U.S. HOUSE MAJORITY WHIP, SC’S TOP DEMOCRAT, HIRES EX-CON
I have to hand it to Rep. James Clyburn because very few politicians would have the gall to knowingly hire someone convicted of federal bribery and extortion charges as part of their Congressional staff. Yet that’s exactly what he did when he brought on former Orangeburg County Councilman John Rickenbacker to work in his Columbia field office.
He defended the decision saying, “I think it is always important to give people a second chance.”
Rickenbacker, who was released from a Columbia-based halfway house April 7 after serving a one-year sentence in a federal prison system for federal bribery and extortion charges, will begin working in his new position as early as [Friday], depending on completion of the required applications. [...]
Rickenbacker’s primary duties will be to conduct visits throughout the district with constituents on their concerns related to senior issues such as Social Security or veteran disability benefits. A salary has not been settled upon yet.
Rickenbacker in June 2006 was indicted following a six-month sting operation in which he accepted about $50,000 from an undercover FBI agent posing as a consultant for a company interested in buying the Regional Medical Center.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year and one day in prison on April 2, 2007.
As part of his sentence, he also received three years of probation or supervised release, the payment of a $200 assessment fee, a $5,000 fine and completion of five days or 100 hours of community service. [Orangeburg Times & Democrat]
I guess in Clyburn’s mind he’s bulletproof, so why the hell not hire this Rickenbacker? And if this guy did all that stuff and got caught, this time he’ll know how not to get caught. If that’s what Clyburn’s going for here.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about second chances. If this guy paid his debt to society, then he should be forgiven.
But that doesn’t mean he should be tossed back in a position with access to the exact same resources that got him in trouble in the first place. Unless, of course, that is by design.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 11:00 am and is filed under U.S. Congress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
It’s one thing to hire an ex-con to do some constituent service for you; it’s quite another to hire someone as your Executive Director while he’s awaiting trial, which is what the SC GOP did in 2002/2003 with Edmund Matricardi. The Republican Party appointed him to the very important sounding title AFTER he had been indicted on state charges for wiretapping and listening in to a Democratic conference call; although the state charges were eventually dropped, Mr. Matricardi ended up pleading guilty to the same offense on the federal level. Link (from before he fessed up): http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9501E7DB1639F937A15752C0A9659C8B63&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Insert comment here about a glass house and stones, or a pot and kettle, etc.
Clyburn, by the way, is bulletproof both in and outside of his head; he got 64% of the vote in ‘06, so he’s pretty safe unless it comes out that he personally is a crook (which he’s not). Even then he might not have too much trouble.
At least forewarned is forearmed unlike some of the public officials out there with things like this subject to come forward at any given time. Many of our public officials are involved in bribes and extortion. Keep watching the news people……….
I don’t think Clyburn is invincible, but I do think he is too politically intimidating to draw a credible challenger.
Wait a minute….Clyburn hires a convicted felon who took a $50,000 bribe as a government official. And Rob W. sees the SCRP’s hiring of someone under investigation as morally equivalent?
Hogwash.
That is all.
As if people needed another reason to suspect that members of congress are all corrupt.
Roy G Biv- I entirely accept your premise that hiring a convicted felon bribe-taker is different than hiring someone who’s been accused/ indicted for wiretapping, and I appreciate you giving me the chance to better explain myself. If we had to choose between the two, of course we’d want the alleged wiretapper instead of a guy who takes bribes. However, two circumstances that make these two hiring decisions about equal, at least in my mind:
1. Matricardi, when he was hired, had admitted to committing the act he was indicted for (he said it was legal for him because of the Freedom of Information Act, which sounds crazy to my non-lawyer mind). This takes a bit of the punch out of the argument that “we don’t even know if he committed the crime”; he was an admitted wiretapper, not an alleged one. The courts just had to figure out if he had the right to weasel out of the consequences (it turned out, he could weasel out of the state but not the federal charges).
2. Matricardi wasn’t hired as a low-level constituent service staffer, but as the Executive Director of the SCRP. Who you appoint as your leader says a lot about you; that person is supposed to be “above reproach”, and should set an example for the entire organization. I’ve never met Mr. Matricardi and this story is all I know about him, so he might be a very responsible and honorable man. But if you hire someone with his history, it’s telling everyone your party isn’t concerned with following the law. Hiring someone as a foot soldier, however, doesn’t send the same message; it just says you’re willing to give an ex-con a menial but important job as a small part of your organization.
The “culture of corruption” charge the Dems used in ‘06 was able to stick not because low-level staffers had criminal backgrounds, but because the leadership (both official and unofficial) of the Republican Party contained people who appeared to have a disregard for the law. Of course Democrats have the same problem in their party (or they will if they are in power long enough); but junior staffers aren’t the problem. Politically, at least, the leadership is the problem.