If you follow the news at all, you would by now know about Congressman George Santos. George Santos is the American politician who is the U.S. representative for New York’s 3rd congressional district, Congressman Santos has lied about his entire resume, his background, education, work, and family history, you name it, Santos has lied about it and yet he is still a member of the House of Representatives. There are even members of his party trying to defend him, defending the indefensible but that is a story for another day. I was more interested in how the guy got into public office, so I started my research and here is what I found.
First, I discovered that most candidates for public office when they first arrive on the scene are usually vented by the local news media. Why didn’t the local news in Long Island uncover this con man and tell their constituents about him. Well, it turns out they did, the North Shore Leader reported that Santos’ financial disclosure form in 2020 claimed no assets over $5,000:
And his income was only just over $50,000 for the prior year, derived from a venture fund called “Harbor Hill Capital” that was closed and seized in 2020 by U.S. federal prosecutors as a “Ponzi Scheme.” Santos was the New York Director of that “fund.”
Shortly after that in a filing dated Sept. 6, 2022, Santos claims his assets are now as much as $11 million, including personal bank accounts of between $1 million and $5 million; a condo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, of between $500,000 and $1 million; and business interests of between $1 million and $5 million. The paper, whose staff had been hearing rumors of various Santos’s tales for a while, followed up with that stinging editorial calling him a fraud.
What happened next is really the root of the problem, nothing happened. No other media outlets pursued the story. Not the six local TV stations or WNYC, or Politico, New York, the Times, the Daily News, not one of them. If this had run 25 years ago, it would have been gobbled up,” he said. “There’d have been 20 follow-ups from Newsday and other publications and the weeklies.”
Now, none of this should surprise you, if you read or watch the local news in the Philadelphia area you must know that it’s on for 8 ½ hours a day and tells you nothing. You get endless weather reports, traffic reports and a million fluff stories but no news or information that is hard hitting or the least bit informative. This is why we are getting such a poor crop of candidates, on both sides of the political spectrum. If you don’t believe that, just remember in the 2018 mid-terms, there were three people running for congress who were under federal indictment, Bob Menendez, Duncan Hunter Jr., and Chris Collins, all three were reelected, the last two were convicted, that says volumes about uninformed electoral than it does to the electees.
I wish that most folks would put the same enthusiasm into researching and electing folks for political office as the do following their local sports teams. Most folks I speak with can tell you all about the Eagles QB or how the Phillies are doing but don’t know who their local or federal representative is, these professional athletes who really have no personal effect on your everyday life get more attention than our representatives who really do affect your world, maybe then we would have less George Santos and folks like Adam Kinzinger who was basically forced out of congress for telling the truth, really a shame!