Fiscal Conservative? Christine O'Donnell's Financial Problems.

(Above: Christine O'Donnell looking like even she didn't expect to win her primary. Her body language says it all, "How did I con enough people into voting for me?!").

Christine O'Donnell has been getting a lot of attention for her past involvement in Satanic rituals but I'd like to write about her financial past. She claims to be this staunch fiscal conservative and says that debt is immoral and yet she herself hasn't had the best personal, financial record. Yet she had trouble paying for her own debt in failing to meet her mortgage payments according to the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). CREW is a non-partisan watchdog group who states that their mission is to, "promote ethics and accountability in government and public life by targeting government officials regardless of party affiliation who sacrifice the common good to special interests." A lot of people have fallen on hard times and had problems paying their mortgage but most people would then run for public office and go on to rail against the Democrats for borrowing money to spend on getting us out of this recession.

Her own campaign manager has said that she's a "complete fraud" in part because during her 2008 campaign she didn't appear to have any other source of income than the donations to her own campaign!! According to CREW, it's been years since she's had a steady job and now she wants a government job (despite railing against what government does) and she wants you to pay her salary. Her house payments were picked up by a Mr. Brent Vasher who charged her $750 a month in rent but when she was unable to make those payments she used campaign funds to make the rent. She recorded those rent payments that came from campaign funds as "expense reimbursements" on Federal Election Commission forms, which is illegal. She also used campaign funds for other personal expenses such as: gas, meals, and even an outing to a bowling alley!!

That's not all. She claims to stand for Christian values and yet has lied for years about her college history. For years she claimed to have gotten her degree from, "Fairleigh Dickinson University; in reality she finally received her diploma a scant two weeks ago." In addition, CREW shows that O'Donnell claimed to have won two counties against Vice President Senator Joe Biden in that 2008 election mentioned above. In reality, she won none. So, if you think by voting for her you'd be getting a fiscal and social conservative in her then you've been duped by her charm. She represents for many the moment that the Tea Party "jumped the shark." O'Donnell is the poster child for just how extremist and deceptive the Tea Party is. They use nice, American sounding labels such as, "patriot" to describe themselves while draping themselves in the American flag to distract you from their true extremist agenda, which is nothing short of dismantling social security, Medicare and a lot of other regressive polices.

I'm angry too but we need to be careful to watch out for voting out of desperation thinking that even though those in the Tea Party sound a little wild and weird that they'd be better than the Democrats. It's easy to feel frustrated with the Democrats right now because they are in power but we are making progress on the economy albeit slow. Do you really want to risk interrupting that progress and momentum by electing a completely untested group of candidates in the Tea Party who promise to undo what little progress we have?

Even though we're all frustrated about the slow pace of the recovery, I don't think we want to wake up one day and find social security, Medicare, the Department of Education and regulations that protect our drinking water, etc. gone. These folks aren't here to co-operate--they're here to undo the America we've known since World War II. They'd take us back to the Robber Baron days where people were completely on their own with no worker rights, no wage protections, no safety standards and little help from outside their own family. That's what's at stake and if you don't believe me; just look at the platform of people like Christine O'Donnell, Rand Paul, Joe Miller and Sharron Angle to name of few of the Tea Party candidates.

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