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My grandpa owned a Chevrolet dealership & I worked there. My mom owned a Hallmark store & I worked there. if my Dad was a senator I would hope I could work for him....
if I was qualified for the job
if I was paid a commensurate salary with others in the same position
I don't see a real problem with that. But a lot of the shit these politicians do is way beyond just getting their son or daughter a decent job because they are qualified to do it. They abuse their positions. but since when is that something new?“Great losses often bring only a numb shock. To truly plunge a victim into misery, you must overwhelm him with many small sufferings.”Comment
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you couldn't. they actually have rules against employing family members in official offices. that's why so many work for the campaigns. and, i agree with you about the, "it's not inherently a big deal."
first of all, there's not enough context. did ron paul pay 6 family members a total of $300,000 over a 10 year period, or over 2 months? huge difference. did he pay his brother a large sum of $100,000 for a 4 months of advice, although similar advisers charge $400,000? i need the context.Comment
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LOL...it would have been had he owned it recently. Kinda anyways.. But no, he sold it in 1989 sadly. I miss that place. In the back lot there were 2 electric golf carts. 1 for shuttling customers and 1 for the mechanics to get to the parts dept & stuff. Anyways, the back lot was closed & abandoned on Sundays. the dealership was right next to the mall. Me & friends would ride bikes to the mall & always stop at the dealership, go in back & race the golf carts.
Until the gas pedal stuck one time & I crashed into a camaro that was in a bay for repairs. Grandpa tanned my fucking hide.
Totally worth it though.
“Great losses often bring only a numb shock. To truly plunge a victim into misery, you must overwhelm him with many small sufferings.”Comment
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This is an article on the study, the best thing to do is to get the actual study from this "watchdog" group for context...Comment
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I did... that's where I pulled the data for Ron Paul on. The study has citations, for some claims, not for others, but the citations themselves are fairly vague on the details we would want. As far as the study goes, all they can say is "Congressmen hire family members to work on their campaigns" (and from what I can tell can't even say whether it's inappropriate or not)Comment
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The NY Times’ bizarre framing of Ron Paul as the poster boy of Congressional nepotism
By PATRICK MCEWEN | Published: MARCH 24, 2012
In the NY Times editorial board’s editorial on a Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics report on members of the House of Representatives paying their families starts off with a number of, frankly, bizarre comments and insinuations about Ron Paul and the family members that have received some form of compensation from any of his political activities.
First off, for a document that contains a wide variety of allegations of nepotism:
Eighty-two lawmakers paid family members through their office payrolls, campaign committees and political-action funds, according to the 346-page report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, an independent watchdog group in Washington. Forty-four had relatives who lobbied or worked in government affairs. Twenty members dipped into their campaign coffers to help a relative who ran for office, and 14 made sure they charged interest when they were reimbursed for personal loans that they advanced to their own campaign committees.
The decision to make the Paul the only member of the House mentioned by name is curious considering that he was only included in the list for hiring family members to work for his campaign and political-action fund.
The obvious rationale is that he paid the most family members to work for his campaign with 6 on various payrolls. However, the total of $300,000 that he paid those 6 family members was only the forth most. When compared to some of the members of the House who paid their wives or girlfriends over half a million dollars to work for their campaigns, Ron Paul’s campaigns hardly seem like the stunning examples of ethics violations and personal enrichment.
In fact, on the list of members of the House who paid the most to family members, Ron Paul’s expenses are the only ones that look reasonable:
Top five representatives paying the most money in salaries or fees to family members:
• Rep. Alcee Hastings, (D-FL) paid his girlfriend $622,574.
• Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) paid his wife $512,293.
• Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) paid her daughter and grandson a combined $495,650.
• Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) paid six different relatives a combined $304,599.
• Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) paid his wife $238,438.
More importantly, the NY Times editorial board did’t mention a couple of very important qualifiers on the $300,000 number they cited. First that Ron Paul was the only current member of the House to run for President in 2008 and raised close to $30 million dollars in that effort. By comparison, in the most expensive House race of 2010, Michele Bachmann only spent $8.7 million.
He also has a large number of family members who could possibly work for the campaign among his siblings, 5 children and 18 grandchildren plus their spouses and immediate family members. Considering that they included his daughter’s mother-in-law, the total number of eligible family members that they would have included probably numbers well over 100 by the time you include the immediate family members of any of Ron Paul’s descendant’s spouses.
They also failed to include the very important qualification that all of them were paid quite reasonable salaries with none making more than $60,000 dollars from any single campaign. For a full time job
In context, the fact that Ron Paul paid 6 family members about $300,000 out of the tens of millions spent by his campaigns seems very reasonable. If those decisions were about funneling money to his family, spending 1% of campaign expenses doing so would be a pretty terrible job.
The opening sentence of the editorial frames the revelation about Ron Paul’s campaign very curiously as well:
Representative Ron Paul’s signature libertarianism takes on a whole new meaning with the disclosure that he has paid more than $300,000 in salaries and fees…
I’m not sure if I just don’t understand what they are trying to imply about libertarianism or if they just don’t understand libertarianism, but either way the way they turn it into an issue of libertarianism strikes me as rather bizarre.
Perhaps they are implying that Ron Paul is using government for personal financial gain, but I don’t think any of the evidence indicates he was doing that. For how many campaign appearance on his behalf his wife makes, they could easily justify paying her a salary, but she didn’t receive one. More importantly, opposing government for personal gain at the expense of others is in many ways the essence of modern libertarianism in America. Perhaps they were trying to imply he is a hypocrite?
In fact, I would argue that because all of the money that his campaign paid to his family members proves why libertarianism is such a great political philosophy. By some standards, people might consider such an action unethical. However, because all of the contributions that ultimately funded those salaries were completely voluntary. If someone is paying family members through tax dollars, it’s an important issue to discuss because that money is being taken from all of us. In this case, all money that exchanges hands is done so voluntarily.
If I choose to give Ron Paul money that he then turns around and gives to his daughter, I’m not really sure why the NY Times editorial board cares. In a system of voluntary transactions, there is no need to enforce some kind of universal ethical standard. I can choose to participate in transactions with people who live up to my ethical expectations and if the Times editorial board disagrees, they can choose to give money to those people. When it comes to taxpayer financed expenditures, no such system is possible.Comment
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LMAO!!
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