The Political Dirt Thread

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Hello Sports Fans and fellow political aficionados! Provided here is a thread in which to air out your dirty laundry: that is, their dirty laundry. The politicos, that is. Pretty simple to do, just pick any politico not named "Bernie Sanders" and if you dig, even just a little bit, you will find enough piles of garbage for a land fill. "So much the dirt, so short the life", or something like that. Knowing more about your favorite politicians can really help, you know, when it comes to voting--it might even matter. But as Mark Twain(or somebody) once said, "if voting actually worked, they'd make it illegal".

 

Anyway, I'll start. Today's Dirt Candidate is the one and only RepubliKlan Senate Majority leader, Mitch McConnell:

 

 

Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ship’s chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about ninety pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.

The seizure of the narcotics shipment in the Caribbean port occurred far away from Kentucky, the state in which Senator Mitch McConnell is now facing a career-defining election. But the Republican Senate majority leader has the closest of ties to the owner of the Ping May, the vessel containing the illicit materials: the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a firm founded and owned by McConnell’s in-laws, the Chao family.

Though Foremost has played a pivotal role in McConnell’s life, bestowing the senator with most of his personal wealth and generating thousands in donations to his campaign committees, the drug bust went unnoticed in Kentucky, where every bit of McConnell-related news has generated fodder for the campaign trail. That’s because, like many international shipping companies, Chao’s firm is shrouded from public view, concealing its identity and limiting its legal liability through an array of tax shelters and foreign registrations. Registered through a limited liability company in the Marshall Islands, the Ping May flies the Liberian flag.

Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao with James Chao

Contacted by telephone, a representative of Foremost said he is “obviously going to have no comment on this one.”

The Republican Senate majority leader’s personal wealth grew seven-fold over the last ten years thanks in large part to a gift given to him and his wife in 2008 from James Chao worth between $5 million and $25 million (Senate ethics forms require personal finance disclosures in ranges of amounts, rather than specific figures). The gift helped the McConnells after their stock portfolio dipped in the wake of the financial crisis that year, and ensured they could pay off more than $100,000 in mortgage debt on their Washington home.....

 

read on: http://www.thenation.com/article/mitch-mcconnells-freighted-ties-shadowy-shipping-company/