A couple of days ago, Political Money Line -- a high-priced political money research firm -- released an analysis (scroll down for a summary) of a new database that shows that 318 former members of Congress are now lobbyists. Seems like it could be really interesting information, but alas, you don't get much more than a headline from this fee-based service unless you are a subscriber. (And we're not subscribers.)
From an article in The Hill (also subscription based!) we get some highlights:
Continue readingTop of the Morning:
- James Tobin, a former Republican National Committee official, was sentenced to 10 months in prison for his role in jamming the phones of the New Hampshire Democratic Party on election day of 2002, according to the Associated Press.
- The Hill reports that Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA), the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, is being accused of forcing his staff to do volunteer work for his son, Joe Baca Jr., in a local California race. Baca previously caused a split in the CHC - six members quit the group's PAC - after he used the caucus' PAC money to fund the campaigns of two sons, Joe Jr. and Jeremy Baca.
- The Senate Indian Affairs Committee report on Jack Abramoff's bilking of Indian tribes is due out "sometime in June at the earliest", according to Roll Call. The report will not have any new relevations but will focus on "the money trail out of the tribes and into Abramoff and Scanlon’s complicated web of lobbying, consulting and PR firms, along with numerous nonprofits." The report will also make a number of suggested reforms and policies to keep a future Washington go-getter with the cupidity of a Jack Abramoff or Michael Scanlon from so easily gaming the system.
It’s Alive!:
After 16 months of deadlock and inaction the House Ethics Committee has launched two investigations into members of the House, according to the Washington Post. The Ethics Committee has agreed to look into the cases of Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), alleged to have taken bribes from Jack Abramoff in return for favorable action, and Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA), who is alleged to have solicited bribes in an international telecommunications deal. The panel refused to hear the case of the retiring former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), who has already been indicted in Texas on money laundering charges and has been closely tied to Jack Abramoff since the mid-90s. The gridlock on the panel actually began due to three admonishments of DeLay in 2004. After the third admonishment Speaker Dennis Hastert and DeLay purged the panel's Republicans, installing DeLay supporters who aggravated the Democrats on the panel by attempting to change the rules on how the ethics process worked. The deadlock ended when the ranking Democrat Alan Mollohan (D-WV) stepped down after he was alleged to have misstated his personal finances and used federal earmarks to enrich himself. The current ranking Democrat is Howard Berman (D-CA) and the chairman is Doc Hastings (R-WA).
Continue readingTea Leaves in the Primary Results
Amid the continuing buzz of opinion polls that show great dissatisfaction with the president and Congress, there are some real elections taking place around the country. The 2006 primary election season is off and running and yesterday saw primaries in three more states – Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and my own state of Oregon.
Continue readingWest Virginia Non-profits Subpoenaed:
The Charleston Daily Mail is reporting that "two dozen organizations in northcentral West Virginia with ties to Rep. Alan Mollohan reportedly have been subpoenaed, and one nonprofit has reportedly shipped 160 cartons of documents to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia." A source states that "between 25 and 30 organizations in north central West Virginia who have received subpoenas that are extremely broad." The head of two organizations, the Institute for Scientific Research and the West Virginia High Technology Consortium Foundation, states that "the complaint filed by the NLPC is nothing more than a witch hunt" and that he intends "to provide anything and everything I can to [prosecutors] to demonstrate" that his organizations are innocent of any violations.
Continue readingThe End of Legal Bribery?:
Jeff Birnbaum, the Washington Post's K Street correspondent, pens an important article in The Washington Monthly about potential shifts in Washington's political culture in the wake of the Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham scandals:
So far, the scandal surrounding disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff has produced some vivid and memorable examples of modern Washington graft--skybox tickets, pricey restaurant meals, golf junkets to Scotland. Yet at the center of the scandal is something more prosaic, and potentially far more explosive: good old-fashioned campaign donations. Deep in the plea agreements won by Justice Department lawyers are admissions by the defendants--Abramoff and his cronies, ex-DeLay aides Tony C. Rudy and Michael Scanlon--that they conspired to use campaign contributions to bribe lawmakers. Even though these gifts were fully disclosed and within prescribed limits, the government said they were criminal, and the defendants agreed. This aspect of the case has received little attention. But it is sending shudders down K Street. If such prosecutions were to become commonplace, the paid persuaders of Washington and their big-money clients would be dealt a body blow. If prosecutors begin to assert as a matter of routine that lobbyist gifts and campaign contributions are a form of bribery, it could open up a whole new front on the decades-old (and largely ineffective) effort to break the nexus of money and politics in the capital.Continue reading
Enter Skeeter and the Bankrupt Cousin:
The investigation into Rep. Alan Mollohan's (D-WV) personal finances has taken a new turn with the introduction of Mollohan's bankrupt distant cousin Joe Jarvis and his son, Skeeter. The New York Times reports on Mollohan's relationship with the scam man Jarvis:
The relative, Joseph L. Jarvis Jr., faced $1 million debts in a personal bankruptcy case when he partnered with Mr. Mollohan in 1996, a few years after his aerospace company failed to fulfill its federal contracts and also filed for bankruptcy. The 1995 West Virginia deal in Mr. Mollohan's district eventually soured too, and Mr. Jarvis walked away owing Mr. Mollohan's nonprofit group $67,681.63 in rent. Still, Mr. Jarvis, Mr. Mollohan and their wives enjoyed a lucrative real estate partnership managing condominium rentals at the Remington, a 52-unit building that bills itself as "Washington's best kept secret." The couples own 27 Remington condos, which have more than tripled in value, to $8 million, over the decade.There is no evidence to show that Mollohan in any way helped Jarvis obtain federal funds for his many (failed) projects. But that didn't keep Jarvis from constantly talking up his relationship with the high ranking Democrat. Jarvis seems like your average scammer who happened to have relatives in powerful positions allowing him to be a much more successful scammer than he probably was destined to be. Scandals need these characters, like the lifeguard who lived in the Delaware beach house owned by Michael Scanlon that was supposed to be a think tank or the owner of Shirlington Limousine, who is alleged to have ferried prostitutes to Duke Cunningham in the Watergate. No good politician is without his or her wacky relative - a Roger Clinton or a Neil Bush. Jarvis is no different. Continue reading
Digitizing Personal Financial Disclosure Records
My colleague, Larry Makinson, moaned and groaned a couple days ago that the personal financial disclosure records for members of Congress were not available in electronic form. Well, Sunlight noticed that too and that's why one of the first grants we made was to the Center for Responsive Politics to create a searchable online database out of those paper records.
CRP has collected, scanned and posted PDF images of Personal Financial Disclosure reports for members of Congress since 1995. In case you don't know these reports show which members are the wealthiest, which own certain stocks, which members maintain (or have recently paid off) large debts, etc. In short, there's some really important information in those forms that might tell us how lawmakers vote, the earmarks they propose, and why. With paper records, analyzing this data is so...last century. Meaningful and timely analysis is practically impossible. (This is no accident...)
Lobbyists Refuse Battered Wife Syndrome:
Some lobbyists are refusing to act like battered wives who continue to stand by their men. "You can’t just call me bad names night and day and expect me to show up," says lobbyist and former Rep. Mike Flanagan. According to Roll Call, lobbyists are upset that lawmakers spend all day blaming them for the ills of Washington and then ask them to attend $2,000 fundraisers in the evening.
A smattering of Republican lobbyists, fed up with lobbying reform and fearful of an aggressive Justice Department probe into bribery scandals, are quietly registering their discontent in the one area that might actually matter on Capitol Hill: withholding campaign donations. In the grand scheme of multimillion-dollar races, a holdout by a few well-connected GOP fundraiser-lobbyists is hardly going to bankrupt candidate coffers. But the small protest suggests a growing divide between the K Street money machine and lawmakers’ war chests. ... “The Speaker, back in January, laid down the gauntlet and said we need to minimize our contact with lobbyists, implying something is not right,” this lobbyist said. But, he added, he has continued to receive fundraising solicitations from the Speaker. Just this week, this lobbyist received an invitation to a breakfast on May 25 for Hastert’s political action committee. The “suggested minimum contribution” to attend was $2,500. “How dare he ask us for money,” this lobbyist said.Continue reading
Top of the Morning:
- TPM Muckraker reports (via the Washington Post) that Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), already under fire for his relationships with crooked characters Jack Abramoff and Brent Wilkes, "has been paying for babysitters out of his campaign till". Doolittle has spent $5,881 of his PAC money on child care costs since 2001. At least that's better than Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) who used his PAC to pay for groceries and Starbucks.
- Hotline On Call Blog posts a quote from Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) pillorying the Senate for their profligant additions to the emergency supplemental bill. "Any calls from the Senate for an across-the-board cut to make room for a bloated supplemental will be met by a busy signal in the House. The House will not join a shell-game spending spree with taxpayer dollars."
- The aforementioned Sen. Santorum seems to be in trouble again. Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) has filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that two former staffers for Santorum "violated several provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA)." I feel that someone should keep a tally of which legislator receives the most filed complaints against them by CREW in a given year.
- The Los Angeles Times reports that Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA), once an aspiring screenwriter, "will return $23,000 he received for a screenplay option from a Hollywood producer who pleaded guilty Tuesday to defrauding dozens of people into investing in a bogus television series about the U.S. Department of Homeland Security." This happens to be one of the funnier tales of influence buying in the current Congress but it leaves one question. Why didn't Rohrabacher sell his conservative themed script to his buddy Jack Abramoff, former movie producer? Abramoff produced the unbelievably bad conservative movie "Red Scorpion", why couldn't he help make Rohrabacher's tale of a grizzled war veteran who goes into Baja California with a stereotypical liberal straw man and hijinks ensue. I guess the answer is that if you want to make a wretched movie like that you need to have the backing of the secret intelligence service of an oppressive regime.
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