{"id":14492,"date":"2012-08-02T00:41:10","date_gmt":"2012-08-02T00:41:10","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-08-02T00:41:10","modified_gmt":"2012-08-02T00:41:10","slug":"laura-richardson-reprimanded-by-house-ethics-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2012\/08\/02\/laura-richardson-reprimanded-by-house-ethics-committee\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Richardson Reprimanded by House Ethics Committee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/scpr\/4309903185\/\" title=\"Laura Richardson (D- CA) by scpr.kpcc, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2784\/4309903185_a440b16f14_m.jpg\" align=right width=\"180\" height=\"240\" alt=\"Laura Richardson (D- CA)\"><\/a><i>Faces steep battle to stay in Congress<\/i><\/p>\n<p>by Brian Leubitz<\/p>\n<p>If we had never seen Top-2 pass, Laura Richardson would be a lame duck right now. &nbsp;Instead, after a 60-40 &#8220;shellacking&#8221; at the hands of Janice Hahn in a newly redistricted seat, she has another shot in the November election. &nbsp;Not a good shot, mind you, but a shot. &nbsp;But the odds are looking ever dimmer, especially after this bit of news:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Representative Laura Richardson, Democrat of California, has agreed to be reprimanded by the House and pay a $10,000 fine for compelling her Congressional staff members to work on her 2010 campaign.<\/p>\n<p>The House Ethics Committee recommended the punishment in a biting report issued on Wednesday.(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/08\/02\/us\/politics\/representative-laura-richardson-reprimanded-by-house.html\">NY Times<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now Richardson hasn&#8217;t exactly had a great record with ethics in the past, just check out her <a href=\"https:\/\/calitics.com\/tag.do?tag=Laura+Richardson\">tag page here for a few snippets of her history<\/a>. But an official reprimand will do no help in her November campaign. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The actual incidents are basically what you would expect from this kind of charge. Richardson assigned her staff to make phone calls on her behalf, or scout her opponent, etc. &nbsp;And then to compound things, she tried to cover her tracks. The official reports describes this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In sum, Representative Richardson&#8217;s submission continues the approach she has taken in this matter from the outset: an utter absence of true remorse for her misuse of official resources and, equally as significant, for what she has put her staff through, as well as a near total deflection of responsibility for this matter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>From <a href=\"https:\/\/calitics.com\/diary\/9113\/note-to-laura-richardson-take-care-of-your-damn-house\">maintaining her property<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/calitics.com\/diary\/6021\/\">dealing with foreclosures<\/a>, Richardson has been something of a &#8220;distraction&#8221; for the California Democratic delegation. Janice Hahn, for whatever flaws she may have, makes a far better representative of and for the district.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/scpr\/4309903185\/\" title=\"Laura Richardson (D- CA) by scpr.kpcc, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2784\/4309903185_a440b16f14_m.jpg\" align=right width=\"180\" height=\"240\" alt=\"Laura Richardson (D- CA)\"><\/a><i>Faces steep battle to stay in Congress<\/i><\/p>\n<p>by Brian Leubitz<\/p>\n<p>If we had never seen Top-2 pass, Laura Richardson would be a lame duck right now. &nbsp;Instead, after a 60-40 &#8220;shellacking&#8221; at the hands of Janice Hahn in a newly redistricted seat, she has another shot in the November election. &nbsp;Not a good shot, mind you, but a shot. &nbsp;But the odds are looking ever dimmer, especially after this bit of news:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Representative Laura Richardson, Democrat of California, has agreed to be reprimanded by the House and pay a $10,000 fine for compelling her Congressional staff members to work on her 2010 campaign.<\/p>\n<p>The House Ethics Committee recommended the punishment in a biting report issued on Wednesday.(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/08\/02\/us\/politics\/representative-laura-richardson-reprimanded-by-house.html\">NY Times<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now Richardson hasn&#8217;t exactly had a great record with ethics in the past, just check out her <a href=\"https:\/\/calitics.com\/tag.do?tag=Laura+Richardson\">tag page here for a few snippets of her history<\/a>. But an official reprimand will do no help in her November campaign. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The actual incidents are basically what you would expect from this kind of charge. Richardson assigned her staff to make phone calls on her behalf, or scout her opponent, etc. &nbsp;And then to compound things, she tried to cover her tracks. The official reports describes this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In sum, Representative Richardson&#8217;s submission continues the approach she has taken in this matter from the outset: an utter absence of true remorse for her misuse of official resources and, equally as significant, for what she has put her staff through, as well as a near total deflection of responsibility for this matter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>From <a href=\"https:\/\/calitics.com\/diary\/9113\/note-to-laura-richardson-take-care-of-your-damn-house\">maintaining her property<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/calitics.com\/diary\/6021\/\">dealing with foreclosures<\/a>, Richardson has been something of a &#8220;distraction&#8221; for the California Democratic delegation. Janice Hahn, for whatever flaws she may have, makes a far better representative of and for the district.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[150,5822,2349],"class_list":["post-14492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-150","tag-5822","tag-2349"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3LK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}