Bush has begun accepting that special honor of the two-term president, the presidential pardon. Who gets the honors?
Our distinguished lineup includes:
Isaac Robert Toussie, “one of Long Island’s biggest developers” who, at 29 years old, raked in $20 million from selling subprime mortgages to “inner city minorities” who couldn’t afford Toussie’s overpriced, apparently dilapidated houses. Toussie’s favorite activity before receiving a presidential pardon was apparently flashing his ill-gained wealth by driving around the neighborhoods in Rolls Royces and Bentleys. Toussie’s father is “one of the largest landowners on Long Island” according to The New York Times and I’m sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the pardon, but the elder Toussie has given large donations to the RNC this year.
How exactly did Isaac Toussie find himself on the wrong side of the law? “In May, 2001, Issac Toussie pleaded guilty to fraud in federal court on Long Island for illegally obtaining federal housing loans.” Put more informatively, Raw Story reports that Toussie “pled guilty to inflating the incomes of at least 100 families to make them eligible for federal loans in the lead-up to the worst housing crisis the United States has ever had.” Toussie avoided millions of dollars in restitution that the federal government was seeking from him.
In other words, this guy ripped off the federal government to the tune of millions while buying himself Rolls Royces and Bentleys and taking part in the activities that have in part caused our current economic crisis while already getting a break in not having to pay back the money, and he is worthy of a presidential pardon? Next, this guy will be wanting his own bailout.
John Allen “Johnny”/”Sonny” Aregood of Riviera, Texas, who pled guilty to harboring and transporting illegal aliens in 1996. He also has received more than $200,000 in farm subsidies to his farm, Aregood Farms, from 1995 to 2006, so I would say the federal government has more than compensated him (or his family) for any damage his federal conviction may have caused him. His son illustrates books about earless cats.
Of course, some of these people deserve a second chance. Eric Charles Blanke, of Parker, Colorado, says he pled guilty to “making impressions of obligations of the United States” (AKA counterfeiting) and says that he’s sorry and has lived with being a felon for 15 years.
David Lane Woolsey was convicted of digging up tribal Indian lands in 1992 and allegedly said at the time, “Better I dig it up than have the cows trample it.”
Perhaps most deserving of pardon (since the crimes they were convicted of shouldn’t be crimes at all), some of the 19 had been convicted for marijuana dealing, like Steve Doyle Cavender of Florida, convicted for possessing (with intent to distribute) marijuana in 1972.
The one commutation issued today (rightly) went to Reed Raymond Prior, sentenced to a mandatory life sentence for one count of methamphetamine distribution.
UPDATE: In an unprecedented move and to his credit, Bush has rescinded Toussie’s pardon.
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