How “street” is RNC chairman Michael Steele, leader of America’s Republican Party? His new fund-raising ace who got fired & fined for blowing through nearly $70,000 from DC’s pro-baseball lobby also got busted for inappropriately dropping money at night clubs. These Republicans are regular Lindsey Lohans!
TPM Muckraker’s Justin Elliot reports:
The man recently hired by Michael Steele as a Republican National Committee fundraiser was accused in 2005 by a political action committee he chaired of improperly using PAC money on personal nightclub bills, according to a copy of the complaint filed against him.
Neil Alpert allegedly used PAC money for unauthorized personal expenses including “cash, C.V.S. drug store, gasoline, various meals, and night club bills” …. “The money slowly disappeared and we had no idea where it was going,” Al Madison, a former official at the PAC, told TPMmuckraker in a phone interview today. “And he was very very circumspect. You never got a straight answer from him.”
This guy is gonna go far! We figure he’ll be named new RNC chief once Steele is finally fired later this week. [TPM Muckraker]
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Why would you do this to Trig?
this mikey steele stuff is fun and all, but still no mention of the whole wikileaks civilian snuff film fiasco?
even the 24 Hour Tiger Channel is interrupting their regularly scheduled programming to begrudgingly talk about it now
Good old Republican values; it appears many saw the Palins’ grifting of the RNC and, instead of being pissed at the theft/waste, decided “I’ve gotta get in on that action.”
Yeah, Ken, is the Wikileaks thing too deathy?
We political scientists are in something of a pickle when it comes to classifying the type of rule currently being exercised by the RNC’s Baby Doc Steele.
Initially, the consensus was to go with an old classic:
Kleptocracy.
But there’s growing support for creating a new branch on the classification tree that uniquely describes a pattern of widespread embezzlement, staggering incompetence, chaotic rent-seeking and ‘Negro-ness.’ It’s called:
Sambocracy.
I’m guessing the CVS drug store purchases had something to do with this incident.
The tags pretty much incorporate any and all commentary from me; short of
“ginormous fucking hypocrites”.
[re=549267]jfruh[/re]:
Exactly. Plan B, indeed.
Sure, Michael Steele is “street.” Wall Street’s a street, isn’t it?
Wow – a political fundraiser wasting donations on hooker, blow and CVS drug store.
How surprising. One almost _never_ hears of that kind of thing going on in DC.
I’ll admit I’m ignorant of the RNC power structure so I will put this question out. Who can fire Steele? Do they just harass him until he resigns? Does he have a freak accident? Inquiring minds need to know.
Everybody sing!
How do you solve a problem like Steele?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Steele?
A flibbertijibbet! A will-o’-the wisp! A clown!
[re=549260]JMP[/re]: The Republican affinity for graft is far deeper than that – like Lincoln’s cabinet deep. To this day, it is the mark of future GOP stars to publicly speak about financial restraint while robbing hotel minibars blind and charging personal stuff to everyone else (Marco Rubio, Charlie Crist, Snowbilly, etc.) Some, like Newt and Huckabee, at least restrain themselves to profiting off bulk book sales and “commentator” gigs . . . and hence can never win the biggest prizes.
I can see this all being turned around into a plus for the GOP – just tell everyone to start referring to themselves as the Republican PAR-TEEE!!
[re=549275]Berkeley Bear[/re]: NEVAR 4GET TEAPOT DOME!!!1
[re=549271]Larry McAwful[/re]: I was kind of surprised when I moved to NYC to find that it WAS an actual street. But it IS!
[re=549274]Monsieur Grumpe[/re]: Apparently a supermajority of the actual committee members (something over 100 total members but I’m not sure of the exact number) have to vote to pull the plug – but since they voted him in, and any leadership turmoil is seen as bad for fundraising (although how could it get worse than its been is a good question), the story I keep hearing is they’ll keep him around until they can blame not taking back Congress on him. Which was proabably the master plan all around, in the RNC world where any black person = Obama, so showing Steele is an incompetent twit proves Obama is too.
[re=549278]AnnieGetYourFun[/re]: I used to work there, too! Most financial services companies of course have an office there. The one I worked for did, but the office I worked in was not on Wall Street. However, when I taught ESL in New York, the school was on Wall Street, so go figure.
[re=549277]President Beeblebrox[/re]: I was thinking of Salmon Chase’s war profiteering at Treasury, but Grant’s people were a bunch of winners, too.
Word on the street: the job title is “party fun-raiser,” eh?
Gambling trips with Bill Bennett. Thai tourism trips with priests and Mark Foley. Airport tours with Larry Craig. Could work.
[re=549280]Berkeley Bear[/re]: I once had a black UPS driver tell me that poor people were lazy. He was a republican (and I was too at the time). There must be some sort of cognitive dissonance here.
[re=549275]Berkeley Bear[/re]: Yeah, part of me suspects that Steele and his people are no more corrupt than previous RNC heads; he’s just worse at avoiding getting caught. That, and some of the other high-up Reps don’t like him (gee, looking at him I wonder why?) and so have been leaking this shit.
[re=549274]Monsieur Grumpe[/re]: With accompaniment by Neil Alpert and the Doyouwanna (get some) Ass.
This RNC guy, his real name is Neil Alpert? Because here in NYC there’s a low budget public access T & A show called Neil Alpert’s Strip Club.
http://www.nealalpertvideo.com/
Somebody please tell Steele that hookers and blow are the answers to his problems.
Don’t these bozo’s know when youz payz in cash?
[re=549262]AnnieGetYourFun[/re]: You guys tell me: Is it fun or necessary to post video of people getting murdered — video that you’ve all seen on other blogs you read — on a political humor site? Did the fact that there’s some *web video* suddenly convince you people that the American kids firing guns and dropping bombs in our various imperial wars are killing civilians, for fun? Did you all think the Troops were handing out candy and flowers?
My god, the commenters here whine and cry every fucking day when we simply post text links to the day’s dreary news.
All this is in keeping with the Republican political theory of what you do when given office.
“Let’s trash this place before everyone finds out what losers we are!”
I do not think “Circumspect” means what Al Madison thinks it means.
[re=549295]Ken Layne[/re]: Thank you thank you thank you, God I cannot stand the kneejerk high moral dudgeon, clothing-rending and professions of horror over that video. As you say, what the fuck do people think has been going on for 8 years. It takes lots and lots and lots of shooting, indiscrimate shooting, to kill 300,000 or 400,000 Iraqis, for Christ’s sake. (See what I did there, with that ambiguously ironic “Christ’s sake?”)
Since many people don’t bother to distinguish Republicans from Democrats, Steele and the RNC scandals are all part of the bigger plan: Washington is a mess — see what happens when the darkies take over.
[re=549280]Berkeley Bear[/re]:
I prefer the freak accident approach. But thanks for info.
How dare Wonkette not offer me another opportunity to not watch a video of people being murdered?
[re=549295]Ken Layne[/re]: Nope, no need for coverage of that. What part of we shoot an “astonishingly high number” of innocent people (Petreus’ words) didn’t everyone already get?
[re=549295]Ken Layne[/re]: If all the other blogs are running it, you are obliged to run it too, just because. Besides, there might be some internet Patton out there who has not yet had the opportunity to point out that at 3:45 in the video there’s a shadowy thing that might be an RPG or maybe just an AK-47, so therefore the rules of engagement made it OK to kill everyone in Iraq forever.
There’s just not much funny to be said about this awful thing.
[re=549318]Dean Booth[/re]: It won’t be long until Fox News starts identifying Steele as a Democrat anyway…
[re=549334]DoktorZoom[/re]: Where is the Sonic Boom?
[re=549295]Ken Layne[/re]: All this time I’ve been getting all of my news from Wonkette and now I find out it’s a humor site!
[re=549295]Ken Layne[/re]: Right on, Ken. The US has so much to answer for. I believe there is a certain mind set that an all-volunteer army is going to take, and we are seeing the ugly outcome of that.
[re=549295]Ken Layne[/re]: With Prommie on this one. Jesus K on a cracker, it turns what’s left of my brain to oatmeal even momentarily contemplating this latest horror, and makes me wonder if my only sane option left is to revert to stuffing peas up my nose and threatening to hold my breath until I die unless we get our military the hell outta there.
Then I remember that didn’t work when I was 3 years old, either.
Maybe I am the only old here, but this shit is small time for Repubs. Check out Nixon’s first VP, Agnew, and his no contest plea to tax evasion scandal. Of course back then, Republicans were prosecuted for crimes unlike the current ecosystem in Washington. After Agnew quit his job as VP or USA (eat your heart out Sarah!), Ford was appointed as VP, he eventually got to be POTUS, pardoned Nixon and then got to appoint a Rockefeller as VP. The Repubs have a long history of just being cold callous abusers of power and trust.
[re=549341]Prommie[/re]: You are the first to call me out on my sekrit idenitty. Fortunately, only nerds read comic books, and I’d never encounter nerds on the Wonkette.
[re=549318]Dean Booth[/re]: Well there is something somewhere pushing a false equivalency between Obama and Tiger Woods. I mean, on a simple human level, could they BE anymore different? They have NOTHING in common but color. Which is all it takes, for some people.
[re=549282]Berkeley Bear[/re]: Teapot Dome was Warren G. Harding. They should provide scorecards.
Pssst. It’s Bilbo what has the Ring. http://tinyurl.com/yd4ao5u
(Neil is the one the right. Again, Neil is the one the right. Pass it on.)
Mike “Bunza” Steele’s street? The Lost Highway.
[re=549342]Johnny Zhivago[/re]: Now you tell me! Since Wonkette was my only source of news I thought things were pretty bad but at least all of it was funny.
Now I find out everything is even worse and most of it isn’t funny.
[re=549295]Ken Layne[/re]: You’re such a dick, Layne. Asking why the vidoes haven’t been mentioned on Wonkette is hardly the same as begging for the videos to be reposted, or feigning shock over the content of said vidoes. We knew this was going on – I’m more interested seeing how Wonkette covers the media response. The fact that it leaked at all is fascinating.
[re=549295]Ken Layne[/re]: Just my humble opinion, but I think that the Wonkettes, being the sharp informed persons they are, already know about the “wikileaks thing,” so, no, leave it alone.
OTOH, Wolf Blitzer and the whole idiotic crew at CNN need to be bitch slapped at every opportunity. In fact, the whole “news” community needs a comeuppance.
Tough call.
What a craptastic week it’s been for coal! Coal mine goes kablooie in WV, coal mine gets flooded in China, ship carrying coal to China runs aground and kills a coral reef forever. Maybe da shrub was right, maybe nukular is the way to go.
Man, those GOP’ers are bold! I nevar buy my condoms at CVS because those old women behind the counter always be talking. Go to the mini-mart, or just ask the hotel concierge. Much more discreet, no receipts…
Michael Steele wanted to make the Republicans more street.
Instead, he just made them more hood rich.
[re=549267]jfruh[/re]: I think a printout of that exchange should be posted on every great achievement of humanity. The Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, next to the Constitution and the Magna Carta, etc. It should be read aloud before every episode of NOVA.
It is the simplest counterargument to approving of mankind in any way.
[re=549256]tombones[/re]: Steele’s going to take over all Wood’s girlfriends!
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