{"id":383,"date":"2014-09-05T16:26:21","date_gmt":"2014-09-05T12:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=383"},"modified":"2014-09-05T16:26:21","modified_gmt":"2014-09-05T12:26:21","slug":"mcdonnell-found-guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=383","title":{"rendered":"McDonnell found guilty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Talk about the commonwealth last night and today has concerned the fate of former governor Bob McDonnell. That is,\u00a0<em>Republican<\/em> Governor Bob McDonnell, as the media are fond of noting.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never met a politician who didn&#8217;t engage in some type of influence peddling. That&#8217;s what politicians do. It&#8217;s the equivalent of charging a musician with playing music, or a businessman of conducting business. The business of politics is trading favors for money or other favors. I don&#8217;t think Bob McDonnell should go without penalty for that reason, but seriously, of all the people to make an example of&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The tension between McDonnell and Mrs. McDonnell is what made this case. We love a good soap opera. That and name-brand clothing and accessories. But Jeebus, if every politician who accepted gifts in exchange for political considerations we&#8217;d be all out&#8230; wait a minute, this could work.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is not the selling or trading of favors. It&#8217;s the value of goods available to today&#8217;s politician. When Thomas Jefferson was governor of Virginia he wasn&#8217;t taking Rolex watches. What was he going to give in exchange? A cow? Today&#8217;s politicians control literally trillions of dollars in assets. This is not rocket science. It&#8217;s political science. Decrease the rewards available and the incentive to skirt the rules drops in kind.<\/p>\n<p>My verdict in this case? Let McDonnell go to prison. And let&#8217;s start a nice long line behind him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Talk about the commonwealth last night and today has concerned the fate of former governor Bob McDonnell. That is,\u00a0Republican Governor Bob McDonnell, as the media are fond of noting. I&#8217;ve never met a politician who didn&#8217;t engage in some type &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=383\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}