This Land's Not His Land

(At least not any more – my apologies to Woody Guthrie…)

This is pretty much a “piggyback” post off The Daily Kos, but it really needs to be mentioned again in light of this Inquirer editorial.

A lucrative land deal benefiting U.S. Senate minority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) deserves full scrutiny by the Senate ethics committee.

OK, let me point out that, according to the Kos post, Reid DID disclose this deal to the ethics committee.

In 1998, Reid purchased undeveloped residential property on the outskirts of Las Vegas for $400,000. He bought one lot outright, and a second lot with a partner, Jay Brown. In 2001, Reid sold the land for the same price to a corporation created by Brown.

Actually, he did own the land, as Kos states. He just transferred the property to a limited liability corporation (LLC), and the land was the only asset.

Reid retained an ownership stake in the corporation...

Wait a minute - the Inquirer's argument seems to be that Reid claimed he didn't own the land, when admission that Reid retained his stake in the corporation is means that he still owned it!

...and continued to pay taxes on the property. There was no written agreement; Brown told the Associated Press that the two had been friends for 35 years and didn't need one.

So the Senate Democratic leader engaged in a seven-figure handshake and didn't feel the need to disclose all the details. Experts on Senate ethics rules say Reid should have disclosed the sale in 2001 on his annual ethics report, and informed Congress of his part-ownership in Brown's corporation. Reid didn't.

That was because he didn't actually sell the land - he just formed the LLC for it!

After the land was rezoned for a shopping center, the corporation sold it in 2004. Reid received $1.1 million in the sale, turning a neat profit of nearly $700,000 in six years.

While now insisting he did nothing wrong, Reid is also offering to make a "technical change" to his earlier ethics reports if the ethics committee so desires. Simply giving the Democratic leader a mulligan is hardly the way to handle this case. When the Senate debated ethics reforms earlier this year, Reid was out in front to demand the toughest of standards from lawmakers.

"Americans have been shocked and even disgusted by revelations of corruption in our current system by Republican lobbyists, senior Bush Administration officials, members of Congress, and former congressional staff," Reid said in March. "The scandals have shown that some outsiders and insiders believed they could act with impunity."

That's how this case looks, too. Unless Reid comes up with a better explanation for this lack of disclosure, Democrats should not keep him as their leader in the new Congress in 2007.

You’ve got to be kidding me. You yourselves even pointed out that Reid paid taxes on the property!

As Kos also notes, there’s no charge that Reid assigned an earmark to increase the value of his property. If I were to start citing examples of congressional Republicans who engaged in this odious practice, it would take me into tomorrow morning to make my case against everyone.

Besides, we’re talking about a profit of $700 grand for a politician who works in a city where Jack Abramoff doled out millions ad nauseum to Republicans (and as a reminder, we have today’s story of the guilty plea of Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio). Does the Inquirer honestly see an equivalency between the actions of Ney and Reid (as well as the fact that our own Mikey Fitzpatrick “hearted” Tom DeLay and Abramoff to feather his own nest also?).