Gepahardt and reid

Pigs going to market

Harry Reid's million-dollar real estate imbroglio reminded me of another very under reported real estate transaction, by another Democrat big shot - Rep. Richard Gephardt.  His ethics committee hearings were alive during the same period that Newt Gingrich was being pilloried for, what turned out to be, nothing. Not only was Gephardt's transgression barely reported, it's almost impossible to find any mention of it now. I spent the better part of three hours looking for it, my original posts on it having been deleted by FreeRepublic. This is the single article I could find. Ethics Absentees The networks continue to ignore ethics complaints against Democratic leaders of the House of Representatives. In early February, the networks saw no need for a story when Rep. Jennifer Dunn (R-Wash.) filed a complaint with the House ethics committee suggesting House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt may have evaded capital gains taxes on a land swap. The February 23 Washington Times reported that Gephardt dumped his share of ownership of the vacation home on North Carolina's Outer Banks. George Archibald wrote that Gephardt, who is an avid opponent of capital gains tax cuts, "claimed for financial-disclosure purposes that his condo was not a rental property the year he sold it for $183,000. He simultaneously claimed it as a rental property for tax purposes to escape capital gains taxes of about $17,000 in 1991." Archibald struck again with a March 6 piece in the Washington Times noting that Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) formally requested the Justice Department undertake a criminal probe of Gephardt's tax situation. Neither story piqued the networks' curiosity. On March 6, the conservative Landmark Legal Foundation filed a complaint against House MinorityWhip David Bonior, the ethical scold of Speaker Newt Gingrich, for misusing his congressional staff to write a 1984 book on government time. The networks didn't cover that either. - From the March 1996 MediaWatch The Virginia district attorney declined to prosecute Geppy, but I was determined to find out the result of his Ethics hearing, there being not a word reported. I spent hours on one of those off-Broadway telnet things that carried government records back then (circa 1997). I finally contacted a woman who had access to House records I was looking for, but she informed me the Gephardt matter was sealed. She did, however, suggest that I contact Rep. Dunn directly. I did. What I got back was a cursory response from Dunn's office, but it did include this bit of information. The Ethics committee had reprimanded (or rebuked?) Rep Gephardt, for "lying to the committee on three separate occasions" about his transaction. If you didn't read the post on FreeRepublic, you didn't know about that until right now. Inconvenient truths about democrats were just not reported then, as now, unless they somehow gained "traction." I don't think Mr. Reid will be quite so lucky today, what with his "culture of corruption," charge out there - a big fat yellow target for anyone to shoot at. I'll do my small part to make sure he doesn't. Did I mention he took bribes from Abramoff too? He did.