White House Says It Can't Comment On Possible Chris Dodd Investigation

from the no-surprise-there dept

This isn't a huge surprise, but following the popularity of the petition asking the White House to investigate Chris Dodd (after Dodd's own statements suggesting that he expects politicians who get Hollywood money to pass Hollywood's preferred bills no questions asked), the White House has officially stated that it can't comment on the matter. As per the terms of the White House's "We the People" petition site, it can refuse to address issues that deal with law enforcement:

consistent with the We the People Terms of Participation and our responses to similar petitions in the past, the White House declines to comment on this petition because it requests a specific law enforcement action.

I'm sure the White House has no interest in getting involved in this in any way, and that if it was actually investigating any of this activity, it wouldn't want to talk about it publicly until later. Still, I think the petition -- and the publicity it got -- did serve a key purpose: to highlight the public's disgust with the MPAA's form of crony capitalism, and the hubris of folks like Chris Dodd who think that as long as they donate enough money, politicians should be working for the MPAA, rather than the public.

Filed Under: bribery, chris dodd, petition, white house
Companies: mpaa

Wikileaks Unveils Evidence Of Indian Parliamentary Bribery

from the but-it's-all-useless,-right? dept

While plenty of attention late last week was focused (reasonably) on the goings on in Libya and Japan, there was a Wikileaks story that also was important. As Slashdot notes, a recent Wikileaks cable leak reveals claims of rampant bribery in the Indian parliament, specifically with regards to a controversial nuclear deal with the US. The report, from a State Department official, involves him reporting that he was shown "chests of cash" potentially representing $25 million, which was going to be used to pay off members of Parliament to vote for the deal. Of course, the response has been a whole lot of denial, so it should be interesting to watch what comes next. However, given how often we hear that the Wikileaks documents weren't any kind of whistleblowing or hadn't revealed anything major, I'm curious how people can still claim that, given this latest leak.

Filed Under: bribery, corruption, india, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks

Congresswoman Suggests That Comcast Tried To Bribe Her To Support Merger

from the bad-day-at-the-office dept

With plenty of scrutiny still facing the proposed merger between NBC and Comcast, Representative Maxine Waters strongly suggested that someone from the company tried to bribe her to get her to support the merger:

During a House Judiciary Committee that took place in L.A. on Monday, Representative Maxine Waters stated that she had received a call from "somebody at Comcast asking, 'What do you want?'"

Waters, who has been grilling the cable giant on issues of ethnic diversity, claims she replied by explaining the need for greater diversity in media. However, Waters says the Comcast caller responded by saying, "I'm talking about what do you want?"

Comcast, not surprisingly, denies any suggested wrongdoing:

Any implication that anyone ever inquired about what Congresswoman Waters would want personally is completely untrue. We meet and discuss the proposed joint venture with many members of Congress and other leaders. We have repeatedly tried to understand Congresswoman Waters' concerns so that we can address them.

Honestly, I still don't see why there's so much concern about this merger, which strikes me as likely to be another AOL/Time Warner-type disaster for everyone involved. Still, buying off a politician seems a bit extreme, though, I would imagine that many assume this is pretty much standard operating procedures in DC. The only thing "different" is that Waters actually called Comcast on it publicly.

Filed Under: bribery, maxine waters
Companies: comcast, nbc universal