Commentary:
By Raoul Lowery Contreras
Is it politics that is dirty, corrupt and dishonest, or is it people who ply the world’s second oldest profession as politicians that are dirty, corrupt and dishonest?
California Democratic State Senators Ron Calderon, Leland Yee and Rod Wright have been suspended until their criminal charges are resolved. Despite being unable to function as Senators they will continue to receive $95,291 annual salaries.
Is this a purely Democrat problem? Sure. At least one California Republican officeholder is doing his best to emulate these corrupt Democrat officeholders charged with serious felony crimes. The difference is, he has been charged and convicted and is on criminal probation while he is a sitting state legislator and, here is the insult, he is running for Governor of California. His name is State Assembly member Tim Donnelly.
State Senator Ron Calderon has been charged with over three dozen felonies for stuffing his pockets with illegal cash and campaign contributions.
State Senator Rod Wright has been convicted of perjury in claiming an address as his official residence while actually living outside his district. That is, he has been convicted and is awaiting sentencing.
State Senator Leland Yee, who ran for Mayor of San Francisco, is charged with conspiring with a Chinese gang leader (“Shrimp Boy”) to bring in illegal weapons from the Philippines to sell American gangs.
This is truly a multi-diverse, multi-culltural group of crooks. One Mexican American, one Black American, one Asian American and, now, California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, a Georgia-born, Michigan-raised quintessential White man becomes part of the dirtiest group of elected officials California has seen in more than half-a-century.
Donnelly first hit the news by showing up at the Arizona/Mexican border with armed “vigilantes” as part of the California Minutemen, pistol in his holster to guard the border from wannabe busboys and gardeners. He was a follower of Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist who has been run out of his own organization.
Donnelly returned to his San Bernardino mountain community and ran for the State Assembly on an anti-illegal immigrant and anti-illegal Mexican platform. He isn’t a bigot, he says, because he has a Filipina-American wife, but that doesn’t legitimatize his anti-Mexican efforts such as trying to reverse a state law that allows children of illegal aliens who have lived in California through their high school graduation to be eligible for public college financing.
It should be noted Donnelly is feeding at the public trough for he makes $95,000-a-year, more money now as an Assembly member than he has ever made in his life. We are paying him to run for governor.
Nonetheless, he is running for governor of California. He is a product of and chief Tea Party politician in California. Tea Partiers are crazy about him despite his mile-wide, inch deep political platform that is laughable at best. The proof is that despite the emotional support from this small group of people, they don’t have any money and he is unable to raise any real money. At last count he had $11,000 in campaign funds, enough to buy six thirty minute commercials on a Low Power Spanish-language television station in Los Angeles.
Where Donnelly joins up with his fellow legislators convicted or charged with felonies in the State Senate his distinction is that he will be the only one on criminal probation for illegally taking a loaded pistol in his briefcase into an airport; and, for criminally trying to take it aboard an airliner, both federal and state crimes. He is serving three years probation, paid a $2500 fine and is prohibited from using or possessing a firearm not registered to him.
He plea bargained the charges down from felonies (by not contesting the charges, nolo contendre, treated by the court as guilty) and he was not charged with serious felonies of lying to authorities. He lied about (a) forgetting the loaded weapon was in his briefcase, (b) that he had a concealed weapon permit and (c) that the gun was his. The gun is not registered to Donnelly; he cannot or will not tell us where he purchased it and can’t explain why it is still registered to an elderly lady who claims she hasn’t seen it for years. Did Donnelly illegally buy a stolen gun?
Now comes, a story that debunks Donnelly’s assertion that he has never been convicted of any other crime. He was arrested and charged in Michigan while a University freshman with burglary in what Donnelly calls a “drunken college prank.” He also admits that he was treated as a “minor” and only did community service.
One corrupt crooked State Senator waiting to be sentenced to prison, another fighting the federal government over 40 bribery and conspiracy charges, another charged with illegal weapons charges and a colleague of theirs serving criminal probation for illegal gun possession who is calling radio talk shows to explain why he had to do community service for breaking into a fellow student’s dorm room and stealing a stereo, while “drunk” he says.
All this and the activist mainstream media is frothing at the mouth that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s assistants shut down a couple of traffic lanes.
Contreras formerly wrote for the New America News Service of the New York Times Syndicate