Is Kaine really able?

[Legion Troll]

An examination by The New York Times of archival email traffic from Tim Kaine’s tenure as governor shows that he received gifts, in some cases, around the same time he and his staff were considering official government requests from these donors

Barr Pharmaceuticals gave Kaine a ride on a private jet to a meeting in Aspen, Colo., at a time when it was lobbying him over issues related to its drug sales, records show.

Dominion Resources, Virginia’s largest electric utility and a lobbying force, picked up the tab for a trip that Kaine took to the college basketball Final Four tournament, according to the records.

State records compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project show that a total of 139 companies or individuals gave about 220 gifts or reimbursements for travel to Kaine.

Under Virginia’s lax ethics rules at the time, the gifts, which had a total value of more than $160,000, were all legal as long as they were disclosed.

With Kaine’s selection as Hillary’s vice-presidential running mate, the gifts he received in the four years he served as Virginia’s chief executive and his time as lieutenant governor before that are a sign that Kaine is not as squeaky clean as he portrays himself.

“It would be naïve to think a pharmaceutical company like Teva was not interested in maintaining access to the governor as a result of a gift of that size,” said Andrew P. Miller, a former Democrat attorney general in Virginia.





http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/25/us/politics/as-pick-for-no-2-tim-kaine-sees-gifts-come-under-scrutiny.html?_r=0

 

[Mr.Badguy]

Props on the title if you came up with it yourself.

 

[anatta]

Under Virginia’s lax ethics rules at the time, the gifts, which had a total value of more than $160,000, were all legal as long as they were disclosed.

I wonder if it's still legal. It's just more corporatist corruption either way.

 

[Legion Troll]

I wonder if it's still legal. It's just more corporatist corruption either way.

After he was elected to the Senate, Kaine publicly urged the Virginia legislature to tighten state ethics laws, saying he had concluded that the more stringent rules in Congress were appropriate.

“The new year presents a superb opportunity to fix a major Virginia weakness: our lax ethical laws,” he wrote in an op-ed article published on Dec. 31, 2013, in The Washington Post. “Gifts to elected officials can create a subconscious sense of gratitude in even the most upright public servants.”

Until the Virginia General Assembly moved last year to tighten state ethics laws — prohibiting any single lobbyist, in most circumstances, from giving an elected official more than $100 in gifts each year — it was common practice for state lawmakers to accept gifts, at times worth more than $10,000.

The issue of gifts to elected officials has become particularly delicate in Virginia in the aftermath of the criminal case against Kaine’s successor, Bob McDonnell. McDonnell took much more extravagant gifts — including a Rolex watch and catering for his daughter’s wedding and other gifts and loans worth $177,000 — from a single businessman who was seeking help with a state government-related matter, and McDonnell did not disclose all of those gifts.




http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/25/us/politics/as-pick-for-no-2-tim-kaine-sees-gifts-come-under-scrutiny.html?_r=0