The political extortion racket

Sarah Palin:

...

Washington has morphed into an extortion racket, a place where members of the permanent political class threaten to inflict legislative and regulatory pain to extract campaign donations that they can then siphon into the pockets of themselves and their family members.

In a new book featured this Sunday on 60 Minutes titled Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets, Peter Schweizer explains how Washington politicians use a set of mafia-style legislative tactics to extort people and industries into donating to them out of fear of political and legal reprisals.

Schweizer interviewed former Chairman of Apache Corporation Ray Plank. Plank said campaign cash and lobbying contracts now function as “protection money” to keep lawmakers and regulators from going after you.

“It’s what you expect from the mafia,” said Plank. “They basically come to you and say, ‘We are going to shove this bat up your ass and give you an enema. You better play ball.’ We saw a great deal of it. It’s an insidious blight.”

There are left-wing progressives on Wall Street and in the high-tech world who bankrolled President Obama’s campaign because they love his radical agenda. But as Schweizer points out, many gave because they know they have to; if they don’t, Obama will come after them.

That’s a lesson the Tea Party knows all too well. After the Tea Party’s historic 2010 midterm victory, Obama unleashed Attorney General Eric Holder to go after the oil and gas sector, which had given four times as much to Republicans as to Democrats. As Obama said in October 2010, “We are going to punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.”

Of course, not everyone gets subjected to these Godfather-style shakedowns. Case in point: Obama bundler and former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine of MF Global shame. After "losing" $1.6 billion of MF Global customer money, Corzine walked away without a scratch. In Extortion, Schweizer publishes a devastating quote from Lisa Timmerman, a 17-year MF Global employee who served as the firm’s assistant comptroller for five years, saying: “Corzine is a major Obama fundraiser [which] is keeping prosecutors from bringing criminal charges against him.”
...

There is more.

Palin has always fought against this type of corruption and it is probably why Democrats have used McCarthy like attacks against her.  When Democrats are in power the extortion is very real.  Where I somewhat disagree with Palin is that with the Obama administration they don't "stay bought" as the big Wall Street banks are now finding out.  The extortion racket is hitting up on bank for $13 billion for doing what the government asked them to do during the financial crisis.  Democrat housing policy caused the housing debacle and then they blamed it on the banks.