If you want to applaud him you'll find a few things in his Wikipedia bio that you can applaud, but please read some of the rest of it.
Here are three excerpts -
1. "In 1992, as President of investment group McCarthy & Co., Hagel assumed ownership and became Chairman of American Information Services (AIS), later known as Election Systems & Software (ES&S), a manufacturer of computerized voting machines. On March 15, 1995, Hagel resigned from the board of AIS as he intended to run for office.<10>"
2. "Allegations of inadequate disclosure and conflict of interest
In Bev Harris' book Black Box Voting,<11> in an article in The Hill,<12> Hagel is accused of having covered up his involvement with American Information Systems, Inc., the voting machine company. Harris alleges that Hagel omitted mention of AIS from the required US Senate financial disclosure forms. <13>. Harris also says that Hagel hid his continuing investment in the McCarthy Group. Harris writes:
In October 2002, I discovered that he
still had undisclosed ownership of ES&E through its parent company, the McCarthy Group. The McCarthy Group is run by Hagel's campaign finance director, Michael R. McCarthy, who is also a director of ES&S. Hagel hid his ties to ES&S by calling his investment of up to $5 million in the ES&S parent company an "excepted investment fund." This is important because senators are required to list the underlying assets for companies they invest in, unless the company is "excepted." To be "excepted," the McCarthy Group must be publicly traded (it is not) and very widely traded (it is not)."
Harris contacted Victor Baird, counsel for the Senate Ethics Committee, to inquire into Hagel's disclosure statements. After some investigation, Baird agreed that Hagel apparently mischaracterized the nature of his investment in the McCarthy Group. Soon afterwards, Baird resigned -- Harris suggests, without proof, that Baird was forced to resign -- and Harris was told that he was unavailable to speak to the press. Harris says that Baird's replacement supported Hagel's characterization of the McCarthy Group as an excepted fund.
Harris and Hartmann imply that Hagel's landslide victories in 1996 and 2002 may have been due to vote tampering. Harris writes, "Hagel defeated popular Democratic Gov. Ben Nelson, who had led in the polls since the opening gun... becoming the first Republican to win a Senate seat in Nebraska in 24 years... What the media didn't report is that Hagel's job, until two weeks before he announced his run for the Senate, was running the voting machine company whose machines would count his votes.".<14> However, Harris and Hartmann provide no concrete evidence of fraud. All they can point to is circumstantial evidence, such as the unexpected nature of the election upset (Hartmann writes, "Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black communities that had never before voted Republican") and the odd fact that the voting machines used to count votes in Hagel's Senate bid were built by the very same company that Hagel had recently chaired and that Hagel continued to invest in. Also, Harris reports <15> that Alexander Bolton, author of the Hill article about Hagel, complained that prominent Republican lawyer Jan Baren and Hagel Chief of Staff Lou Ann Linehan visited The Hill office and pressured Bolton, unsuccessfully, to kill or soften the Hagel story."
3. "Hagel's name was widely rumoured to be one of those considered by George W. Bush as a potential running mate in the 2000 presidential election. During the Bush administration, Hagel maintained a "traditionally Republican" voting record, receiving "a lifetime rating of 84 percent from the American Conservative Union and consistent A and B grades from the National Taxpayers Union."<16> Among his most notable votes, Hagel:
Voted for the Iraq war
Voted for the Patriot Act
Voted for the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts
Voted against No Child Left Behind
Voted against Bush’s Medicare prescription drug bill
Voted against McCain-Feingold<16>
In August 2004, Hagel acknowledged that he was considering a presidential campaign in 2008."
In addition, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. We don't need anymore leaders of the Bilderberg Empire.
Did you ever post anywhere and reference Diebold? Did you also reference ES & S?
Did he ever prove that he wasn't involved in what they were making or his contribution and take from it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Hagel
And the internet is full of stories - better to read from there - lot's of words of derision, not that many in defense.
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- Of course the system is inherently flawed. So no matter what caused it, it was going to happen, one way or another, anyway......
