Chris Dodd; culture of corruption

Ironman didn't blog last week. He and the family spent a week at a $90/night motel along I-4 in suburban Orlando.

Actually, it was like the Obama Administration. I spent the week in an expensive fantasy designed to entertain children.

Well, as I've pointed out before, my senator, Chris Dodd, spends his vacations  in much more fashionable locales  (Hey, why should he have spent August 2008 near Wall Street; nothing much was going on there about then, was there?) 

This drew the attention of the Hartford Courant's Kevin Rennie. All I can say is OUCH!

Where to begin?  A "close friend" who paid $11 million to the SEC to settle insider trading charges is the business partner of  Dodd's former co-owner of his vacation spread in Ireland. 

And Dodd appears to have bought out this co-owner at a price well below fair market value for Irish vacation property. Purchased with a mortgage taken out at 3.85%/year.

And Dodd lobbied former President Clinton to get one of the "midnight pardons"  for his apparent sugar daddy, insider trader Edward Downe. Dodd's argument  in favor of this extraordinary leniency:   "he speaks to Downe nearly every day." 

Hmm. isn;t Dodd Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee?  

You can't make this stuff up. Seriously. You just can't