- Rep. [sw: William Jefferson] (D-LA) secured a $100,000 bribe for the Vice President of Nigeria to get leverage in dealing with the Nigerian state phone company, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Jefferson received the $100,000 from Lori Mody, the woman who wound up turning on the congressman, and promptly hid $90,000 in his freezer while telling Mody that he had given the money to the Vice President. The money was recovered in an FBI raid of Jefferson's house. The big question here is whether Jefferson was ripping off Mody and is that why she decided to turn him in?
- All eyes are on the congressional race to fill [sw: Duke Cunningham]'s (R-CA) House seat. Cunningham resigned last year and subsequently pled guilty to accepting bribes and was sentenced to 8 years and 8 months in prison.
- Another big race will test how Abramoff-related charges are affecting the image of Sen. [sw: Conrad Burns] (R-MT) as he faces a state Sen. Bob Keenan in the Montana Senate Republican primary.
- The Associated Press rewards bad journalism.
- Closing arguments in the David Safavian case will be held next Monday, according to the Associated Press.
- And finally, House Minority Whip [sw: Steny Hoyer] (D-MD) asserted that Jefferson should step down from the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. When asked why he gave this reason, "I think the reason is because he sits on a tax-writing committee and he had $90,000 found in his freezer ... I think he's got a tax problem, if nothing else." (CongressDailyPM)
A Taste of the Future in Montana
I just got back from a long weekend of marathon meetings in Montana – the unlikely home of an outfit I’ve been working informally with since the early 1990s, the Institute on Money in State Politics.
Here at Sunlight we’re focusing on Congress, but out there in Helena, Montana IMSP tracks campaign money at the state level. Their website at www.followthemoney.org is the gateway to all this information. Essentially it’s a state-level counterpart to the DC-based Center for Responsive Politics, which analyzes federal contributions.
Continue readingSupport Our Pork Ribs!:
Yesterday the House and Senate negotiators announced that they would meet today to pare down the pork in the emergency supplemental bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the damage inflicted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Here at this blog, and at many others, we decry the immense amount of pork that was stuffed into this emergency bill, but sometimes, in our outrage, we forget to explain what this pork has done. It has kept this bill from being passed and that has damaged our war efforts and our ability to rebuild our own country:
The White House says a money crunch is threatening military operations and training accounts, especially for the Army, and could slow training and equipping of Iraqi soldiers. ... the Army will impose a civilian hiring freeze Tuesday and has cut spending on spare parts, transportation and travel.And let's not forget that residents of New Orleans are still unable to move back to their homes. Now, there are certainly reasons that these emergency spending bills should not be coming before Congress. We have been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for three and almost five years respectively and there is no reason for the Bush Administration to continue to hide these costs by not including them in their annual budget request. However, the Senate did not try and argue this point, instead they turned the emergency bill into a pulled-pork sandwich and have held up progress in a war and in rebuilding our scarred country. Next time any of these pork-pushers questions the patriotism of an American they should have to answer for withholding funds from our troops and from our damaged cities and towns. Continue reading
Morning News:
- The San Bernardino Sun reports that two more cities have been subpoenaed in the federal investigation of Appropriations Chairman [sw: Jerry Lewis] (R-CA) and his ties to the lobbying firm Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White. The subpoenas issued to the two cities, Loma Linda and Twentynine Palms, push the total number of subpoenas issued so far to six in the investigation of Lewis' earmark practices.
- David Safavian, aside from testifying that he is a doofus, also stated that he provided "a lot of insight and advice" to Jack Abramoff, according to the New York Times.
- House Democrats are holding a steering committee meeting today that many expect to center on Rep. [sw: William Jefferson]'s (D-LA) seat on the Ways and Means Committee. Jefferson, facing an imminent indictment for his role in a number of crooked deals, was asked to step down by Minority Leader [sw: Nancy Pelosi] (D-CA) but refused. Pelosi is expected to ask the Democratic Caucus to remove Jefferson from his committee seat and possibly replace him with another member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
- According to The Hill, [sw: Tom DeLay] (R-TX) will be leaving Congress this Friday and it looks like he'll be slipping out the back door and not leaving with the bluster and pomp that he was known for during his tenure as one of the most powerful men on Capitol Hill.
- The Hill reports that the oil and gas industry is ramping up the fear rhetoric after the House voted to force oil companies to renegotiate their oil leases signed in 1998 and 1999. The industry is declaring that if this law passes the Senate than it would increase foreign investment in the Gulf of Mexico. After the vote in the House I did a quick run-down on oil-and-gas contributions to the Republicans who voted "Yea" and found that they took a significantly less from the industry than the average Republican. My colleague Larry Makinson did a more extensive review of career numbers and found the same pattern.
- And for some lighter news: "A struggling art galley is hoping a showing and possible sale of a pair of paintings by imprisoned ex-U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. will keep it open."
Emergency Supplemental to be Pared Down:
The two Appropriations Chairs, [sw: Jerry Lewis] (R-CA) and [sw: Thad Cochran] (R-MS), are meeting to get the emergency supplemental to the President and have agreed to pare down the Senate's earmarks to make the bill fit Bush's $92.2 billion maximum demand. That's good news, although reading the Associated Press article makes you think that they're cutting A LOT more money out than is actually being cut:
An additional $648 billion obtained by Sen. [sw: Robert Byrd], D-W.Va., to beef up security at U.S. ports is to be dropped, while $1.2 billion in aid for the Gulf Coast fishing and seafood industry obtained by Sen. [sw: Richard Shelby], R-Ala., will be sharply scaled back.I think they meant to say "million". Continue reading
Afternoon News:
- The San Diego Union Tribune looks at San Diego Rep. [sw: Duncan Hunter] (R-CA) and the campaign contributions that he has received from a certain lobbyist with a shady past (read: convicted criminal). "King of Pork" [sw: Hal Rogers] (R-KY) also pops up in the story.
- Rep. [sw: Bob Ney] (R-OH) has a new excuse for going on an all-expenses paid trip to Scotland with Jack Abramoff and friends. His spokesman is saying that he certainly didn't go to play golf because Ney hates golf as much as he hates "an all-night conference committee meeting on an arcane tax issue." He hates dealing with arcane tax issues, good thing he's not in government. Wait a second...!
- Justin Rood reports that David Safavian implicated himself in court today... As a complete and total idiot.
"Did you think you were qualified for the job?" Zeidenberg asked. "Probably not, actually," Safavian said. "Are you intelligent enough to do the job?" Zeidenberg followed up. Safavian gave an extensive pause. "I suppose so."
- Roll Call reports that members of the House and Justice Department officials are scheduled to sit down and hash out issues relating to the raid on Rep. [sw: William Jefferson]'s (D-LA) office and "begin negotiations on a set of procedures for dealing with possible future search warrants for Congressional offices." Meanwhile, House lawyers will file a brief in federal court claiming that the raid was unconstitutional. Continue reading
End of an Era:
Pork Fight:
From Business Week, a story of competition between lobbyists hired by cities, states, and counties wrangling with lawmakers over who takes credit for the pork they bring home:
Capitol Hill insiders love to tell the story about how Senator Robert C. Byrd once killed a multimillion-dollar federal building project for his home-state West Virginia University because the public school had hired a lobbyist to help wrangle the cash. Byrd's message: As senator, it's his job to win federal dollars for West Virginia.Continue reading
Legs of the Iron Triangle
In its Friday editions, The New York Times traced the career path of Letitia White, who, after an apprenticeship working on Capitol Hill in the offices of Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., a longserving member and now chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, found work in the private sector as a registered lobbyist. Many of her clients, the Times neatly shows in a nifty graphic, paid her firm tens of thousands for lobbying fees, and will receive many millions in earmarked contracts and grants. Your tax dollars at work. (And I should note that a lot of the digging and research was provided by Taxpayers for Common Sense.)
Continue readingMust Love Corruption!:
The romance between the House Majority and lobbying and ethics reform is like the made-up relationship of an 8th grader who wants to impress his friends at camp with lurid tales of his hot girlfriend back home. From the Associated Press:
It was only in January that Republicans and Democrats battled for the ethical high ground. They proposed to outlaw privately funded travel, ban meals and gifts from lobbyists, and slow the move of former lawmakers to lobbying jobs. Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., who has led GOP lobbying efforts in the House, said at the time he hoped to pass a bill by the end of February.There's your fantasy relationship. Just like the steamy make-out sessions in the illusory relationship none of this is true. Instead the House narrowly passed a pathetic excuse for reform and now refuses to name members to the conference committee. The Senate has done no better. They passed a slightly better reform package than the House and then placed anti-reform Senators onto the conference committee. The AP article quotes Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, stating that Americans have a "a built-in cynicism" about politicians and corruption and therefore "most ordinary Americans really don't think much can be done". Politicians seem to think that they should only respond when their constituents are pressing them to do something. In this case they ought to try and rescuse their public image by passing serious reforms over every expectation of a cynical public. Perhaps that would restore more confindence in our governing system. Or maybe Congress feels the same way about public trust in government as President Bush does about gay marriage: they just don't give a sh-t. Continue reading
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