Steven] Barringer, 47, and married to the senator’s daughter, Lana, is a lawyer, federal lobbyist and partner in the small Washington-based lobbying firm of McClure, Gerard and Neuenschwander.”

From Associated Press: “Reid hung up the phone when questioned about the [land] deal during an AP interview last week.” That in and of itself is a curious response from someone who has nothing to hide. Now he claims it was some “technical mistake.”

I’m guessing the Senator is going to have a hard enough time staying the Minority Leader, which, of course, brings me back to Ben Franklin.