Chao created special path for McConnell's favored projects

[babylonsister]

Chao created special path for McConnell’s favored projects
A top Transportation official helped coordinate grant applications by McConnell’s political allies.
By TUCKER DOHERTY and TANYA SNYDER
06/10/2019 05:02 AM EDT



The Transportation Department under Secretary Elaine Chao designated a special liaison to help with grant applications and other priorities from her husband Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky, paving the way for grants totaling at least $78 million for favored projects as McConnell prepared to campaign for reelection.

Chao’s aide Todd Inman, who stated in an email to McConnell’s Senate office that Chao had personally asked him to serve as an intermediary, helped advise the senator and local Kentucky officials on grants with special significance for McConnell — including a highway-improvement project in a McConnell political stronghold that had been twice rejected for previous grant applications.

Beginning in April 2017, Inman and Chao met annually with a delegation from Owensboro, Ky., a river port with long connections to McConnell, including a plaza named in his honor. At the meetings, according to participants, the secretary and the local officials discussed two projects of special importance to the river city of 59,809 people — a plan to upgrade road connections to a commercial riverport and a proposal to expedite reclassifying a local parkway as an Interstate spur, a move that could persuade private businesses to locate in Owensboro.

Inman, himself a longtime Owensboro resident and onetime mayoral candidate who is now Chao’s chief of staff, followed up the 2017 meeting by emailing the riverport authority on how to improve its application. He also discussed the project by phone with Al Mattingly, the chief executive of Daviess County, which includes Owensboro, who suggested Inman was instrumental in the process.

more...

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/10/mcconnell-elaine-chao-1358068

[DeminPennswoods]

1. McConnell is more corrupt than Trump,

and that is a tough feat!

[GoCubsGo]

2. More corrupt, and far more dangerous.

He has done far more damage to this country and the Constitution than that syphilitic, orange asshole has. Ernie Slovak got the firing squad for FAR less than what this guy does on a daily basis.

[DFW]

5. That was Eddie Slovik

But you're right, the McConnells not only deserted their oaths of office, they deserted the very principles upon which our government was founded.

[duforsure]

8. I agree

And how long before we learn the McConnell's have been funneling money into there own pockets from doing this.

[olegramps]

13. McConnell's dream is the destruction of the Democratic Republic.

Every Republican president, dating from Nixon, Reagan, both Bush presidents and now the worst of the lot,
Trump, have pursued the establishment of an authoritarian presidency. Each one of them with support of the corrupt Federalist Society has advanced the concept of the Unitary Executive presidency. This is their construed interpretation of the Vesting Clause of Article Two of the Constitution. The important point is that it is their interpretation and was soundly contradicted by Justice John Marshall who stated that only the judicial branch of government has the right to determine its constitutionality. ( Marbury vs. Madison)

The Republican's unlawful attempt to seize control of government has been rightly condemned as being totally in contradiction of the fundamental principle of the Separation of Powers and expressed explicitly by the founders of our democratic nation.

This concept cannot be abridged as James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, No. 47,

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

George Nicholas, spelled out the separation of power in his writing from this period is which the government was created:

"The most effectual guard which has yet been discovered against the abuse of power, is the division of it. It is our happiness to have a constitution which contains within it a sufficient limitation to the power granted by it, and also a proper division of that power. But no constitution affords any real security to liberty unless it is considered as sacred and preserved inviolate; because that security can only arise from an actual and not from a nominal limitation and division of power.


These concepts were address by numerous of the patriots.

Thomas Paine expressed it without any equivocation in which he wrote in Common Sense:

"In America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."

Unfortunately, the MSM has been neglect in addressing the most important issue at hand which is an attempt by the Republicans to seize control of government and transform the presidency into a virtual dictatorship that would make law at will and entrench the oligarchs in control of every aspect of government. It should be highly noted that the puppet that has been appointed Authority General, William Barr, has written extensively in support of the Unitary Executive theory. The powerful Federalist Society is flooding the courts with extreme judges who they can count on paving the way for their control of every aspect of government. The Republicans are reaching the point in which they can not be effective countered. McConnell is a prime example in which he is making a mockery out of the basic concept of a democratic government.

Unless there is a dramatic awakening to the impending threat, I believe that it is not an exaggeration that our children and grandchildren may well have the sad experience of looking back to the time in which their democratic freedoms were stolen. I have written numerous letters that have been ignored by the press and can only hope that more people flood the press with their justified concerns demanding that they awaken the people to the threat. Or will it be yet another case of when people are lulled into apathy while their freedoms were stolen.

[kacekwl]

3. You know a big chunk of

that money went in McConnell 's pocket and his wealthy construction buddies. Glad all the poor folks in Kentucky have a few good roads and a nice plaza to pitch their tents in.

[DFW]

7. McTurtle is the Senate's Meyer Lansky. n/t

[Funtatlaguy]

4. You'd almost think she was related to the 🐢...oh, wait.

[DFW]

6. Don't tell me, let me guess.....

He's the only Kentucky senator with a tortoise shell back. Am I close?

[world wide wally]

9. This is America these days.

Sad

[Wounded Bear]

10. How old fashioned...

that's just the old dime store, common brand of corruption.

[bluestarone]

11. When this nightmare is over

LOTS of people better be in PRISON!! THAT'S the only answer i will accept. When the DEMS win BIG in 2020 THIS has to happen!

[Andy823]

12. He needs to be investigated

All the crooks who bow down to trump and commit crimes need to be investigated. Chao should be investigated also.

[sdfernando]

14. Lock Her Up! Lock Him Up! /NT

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

15. Is anyone really surprised?

And I agree with the upthread poster. McConnell is more corrupt than Trump. He's also more of a threat to our democracy.