The guys at Muckraked! look to whom might be the next victim of an appropriations scandal. They come up with the Appropriations Committee's vice chair [sw: Ralph Regula] (R-OH):
Of course Regula’s own ties to contributors have raised some eyebrows, especially concerning Forest City Enterprises (the developers of that megaproject in downtown Brooklyn). The real-estate development firm is the congressman’s top campaign contributor in his political career, giving him $114,150. In June 2004, the appropriations committee approved a $9.2 billion package to privatize military housing. Three months later, a partnership led by Forest City won the 50-year, $358 million contract.Continue reading
Mid-Morning News:
- The Club for Growth Blog reports that Rep. [sw: Jim Moran] (D-VA) is really excited about earmarking. “When I become chairman [of a House appropriations subcommittee], I’m going to earmark the s—t out of it,” Moran buoyantly told a crowd of 450 attending the event.” Can we please get earmarking transparency -- QUICK!
- The David Safavian trial is about to be handed to the jury to decide the former Bush administration official's fate. Did Safavian abuse his position to help Jack Abramoff? Was it a mistake for the prosecution to not send Abramoff to testify? Will Safavian's bumbling testimony lead to a guilty verdict as Ken Lay's did? I'm putting my money on the latter.
- CongressDailyAM reports that the Democratic Caucus will vote on Thursday on the Steering Committee's recommendation that [sw: William Jefferson] be stripped of his seat on the Ways and Means Committee.
- Also in CongressDailyAM, Speaker [sw: Dennis Hastert] (R-IL) plans on naming conferees to the lobbying and ethics reform conference committee. Don't expect much of the conference committee or the legislation that they create. Whatever comes out of that committee it will not be reform.
- The Washington Post's Jeff Birnbaum reports that Congress is about to make it infinitely more difficult to lobby members of Congress through email. If you wish to send an email to your representative you will now have to complete a math problem. I'm going to go with MoveOn's Eli Pariser's statement about this: "We should be living in the golden age of politics -- an age in which every member of Congress can easily have a two-way conversation with his or her most engaged constituents. Instead, we're seeing bunkerization." Exactly. And why don't we have instant, searchable Internet disclosure of all information reported in Congress? This is the 21st Century isn't it? Continue reading
Reverse California Gold Rush:
What we are seeing here is a reverse California Gold Rush. We have politicians who are from California coming back east to Washington, DC to find gold. These politicians discovered that they didn't need to find gold, they could create it. They could hide their gold inside of cavernous Appropriations legislation or in Armed Services bills, where nobody would dare look -- the site of thousand page bills can turn-off the most daring spelunker. And thus we have come to the point where almost an entire party's delegation from one state, the great state of California, is tied up in scandal. From [sw: John Doolittle] to [sw: Duke Cunningham], from [sw: Jerry Lewis] to [sw: Richard Pombo], and now we have [sw: Ken Calvert] and [sw: Duncan Hunter]. CongressDailyAM provides the goodies on Hunter, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee:
Despite strong objections from the Navy, House Armed Services Chairman Hunter added $25.7 million to the FY07 defense authorization bill to upgrade an experimental high-speed vessel based in San Diego and developed by one of his biggest political donors. ... From 1998 to 2003, Hunter received $47,200 in campaign donations from Titan Corp., more than any other lawmaker, according to the Center for Public Integrity. Cunningham, whose district adjoined Hunter's, came in third -- just behind another Southern Californian, House Appropriations Chairman Lewis -- with $43,050 in Titan donations.Titan was bought up by L-3 Communications last year. L-3 Communications has contributed a total of $34,350 to Hunter's campaign committee and his political action committee in this cycle alone. Calvert turned up in the Roll Call article that contained information on the investigation into [sw: Jerry Lewis]. It turns out that investigators are also looking at Calvert's earmarking practices:
In Calvert’s case, the search of his financial disclosures came eight days after the Los Angeles Times reported on earmarks that went to redevelopment of land around an airfield near where he had invested in a parcel of land. The paper reported that in one instance, after a $1.5 million earmark for fixing up the closed air base, Calvert and a partner sold the land for a nearly 100 percent profit a year after its purchase.Looks like these reverse gold rushers had their day in the sun, but now the party's over. I think I found a motto for these California Reps. to live by. From Tupac Shakur and Dr. Dre's song "California Love": It's all good, from Diego to tha Bay Your city is tha bomb if your city makin pay I'm sure that Hunter and Calvert could agree. No doubt. Continue reading
Perils of Reporting
I'm not sure what to make of NBC's story about Tom Casey, the former CEO of Audre Inc., a bankrupt company that apparently sought a federal earmark from Rep. Jerry Lewis, among others. Casey alleges that in exchange for his campaign contributions (or those made in 1993), Lewis (who would have been in the minority at the time, although of course that hardly matters when it comes to the House Appropriations Committee) offered him a $14 million earmark, which Casey could write into the bill himself:
Continue readingScared Stiff
If I was Rep. [sw: Jerry Lewis] (R-CA) that's what I'd be. Today the Lewis case has officially became a serious matter. After the revelations of Lewis' step-daughter's work for the Small Biz Tech PAC, whose offices reside in a house co-owned by a recipient of Lewis' earmarks and a former aide to Lewis turned lobbyist, and the NBC News revelations about Audre, Inc. Lewis looks set for a busy summer of fundraising, not for an election, but for a legal expense fund. Now Roll Call, the San Diego Union Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times bring us new information about the Lewis case. First let's start with the Roll Call piece:
In one of the clearest signs yet that Lewis is himself under the investigative microscope, the FBI retrieved the chairman’s financial records late last month even as federal prosecutors in Southern California were issuing a series of subpoenas to towns and counties in his Congressional district, all of which were represented at one time or another in lobbying activities by a current or former Lewis staffer. ... The investigators are in particular examining the relationship between Lewis and a lobbying firm he enjoys a very close relationship with, Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton and White. The records search in the Legislative Resources Center in Cannon was the latest sign of that, as the FBI examined the records of Jeff Shockey and Letitia White.The FBI is also searching through the financial disclosure forms of Lewis' wife, Arlene Willis, who works as his chief of staff in his personal office. The Los Angeles Times tells us that Letitia White is at the center of the allegations made by Tom Casey, the head of Audre, Inc.
Casey said he had told investigators that in 1993, Lewis' top appropriations aide, White, escorted him and Wilkes to a basement room in the Capitol where House Appropriations Committee staffers drafted legislation. There, according to Casey, he was seated in front of a word processor and was asked to type a paragraph into the defense bill that would be so specific that it would limit competition. ... The final bill included much of the language Casey wrote, although the earmark was slashed to $14 million, he said.And the kicker to the Audre earmark deal comes at the end of the Times piece:
The obscure trade journal also uncovered in financial disclosure reports that White, then Lewis' aide, had bought stock in Audre on Nov. 3, 1993, one week before the passage of the final bill.Lewis is another example of the power of K Street melded into Congress. Just like Jack Abramoff, Mitchell Wade, and Brent Wilkes the Bill Lowery-Letitia White-Jerry Lewis connection showcases how Congress and K Street have corrupted each other by combining their operations. When lobbyists and defense contractors are writing language into bills the public interest is not being served. When a member of Congress receives over ONE THIRD of his campaign contributions from one lobbying firm and their clients, as Lewis has, then that member will not be serving the public interest. What we have here is a system that has been created by certain members and certain lobbyists that subverts democracy and public participation in government while abusing institutions and the First Amendment rights to give money to a candidate and to lobby Congress. Continue reading
Lewis Is In a Heap of Trouble:
Last night NBC News reported that the CEO of Audre, Inc. was told by Rep. [sw: Jerry Lewis] (R-CA) that he needed to pony up campaign contributions to members and that he hire Lewis' friend Bill Lowery as a lobbyist and provide Lowery with stock options before he could get federally earmarked money for his business.
In an exclusive interview, Casey tells NBC News that after he made campaign contributions to House members of both parties, Lewis informed him the Pentagon would get $14 million for the testing, and that Casey even could write the language. Lisa Myers: You were allowed to write language for an appropriations bill yourself? Casey: Yes, I did. That was Congressman Lewis' suggestion. Casey says Lewis repeatedly urged him to hire a lobbyist, former U.S. Rep. Bill Lowery, Lewis' close friend, and when that didn't happen, pressed for another favor. Casey: Congressman Lewis asked me to set up stock options for Bill Lowery in our company. Casey says Lewis suggested he issue the stock options in Canada — in someone else's name. Myers: Did you view it as an effort to hide what was really going on? Casey: It was intended to conceal his participation, yes.As Justin Rood notes, Casey started the contracting career of Brent Wilkes at Audre, Inc. Wilkes is said to have aggressively urged Casey to spend more money on lobbying and campaign contributions as a means to gain the support of members. Wilkes eventually became fed up with Casey and jumped ship to start his own contracting business, ADCS, Inc. Continue reading
Morning News:
- Yet another local government has been issued a subpoena in the federal investigation into Rep. [sw: Jerry Lewis] (R-CA). According to the San Bernardino Sun, the "clerk of Yucca Valley confirmed Tuesday her office has been subpoenaed for records pertaining to Copeland Lowery and Lewis in connection with a criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI, the federal Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the IRS."
- The Los Angeles Times reports on the details of Rep. [sw: William Jefferson]'s (D-LA) deals with the Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar. Jefferson, in a meeting with the FBI informant Lori Mody, provides this classic quote about Abubakar: "He's a very, well, the word might be … corrupt." The new affidavit also reveals that on one trip to Abubakar's home Jefferson's driver was actually an undercover FBI agent.
- The House Minority Leadership of [sw: Nancy Pelosi] (D-CA) and [sw: Steny Hoyer] (D-MD) invited Jefferson to make his case to the Democratic Steering Committee on why he should remain on the Ways and Means Committee. Pelosi and Hoyer have both publicly stated that Jefferson should be removed from the committee with Hoyer stating "he had $90,000 found in his freezer ... I think he's got a tax problem". The main support for Jefferson comes from the Congressional Black Caucus who have nine members on the Steering Committee. Roll Call reports that a vote on Jefferson's committee seat will show whether the CBC is in open revolt against the leadership or is split itself.
- The Houston Chronicle reports on the end-of-week exit of [sw: Tom DeLay] (R-TX) from Congress. DeLay says that he has no regrets and that he "fight[s] for what I believe in". We'll have more on what DeLay believes in at the end of the week.
- According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, more items that belonged to [sw: Duke Cunningham] will be up for sale tomorrow. If you are around Los Angeles why not go buy a piece of history.
- And finally, The Hill reports that defense lobbyists are rethinking how they do business in Washington in the wake of Cunningham's perp-walk and imminent earmark reform. You see, they need to find a way to get appropriations that doesn't involve bribing members of Congress with hookers. But seriously, this shows that sunlight, and even the threat of more sunlight, causes these guys to, like vampires, alter their behaviors.
Support 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
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
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
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