Lucky Harry

Interesting article from Betsy Woodruff at the National Review:

How Did Harry Reid Get Rich?
Try this thought experiment. Imagine that someone grows up in poverty, works his way through law school by holding the night shift as a Capitol Hill policeman, and spends all but two years of his career as a public servant. Now imagine that this person�s current salary � and he�s at the top of his game � is $193,400. You probably wouldn�t expect him to have millions in stocks, bonds, and real estate.

But, surprise, he does, if he�s our Senate majority leader, whose net worth is between 3 and 10 million dollars, according to OpenSecrets.org. When Harry Reid entered the Nevada legislature in 1982, his net worth was listed as between $1 million and $1.5 million �or more,� according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. So, since inquiring minds inquire, let�s try to figure out how Reid�s career in public service ended up being so lucrative. He hasn�t released his tax returns, which makes this an imperfect science, but looking at a few of his investments helps to show how he amassed his wealth.

In 2004, the senator made $700,000 off a land deal that was, to say the least, unorthodox. It started in 1998 when he bought a parcel of land with attorney Jay Brown, a close friend whose name has surfaced multiple times in organized-crime investigations and whom one retired FBI agent described as �always a person of interest.� Three years after the purchase, Reid transferred his portion of the property to Patrick Lane LLC, a holding company Brown controlled. But Reid kept putting the property on his financial disclosures, and when the company sold it in 2004, he profited from the deal � a deal on land that he didn�t technically own and that had nearly tripled in value in six years.

Tip of the iceberg -- Ms. Woodruff outlines (with links) a lot more. The 300+ comments make for interesting reading. Maybe the title should be Dirty Harry instead of Lucky Harry...