{"id":9306,"date":"2015-05-14T14:44:50","date_gmt":"2015-05-14T14:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9306"},"modified":"2015-05-14T14:44:50","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T14:44:50","slug":"9306","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9306","title":{"rendered":"'Government ethics' takes another hit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

Government ethics has taken another punch in the chops on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

Imagine that.<\/p>\n

It turns out several members of Congress went on a junket in 2013 paid for by the government of Azerbaijan.\u00a0Four of them are from Texas: Democrats Ruben Hinojosa and Sheila Jackson Lee, and Republicans Ted Poe and Steve Stockman (who’s no longer in Congress).<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2015\/05\/13\/four-texas-members-congress-took-trip-secretly-fun\/<\/p>\n

The Azerbaijanis showered the members with gifts, wined and dined them and apparently tried to purchase some influence regarding\u00a0energy policy.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post reported: “Lawmakers and their staff members received hundreds of thousands of dollars\u2019 worth of travel expenses, silk scarves, crystal tea sets and Azerbaijani rugs valued at $2,500 to $10,000, according to the ethics report. Airfare for the lawmakers and some of their spouses cost $112,899, travel invoices show.”<\/p>\n

The host government paid for every penny of it, according to the Post.<\/p>\n

The ethics investigation is the most extensive since the congressional ethics office was created in response to the Jack Abramoff scandal involving payoffs, bribes and assorted influence-peddling deeds perpetrated by the one-time wheeler-dealer.<\/p>\n

Most damning of all is that it was done under the radar. The Post reported: “The State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, known as SOCAR, allegedly funneled $750,000 through nonprofit corporations based in the United States to conceal the source of the funding for the conference in the former Soviet nation, according to the 70-page report by the\u00a0Office of Congressional Ethics<\/a>, an independent investigative arm of the House.”<\/p>\n

Gosh. If it was OK to do this, why do you suppose the Azerbaijanis sought to hide it from congressional ethics investigators? Hey, maybe it was illegal. Right?<\/p>\n

Here’s the question: Did the members of Congress who took the money know<\/em> it was being hidden?<\/p>\n

We have laws that prohibit foreign governments from trying to influence U.S. foreign policy. There well might have been more a few of those laws broken here, not to mention serious violations of congressional ethics rules.<\/p>\n

Don’t these people get it?<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Government ethics has taken another punch in the chops on Capitol Hill. Imagine that. It turns out several members of Congress went on a junket in 2013 paid for by the government of Azerbaijan.\u00a0Four of them are from Texas: Democrats Ruben Hinojosa and Sheila Jackson Lee, and Republicans Ted Poe and Steve Stockman (who’s no … Continue reading 'Government ethics' takes another hit<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[515,1591,1976,2384,3380,4728,5191],"class_list":["post-9306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-azerbaijan","tag-energy-policy","tag-government-ethics","tag-jack-abramoff","tag-office-of-congressional-ethics","tag-texas-tribune","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}