More (Non) Trouble With Harry

Oh dear, it looks like Senate House Majority Leader Harry Reid made too much money on a land deal again. Why, whatever shall we do?

I was tipped off to this when I stumbled across an editorial about it at Real Unclear Politics (and stumbling across it is the only way I would encounter anything at that freeper site) and decided to read more about the subject from a legitimate news source. I then found this editorial from the Chicago Tribune (calling Reid a “land shark” – sorry, had to replace the earlier photo...forgot about how anal SNL is about its intellectual property, if you can call it that), including this excerpt…

“…he (Reid) bought out a business partner in another land deal at a price that looks too good to be true and that he has sponsored legislation that would benefit that former partner.

An investigation by the Los Angeles Times found that in 2002, Reid paid $10,000 to a pension fund--controlled by an old friend, Clair Haycock--which owned a 37.5 percent share of a 160-acre parcel in Bullhead City, Ariz. That is one-ninth what Haycock paid when he and Reid bought the land 25 years ago. On a per-acre basis, it's also about one-fiftieth what it fetched in 1990 from buyers who later defaulted. The county assessor says it sounds like a "super deal" for Reid.

But the Times story raises the possibility that Haycock was getting more from his friend than $10,000. A few months later, the senator introduced a bill to prevent oil companies from suddenly canceling contracts with lubricants dealers--of which Haycock is one. The lawyer who represented Haycock in a dispute with Mobil Oil says, "The Haycocks provided access to Sen. Reid." In the end, the proposal went nowhere.

As the editorial noted a bit later, Reid originally introduced the legislation in question in 1994 and reintroduced it at the time of the transaction.

And by the way, there is nothing wrong with providing a politician with “access” to someone; it’s a matter of what the politician does with that access. It would be nice if we all had the same access to our elected representatives, but the fact that that is not the case does not happen to be illegal (it can be a problem, sure, but it’s not illegal).

The Tribune editorial also criticizes Reid for trying to sell the property to a developer instead of another type of buyer. Reid probably wanted to retain a partial percentage of the property’s worth in the event that the developer increased the value of the property. Again, this is not illegal.

I just have two questions (and as far as I know, the answers to each are no):

- Did Reid write an earmark into legislation without review to increase the value of the property (paging Dennis Hastert)?
- Were taxpayer funds misappropriated in any way in the sale or purchase of the property?

Sure, the whole damn thing probably was a sweetheart deal of one type or another. But I don’t care!

Show me an example of bona fide criminal conduct on the part of Harry Reid if you can (and I strongly suspect that you won’t be able to), or else get lost with this crap!