Rep. Labrador talking to the Idaho Statesman about proposed bribery legislation:
“Labrador says bribery isn’t common in the Legislature.”
“Isn’t common”? So does that mean he knows of some instances, perhaps ones that haven’t seen the light of day? Oh, I bet we’re talking about past occurrences, yeah, that’s gotta be it. I also find it sad that the first offense would only be considered a misdemeanor, second offense being a felony. If there is someone out there knowingly bribing a public official in Idaho, both should be charged with hefty felonies.
The public trust of government is a fundamental cornerstone to any successful society, and violating that trust should carry an extremely tough penalty.
It happened just last summer. Popkey wrote on it. Which means it happens all the time.
Good snag.
Bribery seems to happen every day in the legislature. A bribe is defined as: “money or favor given or promised in order to influence the judgment or conduct of a person in a position of trust” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bribe and that definition seems interchangeable with lobbying when money or favor is involved: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lobbyis... and that situation was brought to light in the recent scandal involving the Idaho Association of Realtors lobby re-nigging on a bribe by refusing to give “money promised” because they were unable to influence the conduct of House Republican candidate Joan Cloonan of Garden City. http://www.idahostatesman.com/popkey/story/639063...
Maybe if a few more legislatures had the brass Joan showed something would get done about it rather than just saying “bribery isn’t common in the Legislature.”
Chris, that post look ugly. Send me the HTML to imbed the url's please
Eric, just do [a href="URL"]TEXT[/a], substituting the brackets for <,>'s.
OK, I'll try it:
Bribery seems to happen every day in the legislature. A bribeis defined as: “money or favor given or promised in order to influence the judgment or conduct of a person in a position of trust” and that definition seems interchangeable with lobbying lobbyingwhen money or favor is involved: and that situation was brought to light in the recent scandal involving the Idaho Association of Realtors lobby re-nigging on a bribe by refusing to give “money promised” because they were unable to influencethe conduct of House Republican candidate Joan Cloonan of Garden City.
Maybe if a few more legislatures had the brass Joan showed something would get done about it rather than just saying “bribery isn’t common in the Legislature.”