John Nichols: Orrin Hatch Was Never a 'Public Servant'

[babylonsister]

https://www.thenation.com/article/orrin-hatch-was-never-a-public-servant/

Orrin Hatch Was Never a ‘Public Servant’
The retiring senator has always been a shameless tool of billionaire campaign donors and a partisan errand boy for the likes of Donald Trump.
By John Nichols
Yesterday 2:30 pm


Orrin Hatch referred last year to his long Senate tenure as “my whole stinking career.”

That was a fair assessment of the Utah Republican’s 41 years in Washington.

Seventy-five percent of Utah voters told pollsters last fall that they did not want the senator to seek reelection in 2018.

Hatch helped usher in the era of relentlessly negative and dishonest politics.

Hatch took the hint this week, announcing that he plans to retire after four decades of placing special interests and the personal power that is obtained by serving them above the public interest and the people whose lives are made dramatically worse when government abandons them.

Few, aside from President Trump, Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell, and the lobbyists for the special interests Hatch served, will miss one of the most egregious hypocrites ever to serve in a chamber where mendacity has always been well represented.

snip//

Ironically, the latest campaign-finance reports for Orrin Hatch show that the biggest source of campaign money for the Senate Finance Committee chair in recent years has been the securities industry and related special interests. He remained their lapdog to the end.

[a kennedy]

1. would like to just post this here about the "public servant" Orrin Hatch:

Hatch, who first took the seat in 1977, is worth an estimated $4.96 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, making him worth 81 percent more than the average senator.

[babylonsister]

2. That's the bottom line for all these

swamp dwellers, how much they can cash in at our expense.