More Reid Slush Fund Payments To Granddaughter Uncovered

by JASmius

Note the modifier:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is at the center of a growing political controversy after it was revealed Thursday that more payments from his campaign funds had been made to his granddaughter than previously reported.

The Nevada Democrat promised earlier this week to reimburse $16,787 his campaign gave to Ryan Elisabeth Reid in 2013 for what was described as payments for “holiday gifts.” Those payments were reportedly made to purchase items from Ryan Elisabeth Reid, who has her own line of jewelry. Reid defended the payments, saying they complied with Federal Election Commission standards that allow the purchase of goods from relatives if those goods are sold at fair market value.

In this case, the "holiday gifts" were purchased from a company known as...."Ryan Elisabeth".  Which is the name of Dirty Harry's granddaughter's company.  This is what apparently used to be known as "money laundering," although maybe in Nevada they like all their money dirty.

Hard not to notice that Pencilneck is agreeing to reimburse his campaign for payments he's both defending and belatedly remembering.  Because yes, this is a sequel:

Things got worse for Reid when the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Thursday that federal disclosures show the campaign paid another $14,481 to Reid's granddaughter in 2012, bringing to $31,268 the total paid to Ryan Elisabeth in 2012 and 2013 to purchase gifts for Reid's support staff.

I have to say, this baffles me.  As rich as the old bastard is, I just don't understand why he would create this headache for himself.  Just have Dirty Landra (Mrs. Dirty Harry) write a damn check out of one of their personal accounts to Dirty Ryan and be done with it.  Is this so difficult to do?  Obviously Reid thinks his campaign warchest is his, his, ALL his, but why can't he look at it like a trust fund or a 401(k), an account that is his but can't be touched without incurring a significant withdrawal penalty?  I don't get it.

Then the thought occurs - could "memory difficulties" be part, or all, of the problem?:

jimgeraghtyVerified account‏@jimgeraghty 22h

Suddenly the mockery is a bit less funny. Could 74-year-old Harry Reid have Alzheimer's?

http://youtu.be/nefN-QvOPXY 

Maybe it's not full-blown Alzheimer's; could just be senility, or mini-strokes.  Reid is 74; my mother died at 76 of a cerebral hemorrhage and it was determined that she had suffered several mini-strokes that had eroded her short-term memory ability.  I began to notice it a few months before she passed away - I mentioned the (mini-) shopping spree to which she treated my daughter on her sixteenth birthday - three years in the past at that point - and she had no idea what I was talking about.  Ditto the powers of attorney for her and my dad that we had had drawn up a few years previous (and on which I was secondary, while they were primaries for each other).  Oh, she was still lucid and could carry on a normal conversation, and her long-term memory was fine.  But it seemed....odd.  Like something wasn't quite right.  Then, after she was gone, and we were going through the financial records (she always handled the family finances), we discovered that she had squandered over fifty grand - not in one purchase, but over the preceding decade as she would, say, buy a jacket or a dress or something of that sort of "nickel & dime" nature and then forget she had bought it and make the same purchase again.  She'd stock up on vast quantities of frozen and canned food and then repeat the process, having forgotten that she'd already done it.  My parents' house is not exactly mansion-sized, and by the time we were done we filled up two huge dumpsters with all the stuff we couldn't sell or give away to Goodwill, and much of it was from these serial, mentally-impaired shopping sprees.

I mention all of that to illustrate a point: Imagine if my mother had been an exceedingly arrogant high government official handling not just the modest, fixed-income finances of a retired couple, but the multi-trillion dollar budget of the United States.  That Harry Reid may have corruptly double-dipped on luchre to his granddaughter because not all his thrusters are firing anymore may be a symptom of something a lot more serious than that he's a raving dick to all that's good and holy.

The alternative is that he knew exactly what he was doing all along and belongs behind bars.  For Dirty Harry, an "insanity" plea might be something to seriously consider - literally for his own good, and definitely that of the country.