Robert Menendez: Saving fallen women from Victimhood

Per­chik: Money is the world’s curse.

Tevye: May the Lord smite me with it. And may I never recover!

Fid­dler on the Roof 1971

A while Back the twin city tea party hosted Pat Bar­ron who ran as an inde­pen­dent for Con­gress back in 2010 in what was at the time the 3^rd Mass­a­chu­setts dis­trict. He spoke about money in pol­i­tics and noted that one of the real sur­prises that a lot of new mem­bers of con­gress face is the huge demands from the party to raise funds.

He described phone bank­ing with long lists of poten­tial con­tributes and thresh­olds that mem­bers are expected to attain. The men­tal pic­ture is some­thing like a giant tele­mar­ket­ing scheme that never seems to end with mem­bers of con­gress a direct cog in it

So when I read this story out of New Jer­sey…

An Elm­wood Park man pleaded guilty on Tues­day to con­spir­ing with his brother to vio­late fed­eral elec­tion law by steer­ing $21,400 in ille­gal cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions to U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez.

Benedetto Big­ica, 45, admit­ted that he worked with his brother, Joseph, of Franklin Lakes, from April 2005 to April 2008 to make the ille­gal contributions

…and this response from the Menen­dez campaign…

A spokesman for Menen­dez has acknowl­edged that the sen­a­tor was the unnamed fed­eral offi­cial cited in court papers in the case but said Menen­dez was a vic­tim of Joseph Bigica’s.

“Sen­a­tor Menendez’s cam­paign, a vic­tim of the fraud that ensued, coop­er­ated fully with the inves­ti­ga­tion,” Mike Soli­man, Menendez’s state direc­tor and for­mer cam­paign man­ager, said Tuesday.

…my head started to spin.

Pols like Sen­a­tor Menen­dez rou­tinely seek dona­tions of large amounts of money, A busi­ness­man fun­nels a large amount of money to him and rather than an accom­plice as a receiver of $98,000 in ille­gal cam­paign funds this makes Sen­a­tor Menen­dez… a vic­tim!

True it wasn’t until there was a guilty plea in this case that the Sen­a­tor decided to abdi­cate vic­tim sta­tus by giv­ing the money to char­ity, but some­times it takes time for vic­tims to come forward.

What I find inter­est­ing is how lit­tle stretch­ing of this elas­tic def­i­n­i­tion of “vic­tim­hood” it would take for Joseph Big­ica to claim the title:

Joseph Big­ica, 47, an insur­ance bro­ker, was a promi­nent Demo­c­ra­tic con­trib­u­tor who won mil­lions of dol­lars in no-​bid gov­ern­ment con­tracts across North Jersey.

After all if the Sen­a­tor is a vic­tim for receiv­ing tens of thou­sands by less that eth­i­cal means surely those mil­lions of dol­lars make Mr Big­ica an even big­ger vic­tim!

This story might be an alter­na­tive expla­na­tion as to why Sen­a­tor Menen­dez abruptly left yesterday’s hur­ri­cane Sandy press con­fer­ence, although it makes lit­tle sense. The press con­fer­ence is about help­ing vic­tims and the sen­a­tor as a vic­tim should have fit right in.

The vic­tim sta­tus that comes from obtain­ing money from an ille­gal source also explains his silence to Kerry Picket con­cern­ing the under­age Domini­can Hooker Story

Two women from the Domini­can Repub­lic told The Daily Caller that Demo­c­ra­tic New Jer­sey Sen. Bob Menen­dez paid them for sex ear­lier this year.

In inter­views, the two women said they met Menen­dez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expen­sive 7,000-acre resort in the Domini­can Repub­lic. They claimed Menen­dez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.

The senator’s alleged under­pay­ment of these young ladies appar­ently was an effort to limit the degree of their victimhood.

Fur­ther­more his con­tin­ued silence on the mat­ter in the face of a FBI inves­ti­ga­tion is clearly an effort by the sen­a­tor to keep the embar­rass­ment of these young ladies vic­tim sta­tus away from the national press, or at least away from the mem­bers of the national press that finds it news­wor­thy.

And you thought Chivalry is dead?

Update: Chivalry or no, once Jay Leno starts jok­ing

it’s hard to ignore it. Par­tic­u­lar when the FBI is bang­ing down doors:

FBI agents late Tues­day night raided the West Palm Beach busi­ness of an eye doc­tor sus­pected of pro­vid­ing free trips and even under­age Domini­can Repub­lic pros­ti­tutes to U.S. Sen. Bob Menen­dez, D-N.J. — who has denied what he calls the “fal­la­cious allegations.”

Agents gath­ered at the medical-​office com­plex of Dr. Salomon Mel­gen, a con­trib­u­tor to Menen­dez and other promi­nent politi­cians, to start haul­ing away poten­tial evi­dence in sev­eral vans.

Another con­trib­u­tor, Don’t tell me the Sen­a­tor has been vic­tim­ized again!