To the life boats - Did Randy Kuhl jump to the head of the line?
What is the adage about lifeboats? Women and children first. Well check this out.
How many of you moved money around to avoid a possible bank failure? Any of you rearrange your bank accounts to avoid possible bank failure? Say within the past week?
Remember, a week ago we were told, publicly told, that Wall Street and our financial system was on the brink of collapse and it required $700 billion dollars of taxpayer money.
Read this post set-up or skip to the bolded area for the juicy stuff. The Juicy stuff is worth it.
Start with this New York Post article. It is about New York’s Representatives who voted against the most recent bailout bill.
WASHINGTON - By his own account, Rep. Randy Kuhl has some explaining to do. Of the handful of New Yorkers who voted against the financial bailout bill on Monday, he was the only one to change course and vote for the new version on Friday.
The Southern Tier Republican had joined Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand, Maurice Hinchey, and Jose Serrano voting “no” the first time around.
Ok, so we have Randy Kuhl changing his vote from No to Yes. Well, continue reading. There are the obligatory “justification” quotes from Randy Kuhl:
“Sometimes you have to vote against a bad bill to get a good one. This is not necessarily the best bill that it could be, but it’s a better bill,” said Kuhl. He said the addition of tax breaks were a major selling point for him.
Kuhl said he expects he’ll spend the rest of his campaign for re-election telling voters in his Southern Tier district why he voted the way he did.
“I’m going to have to explain to them the dire consequences that they would have suffered, and get them to understand,” he said.
Ok - So he changed his mind and that can be the topic of a different post but the rest is simply frightening. THIS IS THE NUGGET THAT IS IMPORTANT:
Kuhl said in recent days the possibility of a widespread economic collapse had become apparent to far more people.
In his own case, Kuhl decided to break up his campaign’s bank account into several smaller accounts in different banks, to guard against a bank failure.
Um, possibility of widespread collapse? Rearranging finances? Breaking up his Campaign bank account? WHAT INFORMATION DOES HE HAVE? Transferring assets to multiple banks and multiple accounts is a big hassle, and the fact that he felt it necessary to do that raises a big red flag.
Questions I’d like the press to ask:
- When did this happen? Before the bail out proposal last weekend? Before the Randy Kuhl’s No vote on Monday? Between Randy’s vote on Monday and his Yes vote today? Over what time frame did this happen?
- How much money are we talking about? How many different banks? Which banks? What type of accounts? Where they campaign assets only or his personal assets?
- What information did Randy have to prompt him to move assets? What exact information did he have?
- Did Randy share this concern with his constituents? I mean Randy loves sending out mailers - the last mailer I received was to take weight out of my car to improve gas mileage. Where was the advice that we should immediately break up our bank account over several banks?
- Finally is that ethical? How did Randy find out this information that caused him to change his bank account structure?
This smells so wrong and it is late - I’ll have more later.
Who is Randy throwing overboard to protect himself? Sounds like it’s you - his constituents.
Related posts:
Randy was holding out for the Wooden Arrow Manufacturers tax break
This has to be one of the best written pieces you’ve ever done. I believe you have only begun to scratch the surface on Kuhl’s knowledge and involvement in our country’s economic collapse. Did other members of the House or Senate do the same thing? Or was it a random and select few?
This story is worthy of greater publication. And how much of the 110B in pork were distributed his way?
I believe this is a criminal act. I can only hope that Eric Massa will pick up on this and not only use it in his advertisements, but refer this for criminal investigation as well.
This smacks of Bush reading books to school children safely in Florida for 20 minutes while the planes hit the buildings…
This rotten apple does not fall far from that tree.
Excellent job of writing and reporting this stlo7. If there were a Pulitzer for blog reporting, you just got nominated.
Don’t you think that he felt the panic that many of us have felt - only he had enough money in accounts that exceeded the $100,000 FDIC insurance in accounts? So in order to be protected by the FDIC insurance, he’d have to break up the accounts into smaller accounts of less than $100,000 each. Or am I missing something (entirely possible)?
I believe this is an assumption when it comes to bank accounts. Were you panicked? The question still is when did this occur. I mean if FDIC insurance consideration was important then why not earlier in the year or why bother setting up an account that wasn’t FDIC insured for the total amount.
I want to know if additional information was available to Congressman Kuhl that the rest of us didn’t necessarily have. Frankly. I would feel better if the questions I posed were answered.
Bottom line - if it were “as bad” as the Congressman claimed why didn’t the rest of us get “the memo”?
One more thing.
I expect my leaders to put the people they “lead” ahead of themselves. Because without those people the leaders amount to nothing. As an Army Officer, my troops rested, ate, unwound before I did. Why? Servant leadership.
I apply that same measure to my government Representatives. It’s admittedly tough but why expect less?
So, here we have Randy Kuhl, rearranging bank accounts - Is the rest of America rearranging their accounts?
Is he looking out for himself before the rest of us? Seems so to me based on this article. Again the smell test.
I forwarded this link to the New York Times for continuance. I received the standard robo response within the hour. However - a few hours later I received a HUMAN response who said this was being forwarded to a reporter for further investigation.