Governor Mike Huckabee was on the Daily Show last Tuesday and had a lot to say about government in general, but what caught my ear was his attack on the influence of lobbyists in Washington.
"The corruption that exists, and it may not be overt corruption, but auto industries are down there asking for a bailout. Now, the other side of this story is auto industries have spent $50 million on lobbyists in Washington, D.C. and $15 million in campaign contributions. Do we really think that members of Congress have an objectivity as it relates to what they're hearing? Of course they don't. And that's part of the problem. 35,000 registered lobbyists in Washington, that's 70 lobbyists for every member of Congress."
It's telling to hear talking points that only a year ago were being uttered by Democratic presidential candidates like Obama and Edwards.
And Governor Huckabee isn't alone. You're hearing more and more conservatives question the role of lobbyists in the same way that Democrats have been for the past year. Conservatives opposing the Detroit bailout to General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Daimler/Chrysler, cry foul at the influence of lobbyists on the legislation. This from the National Review Online:
The Big Three’s CEOs, the leaders of their unions, and their taxpayer-funded lobbyists (disguised as lawmakers from Michigan) have done an excellent job of sowing fear and confusion, particularly in the media.
After the Bush blink of last week, Washington's automotive lobbyists will be revving up their engines. Unless the Bush White House has an unexpected change of heart, the one man who can stop the lobbying momentum now is Barack Obama.
Governor Huckabee and other conservatives are right in drawing attention to the concern around how the Big 3 utilized their lobbyists in the past few weeks. The question is, will politicians on both sides of the aisle continue to closely examine the relationship between lobbyists an public policy? We hope so.
It's official: Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich has defeated convicted felon and long-time Senator Ted Stevens for Alaska's other Senate seat, making him the next Junior Senator from Alaska.
With this victory, Democrat Mark Begich has defeated one of the giants in the U.S. Senate by a 3,724-vote margin, a stunning end to a 40-year Senate career marred by Stevens' conviction on corruption charges a week before the election.
A real victory in the fight towards ending corruption in Congress! Thank you good people of Alaska.
Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight believes that the remaining votes to be counted in the Begich-Stevens Alaska Senate race will favor Begich. The former Democratic mayor of Anchorage remains 3,500 votes behind newly convicted felon Ted Stevens and may end up passing him with the remaining early voting ballots yet to be counted. And there's no reason not to trust Nate's analysis -- his prediction for an Obama victory was dead on.
If you want to help get him out, checkout our petition, "Thanks for the memories, Ted Stevens."
Both Presidential candidates called on Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) to step down today in the wake of the senator's guilty verdict in federal court yesterday. Here are the statements:
From Obama:
"It's time to put an end to the corruption and influence-peddling, restore openness and accountability, and finally put government back in the hands of the people it serves. Senator Stevens should step down."
And from McCain:
"It is clear that Senator Stevens has broken his trust with the people and that he should now step down. I hope that my colleagues in the Senate will be spurred by these events to redouble their efforts to end this kind of corruption once and for all."
Also, from Governor Palin:
"After being found guilty on seven felony counts, I had hoped Senator Stevens would take the opportunity to do the statesman-like thing and erase the cloud that is covering his Senate seat. He has not done so," she said in a statement released afterward. "Alaskans are grateful for his decades of public service but the time has come for him to step aside. Even if elected on Tuesday, Senator Stevens should step aside to allow a special election to give Alaskans a real choice of who will serve them in Congress."
Based on Stevens' public comments, it seems like he'll stay in the race. Under current law, if he wins re-election on Tuesday he is not required to step down and instead must be removed by a full Senate vote on recommendation by the ethics committee (currently chaired by Senators Barbara Boxer John Cornyn). Regardless, a jury of his peers decided that he was guilty on all seven counts and its time for him move on. As both presidential candidates pointed out in their statements, the trust has been broken.
It's time for a fresh start. It's time for change.
A jury in Washington found Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (R) guilty on all seven corruption counts of lying on Senate financial forms and failing to report more than $250,000 in home renovations he received from Veco, formerly an oil company who he maintained close ties to. Stevens could face up to 5 years in prison for each count but will most likely face much less, if any.
The Senator who once referred to the internet as "a series of tubes," is still facing a tough challenger in Mark Begich, former mayor of Anchorage.
Amidst the hype of the Powell Obama endorsement, some may not know of the other Powell endorsement also getting some attention: Senator Ted Stevens
Stevens is currently on trial for concealing over $250,000 in gifts from Veco, formerly an oil-services corporation, between 2001 and 2006. Federal prosecutors grilled Stevens on Monday at his trial in Washington, D.C. before the case went under deliberation last week. It looks, as Sunlight Foundation's Ellen Miller points out, that Steven's lawyers have secured a potential victory for their client on what could be viewed a technicality. Unfortunately, the public interest appears not to be of interest to judge Emmet Sullivan.
However, the judge has a lot of interest in the hype of Powell's endorsement of Senator Barack Obama. Why? Powell was a key defense witness in the trial. Bush's former Sect. of State apparently spoke highly of Stevens' calling his character "sterling" and that he, "would never do anything improper."
In the culture of Washington politics I sometimes wonder if character is relative. Have our politicians become immune to recognizing corruption because it is so much a part of their culture? I don't doubt that many of our elected leaders are personally pure in many ways. But in Washington, you have to wonder whether a broken system has broken down their compass of integrity.
My interest has been peaked of late. What is the fate of publicly funded campaigns given the "Obama phenomenon?" A recent NPR article Did Obama Kill Public Campaign Finance? asks the question, "Is something rotten in the state of public financing for presidential campaigns?"
The article continues:
Sen. John McCain, one of the most vocal proponents of campaign finance reform, is being hoisted by his own petard by choosing to accept federal funding for his general election campaign. Meanwhile, Sen. Barack Obama, the choice of the Democratic Party — the very party that cried out for finance reform in the wake of the Watergate scandal — has chosen to bypass public funds and, as a result, is pummeling McCain in the fundraising arena.
Irony alert: The Republican standard-bearer is using federal grants, while the Democrat extols the free-market virtues of individual campaign donations.
One could argue that Obama's campaign is 'publicly funded,' after all, he and the DNC have forgone Lobby and PAC money and the majority of his campaign contributions come from small donations made by lots of people. However, the "Obama phenomenon" does not take into account an average person seeking office. This is where public funding would level the playing field so that ordinary citizens could run for office. Obama's 'star quality' and fund raising ability, plus the current political climate, cloud the argument for killing public funding.
McCain opted in to public funds, thus agreeing to cap out at $84 million for his campaign. The RNC supplements his allocated funds by raising money and they do take Lobby and PAC money. Neither candidate, in my opinion, represents 'clean money.'
No matter which candidate wins the White House, both will be faced with determining the fate of public campaign financing, in fact, both have an obligation. At Change Congress, we would also argue that the issue needs to go beyond Presidential and on to Congressional elections -- a more difficult battle.
A smart conversation took place on KQED's Forum with Scott Shafer. I encourage you all to have listen and weigh in on the conversation through our comments section. Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics is on the panel and directs people to the OpenSecrets site so you can follow the money yourself. You can listen in below:
The largest association in the state of Texas, the Texas Association of Business, pleaded guilty today to a misdemeanor charge, unlawful direct campaign expenditure, and paid $10K in fines to the state. After a six-year investigation into the campaign practices of the TAB's political action committee, this is the last lawsuit they'll have to deal with (unless 2008 turns out to be a especially corrupt election year.)
Apparently, the association's PAC was paying for the salaries of its President Bill Hammond and chief lobbyist Jack Campbell as they traveled around the state convincing voters to support state GOP candidates, attending fundraisers and speaking to the media on behalf of the candidates and their campaigns.
Earlier in 2007 District Judge Mike Lynch dismissed two indictments of TAB after the association spent over $1.7M on mailers and television ads on behalf of state GOP candidates. But now, with Texas redistricting on the table for the 2008 and 2010 state legislatures, the temptation to flood swing districts with political ads is hard to ignore. This latest decision by the district court will (hopefully) keep some of the corporate PAC money out of the airwaves and off voters' front stoops. Let's be honest, however, in today's stock market, paying $10K for pumping over $1.7M into local political races is a steal. Now, these business leaders have a host of state legislators in their back pocket. At least, that is how the public will perceive it. The return on investment is better than owning stock in Google (at least a couple months ago anyway). TAB obviously understood this after they moved their headquarters to the state capitol in 1990.
A closer look at the Texas Association of Business shows, once again, a revolving door between elected officials and lobbyists. Hammond, now President, was formerly a four-term member of the Texas House of Representatives. While there, he authored the Texas Education Agency Sunset Bill that was criticized heavily for opening up failing public schools to control by private entities (corporations, universities, non-profits could all essentially manage a public school under the bill). Two years later, after Hammond had left public office, his old boss, the Speaker of the Texas House, named him to lead the Commission on Higher Education and Global Competitiveness.
This, all while aggressively advocating for specific TAB-endorsed candidates around the state of Texas.
In a rather pathetic show of guilt, TAB lawyer Joe Turner complained that the laws around campaign finance law are just too confusing:
Association attorney Joe Turner called upon the Legislature to clarify "this treacherous area of the law," which he said can be confusing for people like Hammond who must wear multiple hats: salaried employee, representative of a political action committee and citizen.
"This is an accounting nightmare," Turner said.
Ok, i understand that the law might be confusing. But I don't tell the state that the reason I didn't pay any taxes for nine years was because, "Gosh, tax law is just really confusing." It is, but you find someone to guide you through it.
Here's another idea: how about individuals like Hammond and Campbell don't wear four different hats, all of which have severe legal implications if ever worn at the same time. The fact that they knew they had to wear different hats shows they understood the vague, but existent, legal divisions created between each one.
I highly doubt TAB understood that it was breaking the law. Perhaps they thought they were bending it. And ignorance is rarely a ticket out of guilt, which is why TAB agreed to pay the $10K fine and move on. Regardless, they are under the reform microscope for the next few cycles.
As you probably know, the Federal Elections Commission requires political committees to disclose information about all donors who contribute over $200, including their name, address, occupation, and employer. (There are some great sites, like OpenSecrets.org and FundRace.org, that help make sense of this data.) But this is just a minimum -- campaigns can do more. John McCain has been disclosing his sub-$200 donors and he recently criticized Barack Obama for not dong the same.
By looking at the disclosed records, the RNC and other Obama critics have found donations that Obama isn't legally permitted to accept -- contributions from overseas, contributions over the legal limit, contributions under apparently-fictitious names. Presumably, McCain thinks that if Obama opens up the rest of the data, they'll find even more. Obama has received contributions from literally millions of people, so it's a lot of data to look thru.
To put the pressure on, the RNC has released RNCDonors.com, which provides a near-real time search interface to all sub-$200 contributions to the RNC. (Why only sub-$200?) Very little data is disclosed about each contribution, but it's still fun to type in the names of Republican friends and see if they donated. So far Obama and the DNC haven't responded to these tactics.
Thursday night, the final night of Republican Convention celebration here in St.Paul, we were invited to a closing party called "It's a Wrap" sponsored by major D.C. lobbying firm Patton Boggs LLP. It was also sponsored by Ford Motor Company, EnCana Energy, Sands Las Vegas Casino Corporation, Oracle, DDC and Fierce, Isakowtiz & Blaylock.
The party was held in the majestic Landmark Center here in St.Paul, just a few steps away from the Xcel Energy Center where the convention speeches were taking place. Upon getting in we toured the grand ballroom and upstairs rooms, all of which were outfitted with open bars and waitresses walking around with niblets of food that looked more like art than tasty morsels (don't worry, they were tasty as well).
I talked to a few folks milling about and finally found someone from the law firm who was willing to answer some of my questions, albeit not on camera because they were forbidden to do so. Oddly, her card read, "Director of Media Relations and Communications." I guess that simply meant she wasn't allowed to actually say anything on the record. I let her know that I was not a member of the media. As soon as I asked her about the party she said, "we're not allowed to get into that." So I asked her about the firm -- what kind of law they focused on and who their clients were. She went through the typical talking points -- offices in countries around the world (including new offices in Abu Dhabi and Qatar), major work in public policy arena, etc., etc. Then she said, "Yeah, we're kind of known as the grand-daddy of lobbying firms." And why not? With the size of the party being put on, who would think otherwise.
How close is Patton Boggs, the "grand-daddy of lobbying firms," to our elected leaders? This from their About Us section of their website:
For more than 40 years, Patton Boggs has maintained a reputation for cutting-edge advocacy by working closely with Congress and regulatory agencies in Washington, litigating in courts across the country, and negotiating business transactions around the world. Our partners include women and men with extensive backgrounds in government service with strong ties to both major political parties, as well as top-flight litigators and individuals with a keen understanding of business and finance.
Clearly, they're proud of their connections to both Democrats and Republicans. And reading through the firm partner's bios, you can see how fast the revolving door between lobbyists and government regulators actually spins.
Edward J. Newbury, Partner: formerly served on several congressional staffs including chief appropriations staff and press secretary to U.S. Representative Frank R. Wolf (R-VA) and associate staff member on the House Appropriations Committee. They proudly tout his profile in a NY Times piece entitled, “Wing-Tipped Migration: Five Prominent Men and How They Got from Congress to K Street.”
Stuart M. Pape, Partner: served in various positions in the Office of the Chief of Counsel at the FDA prior to joining the firm in 1980. He is the former associate chief counsel for food, and from 1978-1979, served as executive assistant to FDA Commissioner Donald Kennedy. Now, he lobbies on behalf of corporations looking to obtain approval of new food ingredients, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices; advising on labeling and advertising of regulated products; assisting in enforcement proceedings initiated by regulatory bodies; and lobbying in connection with legislative consideration of statutory changes to the laws governing FDA-regulated products.
John F. Jonas, Partner: before joining the firm, Jonas served in number of government positions: while serving as counsel to Congressman Pete Stark (CA-13) on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee in 1981, Jonas "played a principal role in the rewriting of statutes concerning the taxation of life insurance companies." Jonas also worked extensively on the 1982, 1984, and 1986 tax laws during his time with the Ways and Means Committee. Now, his focus is...you guessed it: tax law. Concentrating on "representing financial services companies and a wide variety of health care interests before the House Ways and Means Committee, Senate Finance Committee and the Department of the Treasury." Jonas is busy lobbying for the very industry groups he regulated over a decade ago.
Let's be clear. None of these folks broke any laws. This is by no means an indictment of what are arguably some of the most accomplished lawyers in the country. But, this is how Washington works. The point of revealing this revolving door between lobbying groups and those tasked with regulating them is to show why the public, understandably, distrusts the government's ability to get the most important questions of our time, right. If government is supposed to be the counterweight to business and private industry, why would the public have faith in a system that puts both on the same side of the scale?
Parties are well and good. But with every party, every free drink, every gift to regulators (our elected leaders) there comes a hidden expectation: payback, usually in the form of a favorable vote in Congress or within some Congressional committee.
We must begin tackling this problem of corruption today. Corruption in the People's House, in our government, is the first problem. Much like an alcoholic dealing with a failing liver, a crumbling family life and a potential job loss, all of these challenges are connected back to the first problem: alcoholism. Similarly, Congress must deal with corruption first. If we want to solve global warming, the healthcare crisis, a failing economy and the war in Iraq, we must first deal with corruption. All of us play an important role. These elected leaders work for us, not vice versa. Lest we forget we are the ones that have the responsibility to make a change in our government when it continues to get the easy answers utterly wrong.
Change Congress is making that change. You can help by joining us and help show our government that the first problem, the problem of corruption, cannot be ignored.
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin wants the American public to believe that she is a strong reformer and a logical teammate for Republican candidate Senator John McCain. Because of her relative freshness to the national political scene I thought I'd put together some background on her reform record.
As mayor of Wasillia, Palin hired a Washington lobbyist in order to represent the town. (That lobbyist, Steven Silver, previously had served as an aide to Senator Ted Stevens).
90% of campaign contributions during her race for governor came from individuals, not PACs. This will help her argument as being a Washington outsider.
In that same campaign, Palin accepted over $10,000 from lawyers and lobbyists.
Palin's Legislative Director has been under scrutiny due to his ties to a Juneau lobbyist who has given Palin's campaign $1500 over the past three years.
Palin joined forces with Democrats to push through new corporate oil taxes going against industry as well as her own party.
In early 2007, Palin tried to push an ethics bill through the Alaskan Legislature. SB 19 and 20 were both passed but were watered-down versions of her initial effort.
Regardless of the laundry lists being emailed around about Palin's ability and experience, we're all trying to get to know her as quick as possible. At the moment, if feels as though Palin has dipped in and out of playing the political game while at the same time trying to remain an outsider.
Hiring a Washington lobbyist on behalf of your town of 5,470 is not a compelling argument for a candidate claiming to be a reformer. However, raising taxes on Big Oil and challenging the party line does show either acute political adroitness or a maverick streak.
Based on Palin's green (and thin) record, I wouldn't say she is any more a reformer than your typical politician. And being a reformer at the state level is certainly different than being one at the federal level. But seriously, what did we expect to find after three days of media hype? More is coming I am sure.
Rep. Don Young (R-AK) is under the microscope after his friend and ally Senator Ted Stevens was handed a federal indictment on corruption charges. What's interesting is who is holding the microscope.
The Club for Growth, a conservative PAC known for their hard-hitting commercials, has released a new one hammering Young for his $10 million earmark for a road in Fort Myers, Florida.
Add Young to the list of Alaskan politicians under the microscope (along with Senator Stevens and Governor Sarah Palin).
On Tuesday, Senator Ted Stevens was indicted by federal prosecutors for failing to report gifts he had received from an oil company to help him renovate his Alaskan home. The charges were not a surprise, though official Washington mustered its collective, and requisite outrage. Senators Dole and Sununu were quick to return campaign contributions from the now-tainted Stevens. Editorials across the nation were quick to condemn the obvious graft targeted by the government.
But I confess, I don't get it. Not that I don't see the wrong in what Stevens has done. That's obvious. What's not obvious to me is why this wrong is so different from everything else that DC thinks is right.
The concern with the gifts that Stevens allegedly took from oil companies is clear enough. If a Senator takes a gift from a special interest, he's less likely to weigh the interests of that special interest properly. If he's getting gifts from an oil company, for example, he's less likely to weigh concerns about global warming properly. He's more likely to ignore those concerns. He's more likely, in other words, to put his private interest (in continuing the gifts) above the public interest (dealing with the threats from global warming). These types of events are exactly why myself and Joe Trippi started Change Congress: as a way to address corruption in Washington D.C.
So far, so good. But what about the other ways that oil companies act to make it less likely that a legislator weighs in the interests of special interests properly? How do the laws and ethics of DC police this?
Consider the most obvious example first. Ted Stevens was elected to the United States Senate in 1968. As the Republican with the longest tenure in the United State Senate — ever — he had perfected the business of getting reelected to serve his state. Individuals and special interests helped him secure that tenure. Since 1989, those contributions have exceeded $11 million. Close to $1 million in that eleven has come from the Energy and Natural Resource sector. Oil and gas has given him almost 1/2 of that.
These "gifts," of course, were not to Stevens personally. They were gifts to his campaign, for the purpose of securing Stevens' tenure. But as someone for whom tenure is quite important, it is bizarre to me that anyone would see this distinction as a distinction that matters. If Microsoft gave Stanford $1 million to persuade Stanford to give me tenure, or if the RIAA gave Stanford $1 million to persuade Stanford not to give me tenure, there'd be no doubt that I would be disqualified from judging whether either was entitled to special benefit. Yet in DC, the doubtless is not. There's nothing wrong, in the world of DC, with Stevens' voting on matters that affect the industries that have worked so hard to secure his tenure.
And the gifts don't stop there. As Ken Silverstein described in Harper's last March, despite their relatively modest salary, many Congressmen and Senators live a life of extraordinary luxury. Not because these representatives come to Washington with their own private wealth (though more and more often, of course, they do). Rather, they live a life of luxury because more and more of their day to day existence is paid for by their campaigns. As Silverstein put it, "[t]he most lavish benefit of winning a congressional campaign is, ironically enough, the right to keep on campaigning—and therefore to keep raising and spending donor money." And that spending increasingly substitutes for the sort of stuff most of us have to pay for out of our own salary. Again, Silverstein: "[T]he FEC has permitted virtually any expenditure, from a night on the town to a resort stay with big contributors, to be drawn from [campaign] funds." Thus while it is a crime for VECO Corporation to pay to have Stevens' house renovated, there's no problem with VECO's PAC and senior executives giving Stevens' campaign many times more than that which Stevens' is then free to use to fly to a resort in Montana, or entertain senior executives at DC's most expensive restaurants.
If there is a difference here that makes a difference, I confess I'm not keen enough to see it. Rather, as I see it, we've got a system that periodically sacrifices the likes of Ted Stevens so that the appearance of policing improper influence can be maintained. But judgment distorting influences are shot through the economy of influence we call Washington.
The problem with this economy won't be solved by jailing one Senator. It will be solved only when we cease using private funds to fund public campaigns. And when we start paying representatives in Congress a salary that fits with the work we expect them to be doing. For the number of career senators like Stevens — people who go to government for a public service career — is, unfortunately, falling. In its place is a rise of representatives who treat Congress as a farm league for K Street. That dynamic, of course, only increases the power of K Street over policy. Or put differently, that dynamic only increases the corruption that has driven public trust of Congress to historic lows. (Rasmussen now counts only 9% of the general public with a favorable view of Congress' work.) Breaking that dynamic will take more than an ethics trial against this icon of the United States Senate.
