BIRDS IN THE LOBBY
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
~ o ~
May 11, 2008
GOP Leader Quits Over
Myanmar Junta Ties
ST. PAUL, Minn. - (AP) - The man picked by the John McCain campaign to run the 2008 Republican National Convention resigned Saturday after a report that his lobbying firm used to represent the military regime in Myanmar.
Doug Goodyear resigned as convention coordinator and issued a two-sentence statement:
"Today I offered the convention my resignation so as not to become a distraction in this campaign. I continue to strongly support John McCain for president, and wish him the best of luck in this campaign."
Goodyear, chief executive of lobbying firm DCI Group, resigned a few hours after Newsweek posted a story online that the company was paid $348,000 in 2002 and 2003 to represent Myanmar's junta.
"We respect Mr. Goodyear's decision, and look forward to the convention in September," said Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign.
Cyclone Nargis left more than 60,000 people dead or missing, and the U.N. estimates that at least 1.5 million people have been severely affected. Human rights organizations and dissident groups have bitterly accused the junta of neglecting disaster victims and blocking foreign donations of relief supplies.
Justice Department records covering agents of foreign agents that are required to register with the U.S. government show DCI signed a contract to work to "improve relations between the United States and Myanmar" and to act as the junta's public relations agent in Washington.
Newsweek said the firm drafted news releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing claims by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses.
"It was our only foreign representation, it was for a short tenure, and it was six years ago," Newsweek quoted Goodyear as saying. The magazine said Goodyear added that the junta's record in the current cyclone crisis is "reprehensible."
The Newsweek article also reported that some of Goodyear's allies worried the choice of Goodyear could fuel perceptions that McCain is surrounded by lobbyists. DCI Group earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil, General Motors and other clients, the report said.
Newsweek also reported DCI has been a pioneer in running "independent" expenditure campaigns by so-called 527 groups, the kind of operations that McCain has denounced in his battle for campaign finance reform.
The convention runs Sept. 1-4 at the Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul.
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/11/politics/main4086222.shtml
October 6, 2006
AGENTS SAY FOLEY SCANDAL
TIP OF ICEBERG
Feds: GOP Lobbyist Abramoff ran Capitol Hill
call-boy sex service at DC hotel
by Tom Flocco, tomflocco.com
Washington—A retired intelligence agency official corroborated the revelations of a national security expert that male and female heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, bisexual and underage children provided sexual services to numerous congressmen, senators, national media hosts, top military officers and other federal officials who were compromised and made susceptible to blackmail at three Washington, DC hotels since 2000.
The long-time intelligence insider with multiple Capitol Hill sources told TomFlocco.com that convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff operated the sex / spy ring at the Watergate, Ritz-Carlton and Sheraton hotels in Washington, DC. “The whole Republican Party was for sale—the House, Senate and the White House,” said the well-respected federal insider with impeccable and historic intelligence credentials who declined to be named at this time but who is familiar with testimony and sources close to a grand jury probing the GOP lobbyist’s sale of sex in return for legislative influence over taxpayer dollars.
According to Justice Department sources there is email and phone record evidence that White House advisor Karl Rove is linked to the operation of Abramoff’s sex ring according to federal agency sources who spoke with U.S. intelligence authority Thomas Heneghan.
Heneghan added that a grand jury heard several agents testify last April that “the Watergate, Ritz-Carlton and Sheraton Hotels in Washington, DC were used to compromise legislators and news-people with prostitution services, the financing of which is directly linked to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Marc Rich and Abramoff.”
The allegations raise serious questions as to why such testimony was not made public to protect the safety of congressional pages subject to sexual contacts by congressmen or other officials linked to the Abramoff poker party hotel sex ring which has already ensnared convicted former GOP Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-50-CA) who is currently serving a federal prison sentence.
On Wednesday evening CNN Primetime host Nancy Grace interviewed former congressional page Tyson Vivyan who called recently resigned Florida Congressman Mark Foley “sick and depraved” after receiving explicit emails and instant messages asking if he [Vivyan] “would like to perform sex acts on Foley” more than ten years ago when he was sixteen years old.
Heneghan’s executive intelligence network revealed startling allegations that “retiring GOP Senate Majority Leader and Tennessee 2008 presidential candidate William Frist visited the Abramoff hotels,” adding that “Frist is reportedly a close friend of George W. Bush’s Yale Skull and Bones roommate—former Knoxville, Tennessee mayor Victor Ashe—who agents have alleged to be a long-time albeit sporadic Bush 43 consort.”
Heneghan also alleged additional prostitute customers as British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former CNN host-reporter Robert Novak, both of whom were allegedly introduced into the sex-ring by GOP reporter and former male prostitute Jeff Gannon.
Gannon visited the Bush White House private living quarters 45 times without the assignations being recorded in visitor logs even though they could be documented by the President’s Secret Service detail, said Heneghan who has yet to be interviewed by mainstream media, according to Heneghan.
Federal agents linked recently resigned Representative Mark Foley (R-16-FL) to Abramoff and Gannon who allegedly acted as “facilitators for the poker parties and an elaborate prostitution ring of pedophiles and extortion-friendly homosexuals-in-the-closet serving elements of the Republican leadership,” he said.
The intelligence expert said FBI investigators are reportedly probing GOP bribery of the family of one alleged congressional page-boy victim who was sexually approached by page predator Foley, having received lurid emails which were eventually publicized widely in the media.
Heneghan said payoff money was allegedly channeled through presidential advisor Karl Rove and Abramoff to induce the congressional page’s silence during the past three years.
Heneghan’s federal agent network also revealed that sources close to the New York Times indicate that GOP congressional leaders including Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-14-IL), House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-8-OH), House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-7-MO) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) all helped obstruct justice to cover up the sets of emails incriminating Congressman Foley over a lengthy period of time—and that the Foley email issue was “taken care of.”
Media reports indicate that most Americans feel that homosexual and lesbian citizens have the same rights to equality, fair treatment and privacy afforded to all Americans; however, Foley’s position as a United States congressman who preyed upon underage congressional page boys crosses the line of criminality which leads many to wonder if more federal legislators will become ensnared in the Abramoff hotel sex ring pedophilia asserted by federal agents....
WMD, poker and pillow talk
While allegations of sex with minors promulgated by the retired intelligence official are scandalous, Heneghan unloaded an explosive charge that the White House bin Laden “terrorist” film footage was produced in Las Vegas by a Paramount subsidiary called Las Vegas Rose Productions and that many of the alleged 9-11 “hijackers” including Mohammed Atta visited Sin City just before the September 11 attacks.
The intelligence authority’s network of agency sources revealed that prosecutors will have interest in reports that "the genesis of the Valerie Plame CIA leak case took place during one of Capitol Hill reporter Robert Novak’s alleged visits with an Abramoff hooker at one of the hotels after a poker party."
“Photographs of politicians in compromising positions have reportedly already been used as blackmail to silence politicians who would speak the truth about the 2000 Bush-Gore election fraud in Florida, prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks , Iraq—yellowcake—weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and how Abramoff and Netanyahu were the pimps for the sex for influence operation,” said Heneghan.
President Bush emphatically denied that he personally knew Abramoff, despite CIA and Secret Service documents indicating the convicted lobbyist visited the White House 200 times during the first ten months of the Bush presidency—often enough for a personal visit on every business day of each month, according to wide news reports.
Despite the daily White House visits, Bush said “I’ve never sat down with him and had a discussion with the guy,” adding, “I’m also mindful that we live in a world in which those pictures will be used for pure political purposes,” attempting to justify his unwillingness at first to release photos with Abramoff and to account for his false statements.
Heneghan told us the Bush administration wanted Valerie Plame-Wilson’s identity as a CIA official leaked because her intelligence team had identified Israeli Mossad operatives inside Iran who were to receive weapons of mass destruction to be delivered through Turkey and planted in Iraq to further the president’s case for war.
“The financing for these whorehouses is linked directly to AIPAC, Benjamin Netanyahu, Marc Rich and Jack Abramoff; and the money trail ties back to American International Group (AIG), Hank Greenberg, Leonard Millman and Doug Alexander—former British Minister of E-Commerce,” said Heneghan....
Read the complete story, with photos, at...
www.tomflocco.com/fs/FoleyTipOfIceberg.htm
October 3, 2006
Lincoln Weeps
Bill Moyers, www.tompaine.com
Back in 1954, when I was a summer employee on Capitol Hill, I made my first visit to the Lincoln Memorial. I have returned many times since, most recently while I was in Washington filming for a documentary about how Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, among others, turned the conservative revolution into a racket—the biggest political scandal since Watergate.
If democracy can be said to have temples, the Lincoln Memorial is our most sacred. You stand there silently contemplating the words that gave voice to Lincoln's fierce determination to save the union—his resolve that "government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
On this latest visit, I was overcome by a sense of melancholy. Lincoln looks out now on a city where those words are daily mocked. This is no longer his city. And those people from all walks of life making their way up the steps to pay their respect to the martyred president—it's not their city, either. Or their government. This is an occupied city, a company town, and government is a subservient subsidiary of richly endowed patrons.
Once upon a time the House of Representatives was known as "the people's house." No more. It belongs to K Street now. That's the address of the lobbyists who swarm all over Capitol Hill. There are 65 lobbyists for every member of Congress. They spend $200 million per month wining, dining and seducing federal officials. Per month!
Of course they're just doing their job. It's impossible to commit bribery, legal or otherwise, unless someone's on the take, and with campaign costs soaring, our politicians always have their hands out. One representative confessed that members of Congress are the only people in the world expected to take large amounts of money from strangers and then act as if it has no effect on their behavior.
This explains why Democrats are having a hard time exploiting the culture of corruption embodied in the scandalous behavior of DeLay and Abramoff. Democrats are themselves up to their necks in the sludge. Just the other day one of the most powerful Democrats in the House bragged to reporters about tapping "uncharted donor fields in the financial industry"—reminding them, not so subtlely, of the possibility that after November the majority leader just might be a Democrat.
When it comes to selling influence, both parties have defined deviancy up, and Tony Soprano himself couldn't get away with some of the things that pass for business as usual in Washington. We have now learned that Jack Abramoff had almost 500 contacts with the Bush White House over the three years before his fall, and that Karl Rove and other presidential staff were treated to his favors and often intervened on his behalf. So brazen a pirate would have been forced to walk the plank long ago if Washington had not thrown its moral compass overboard.
Alas, despite all these disclosures, nothing is happening to clean up the place. Just as the Republicans in charge of the House kept secret those dirty emails sent to young pages by Rep. Mark Foley — a cover-up aimed at getting them past the election and holding his seat for the party — they are now trying to sweep the DeLay-Abramoff-Reed-and-Norquist scandals under the rug until after Nov. 7, hoping the public at large doesn't notice that the House is being run by Tom DeLay's team, minus DeLay. All the talk about reform is placebo.
The only way to counter the power of organized money is with organized and outraged people. Believe me, what members of Congress fear most is a grassroots movement that demands clean elections and an end to the buying and selling of influence—or else! If we leave it to the powers that be to clean up the mess that greed and chicanery have given us, we will wake up one day with a real Frankenstein of a system—a monster worse than the one created by Abramoff, DeLay and their cronies.
By then it will be too late to save Lincoln's hope for "government of, by, and for the people."
www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/03/lincoln_weeps.php
September 25, 2006
IDENTIFY THE ENEMIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION IN THE 21st CENTURY AND ANNIHILATE THEM
WITH TOM HENEGHAN, Cloak and Dagger
Frist Fingered As Extortionist
William Frist (R. Tenn.) has been subpoenaed by the SEC and now faces three counts of criminal indictment for fraud and insider trading.
Noted Republican from Tennessee William Frist was subpoenaed two weeks ago by the SEC (reference documents linked to the HCA Inc. which involve a loan of 1.4 million dollars and the sale of his HCA Inc. stock aka a tip from his brother who is a director of HCA Inc.)
Further Frist whose interest on the loan amounts to about ten thousand dollars a month, has been fingered in receiving direct help in paying back the loan from noted Mega Mossad lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The bribes and under the table money given to Frist is also tied to noted defense contracting company MZM Inc. with direct links to the NSA, Mitchell Wade, and Katherine Harris.
Note: The NSA has used MZM Inc., a byproduct of Choicepoint Software, to collect a secret spy data base on every living and breathing American living in the United States.
(Reference: Choicepoint Software was used to destroy forty thousand votes for Albert Gore Jr. in the Year 2000 U.S. Presidential Election.)
Frist, also received Walt Disney/Mickey Mouse/ABC stock and other financial favors. Frist is now directly linked to Michael Eisner and Coca Cola in the conspiracy to overthrow the Year 2000 U.S. Presidential Election.
Part of this group included noted ABC Talk Show Host George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos was happy to work with Frist and other co-conspirators since he loathed the then U.S. Vice-President Albert Gore Jr. and what Gore represents, namely fairness and respect for the “Rule of Law," and real family values.
In Sunday’s interview with Frist, Stephanopoulos did not raise any of these questions!
It gets worse. He is now linked to the Tennessee Project with Bay Point School Florida, as well as British Cabinet Member Douglas Alexander and noted Bush Advisor Karen Hughes, in the theft of up to seventy-five thousand votes from the State of Tennessee in the Year 2000 U.S. Presidential Election.
Frist was aware of the Hughes-Alexander-Tennessee Project that allowed an encrypted software in Nashville, Tennessee to switch the Vote Totals from Tennessee in favor of Bush utilizing and compromising the Noted Voters News Service that was still used in the Year 2000....
Note: Frist, a defender of NSA Espionage against the American People, has even threatened to filibuster any attempt to reign in the Gestapo-like activity.
It can now be reported that it was the NSA that had the Program and gave out the encrypted signal that allowed the Election to be stolen in Tennessee.
PS - The NSA has a seven second advance lead time on all financial transactions in the United States. It can now be reported that Frist benefited from this with his Insider Trading Swindles.
PPS - Frist is also linked to noted male prostitute Jeff Gannon in the procurement of whores, male and female, through the noted poker parties run by Abramoff.
Frist, like former Governor McGreevey of New Jersey is married but secretly extortion-friendly and in the closet.
Frist is also linked to sexual liaisons with Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman.
PPPS - Former President Bill Clinton told his wife Hillary Clinton that she is unelectable and is a Dukakis in a dress. This has caused Hillary to experience a massive nervous breakdown in which she is once again being heavily medicated....
www.the-catbird-seat.net/Cloak-Dagger-Frist-Millman.htm
October 11, 2006
BAE Systems wins $87M
contract at Pearl Harbor
By Stewart Yerton, Star-Bulletin
Ensuring the retention of more than 300 jobs at Pearl Harbor for most of the next decade, BAE Systems Inc.'s ship repair division has won a seven-year, $87 million contract from the U.S. Navy to repair ships at BAE's Hawaii Shipyard, the company said yesterday.
The contract covers maintenance of the 12 Navy ships stationed in Hawaii, as well as transient Navy ships that could stop in Hawaii for repairs while at sea, said John Kowalczyk, a spokesman for BAE Systems in Rockville, Md. It means continued employment for 170 BAE employees in Honolulu and for 150 to 170 contractors, Kowalczyk said .
Although BAE pegged the contract's value at $87 million, it actually could be worth as much as $270 million at the end of seven years, Kowalczyk said.
BAE Systems Inc. is the U.S. subsidiary of U.K.-based BAE Systems PLC.
The benefits of the contract go beyond the jobs it creates for BAE and its contractors, said Tom Smythe, military affairs coordinator for the Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism. Having the ships docked in Hawaii for repairs also means the crews will be stationed here during that time, which Smythe said is also a benefit for the local economy...
For more, GO TO > > > BAE...Buzzards Absent Ethics
August 8, 2005
Bush removal ended
Guam investigation
US attorney's demotion halted probe of lobbyist
By Walter F. Roche Jr., Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON -- A US grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor, and the probe ended soon after.
The previously undisclosed Guam inquiry is separate from a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia that is investigating allegations that Abramoff bilked Indian tribes out of millions of dollars.
In Guam, a US territory in the Pacific, investigators were looking into Abramoff's secret arrangement with Superior Court officials to lobby against a court reform bill then pending in Congress. The legislation, since approved, gave the Guam Supreme Court authority over the Superior Court.
In 2002, Abramoff was retained by the Superior Court in what was an unusual arrangement for a public agency. The Los Angeles Times reported in May that Abramoff was paid with a series of $9,000 checks funneled through a Laguna Beach, Calif., lawyer to disguise the lobbyist's role working for the Guam court. No separate contract was authorized for Abramoff's work.
Guam court officials have never explained the contractual arrangement. At the time, Abramoff was a well-known lobbying figure in the Pacific islands because of his work for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Saipan garment manufacturers, accused of employing workers in what critics called sweatshop conditions.
Abramoff spokesman Andrew Blum said the lobbyist ''has no recollection of his being investigated in Guam in 2002. If he had been aware of an investigation, he would have cooperated fully." Blum declined to respond to detailed questions.
The transactions were the target of a grand jury subpoena issued Nov. 18, 2002, according to the subpoena. It demanded that Anthony Sanchez, administrative director of the Guam Superior Court, turn over all records involving the lobbying contract, including bills and payments.
A day later, the chief prosecutor, US Attorney Frederick A. Black, who had launched the investigation, was demoted. A White House news release announced that Bush was replacing Black.
The timing caught some by surprise. Despite his officially temporary status as the acting US attorney, Black had held the assignment for more than a decade.
The acting US attorney was a controversial official in Guam. At the time he was replaced, Black was directing a long-term investigation into allegations of public corruption in the administration of then-Governor Carl Gutierrez. The probe produced numerous indictments, including some of the governor's political associates and top aides.
Black, 56, had served as acting US attorney for Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands since 1991, when he was named to the post by the president's father, President George H. W. Bush.
The career prosecutor, who held a senior position as first assistant before accepting the acting US attorney job, was demoted to a staff post. Black's demotion came after an intensive lobbying effort by supporters of Gutierrez, who had been publicly critical of Black and his investigative efforts.
Black declined to comment for this article.
His replacement, Leonardo Rapadas, was confirmed in May 2003 without any debate. Rapadas had been recommended for the job by the Guam Republican Party. Fred Radewagen, a lobbyist who had been under contract to the Gutierrez administration, said he carried that recommendation to top Bush aide Karl Rove in early 2003.
After taking office, Rapadas recused himself from the public corruption case involving Gutierrez. The new US attorney was a cousin of ''one of the main targets," according to a confidential memo to Justice Department officials.
Rapadas declined to comment and referred questions about his recusal to Justice Department officials who did not respond to requests for comment.
For more, GO TO > > > Broken Trusts
From Washington on $10 Million a Day - How Lobbyists Plunder the Nation, by Ken Silverstein:
PIMPS TO POWER
Lobbyists and the Destruction of Democracy
The link between campaign donations and political policy was brought into sharp focus by the campaign finance scandals that erupted during the 1996 campaign. Even jade observers were started by the Clinton administration’s selling of the Lincoln bedroom to the highest bidder, and its organizing of White House coffee klatsches to reward donors and encourage them to make additional contributions.
But political contributions are only one way that big business wins favors in Washington....
Understanding how the capital works, and how business prospers here, requires a trip through the world of beltway lobbying and a review of the vast army of hired guns working at the behest of Corporate America.
Dollar for dollar, lobbying is a better investment than campaign contributions— one reason business spends far more on the former than on the latter.
In 1996, Philip Morris coughed up $19.6 million for lobbying programs vs. $4.2 million for campaign donations (making it the leader in both categories). The same pattern holds true with other firms.
For 1996, Georgia Pacific spent $8.9 million for lobbying and handed out $527,000 in political money. Corresponding figures for AT&T are $8.4 million vs. $1.8 million; for Phizer, $8.3 million vs. $775,000; for Boeing, $5.2 million vs. $770,000; for ARCO, $4.3 million vs. $1.4 million; for Lockheed, $3.5 million vs. $1.26 million; for FedEx, $3.1 million vs. $1.9 million; for Dow Chemical $1.5 million vs. $578,000.
In addition to in-house efforts, most big corporations spend lavishly for outside lobbying firms. Lockheed, for example, retains at least two dozen beltway lobby shops to supplement its own efforts, while FedEx has an additional 10 firms on retainer.
In 1996, Boeing hired seven outside lobby shops for the sole purpose of pushing renewed Most Favored Nation trade status for China, paying them a combined total of at least $160,000 for their efforts.
While corporate lobbying has long been a major force in American politics, it has been greatly transformed during the past few decades. Today, many efforts involve stealth lobbying— the chief tactic here is mobilizing fake “grassroots” campaigns— or with indirect methods, such as buying research from friendly “think tanks” in order to influence Congress and public opinion.
All of this makes calculating corporate lobbying expenditures nearly impossible, though it’s safe to say that lobbying has now become a multi-billion dollar-per-year industry....
When you consider the enormous benefits bestowed on Corporate America by the White House and Congress, the big sums companies spend to win favors are revealed as chump change. Lockheed’s combined expenditures on lobbying and campaign contributions were about $5 million in 1996. That same year, Lockheed’s lobbyists, with help from other arms makers, won approval for the creation of a new $15 billion government fund that will underwrite foreign weapon sales.
In 1996, Microsoft spent less than $2 million for its combined lobbying and campaign contribution expenditures (the former accounted for more than two-thirds of that amount). The following year, Congress awarded the company tax credits worth hundreds of millions of dollars for the sale of licenses to manufacture its software programs overseas....
It is indisputable ... that corporate citizens who retain lobbyists have an enormous advantage in Washington over the regular ones who merely vote.
Tommy Boggs, perhaps Washington’s best known influence peddler, charges $550 per hour for his services. That’s a drop in the bucket to Philip Morris, but Boggs’ rate would eat up the average salary earner’s entire annual income after a mere 43 hours of lobbying activity.
That lobbying has corrupted the political system is no secret. During his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton promised to “break the stranglehold the special interests have on our elections and the lobbyists have on our government.”
Such promises (like many others the president made) were forgotten as soon as the election votes were counted.
Clinton picked Vernon Jordan, a top lobbyist and one of Washington’s consummate political insiders, to head his presidential transition team. Among those selected for top administration jobs were Ron Brown, a former colleague of Tommy Boggs at the firm of Patton Boggs; Mickey Kantor of the powerhouse firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips; and Howard Paster, a former lobbyist for oil companies, banks and weapons makers....
Republicans criticize Clinton for his coziness with special interests, but they maintain the same intimate relationships with corporate lobbyists.
After winning control of Congress in 1994, the GOP house leadership met weekly with “The Thursday Group,” a pack of lobbyists and activists who helped plot legislative and media strategy on the “Contract With America”.
Included in this elite troupe were hired guns representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, and Americans for Tax Reform. . . .
For more, GO TO > > > Drowning in Think Tanks
* * * * *
From The Money Men, by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum:
THE MONEY MEN
If you assume that campaign money is so distasteful that you don’t want to hear any more about it, you’re closing your mind to one of the most fundamental and most fascinating stories in American politics. It’s okay to be outraged— more than okay. But it’s wrong to be so disgusted that you don’t want to read another word.
Take, for example, the real-life picture we should have of our elected officials. It’s wrong to think of them sitting studiously through boring congressional hearings or making speeches to Rotary Club luncheons.
Think of them, instead, in windowless offices grubbing for money almost every spare moment they get. Fund-raising is so essential to their reelections yet takes so much time that politicians have invented a virtual science of efficient solicitation.
Here’s the typical scene: The lawmaker or would-be lawmaker sits at a desk surrounded by telephones. Aides seated nearby (there are usually 2 or 3 aides, but I’ve heard about instances involving as many as 8) dial up contributors and stay on the line until the would-be fund giver comes on. Then they put that person on hold until the lawmaker gets to their line.
The politician is thus able to move seamlessly from one begging session to another, and groveling can go on nonstop.
So there’s a picture for the ages: democracy on hold, literally.
Here’s another one: Around a conference table in the suite of the Speaker of the House ... a dozen lobbyists and trade-association executives plot strategy with the highest-ranking lawmakers in Congress. This isn’t an occasional meeting. It happens every week. On Thursday. At 11 AM. It even has a title: The Thursday Group....
The point is that money men are players. They aren’t dark figures lurking in the background, plotting political intrigue. They are central to the drama. They make a difference in the way laws are made and implemented. Without them, the politicians wouldn’t be politicians. And they insist on, and invariably get, politicians’ attention.
That’s the way it works....
Money, money everywhere.
But not all of it carries the same weight. And not all of it goes to candidates. The laws and rules that govern political fund-raising are many and peculiar. They also are largely ignored. . . .
At the federal level, the most that any person can donate to a candidate is $1,000 per election. Political-action committees (PACs), which are amalgams of individuals, can give $5,000. But that’s just the start. Individuals, labor unions, and corporations can give as much as they want to political parties.
That’s the so-called soft money or, more appropriately, sewer money.
This money, in effect, is used to make a mockery of the limits on direct giving to candidates.
Think of it as legal cheating....
* * * * *
March 31, 2003
HALF OF CLINTON’S 100 TOP AIDES ARE NOW LOBBYING, REPORT SAYS
By Jonathan Salant, Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Many top officials of the Clinton administration remain in Washington, trying to influence actions of their successors in government.
A study being released today by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, ranked the top 100 officials serving when Bill Clinton left office two years ago and found 51 now lobby the government or work for companies that do. The center said the number is about the same as in previous administrations.
“This shows systematically what happen to an administration when they’re tossed out on the street,” said Charles Lewis, the center’s director. “Where do they go? They basically go to the bank.”
Clinton administration officials working for lobbying firms include three Cabinet secretaries – Bruce Babbitt of Interior, Dan Glickman of Agriculture and Rodney Slater of Transportation. Two others, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Defense Secretary William Cohen, have formed international business consulting groups. Others work for companies regulated by the government or serve on their boards.
Herbert Alexander, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Southern California, said the Clinton administration officials are following a well-worn path. “Public officials find it much more lucrative to continue their careers after government service through representation of special interests,” Alexander said....
Clinton administration veterans also went into academia. Glickman spends most of his time running the politics institute at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Former Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo, who failed in an effort to become governor of New York as his father, Mario, was, is a senior fellow at the school.
Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is president of Harvard, and ex-Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala is president of the University of Miami.
The majority, however, traveled the well-worn path from government worker to government lobbyist.
Steve Ricchetti, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, opened a lobbying firm and landed such clients as AT&T, General Motors Corp. and Eli Lilly and Co. Former Deputy Defense Secretary Rudy deLeon became the chief lobbyist for Boeing Co., a major defense contractor.
Most government officials must wait one year before lobbying their former agencies. Likewise, member of Congress can’t lobby their former colleagues for a year.
Shortly after taking office, Clinton issued an executive order that required officials in his administration to wait five years after leaving office before lobbing government agencies. He revoked the order in late December 2000, weeks before leaving office.
“It just means the revolving door is alive and well in Washington,” Lewis said.
“It doesn’t matter what party you’re in, the color of money is green. When you’re one of the top officials in an administration, you’re valuable because of your connections and your perceived clout and your perceived access.”
* * * * *
April 2, 2002
Capitol Games
by David Corn, The Nation ( http://www.thenation.com )
Taiwangate?--Bush Appointees Linked
to Secret Slush Funds
Allegations that a past president of Taiwan illegally set up a $100 million secret slush fund to pay for overseas intelligence, propaganda, and influence operations are causing ripples that have reached into the Bush Administration.
At the end of March, Next, a Hong Kong magazine, and the China Times, a daily newspaper in Taiwan, reported that classified documents indicated Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan's president in the late 1990s, established a secret account in the National Security Bureau to underwrite various activities, including running spy networks in China and elsewhere. The articles, which noted the NSB had made payments to Japanese officials (including former prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto) and which identified Taiwanese intelligence officials stationed abroad, detonated a scandal in Taiwan.
The government did not deny the veracity of the reports, and the Taiwanese news media reported Taiwan's security services were recalling personnel from outposts around the world, including those in the United State, Japan, France and China.
The Next magazine reporter who broke the story, Hsieh Zhong-liang, was charged with breaching national security and banned from leaving the country; his magazine's office was raided by the police. Hsieh wouldn't reveal the source who provided the documents, but other journalists speculated the information had come from a former National Security Bureau (NSB) finance officer who is on the run and alleged to have embezzled $5.5 million.
The leaks damaged the current government, which is controlled by the Democratic Progressive Party, for the DPP is allied with the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a pro-independence party led by ex-President Lee. Amid all the fuss, Lee called off a trip to the United States.
The scandal has tainted two senior Bush officials in the State Department. Sing Tao Daily, a Hong Kong newspaper, reported that Lee used the secret account--which had not been approved by Parliament--to pay Cassidy and Associates, one of Washington's largest lobbying firms, to work for Taiwan, and the newspaper said the slush fund had covered the costs of trips made to Taiwan by Carl Ford Jr., a Cassidy and Associates consultant.
Ford is now assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research.
Sing Tao, citing the classified documents, also reported James Kelly, whom Bush last May appointed assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, received money from this fund when he headed the Pacific Forum, a Honolulu-based think tank that is an arm of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is based in Washington, DC.
Sing Tao maintained Lee drew $100,000 from the clandestine account in February 1999 to pay the Pacific Forum to support a former Japanese defense official's study at Harvard University.
Both Ford and Kelly are significant players in crafting Bush Administration policy on Taiwan. Ford is a longtime expert on Chinese affairs. He was a China analyst with the CIA in the 1970s and the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for East Asia in 1985. He has been a Capitol Hill staffer, a Pentagon official, and a longtime advocate of U.S. military assistance to Taiwan. Kelly was director of Asian affairs for the National Security Council during the Reagan Administration. He also served in the Pentagon in the early 1980s.
In the late 1999 and 2000, Ford was indeed a consultant to Cassidy and Associates, according to Justice Department records and a spokesman for the firm. During this time, Cassidy and Associates was mounting a vigorous campaign on Taiwan's behalf, lobbying Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon, the White House and producing pro-Taiwan media materials, including a website, position papers, and a newsletter. (This was a joint effort with its sister company, Powell Tate.) Ford wrote op-eds, letters-to the editor and testified before Congress in support of Taiwan's positions, usually identified as a consultant to the Taiwan Research Institute, a think tank based in that country.
A spokesman for Cassidy and Associates says the firm was paid by the Taiwan Research Institute. Justice Department records show that Cassidy and Associates received $3.2 million from 1997 to 2000 for this work. "It was our understanding that the TRI money came from private sources," says the Cassidy and Associates spokesman. "TRI, to us, was a private, nongovernmental think tank. They engaged us and they paid us."
But perhaps the money was part of an undercover government effort to influence politics and policy in the United States. Would it make any difference to Cassidy and Associates if the money had come from a slush fund, funneled through a research institute?
"That's a metaphysical question," the spokesman replies. "I'm not sure it makes any sense for me to respond."
Did Ford take trips to and from Taiwan as part of his work on Cassidy and Associate's Taiwan account?