Disclosure Forms Show Congress' Wealth

Annual Disclosures Reveal That Lawmakers Profit From Gold Mines, TV Spots And Irish Cottages

(AP)  Sen. Harry Reid, whose leadership post depends on holding onto a fragile majority in the Senate, can always fall back on his gold mining claims in Nevada. Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd pads his income with rent from a cottage in County Galway, Ireland.

House and Senate lawmakers filed their annual financial disclosure forms Thursday, revealing a variety of income sources well beyond their salaries.

Rank-and-file House and Senate members last year received $165,200 in pay. Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., both got $183,500 for their previous roles of minority leaders in the Senate and House.

Former Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., now a regular member, will take a pay cut of almost $47,000 this year after earning $212,100 last year as speaker.

But senators in particular tend to come from the upper echelons of wealth, with many claiming incomes and assets reaching well into the millions.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who is running for president, reported that her husband, former President Clinton, made more than $10 million in paid speeches last year. The couple held two accounts — a regular bank account and a blind trust, each valued at between $5 million and $25 million. The forms don't require Congress members to report exact figures, only to note the ranges their holdings fall within.

Senate Majority Leader Reid, who drew questions about his disclosure form last year over a Las Vegas land deal that allowed him to collect $1.1 million for property he hadn't personally owned in three years, owns portions of more than 200 acres of mining claims, including old claims around his hometown of Searchlight.

His Nevada land holdings and mining claims were valued from $496,000 to $1.39 million.

Reid's Republican counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he held property in the District of Columbia worth $1 million-$5 million.

But a large portion of the family assets is held by McConnell's wife, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. She had investments in various index and mutual funds totaling between $1 million and $2.3 million.

That pales beside others in the Senate millionaires' club. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., heir to his family's oil fortune, has three blind trusts worth more than $80 million.

On the lower end of the wealth scale, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, said he had no major sources of unearned income in 2006. His major asset was a bank account held jointly with his wife worth between $50,000 and $100,000.

Dodd, in addition to taking in $5,001-$15,000 for his cottage in Ireland, received a $30,000 book advance for "Letters from Nuremburg." His father was a prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials after World War II.

Several other senators were also involved in book projects: Clinton reported royalties of $350,000 for her book "Living History." Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, received a $16,667 advance for a book he is co-writing on radical Islamic movements in Southeast Asia.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, made $1,462 from sales of her suspense novel, which features a combative, liberal senator much like herself.

Boxer also was paid $737 for playing herself on an episode of the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

Lawmakers cannot make more than 15 percent of their salaries in outside earned income, although book royalties are exempt from that limit.

[menofoz]

When the ruling party needed a hefty sum for the 1994 election, Presidente Salinas leaned on a group of rich businessmen to write $25 million checks each at an infamous dinner party, where contributions totaled a staggering $750 million by evening's end. Compare that with the measly $150 million campaign chest in spring 2004 that President Bush had accumulated after three years in office.

%u2022 Freedom House notes the cost of corruption: "According a recent study by the Mexico chapter of Transparency International, some $2.3 billion-approximately 1 percent-of the country's economic production goes to officials in bribes, with the poorest families paying nearly 14 percent of their income in bribes."

Jam 5:1 6 Go to now, [ye] rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon [you].

[menofoz]

Mexico Is Rich
Mexican wealthy play American taxpayers for suckers

Certainly there are many poor people in Mexico, since perhaps half the country lives in poverty. However, the nation as a whole is quite rich

When measured in GDP per capita, Mexico ranks #1 as of 2005, ahead of Chile and Venezuela.

%u2022 According to Forbes magazine, a substantial proportion of Latin American billionaires, 10 out of 26, were Mexican as of 2005.

%u2022 Mexico raises less revenue through taxation than nearly any other Latin American country, just 12 percent which is one reason why the nation's wealth is not better utilized. By comparison, the United States takes in 25-28 percent of its gross domestic profit in taxes. Even Brazil taxes itself at twice the Mexican rate.

%u2022 Economist Gary Hufbauer of the Institute for International Economics has remarked, "It's up to Mexico to solve its problem, and basically the wealthy classes do not want to tax themselves, period. While I'm not usually an advocate for larger government, Mexico is a country where public investment, done wisely, could pay huge dividends."

%u2022 Mexico expert Prof. George Grayson of William and Mary College calls Mexico an "immensely wealthy nation."

%u2022 Mexico's economy is the world's tenth largest.

[menofoz]

Corrupt Mexican Govt + Complicit Multi National Corporations and American Officials= Love of Money


1Ti 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

[menofoz]

Open Borders+Illegal Drug Trafficking= Love of money.

1Ti 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

[menofoz]

Illegal Immigration+cheap labor= the love of money.


1Ti 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

[menofoz]

1Ti 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

And the lying politicans keep saying they hate us for our freedoms.

Devil tears.. Oil+Money=root of all evil.

[menofoz]

Jam 1:11 For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.

Rev 3:17 Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:

[menofoz]

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
- Albert Einstein

Pro 18:11 The rich man's wealth [is] his strong city, and as an high wall in his own conceit.

Jam 5:1 6 Go to now, [ye] rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon [you].

Jam 5:2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.

Jam 5:3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

Jam 5:4 Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

Jam 5:5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.

Jam 5:6 Ye have condemned [and] killed the just; [and] he doth not resist you.

Jam 5:7 6 Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.

[mjv2944]

Yes sir, these folks really know and understand what middle Americans want and need. NIKOSK1 is 100% right, THE BEST THAT MONEY CAN BUY!!!! And believe me they have ALL sold us out, repubs and dems. So much for the dems promises last Nov, huh! Watch out for the immigration bill they are going to stick down our throats, cause they know best. This Reid character is a joke, where in the he!! do we get these losers?

[forthepeopl1]

time to take up ARMS and take them all out.

EVERYONE THAT WANTS TO HELP WITH THIS SHOULD BE TALKING TO ALL MEDIA OUTLETS AND TELLING THEM THAT AMERICANS ARE READY TO TAKE WASHINGTON ON AND ITS NOT A FEW AMERICANS ITMILLIONS OF AMERICANS THAT WILL TAKE BACK THERE COUNTRY..

I AM WILLING TO GIVE MY BLOOD FOR ALL AMERICANS TO GET OUR COUNTRY BACK TO WHAT OUR FORFATHERS WANTED.

AM A VET AND AM READY TO TAKE CHARGE OF THIS AMERICAN BOYCOT/COOP IF WE THE PEOPLE DONT DO THIS NOW WE WILL BE GIVENING UP ON OUR CONSTITUTION AND WHAT ALL OUR VET HAVE DIED FOR..

DAVID A BELANGER,VET US ARMY,[e-mail]

ok so wants to join in on this great american REVOLUTION


they cant kill millions of americans at once so if we charge them all at once we will win and take them out and hang them all..

just like in the old days of the west...hang them from the trees in front of the whitehouse and see how many start telling the truth about what they have done to all us americans..


if the american NOW dont stand up and start a NATIONAL REVOUTION ON THIS WASHINGTON BULL S/H/I/T/ THEN we as TRUE AMERICANS can say nothing!!!

its time to take all this *** and take our government back now..

they are the ones that started this and we will finnish it now..we the people will take our country back and everyone in washington can sit there and thinks we the people are ok with what they are doing..go ahead and let them think that we are comming to take them out