Cunningham Plea Sparks Pension Questions

[Catherine Vincent]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051214/ap_on_go_co/congressman_bribery

WASHINGTON - Republican House members disturbed that their former GOP colleague Randy "Duke" Cunningham will get to keep his pension despite pleading guilty to bribery want to pass a law to strip federal pensions from white-collar criminals.

Under federal law, only a conviction for a crime against the United States, such as treason or espionage, can cause a member of Congress or other federal employee to lose his or her government pension.

That means Cunningham, a California Republican, will keep his pension despite admitting taking $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors and others in exchange for government contracts.

Cunningham's congressional pension would be around $40,000 per year, according to an Office of Personnel Management formula. He resigned last month and faces 10 years in prison when he's sentenced in February.

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How much you wanna bet every last one of these criminals
voted to impeach President Clinton?

[Warpy]

1. Keep your eye on this one, it could rise to the level of treason

They've subpoenaed Wilkes and his records in the Delay mess, which is connected to the Cunningham mess, which is connected to... blah blah blah.

Wilkes is the defense contractor who had a bunch of little companies whose only purpose seems to have been to collect fat DOD contracts funded by the taxpayers and flip the money into RNC coffers.

Personally, I think the whole RNC leadership needs to be brought up with Abramoff on racketeering charges. If this isn't the worst example of organized crime we've ever seen, what is?

[Catherine Vincent]

2. Treason eh?

We shall see. What about all that stolen money during the savings and loan debacle several years ago? That was wrong on all levels but I don't think anyone went to prison over it.

[sojourner]

3. wasn't that on GHWB's watch...and weren't his boys in pretty deep on that?

i think that would explain why nobody went to prison. and probably a good reason to suspect it won't happen to the most deserving of this crowd this time either.

[Warpy]

5. It was only stolen from investors

and then the taxpayers. This was stolen from the Pentagon. Big difference.

[FreedomAngel82]

4. They're always connected

So it will be interesting who pops up in the Abramoff case.