Waldo Jaquith Kicks Butt Good(e)!
By: Lowell
Published On: 6/28/2005 1:00:00 AM
Waldo Jaquith is doing some amazing work over at his blog. The gist of the story is this:
It?s been alleged by top executives at MZM that employees were forced ? under penalty of being fired ? to donate to [Republican Congressman Virgil] Goode, with Goode?s knowledge of this coercion, with the resulting torrent of money (over $100,000 to Goode) being enough to cause MZM president Mitchell Wade to brag that he ?owns? Virgil Goode.
[...]
To recap: 35 MZM employees had never given any money to a federal candidate before. 37 MZM employees simultaneously contributed to Rep. Virgil Goode on two occasions, in March of 2003 and March of 2005. None of these MZM employees have given any money to any other candidate in the past two years, other than a few who gave money to MZM?s other darling, Katherine Harris. 10 of them also gave to MZM?s PAC.
And we?re to believe that MZM did not coerce their employees to support Virgil Goode? Between the claims of MZM employees that they were forced into and the empirical evidence, nobody can seriously claim that these employees contributed to Virgil Goode of their own free will.
I checked Open Secrets.org, and found that out of Goode's $57,625 in total donations during the current election cycle, $38,625 (67%) came from MZM. Wow, who knew that MZM was such a hotbed of support for Virgil Goode? But, apparently, it is. So what did MZM get for this money, my cynical side wants to know? A great, deal apparently. According to this diary on DailyKos:
On 11/3/2003, the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission announced that, thanks to the intervention of one Rep. Virgil Goode, it was happy to provide $250,000 to be provided to a certain company called MZM as an incentive for MZM to locate a facility in Martinsville, Virginia. In addition, $250,000 in incentives would be provided from the Governor's Opportunity Fund.
That's $500,000 total. But wait, there's more money for MZM involved. According to a 11/3/03 press release from the Governor's office, MZM also received incentives via a $127,000 grant from the Martinsville-Henry County Chamber's Partnership for Economic Growth. This press release also notes that "U.S. Congressman Virgil H. Goode, Jr. was instrumental in securing this project for Virginia."
That's $627,000 received by MZM --that we know of-- in this sweetheart deal.
This is serious stuff, and Waldo Jaquith has gathered a heap of serious evidence. In a court of law, I believe that this would now be known as a slam-dunk case. The only questions, it seems to me, are a) how serious an ethics violation Goode has committed here; b) what the penalty will be; and c) how many other people committed such violations?
According to today's Washington Post, just about everybody involved in this mushrooming scandal -- Virgil Goode, MZM founder Mitchell J. Wade, anyone at MZM (phone calls by the Post were not returned) -- is declining comment. Intriguingly, so is the White House. Could this just possibly have something to do with the fact that MZM was a key contractor in Iraq, receiving $5 million from the White House-created Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance? Hmmm....
Comments
If you believe in th (Charlene Hall - 4/4/2006 11:27:08 PM)
If you believe in the death penalty in any single case, you are pro-death penalty. It seems that you will step away from your distorted statistics for a moment because you happen to know the details on this particular case of BTK, and they are gruesome enough for you to support the appropriate punishment for one of this country's worst criminals. You should consider that the jury on every case that results in a death sentence "knows the details" on that particular case. They are there, doing their duty on behalf of you and me, and listening to all of the admissable evidence and making a very difficult decision. Their efforts are not clouded with ancient counts of people executed long before the current criminal justice system was in place. They consider each specific case and determine the appropriate punishment in that case. You do a disservice to those people when you adopt this middle of the fence position - somehow believing the rhetoric that they surely must have made their decisions based on race rather than on the facts of the crime before them. In almost every case, I suggest that a juror would tell you that the individual that they sentenced to death was also evil and human filth. If you plan to be Governor of Virginia, you will have to go much further into this issue than these highly skewed statistics that don't for a moment consider the human lives that were taken from us, the murder victim survivors that must go on without their loved ones, the loss to society that we all suffer each time someone is murdered in our country. Please visit our site for some of the case histories that the juries were faced with when doing their civic duty. You may begin to understand that they made appropriate decisions based on the individual case before them, as it should be. In particular, please visit the memorial page for the victims in the case that got me involved in this issue.
http://www.murdervictims.com/Voices/jeneliz.html
Charlene Hall
My position is that (Nicholas Christie - 4/4/2006 11:27:09 PM)
My position is that the death penalty should be instated in every state. You just look at the Ward Weaver case where he raped and killed two young teenagers (Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis) then look me straight in the eyes and tell me that he doesn't deserve the death penalty. This case hits home to me because I live about 30 miles from where this happened and I visited the site around his house. You could feel the evil just standing out in front of it. These sick people have no remorse and don't deserve to live. Ward Weaver got 2 life sentences but he is still living while those two girls aren't and they never had a chance to do anything in their lives.
Yep, he is a poster (Mimi Schaeffer - 4/4/2006 11:27:09 PM)
Yep, he is a poster boy for the worst of the worst.
Unfortunately for many on death row in Virginia, had they committed their crime in another jurisdiction, never mind another state, they would not be on death row.
Sorry, I misundersto (Charlene - 4/4/2006 11:27:09 PM)
Sorry, I misunderstood and thought the commentary was made by the candidate. I don't think I suggested that you were wrong, just seemingly under-educated on the issue. A majority of Americans support the death penalty according to recent polls. As I said, if you favor it for any single case, you support the punishment.