GOP ramps up attacks on SEC over porn surfing

[formercia]

Source: Yahoo News



By DANIEL WAGNER, AP Business Writer Daniel Wagner, Ap Business Writer – Fri Apr 23, 4:10 am ET

WASHINGTON – Republicans are stepping up their criticism of the Securities and Exchange Commission following reports that senior agency staffers spent hours surfing pornographic websites on government-issued computers while they were supposed to be policing the nation's financial system.

California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said it was "disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at porn than taking action to help stave off the events that put our nation's economy on the brink of collapse."

He said in a statement Thursday that SEC officials "were preoccupied with other distractions" when they should have been overseeing the growing problems in the financial system.

The SEC's inspector general conducted 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100423/ap_on_bi_ge/us_sec_porn

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Do they really want to go there? ....and who was at the helm of the SEC at the time? A Bush Appointee.

[mucifer]

1. Is that all they got? Pathetic. I knew they would go there.

I was surprised that cnn radio top of the hour news over the past few days has been more supportive of the democratic side on the wall st. issue.

[izquierdista]

2. When the pig says the food is spoiled...

...where do you end up throwing it?

[cbdo2007]

3. BREAKING NEWS - The SEC isn't doing it's job!!! ha ha

No shit sherlock! Obama needs to completely clear cut this agency and start from scratch.

Why does it seem like the entire govt and Wall Street, etc. all just sort of had a "we can get away with anything" attitude during the Bush Admin? Oh yeah, cause he was distracting everyone with all these wars so really they could get away with anything.

[SpiralHawk]

4. Hey, aren't these SEC jerkers all Bush-Cheney Family Values appointees?

I mean, this has the stank of Republicon Family Values all over it.

[formercia]

5. You just had to ask.

:rofl:

The GOP wailing is not about truth, but about perception.

The GOP doth protest too much, Methinks.

[SpiralHawk]

7. The DEMS need to point this out. Scream out the truth

Maybe, just maybe, the corporate MSM (R) will let a peep of the truth out about this....

Republicon Hypocrites (a redundant phrase)

[Nancy Waterman]

13. Most of the porn investigation is during the Bush years

2007 and 2008 from what i have read.

[TankLV]

25. Yep - and the incidents stem from around January of 2009

Or were first discovered then - that's when the investigations that lead to this latest announcement...

You know - a few DAYS after Obama took office, and the office that is STILL staffed with bush* appointees because the repukes refuse to approve of Obama's appointees?

But don't confuse the repukes with FACTS that is is the REPUKES who were surfing porn!!!

[formercia]

27. It will take years to clean house at SEC

and the same goes for the rest of Junior's stay behind fifth-column embedded in the Federal Government.

[onenote]

28. not clear. a bunch of the cited instances took place in 2009 and this year

[BR_Parkway]

6. Republican Appointed SEC under Bush fails to police Wall St, opting

to watch porn during time of increased administration pressure to further deregulate.


I'm down with that headline, bring it on

[HughMoran]

8. I remember that old toon where the Internet Explorer icon was simply marked "PORN"

:rofl:

Dems should probably condemn the stupidity too and move on. If the Repukes want to make hay out of this, Dems can simply point out that they are Republican appointees for the most part and that this is typical Republican behavior based on the massive number of Republican sex scandals in the past 5 years :)

[msongs]

9. let senator Vitter lead an investigation lol nt

[on point]

10. I guess republicans shouldn't be trusted to run govt!

Issa says this calls into question whether we should have more government regulation over Wal St. Actually, what it says is we should never ever trust management of government to the republicans again. They are right when they say government doesn't know how to run anything, at least when they are in charge!

[socialist_n_TN]

19. I've had righties argue this too....................

It's so stupid of an argument. Just because one side when it was the government is incompetent does NOT follow that the other side will be as incompetent JUST BECAUSE IT'S ALL GOVERNMENT.

I argued that and also mentioned that people who don't BELIEVE in government should never be EXPECTED to govern competently. I've never understood that line of reasoning either. Elect me, I'm a Republican who believes government is evil, so I'll be good at it! Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. NOT!

[annabanana]

33. They haven't been interested in "running" government for decades...

They are out to prove that "government doesn't work". And every time they're in power... they go about proving it in the most egregious ways possible.

[MidwestTransplant]

11. Like going to a lesbian bondage club but different.

[fascisthunter]

12. Breaking News: GOP finds way to make self look noble

although, these are probably GOP/Bush appointments!

[Arkana]

14. From the party of S&M clubs, this is particularly rich.

[cilla4progress]

15. Nice.

This enrages me for a NUMBER of reasons, not the least of which: those assholes HAVE jobs; I can't GET a job. Shit - I've done everything "right," honesty, integrity, competence, conscientiousness. AND, I've NEVER watched porn on the job.

Fuckers.

[bemildred]

16. Classic red herring. "Look!!! Over there!!" nt

[mikeSchmuckabee]

17. These are the same people who elected to give mark foley

a pass. So I guess they're pissed that they weren't homosexual kiddie porn sites.

[panzerfaust]

18. "...who was at the helm of the SEC at the time?"

The public has forgotten, and our party won't mention it.

[bamacrat]

20. Do they really want to do this with all their "wide stancers" in their party.

I mean Im sure if it were not political and social suicide the republicans would be the gayest party in the world.

[ThoughtCriminal]

21. SEC Commissioners - 2007-2008

I do not know if the Commissioners selected these "senior staffers", but if the GOP wants to grandstand on this at least it should be noted that it happened on their watch. The last Clinton appointee left in 2002. During the time this was happening, it was the Republicans in charge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securities_and_Exchange_Commission_appointees

[annabanana]

34. yup. . n/t

[ThoughtCriminal]

22. When you spend your entire work day looking the other way

you have to have something to fill the hours. Under GOP control, not doing their job, WAS THEIR JOB.

[Old Troop]

23. Kettle, meet pot

[Dappleganger]

24. I'd bet he'd back down from that shit in a New York minute if they published

web history from all of the GOP offices on the Hill.

[TomCADem]

26. Does it occur to them that most surfing occurred under Republican rule? Chris Cox

This took place under the past five years with Chris Cox as chair.

[onenote]

29. true, but it continued after Cox left

Of the the 33 incidents identified by the IG report, three were reported this year. Ten occurred in 2009, 16 in 2008, two in 2007 and one each in 2006 and 2005.

what we don't know is when the employees involved were hired -- were they career employees or political employees?

[Vogon_Glory]

30. But Those SEC Staffers Were Letting The Market Regulate Itself!

But those SEC staffers were keeping the hands of 'big gubmint' out of the securities industries and letting the market regulate itself--just like former US senator Phil Gramm and other anti-regulatory zealots still admired by those Republican politicians wanted them to.

:crazy:

:tinfoilhat:

[Vogon_Glory]

31. One of the Dirty Books in My Personal Collection Is Titled 'Stocks and Bonds' n/t

[hollowdweller]

32. Why was the porn not blocked??

Most state and federal computers have extensive blocking software. My wife works in public health and even some of the sites she needs to get on in the course of her job are blocked. So how is it the SEC managed to avoid the gov't firewalls?

[anigbrowl]

35. Such blocks are fairly easy to circumvent

Apparently one staffer used a USB key with a separate browser configured to go via a proxy server. It's hard to block everything.

Plus you can't just auto-block all picture files. Legal documents are often supplied as in graphical format (as scans of paper documents), and you could even have a legitimate reason to examine porn - for example, if you were investigating a hedge fund for evidence that fund managers were looking at porn when they should have been monitoring client accounts - sounds unlikely, but it does actually happen.

Mrs Browl works for a litigation support company (bulk document processing for law firms) and sometimes they have cases involving exactly that, with heaps of porn as part of the evidence. One time they even had to fire some of their own staff who had started collecting it from evidence they were supposed to be managing.

[hollowdweller]

37. Then they should get in trouble

Or be fired if they went that far to get around agency policy.

[buckrogers1965]

36. Wasn't this overseen by Bush?

When the economy was tanking?

[and-justice-for-all]

38. alright, time to bring on the S&M sessions they bought Mr.Steele.nt

[w4rma]

39. They had to be doing something during all that time that they weren't doing their job. (nt)