The other half is bond debt – some taking the form of shady interest-rate swaps, owed to the very same Wall Street banks that tanked the global economy in the first place.
They're paid for by a shady interest group doing the bidding of Ken Buck.
For Democrats, the news was an early Christmas present, playing right into the argument that Republicans are pawns of the Koch brothers and other shady interest groups.
Another character in "Bridge" describes Rodolpho as "like an angel — you could kiss him he was so sweet," whereas Diana says her brother, an ex-convict with shady business interests, is so virile, he "makes the girls pregnant only from looking".
Investigative journalist Alex Kotch, who recently took a deep dive into the fundraising reports of both IDC challengers and incumbents, found that, though the IDC challengers were relying on small donors, the incumbents were relying on shady corporate interests.
Taken together, this referendum, which earned a place on November's ballot with more than 80,000 citizens' signatures, will ensure that Mainers are represented by Mainers, not shady special interests from outside the state.
That's easy to believe that if you share 9/11 truthers' view that the U.S. government is a compromised institution hiding things from Americans to serve shady powerful interests, whether it's Jews, Muslims or any other group you dislike.
In some ways what happened this year was even more maddening: The top federal student loan watchdog quit in disgust at the government's coddling of shady private interests like Navient.
