Rep Steve King spent $18,000 at private GOP club, sent taxpayers the bill

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/24/lavish-nazi.html

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Drain the swamp!

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Nothing will happen. By the very act of voting for him (or indeed the GOP) the majority of his constituents have defined themselves as suckers.

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Wait, so the Republican Party oversaw the sale of overpriced dinners to members of congress? Isn’t that a form of money laundering? It’s a very slow method of raiding the treasury for the benefit of… who? Who owns this so-called club?

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Bartender Fee alone is $100.00 hr there so, yeah 18k would add up quick…

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Did he order the cantaloupe?

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Western Iowa in a nutshell.

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Super D-Bag Nazi Rep Steve King spent $18,000 at private GOP club, sent taxpayers the bill

FIFY

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“We ain’t got a constituency!”

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At least Duncan Hunter had the decency to user donor money rather than taxpayer money. (Which King is also doing: " King paid his son and daughter-in-law $805,000 using his campaign account.")

It occurs to me that this is a pretty good scam - set up a private club catering to conservative politicians and then form a conservative group to hold gatherings there to channel even more Congressional GOP donor/taxpayer money into the business. Apparently you don’t even have to pretend there’s legislation you want to discuss.

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My question would be “what is the allowed dinner budget for a representative?”

Good example: My work allows $50 for dinner expenses/day when I’m on a business trip. I never spend that because I’m a cheap date, but technically a $49 chicken dinner would be allowable.

The whole club setup sounds shady as others have noted, but is it technically within the rules, and the $18k figure actually falls within allowances for the given time period?

(an argument could definitely be made that if that’s the case that the allowances are too high. Maybe “representatives are allowed a budget for meals that matches the average meal expenditure for someone in the lowest 10% income in their representative area.” or something similar…)

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When I was in seventh grade on my dc school trip my relative who was a big time republican picked me up and took me to lunch at the capital hill club. I loved it, it was super grown up, I remember bob dole came up and shook my hand, he was really nice and asked me about my trip. I met several members of Congress and they were all really nice. I thought it was so cool I considered myself a republican, until I went to college and educated myself on politics. Now I’m a dyed in the wool liberal living in Portland, but I always will remember how all those old men, treated me so nice, and even though I am diametrically opposed to their politics now, I still remember what nice people they were. We may be opponents, but we are all people who are capable of kindness.

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Steve King is the very definition of not nice.

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Roger that!


I’m sure that he views Iowa’s support of the Union during the Civil War as an unfortunate event, best forgotten.

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Strikes me that the kind of connections you make at an $18k dinner are the kinds that are not going to push you to work in the people’s best interest. At best you can argue that he’s wheeling and dealing to get some company to open a plant in the state for more jobs and $18k would be a bargain if it means he can seal the deal without signing away their tax income, but that’s a lot of wishful thinking on my part.

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I was a senate page on the Republican side. I liked Bob Dole, too, and even went to a gathering at Strom Thurmond’s house. All swell guys. On the outside.

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Just another day of the assholes on parade. Smile and wave, daughter. Smile and wave.

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I’m 76 years old; I doubt that I’ve spend $18,000 on restaurant meals in my entire lifetime. So why should I be subsidizing this POSs excesses?

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kliban

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