{"id":115110,"date":"2014-04-28T19:56:40","date_gmt":"2014-04-28T19:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=115110"},"modified":"2014-04-28T19:56:40","modified_gmt":"2014-04-28T19:56:40","slug":"new-probe-confirms-harry-reids-long-history-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/new-probe-confirms-harry-reids-long-history-corruption\/","title":{"rendered":"New Probe Confirms Harry Reid\u2019s Long History of Corruption"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Adelmann<\/strong><\/p>\n

The seemingly Teflon senior senator from Nevada, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, has been forced to respond to charges made in a\u00a0two-part investigation<\/a>\u00a0into his dealings published last week at RealClearPolitics. The initial investigation looked into multiple claims of corruption, and responses from Reid\u2019s PR people failed to deflect them.<\/p>\n

Adam O\u2019Neal led off with a relatively innocuous charge that in 2012 and 2013 Reid\u2019s campaign staff spent some $30,000 buying appreciation gifts for his donors from a store owned by his granddaughter. It was a small thing: The amount spent by his staff was seven times more than the staff spent elsewhere, combined. In the past such charges would have met apathy from Reid, who simply ignored them and passed them off. Reid was willing to let time go by and memories fade. Not this time, apparently \u2013 Reid\u2019s staff said that to avoid the appearance of impropriety, Reid would pay those bills out of his own pocket. He tried to ingratiate himself at the time, saying that he was glad he could afford to write the check.<\/p>\n

He certainly could.<\/p>\n

Arriving in Washington in 1983 as Nevada\u2019s only representative, Reid declared a net worth of about $1 million. At the latest count, he estimates his net worth at 10 times that, if not more. Since much of his portfolio is in real estate, estimates may vary with circumstances and timing and political maneuvering.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neal pointed out that over the years \u2013 especially since Reid became Senate majority leader in 2007 \u2013 he has built \u201ca dizzying network of mutually beneficial political, personal and business alliances. These associations benefit Reid, his family, his close friends and, very often, the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reid has a veritable coterie of investigative journalists making a good living following him around and writing about that network. One of them is David Damore, a professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, who put it more succinctly: “I\u2019m going to put this politely. Their personal interests, they seem to see, represent the common good. They don\u2019t differentiate those two.”<\/p>\n

Translation: What\u2019s good for Reid is (or may be) good for Nevada. What\u2019s good for Reid is always good for his donors and his family.<\/p>\n

In part one of his report, O\u2019Neal asked rhetorically:<\/p>\n

How did Reid manage to grow his net worth so significantly while raising a large family, on a public official\u2019s salary and incurring the expenses associated with maintaining two residences on opposite sides of the country?<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neal\u2019s answers illustrate just how much influence Nevada\u2019s senior senator has among his donors, who are only too happy to invite him to participate in their ventures. For example, in 1998, Reid joined partner Jay Brown in investing $400,000 in some dirt located on the outskirts of Las Vegas. By 2004, the property just happened to be rezoned for a shopping center and Reid cashed in for $1.1 million.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Adelmann The seemingly Teflon senior senator from Nevada, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, has been forced to respond to charges made in a\u00a0two-part investigation\u00a0into his dealings published last week at RealClearPolitics. The initial investigation looked into multiple claims of corruption, and responses from Reid\u2019s PR people failed to deflect them. Adam O\u2019Neal led off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":115111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-115110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}