CongressDaily PM reports that the Senate Indian Affairs Committee will finally issue a report on Jack Abramoff and his bilking of Indian tribes in the next two months. However, the report will not touch on Abramoff's dealings with lawmakers or executive branch officials meaning that "two years after news of the activities of Abramoff and his allies first came to light, there is no known congressional inquiry into whether lawmakers or administration officials took improper or illegal actions on their behalf." Congress has essentially given up its authority to investigate the matter and left it up to career Justice Department investigators and prosecutors.
Continue readingFBI Investigating Missouri Lobbying:
Jack Abramoff and his fedora laid bare corrupt elements in Washington lobbying. It seems the feds took note and are investigating corrupt lobbying practices at the state level. First case, Missouri:
FBI agents are looking into lobbying practices in the Missouri Capitol, The Kansas City Star has learned. ... Jack Cardetti, a spokesman for the Missouri Democratic Party, ... said he was told investigators were asking about companies and associations being steered to hire certain lobbyists if their wishes were to be met — or at least heard. Others said, however, it would be logical to hire Republican lobbyists who would likely have more access to contacts in the governor’s office or the legislative leadership. One official who recently traded for a new lobbyist agreed that his move was just to have Republican representation in a Republican world.Looks like the feds are looking into a Missouri "K Street Project". Oops... I better not say that or Grover Norquist will sue me. Continue reading
Political Heat:
Two Congressmen are taking political heat for allegedly unethical behavior:
- Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post's The Fix analyzes Alan Mollohan's (D-WV) response to allegations that he has seen his personal finances skyrocket over the past few years thanks to earmarks that he has provided to a business partner of his in North Carolina.
Mollohan has smartly sought to cast the complaint filed by the NLPC in partisan terms. "The NLPC has in the past targeted Democrats with charges that later proved to be without merit," Mollohan said in a statement released by his campaign. "Obviously I am in the crosshairs of the National Republican Party and like-minded entities, such as the NLPC." In a letter sent to Reynolds and Hastert, Mollohan wrote that calls for him to resign from the Ethics Committee reveal "the entirely partisan, political nature of the attack that has been made upon me, and the reason this attack has been made." He added: "The reason is...that I strongly opposed efforts by the Republican leadership that would have seriously undermined the ability of the Ethics Committee to perform its basic function of enforcing House rules and standards."
- Over in Western North Carolina Charles Taylor (R-NC) is being challenged over his connection in the Jack Abramoff scandal, according to the Ashville Citizen-Times.
Abramoff’s firm threw the congressman a fundraiser on April 11, 2003, that scored thousands of dollars in donations for his campaign. That included a $2,000 contribution from Abramoff and $1,000 from the Saginaw Chippewa tribe, which wanted federal money for school construction.A month later, he and a U.S. senator wrote a letter challenging the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ resistance that the Saginaw shouldn’t quality for the federal money, The Associated Press said in a report Tuesday.
The tribe donated $3,000 more to Taylor a month after the letter.
Buckham Lobbying and Investing Mixed:
The dirt keeps piling up for ex-DeLay chief of staff Ed Buckham. The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Buckham got Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL) to insert a $1.55 million earmark for the Florida Institute of Technology which then turned around and signed a lobbying client and business partner of Buckham to do the work.
With the assistance of Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.), a DeLay political ally, Buckham had $1.55 million set aside in late 2003 in a federal appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Labor to fund a program for small businesses. The money was awarded to the Florida Institute of Technology, which promptly signed a contract with Map Roi Inc., a client and partner of lobbyist Buckham. At the time, Buckham's lobby company, Alexander Strategy Group, held options on 500,000 shares of Map Roi stock, records show.Map Roi, a Guam-based company, enjoyed success after securing the FIT contract attracting $3 million from a group of venture capital firms. Buckham had encountered Map Roi through his dealings with Jack Abramoff in Guam. The FIT earmark was not the only one sought by Map Roi. There was an effort to obtain $20 million in earmarks from the federal government that strikes current Abramoff lightening rod Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT):
In a May 13, 2003, speech to Guam legislators and other officials, Gutierrez's successor as governor of Guam, Felix P. Camacho, said that a $20-million pact with Map Roi was in the works. In the speech, he credited Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) with pushing for the appropriation. A Burns spokesman said the project was never funded.Continue reading
Matt Taibbi Profiles Abramoff
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi pens an informative and hilarious portrait of superlobbyist Jack Abramoff's career:
Continue readingHe was an amazingly ubiquitous figure, a sort of Zelig of the political right -- you could find him somewhere, in the foreground or the background, in almost every Republican political scandal of the past twenty-five years. He carried water for the racist government of Pretoria during the apartheid days and whispered in the ear of those Republican congressmen who infamously voted against anti-apartheid resolutions. He organized rallies in support of the Grenada invasion, showed up in Ollie North's offices during Iran-Contra, palled around with Mobutu Sese Seko, Jonas Savimbi and the Afghan mujahedin.
All along, Abramoff was buying journalists, creating tax-exempt organizations to fund campaign activities and using charities to fund foreign conflicts. He spent the past twenty years doing business with everyone from James Dobson to the Gambino family, from Ralph Reed to Grover Norquist to Karl Rove to White House procurements chief David Safavian. He is even lurking in the background of the 2004 Ohio voting-irregularities scandal, having worked with the Diebold voting-machine company to defeat requirements for a paper trail in elections.
He is a living museum of corruption, and in a way it is altogether too bad that he is about to disappear from public scrutiny. In a hilariously tardy attempt to attend to his moral self-image, lately he has been repackaging himself as a fallen prophet, a humbled super-Jew who was guilty only of going too far to serve God. He was the "softest touch in town," he has said, a sucker for causes who "incorrectly didn't follow the mitzvah of giving away at most twenty percent."
How Tony Rudy Bought a Think Tank:
According to Raw Story, former DeLay aide and official member of the "pled guilty" caucus Tony Rudy directed his client Stoli Vodka to donate $20,000 to the Abramoff controlled National Center for Public Policy Research. Rudy took an $8,000 cut while the head of NCPPR Amy Ridenour wrote a favorable op-ed for Stoli that is still displayed on their website. Ridenour and the NCPPR have become notorious for writing favorable pieces about Abramoff clients after those clients gave the nonprofit hefty contributions.
Continue readingNorquist to Trademark “K Street Project”:
The Hill reports that Grover Norquist, head of American for Tax Reform and a close friend of Jack Abramoff, wants to trademark the term “K Street Project” and is defending the project from critics.
Conservative activist Grover Norquist is seeking a trademark on “K Street Project,” saying Democrats and Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) have wrongfully acquired the term to describe unethical practices that have nothing to do with his organization.
…
Norquist’s trademark application could take up to a year and a half to be processed.
“Some people say Kleenex when they mean tissue,” Norquist said. “We will jealously guard the real phrasing the way Kleenex and Coca-Cola do. We will sue anyone who says it wrong and make lots of money.”
Norquist founded the K Street Project to pressure lobbying firms into hiring Republican lobbyists. The project was launched after the Republican revolution of 1994 and then accelerated after George W. Bush was elected President in 2000. Reps. Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Dick Armey (R-TX) worked closely with Norquist on the House side while Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) ran the project’s Tuesday meetings where lists of job openings were passed around and the lobbyists and political operatives who attended would discuss which Republicans should fill the jobs.
Continue readingAbramoff E-mails Show Use of Campaign Contributions; GOP, Burns, Taylor In Spotlight
E-mails obtained by the Associated Press indicate how Abramoff’s team used the lure of campaign contributions to obtain an earmark for a school construction project desired by the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Michigan
Abramoff’s team worked with Michigan Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow to get the Senate Democrats, then in control of the Senate, to request the money. Abramoff also turned to Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) to write the earmarked provision for the money. The plan hit a snag when a lone GOP House staffer, Joel Kaplan, objected to the money. That is when the e-mails become of interest:
Aside from the Republican Party getting involved in Abramoff's contribution-for-action scheme two specific lawmakers come up for scrutiny in the e-mails:A staffer for the National Republican Congressional Committee, Jonathan Poe, suggested Abramoff's team compile a list of tribal donations, comparing Republicans with Democrats, to help make the case for lawmakers to overrrule Kaplan, the e-mails state.
Poe's "suggestion for me was to have a list of money contributed by tribes broken down 'r' to 'd' so that I can make the cleanest argument that we are about to let the Senate Democrats take credit for the biggest ask of the year by the most Republican-leaning tribes," Abramoff lobbying associate Neil Volz wrote.
Abramoff's team obliged, creating a tally that showed his tribal clients overwhelmingly donated to Republicans — $225,000 compared with $79,000 for Democrats.
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The Abramoff team's pressure came the same day the NRCC, the GOP's fundraising arm for Republican House candidates, held its major fundraising dinner with President Bush. The Saginaw were a dinner sponsor, donating $50,000.
Nothing is coming up Burns these days. Continue readingIn early 2003, Kaplan's new boss, House subcommittee chairman Charles Taylor, R-N.C., ended any problems in the House when he signed onto the Saginaw money. Burns' office took up the fight in the Senate.
Both oversaw subcomittees that controlled Interior's budget, and the two lawmakers wrote a letter in May 2003 in an effort to overcome resistance inside Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was arguing the Saginaw shouldn't qualify for the school program.
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The blunt letter has caught federal investigators' interest because it referenced correspondence that had been drafted inside Interior but never delivered. Federal agents are investigating whether an Interior official leaked the draft to Abramoff's team so it could be used by the lawmakers to pressure the department.In addition, both Burns and Taylor got campaign money around the time of their help.
A month before the letter, Abramoff's firm threw Taylor a fundraiser on April 11, 2003, that scored thousands of dollars in donations for the lawmaker's campaign, including $2,000 from Abramoff and $1,000 from the Saginaw. The tribe donated $3,000 more to Taylor a month after the letter.
Burns, likewise, got fresh donations. Several weeks before the letter, Burns collected $1,000 from the Saginaw and $5,000 from another Abramoff tribe. The month after the letter, the Saginaw delivered $4,000 in donations to Burns.
It Came From Beyond The Beltway
Despite the inability of a deeply-split Congress to pass any kind of immigration bill before heading off for their Easter recess, the surprisingly large and widespread turnouts of marchers around the country – largely Hispanic – are keeping this issue very much alive. That’s making a lot of politicians nervous, and for good reason. Unlike most issues dealt with in Washington, this one isn’t being carefully stage-managed solely by the usual inside-the-Beltway operatives: lobbyists, PR companies, and money men. In fact, looked at through the lens of money in politics, the immigration issue is almost invisible. A search of the Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets website shows eight PACs with “immigration” in their names: • Americans Against Illegal Immigration • Americans for Legal Immigration
Continue readingPaid more than the President
Currently, federal law sets the rate of pay for the President of the United States at $400,000 a year. Assuming that he works 48 weeks a year (there are those who would argue that our current President doesn't, but I tend to think those arguments are cheap and petty -- even on vacation, the office travels with him), that works out to an hourly rate of $208.33 ($400,000/(48 wks * 40 hrs/wk). Meanwhile, private contractors charge the government, for the use of some employees -- well, look here, on page 9 -- to see that Deloitte & Touche charges the Feds $249.37 an hour for a partner/principal, or here for the $294.21 charged by George Washington University for a Senior Executive Consultant/Lecturer (defined as someone who is a...
Top leader in subject area. Serves as distinguished subject matter expert in content or delivery. Maintains current knowledge of industry best practices and ongoing industry developments and completes whitepapers and speaking engagements on such topics as requested by preeminent publications and organizations. Works with other senior management and senior corporate management to develop the direction of the organization and ensure that the organization s people can meet those needs....or here to see the $225 an hour for a senior economist, $230 for a managing director, $320 an hour for a vice president (the one we elect--the one who lives in the Naval Observatory--earns a scant $108 an hour by comparison), $380 for a senior vice president or a senior managing director, and $420 an hour for president (twice what we pay the one we've chosen to faithfully execute the laws of these United States) charged by Lukens Energy Group. Good enough for government work indeed. Continue reading
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