William ‘Cold Cash’ Jefferson’s Family Values
Found on Sweetness & Light
Sphere: Related ContentA newsworthy “editorial” from, of all places, the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
Let’s hear it for Jefferson family values
Friday, June 06, 2008
James GillCongressman “Dollar” Bill Jefferson, D-New Orleans, must be one proud patriarch.
To judge from the federal indictments that continue to rain down, his kinfolk were filled with a desire to be just like him.
They could not, of course, hope to emulate the scale of his alleged scams and shakedowns, which, as befits a politician in such exalted office, played out across two continents.
But there were no flies on the local team either, according to the feds. While Dollar Bill awaits trial in Northern Virginia, the New Orleans feds have indicted Dollar Bill’s sister, New Orleans Assessor Betty Jefferson, his brother Mose and his niece Angela Coleman.
Year in, year out, those three pocketed huge amounts of public money supposedly appropriated to help the needy, according to the indictment. No doubt they now yearn for the days when Dollar Bill’s old sidekick Eddie Jordan was U.S. attorney.
When President Bush appointed Jim Letten to replace Jordan, the family might have been wise to draw in its horns or at least to make some show of charitable endeavor. But its organizations just kept raking in the dough without so much as putting out a sign or publishing a phone number. The city’s myriad dispossessed can have had no idea all that money was sloshing around for their supposed benefit.
Stealing public money, it turns out, is pretty straightforward, provided you have friends and relatives in Baton Rouge and Washington. And you certainly have them if your patriarch is Dollar Bill, who was a state senator until his election to Congress 18 years ago.
Jefferson family organizations were major beneficiaries of slush funds in the gift of individual state legislators, who included Dollar Bill’s protégée Renee Gill Pratt and his daughter Jalila. Between them they steered some $5 million to organizations controlled by Aunt Betty, Uncle Mose and Cousin Angela.
Also check out his extensive post: Whites Are Anti-Christ - Obama Christianity?
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June 11th, 2008 at 8:36 am
You know, stories like this make me wonder about something I learned while just a teenager. My first job (at a bookstore selling soley things connected with religion, mine) brought me for the first time in contact with real Gypsies. I had a pre-conceived notion in favor of this ethnic group, having some fantasy about how romantic etc. it was to be “travlerss” and misunderstood by so much of society. And they liked me too. Imagine my surprise when I gradually realized that they were stealing from the store (a lot). They’d put statues of saints in the diapers of babies, distract me on one end of the store so the other group could make off with a bunch of crosses, etc. It was amazing! I was hurt and offended and saddened.
But then, after speaking to some of them (who were honest enough to be candid with me), I realized that in THEIR culture, stealing was not only allowed, it was encouraged. They simply did not have the same value system I did. Nor did anyone in their families. They knew the law of the land said otherwise. But in their world, those who could succesfully pilfer were doing things correctly.
I think this type of mind set must be considered when looking at folks like this family. They may not be simply evil or corrupt. They may know that what they did was “wrong” by everyone else’s standards. But they may truly in the deepest parts of their souls believe that the rules that society imposes are not meant to apply to them, and that breaking them is actually a good thing.
I don’t understand or agree with those kinds of values. I have accepted and adopted the values of most middle class Americans. For better or worse, it is how I was raised. And I am comfortable in my world. But stories like this make more sense to me when I remember the Gypsies that stole religious articles without batting an eye. It was how they were raised to be.