Keeping track of congressional information starts at the local level, and blogs do a great job of informing people about what is happening in their own backyard. I have been reading local blogs for quite a while and have been very impressed with the coverage on local ethics issues and congressional information. So I would like to highlight every week some blogs that do a great job covering issues that deal with transparency, ethics, and corruption.
Continue readingTed Stevens Threatens to Block Ethics Bill
What happens when you combine the last two posts by Bill and myself? You get a story like this one from John Bresnahan at the Politico:
"Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, whose home back in Alaska was raided by federal investigators Monday in a wide-ranging corruption investigation, has threatened to place a hold on the Democratic-drafted ethics legislation just passed by the House and expected on the Senate floor by week’s end.
The senator told a closed session of fellow Republicans today, including Vice President Dick Cheney, that he was upset that the measure would interfere with his travel to and from Alaska – and vowed to block it."
Sen. Stevens' is apparently upset that lobbyists will no longer be able to freely ferrett him from Washington to Alaska. He is concerned that he may have to use some of those millions of dollars which he obtained with Bob Penney and Bill Allen to actually - gasp - pay for his own travel.
Sen. Stevens could always just stay in Alaska.
Continue readingTed Stevens’ Home Raided
By now, you've probably heard that agents from the FBI and the IRS raided the home of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who has been under investigation for his links to Veco Corp., whose executives have been among his top contributors over the years (and top contributors to quite a few others as well. A pair of them have also pled guilty to bribing some state lawmakers. One of the issues federal agents are investigating is the role Bill Allen, the company's CEO, played in arranging renovations to Stevens' home, which doubled its size. Stevens says he paid for the renovations out of his own pocket. This raises a question I've thought of before but have never seen satisfactorily answered -- how many kinds of favors are there that someone can do for a lawmaker that don't necessarily leave a paper trail? If someone uses his time, connections, expertise and so on to help a senator hire the right contractor, it doesn't necessarily leave any kind of record. The senator gets a thing of value--perhaps the best price or the finest quality or the fastest service--thanks the efforts of this benefactor. Perhaps it's not the name of the company to hire, but a whispered stock tip that pays off handsomely or an invitation to be in on the ground floor of a can't-miss real estate development. In any case, our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense are asking Sen. Mitch McConnell to ask Stevens to recuse himself from his committee work. Don Surber notes that Alaska has a dubious trio of lawmakers. It's pretty indicative of the state of affairs of the North to the Future state that the Anchorage Daily News has a tab on this page that says, "More Alaska Political Corruption Stories," which takes the reader to this catalog.
Continue readingOn Land Deal, Murkowski takes the Personal out of Financial Disclosure
Laura McGann of TPM Muckraker writes about an odd wrinkle in the personal financial disclosure rules that's being advanced by an aide to Sen. Lisa Murkowski to explain her failure to dislcose some property she bought. To briefly recap McGann's story, Murkowski bought some undeveloped land from Bob Penney, a politically connected Alaskan real estate developer (he's quite close to Sen. Ted Stevens). Local realtors consulted by McGann suggest the property might sell on the open market for as much as $300,000. How much Murkowski actually paid is unknown--the transaction price in Alaskan real estate deals are not public, Penney isn't talking and Murkowski didn't list the purchase on her personal financial disclosure form because, her office says, the land is for personal use:
Murkowki's office called the purchase exempt from Senate financial disclosure, citing a clause in the ethics manual which says "property which is held or maintained solely for recreational or personal purposes does not have to be reported." (ethics manual) The committee declined to comment for this story. "She bought this for personal use just like millions of other people," Danielle Holland said. "My response to your question, times six, is it's for personal use."Continue reading
What’s With These Guys?
Every single time we look around one Senator or another (in our experience usually a Republican) is blocking a piece of legislation that would require greater transparency for the work of Congress. First, it was Sen. Ted Stevens who had a secret hold on the Coburn-Obama bill that ultimately passed after pressure from the blogosphere, then there is Sen. Mitch McConnell who is effectively is hiding the Senator who is blocking a bill that would create electronic filing for Senators' campaign finance reports, and now there's Sen. Stevens (seems to be a pattern here)... who blocked the markup of legislation that would provide transparency for presidential library donations, which currently have no official disclosure requirements.
Continue readingDefeated Earmark Disclosure Puts Sham House Rule to Shame
Robert Novak has more on the backdoor maneuvering and dust-up between Sen. Tom Coburn and Sen. Ted Stevens over the issue of disclosing earmarks that he'd alluded to earlier. Coburn sponsored a measure that would require the Pentagon to issue report cards on the utility and effectiveness of projects earmarked by members of Congress; Stevens didn't care for the scrutiny. The intra-party squabble doesn't interest me so much as the bottom line:
The earmark process enables the congressional-industrial complex to fund projects the military does not want. This year's bill appropriates money to buy 10 unrequested C-17 Globemaster cargo planes from Boeing. It also funds 60 F-22A Raptor stealth fighters, not supported by the Pentagon and opposed by McCain and Sen. John Warner, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman. F-22A appropriations are guaranteed for three years, reducing leverage with contractor Lockheed Martin. Continue reading
Veco and a Bridge to Nowhere
I doubt it had much to do with the search of Alaska state lawmakers' offices, including Ben Stevens, the son of Sen. Ted Stevens, for information on the legislators' relationship to Alaska oil services firm Veco (whose executives are prolific campaign donors to Alaskan politicians), but it's worth noting that Veco figures in one of the two "Bridges to Nowhere" -- the Knik Arm Crossing, described here as "a proposed 13,500-ft span across Knik Arm from Anchorage to hundreds of square miles of unpopulated wetlands to the north."
Continue readingCatalog of Ted Stevens’ Actions That Have Benefitted Clients of Ben Stevens
From the miracle of Nexis comes this list compiled by Chuck Neubauer, Judy Pasternak and Richard T. Cooper of the Los Angeles Times in June 2003 of Sen. Ted Stevens official actions in the U.S. Senate that have benefited the clients of his son, state Sen. Ben Stevens. Regrettably, that article (part of a two-part series the Times did looking at congressional offspring who became lobbyists) is not available online; this is a small chunk of it.
The Stevens connection The special interest: Cook Inlet Region Inc., (CIRI), a Native Alaskan corporation created by federal legislation sponsored by Sen. Stevens Continue reading
FBI Investigating Top Alaska Donor
FBI agents in Alaska, armed with search warrants, descended without warning Thursday at the offices of several Alaskan lawmakers in what appears to be a major investigation involving VECO, the oil field service company that has long been one the most generous political contributors to Alaska politicians.
Among the offices searched were that of State Senate President Ben Stevens, the son of US Senator Ted Stevens, and an important political ally of VECO in the state legislature. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Stevens has closer connections to the company than simply receiving campaign contributions:
Continue readingAnother holding foul!
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) wasn't alone in placing a hold on the Coburn-Obama transparency bill. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who along with Stevens is a notorious earmarker, also had a hold on the bill. Byrd, however, has announced that he will lift his hold. TPM Muckraker has the scoop and the rest of this statement from Byrd's office:
Senator Byrd wanted time to read the legislation, understand its implications, and see whether the proposal could be improved. Now that there has been time to better understand the legislation, Senator Byrd has released his hold. Senator Byrd believes that the bill should be debated and opened for amendment, and not pushed through without discussion.
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