WASHINGTON — Steven Rattner, head of the Obama administration’s auto task force, is leaving that post and will be replaced by former steelworkers official Ron Bloom. The administration said Monday that Rattner decided to return to private life and his family in New York City. Rattner won praise for the job he did managing the massive restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler. But his government service came under a cloud with an investigation of an influence peddling scandal back in New York.  Authorities have said that Rattner, an investment banker, was unlikely to face charges in the investigation which involved a giant state pension fund that provides retirement benefits for more than 1 million government employees.

In a statement, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner praised Rattner’s work on the auto industry overhaul. “We are extremely grateful to Steve for his efforts in helping strengthen GM and Chrysler, recapitalize GMAC and support the American auto industry,” Geithner said. “I hope that he takes another opportunity to bring his unique skills to government service in the future.”

Rattner will be replaced by Bloom. He assumes leadership of the task force’s activities as the government transitions from day-to-day restructuring to “protecting the substantial investment the American taxpayers have made in GM, Chrysler and GMAC,” Geithner said.

Hilarious! This is like watching a grade school argument unfold. Democrats tossed the Republicans a hard ball (we will indict and prosecute former Bush lawyers for advising legalities of torture) – so the Republicans toss the ball back “you knew this was happening and never objected” – The political winds have shifted and now pols are getting caught in a sandstorm. Even Majority leader, Steny Hoyer, is asking for ALL the facts to be revealed. My guess? This will die a slow death because both parties would be harmed. In the meantime – more lies, deceit and distractions while Rome is burning…

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A source close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now confirms that Pelosi was told in February 2003 by her intelligence aide, Michael Sheehy, that waterboarding was actually used on CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah. Source says Nancy Pelosi didn’t object about waterboard usage because she wasn’t personally briefed about it. Source says Nancy Pelosi didn’t object about waterboard usage because she wasn’t personally briefed about it. This appears to contradict Pelosi’s account that she was never told waterboarding actually happened, only that the administration was considering using it. Sheehy attended a briefing in which waterboarding was discussed in February 2003, with Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, who took over Pelosi’s spot as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. This source says Pelosi didn’t object when she learned that waterboarding was being used because she had not been personally briefed about it — only her aide had been told. The source said Pelosi supported a letter that Harman sent to the administration at the time raising concerns. The source asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of matters discussed in classified intelligence briefings.

Pelosi admits attending one briefing in September 2002, but at a news conference last month, she was adamant that she did not know waterboarding was used. “At that or any other briefing, and that was the only briefing that I was briefed on in that regard, we were not — I repeat, we were not — told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used, ” Pelosi said on April 23. Some Republicans have called for Pelosi to testify at congressional hearings. The number two House Democrat — Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland — said Tuesday, “I think the facts need to get out” regarding what members of Congress had been told about harsh interrogations. But when asked whether Pelosi testifying would be appropriate, Hoyer did not directly answer the question, saying, “The issue is what was done. If you don’t have the facts pounded on the table, they (Republicans) are pounding on the table, or they are pounding on Speaker Pelosi. Take your pick. But they are doing so as a distraction, as a distraction from what was done in this case.”

Murtha could have an entire website devoted to his corruption tactics…
The Washington Post – Tues., May 5, 2009

WASHINGTON – The headquarters of Murtech, in a low-slung, bland building in a Glen Burnie business park, has its blinds drawn tight and few signs of life. On several days of visits, a handful of cars sit in the parking lot, and no trucks arrive at the 10 loading bays at the back of the building. Yet last year, Murtech received $4 million in Pentagon work, all of it without competition, for a variety of warehousing and engineering services. With its long corridor of sparsely occupied offices and an unmanned reception area, Murtech’s most striking feature is its owner — Robert C. Murtha Jr., 49. He is the nephew of Rep. John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has significant sway over the Defense Department’s spending as chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

Robert Murtha said he is not at liberty to discuss in detail what his company does, but for four years it has subsisted on defense contracts, according to records and interviews. He said Murtech’s 17 employees “provide necessary logistical support” to Pentagon testing programs that focus on detecting chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats, “and that’s about as far as I feel comfortable going.” Giving more details could provide important clues to terrorist plotters, he said. Murtha said he does not advertise being the nephew of John Murtha and considers it “unfortunate” that some will unfairly assume Murtech received its federal contracts because of his uncle’s influence at the Pentagon. “If we’re not doing our job well, we wouldn’t be doing our job,” he said. “I’m successful at the work I do because of the skill sets I have. . . . You don’t know how good someone is unless you work with them.” A spokesman at Murtha’s office did not return calls seeking comment. The lawmaker, a former Marine, has said in the past that he is proud of his family’s service to the military and the government.

Over the years, John Murtha has proudly claimed credit for using his Appropriations Committee seat to steer hundreds of millions in Pentagon work to companies in his district, many of them fledgling enterprises run by campaign contributors. His influence also may be seen in the military improvements at the Johnstown airport that bears his name. The little-used commuter airport doubles as a wartime preparedness facility for the Pentagon after $30 million in improvements.

Family ties
Murtha’s power has had beneficial effects within his family. His brother, Robert C. “Kit” Murtha, built a longtime lobbying practice around clients seeking defense funds through the Appropriations Committee and became one of the top members of KSA, a lobbying firm whose contractor clients often received multimillion-dollar earmarks directed through the committee chairman. Robert C. Murtha Jr. of Murtech is Kit Murtha’s son. He also is a former Marine who once served as a presidential security officer and aide to the president for White House functions. He worked for eight years for ACS, a defense and information technology contractor. When Lockheed purchased ACS in 2004, he started several companies, including Murtech, which he registered as a defense contracting firm. Murtech received its contracts primarily from the Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville, Ala., which has been generous to companies in John Murtha’s district and enjoys a close relationship with the congressman through a mutual interest in breast cancer research. The Army command has won at least $200 million a year in federal funding for the cancer research, of which Rep. Murtha is a stalwart supporter. In a program called Missiles to Mammograms the command has collaborated with a contractor in Murtha’s district, Windber Medical Center, in a multimillion-dollar project to explore using missile-tracking technology to detect breast cancer. The command awarded its first storage contract to Murtech without competitive bidding, paying $1.4 million a year. Robert Murtha Jr. says the no-bid arrangement was “the government’s choice” and occurred because the government “got itself in a bind.” A contract with SA Scientific of San Antonio was about to lapse, and the command needed Murtech, then serving as a subcontractor to the Texas company, to store materials for the military’s Critical Reagents Program. The program produces lab materials that can be used in handheld devices and sensors to detect the presence of biological toxins.

“We were uniquely qualified because we had already been doing that work,” Murtha said. In justifying the award, the command said in a spring 2007 notice that “Murtech, Inc. possesses a unique combination of certain essential capabilities” to perform the warehousing. Leo Fratis, the Army contracting officer who handled the matter, said there was “nothing improper” about the contract. He said it was awarded on a no-bid basis only because the Army command “had a lot of things going on at the time.”
Pentagon spokesman Julius Evans said the congressman never contacted the Army command about his nephew’s company and has no say in its procurement decisions. “Congressman Murtha has had no influence over any contract award by our organization,” Evans said. The Pentagon has paid $2 million to Murtech to provide “logistics and engineering” for tests of joint dismountable reconnaissance systems, emergency tools and kits that troops can use to evaluate the environment when a release of biological or chemical agents is suspected. Robert Murtha Jr. explained that the work involves Murtech employees moving equipment to Army test locations.

Murtech also was awarded a large piece of military business in September, as part of a contract for detection equipment awarded to ICX Technologies, a client of the lobbying firm PMA Group. PMA founder Paul Magliocchetti is a close friend of John Murtha’s, and his firm’s clients were highly successful in securing hundreds of millions of dollars in defense earmarks from Murtha. PMA is under federal investigation for its campaign donations to Murtha and other lawmakers. Several members of the congressman’s family have served in the military and worked in the government contracting arena. There’s no evidence that Murtech has received direct congressional earmarks. A congressional rule imposed in 2007 requires that lawmakers certify that the earmarks they add to the federal budget would not benefit them or their family members. The nephew disputes the notion that he has secured Pentagon work because of his family ties. In fact, he said, having a powerful relative can sometimes be a distraction. “I’ve been critiqued all my life, having the last name of Murtha,” he said. “Whenever I walk into a room, I don’t know if you like him or if you don’t like him.”

Are taxpayers getting best value?
But Steve Ellis, a spokesman for the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, said contracts to Murtech raise questions about whether taxpayers are getting the best value. “Historically we’re always concerned when there is a sole-source or single-bidder contract,” he said. “By definition, the taxpayer isn’t necessarily getting the best deal possible. And certainly when you see the company has close ties to one of the most powerful appropriators in Congress, our antenna really perks up.” During an unannounced visit to Murtech headquarters last week, a reporter asking to talk to the owner was waved away by an employee. “He’s not here. Come back another day,” said the woman who opened Murtech’s security door. “Unfortunately, everybody’s stepped out.” But a few minutes later, Murtha emerged and answered questions about the company.

In an interview, Murtha expressed concern that publicity could be harmful to his business. Tom Mann, a Murtech vice president, also defended the company’s operations, noting that Murtech had won the confidence of the Army by doing a good job. Mann said the $4 million in contracts has not been excessive for the quality of work performed and the demands on the business. “With a warehouse and distribution center, there’s a lot of overhead,” he said. “There’s a huge recurring utility bill.” “Busy, busy. We’re always busy here,” said one employee walking outside the building.

In November of 2007, while campaigning, John Edwards said: “Washington is awash with corrupt money, with lobbyists who pass it out, with politicians who ask for it,” he said. In finishing his speech, he reiterated: “this election is the ‘great moral test of our generation.’ Now, 18 months later we have Mr. Edwards being investigated for use of PAC money for personal use.
Review this release and try and control your anger…

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — His once-prominent political career is buried and the turmoil of his marriage is playing out in public. Now, John Edwards is facing a federal inquiry. The two-time Democratic presidential candidate acknowledged Sunday that investigators are assessing how he spent his campaign funds — a subject that could carry his extramarital affair from the tabloids to the courtroom. Edwards’ political action committee paid more than $100,000 for video production to the firm of the woman with whom Edwards had an affair. The former North Carolina senator said in a carefully worded statement that he is cooperating. “I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly,” Edwards said in the statement. “However, I know that it is the role of government to ensure that this is true. We have made available to the United States both the people and the information necessary to help them get the issue resolved efficiently and in a timely matter.”

While Edwards focused his comment on campaign funds, he also had a range of other fundraising organizations — including two nonprofits and a poverty center at his alma mater — that have come under scrutiny. Chief among them was the PAC that paid Rielle Hunter’s company for several months in 2006 for Web videos that documented Edwards’ travels and advocacy in the months leading up to his 2008 presidential campaign. The committee also paid her firm an additional $14,086.50 on April 1, 2007. Edwards acknowledged the affair with Hunter last year, months after dropping his presidential bid.

At the time of the 2007 payment, the PAC only had $7,932.95 in cash on hand, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission. That day, according to the records, Edwards’ presidential campaign paid the PAC $14,034.61 for what is listed as a “furniture purchase.” Willfully converting money from a political action committee for personal use is a federal crime. The furniture money was one of just five contributions to the political action committee between April 1 to June 30, 2007. The other four were on June 30, the last day of the reporting period, including a $3,000 contribution from the wife of Edwards’ finance chairman, Fred Baron.
Baron, Edwards’ national finance chairman and a wealthy Dallas-based trial attorney, said last year that he quietly began sending money to Hunter to resettle in California. He said no campaign funds were used and that Hunter was not working for the campaign when he started giving her money. Edwards has said he was unaware of the payments. Baron died of cancer in October.

U.S. Attorney George Holding has declined to comment and said he won’t confirm or deny an investigation. Kate Michelman, a former head of the abortion-rights group NARAL who advised the Edwards campaign, said she hopes there was no wrongdoing.

“All of us remain very saddened by what has happened to John, because he was right on the policies,” Michelman said Sunday. “It remains a very sad occurrence for all of us. It’s sad for John and Elizabeth, and this is just one more problem for them to deal with.”
Edwards, 55, powered onto the national scene in 1998, when he won a seat for the U.S. Senate in his first political campaign. With smooth speech and good looks, the former trial lawyer ran for the White House in 2004 and was tapped as Sen. John Kerry’s running mate. He returned to the campaign trail in a 2008 presidential bid but was largely overshadowed by a duel between Hillary Clinton, vying to be the first female president, and Barack Obama, who did become the first black president. Since announcing the affair, Edwards has remained largely secluded, and he canceled all his public appearances before the November election because he said he didn’t want to be a distraction for Obama.

His wife, Elizabeth, who is terminally ill with cancer, will soon be releasing a book talking about the affair. In it, she writes that news of the affair made her vomit. She also describes Hunter as “pathetic.”

Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called “economic justice.” He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code – socialist code.
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY 6/2008

During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. “I’ve been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served,” he said at the group’s 99th annual convention in Cincinnati. And as president, “we’ll ensure that economic justice is served,” he asserted. “That’s what this election is about.” Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn’t have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval. It’s the rest of the public that remains in the dark. “Economic justice” simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It’s a euphemism for socialism.
In the past, such rhetoric was just that – rhetoric. But Obama’s positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state. In his latest memoir he shares that he’d like to “recast” the welfare net that FDR and LBJ cast while rolling back what he derisively calls the “winner-take-all” market economy that Ronald Reagan reignited (with record gains in living standards for all). Obama also talks about “restoring fairness to the economy,” code for soaking the “rich” – a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns. It’s clear from a close reading of his two books that he’s a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor. Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old. Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He’s disguising the wealth transfers as “investments” – “to make America more competitive,” he says, or “that give us a fighting chance,” whatever that means.

Among his proposed “investments”:

• “Universal,” “guaranteed” health care.
• “Free” college tuition.
• “Universal national service” (a la Havana).
• “Universal 401(k)s” (in which the government would match contributions made by “low- and moderate-income families”).
• “Free” job training (even for criminals).
• “Wage insurance” (to supplement dislocated union workers’ old income levels).
• “Free” child care and “universal” preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for “working poor.”
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.

The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager in Hawaii – and they were far more radical than any biography or profile in the media has portrayed. A careful reading of Obama’s first memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 – a man he cryptically refers to as “Frank” – was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his “subversive,” “un-American activities.”
As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis’ feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment. “They’ll train you so good,” he said, “you’ll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**.” After college, where he palled around with Marxist professors and took in socialist conferences “for inspiration,” Obama followed in Davis’ footsteps, becoming a “community organizer” in Chicago. His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman’s a disciple of the late Saul “The Red” Alinsky, a hard-boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the “Rules for Radicals” and agitated for social revolution in America. The Chicago-based Woods Fund provided Kellman with his original $25,000 to hire Obama. In turn, Obama would later serve on the Woods board with terrorist Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground. Ayers was one of Obama’s early political supporters.

A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic freedoms are at serious risk.

IT’S been a rotten year for Chris Dodd. Time and again, the Connecticut senator has been caught both doing favors for heavy hitters and receiving them — and then lying about it. Sometimes the mess involves a firm like AIG or Countrywide, enmeshed in the abuses that have so damaged the US economy. Sometimes Dodd’s pal is just a felon in need of a presidential pardon. But the cavalcade of scandal clearly puts the five-term senator in danger of losing his next re-election bid.
Dodd’s collapse began last June, when Conde Nast Portfolio revealed that he had gotten two cut-rate mortgages of nearly $800,000 from subprime giant Countrywide Financial in 2003. As the magazine reported, Dodd was a “Friend of Angelo” — one of several notables marked for special treatment by Countrywide co-founder Angelo Mozilo. That triggered a dizzying carnival of misleading Dodd statements. First, he issued an angry written statement denying any favorable treatment. A few days later, he told some reporters that he knew he’d been treated as a VIP by Countrywide, while the same day assuring other reporters that he hadn’t. He also promised he would release documents related to his mortgages. It took more than seven months for him to produce anything, and he still hasn’t disclosed all the paperwork. On Feb. 2, he let some Connecticut reporters look at some papers — but allowed no copies to be made and refused to list the documents provided. Dodd has promised to refinance the Countrywide deals, which would save him at least $70,000 over the life of the mortgages. But this is plainly damage control, not remorse. There’s no question why Countrywide wanted Dodd’s friendship. Dodd has long been a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees the industry. In 2003, at the time of the first sweetheart loan, he was close to becoming chairman — and a big catch for a company that depended on government policies that encouraged lending over prudence.

Nor is this the only sweetheart deal to surface:
* He bought a Washington, DC, condo in 1986 with New York bon vivant Edward Downe Jr. Dodd lived in the unit; Downe paid half the mortgage, fees and taxes — but rarely used the apartment. The subsidy ended in 1990 as federal authorities closed in on Downe’s lucrative off-shore insider-trading scheme. In 1994, Dodd bought a waterfront home on 10 acres in County Galway, Ireland. Actually, he got a 1/3 interest: Buying the rest was William “Bucky” Kessinger, Kansas City, Mo. real-estate developer (and also a college classmate and longtime business partner of Downe, who by then had been convicted. The total purchase price was $160,000; eight years later, Dodd bought out Kessinger for only $122,351. He says he also paid the balance of the outstanding mortgage — but other records suggest that couldn’t have been much, so Dodd still realized a substantial profit on the deal. Dodd claims that price was based on an independent appraisal. If so, he owned the only piece of property in Ireland that was nearly untouched by the biggest boom in Europe. Dodd’s Irish real-estate bonanza, likely worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars in 2002, came the year after he obtained a full presidential pardon for his and Kessinger’s pal Downe. Circumventing the usual vetting process for pardons, Dodd had made his plea directly to President Bill Clinton. Downe still owed millions to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The latest Dodd disaster, of course, involves those AIG bonuses. In February, Dodd inserted an amendment into the stimulus bill ensuring that executives of firms bailed out by the government could still collect already-contracted bonuses. When that became so controversial this month, Dodd at first denied doing the dirty work — then admitted it, but tried to blame the Obama administration. Even voters who might believe that story will also note that AIG had donated more to Dodd than to any other American politician. And now it turns out that his wife served for three years (2001-2004) on the board of a Bermuda-based company in the AIG constellation.

Polls show Dodd, long unassailable as a Democrat in Connecticut, in a close race with ex-Rep. Rob Simmons (R-Stonington). But his real danger comes from outside Connecticut. Jay Leno no longer needs much setup to skewer Dodd in his monologue. The California audience gets it, and the Connecticut one does, too.

Kevin Rennie, a lawyer and a former Republican state legislator, is a columnist for The Hartford Courant.

Posted: Friday, March 27, 2009
From NBC’s Chuck Todd

In the midst of the congressional outrage over bonuses and bailouts, many of the very firms who benefitted from TARP funds are still making political donations. And the politicians are still taking them. According to the latest F.E.C. data for February, several members of Congress who have been critical of the federal government’s bailout of U.S. companies have received campaign contributions just in the last six weeks – from the firms they bailed out. Campaign-finance-reform advocate Fred Wertheimer says the government’s been bailing out banks and other major “too-big-to-fail” firms — as these same companies continue to use their PACs to make contributions. “It all adds up to kind of a magic circle involving the government, TARP recipients, members of Congress, and campaign contributions.” The reality, of course, is that these contributions, individually, aren’t a lot of money. But many members of Congress (including Speaker Pelosi and Financial Services Chair Barney Frank) have decided against taking any of the money. The optics of this for both the banks and for the members of Congress is bad, and only feeds the credibility problems both entities have with the American public.

So who is getting money and giving it right back to the politicians? Here’s a list of companies who received at least $1 billion in TARP funds and in February alone also gave money to members of Congress or national parties: (Note: more TARP-recipients may have given money in February but not every company PAC reports their contributions monthly, some do it quarterly, meaning we won’t know until mid-April if these figures are actually higher)

Citigroup
Bank of America
Goldman Sachs
U.S. Bancorp employee PAC
Chrysler
American Express
KeyCorp
BB&T
Huntington Shares

Now here’s a list of House leadership and banking committee members who got money from these bailed-out companies:
(Note: Some members of Congress received contributions directly to their campaign accounts and some received money to their leadership PACs.)
Steve Austria, R-Ohio, $1,000 from Huntington Shares
Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., $5,000 from Bank of America
Melissa Bean, D-Ill., $5,000 from Bank of America
Roy Blunt, R-Mo., $1,500 from U.S. Bancorp employee PAC
John Boehner, R-Ohio, $5,000 from Bank of America; $5,000 from American Express; $1,500 from U.S. Bancorp employee PAC
Kevin Brady, R-Texas, $1,000 from Citigroup; $1,000 from American Express
Eric Cantor, R-Va., $2,500 from Citigroup; $5,000 from Bank of America; $1,000 from Chrysler; $2,500 from American Express
Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., $1,000 from Bank of America; $5,000 from Bank of America
Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., $5,000 from Bank of America
Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., $1,000 from Chrysler
Vern Ehlers, R-Mich., $1,200 from Huntington Shares
Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, $1,000 from Citigroup; $5,000 from Bank of America
Steny Hoyer, D-Md., $1,500 from Bank of America; $5,000 from Bank of America
Lynn Jenkins, R-Kan., $1,000 from Citigroup; $1,000 from Bank of America; $1,000 from U.S. Bancorp
Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, $1,000 from Huntington Shares
Mary Jo Kilroy, D-Ohio, $1,000 from Huntington Shares
Leonard Lance, R-N.J., $1,000 from Citigroup; $2,000 from Goldman Sachs
Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., $1,000 from Citigroup; $5,000 from Bank of America
Greg Meeks, D-N.Y., $5,000 from Bank of America
Gary Miller, R-Calif., $1,000 from Bank of America
Gwen Moore, D-Wis., $2,500 from Bank of America
Richard Neal, D-Mass., $4,000 from Citigroup; $5,000 from Bank of America; $1,000 from American Express
Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, $1,000 from U.S. Bancorp employee PAC
Devin Nunes, R-Calif., $5,000 from Bank of America
Glenn Nye, D-Va., $250 from BB&T
Mike Pence, R-Ind., $1,000 from Chrysler
Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., $1,000 from Chrysler
Mike Rogers, R-Mich., $1,000 from Chrysler
Pete Sessions, R-Texas, $5,000 from Bank of America
Lamar Smith, R-Texas, $1,000 from American Express
Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, $1,000 from Huntington Shares
Mel Watt, D-N.C., $1,000 from Bank of America; $1,000 from BB&T; $1,000 from U.S. Bancorp employee PAC

But Senators also benefitted:
(Note: Both Reid and Shelby say they returned their checks.)

Michael Bennet, D-Colo., $1,000 from U.S. Bancorp employee PAC
Robert Bennett, R-Utah, $1,000 from Chrysler
Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, $1,000 from Chrysler
Richard Burr, R-N.C., $5,000 from Bank of America
Tom Carper, D-Del., $620 from Citigroup; $1,000 from Bank of America; $5,000 from Bank of America
Jim DeMint, R-S.C., $2,000 from Citigroup; $1,000 from Bank of America; $2,000 from BB&T; $1,000 from U.S. Bancorp employee PAC
Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., $1,000 from Citigroup
Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., $1,000 from Bank of America
Bob Menendez, D-N.J., $5,000 from Bank of America
Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., $2,500 from Citigroup; $4,000 from Bank of America
Harry Reid, D-Nev., $1,000 from U.S. Bancorp employee PAC
Richard Shelby, R-Ala., $5,000 from Bank of America
Arlen Specter, R-Pa., $2,000 from Chrysler
George Voinovich, R-Ohio, $5,000 from Bank of America

And so did the Parties.

The Democrats:
(Note: Both the DSCC and the DCCC say they never received the checks Bank of America reported in their March FEC report)
NDCPAC, $5,000 from Citigroup, $5,000 from Bank of America
Blue Dog PAC, $5,000 from Citigroup; $5,000 from Bank of America
DSCC , $15,000 from Bank of America
DCCC, $15,000 from Bank of America
FourOhDems, $1,000 from Huntington Shares

And the Republicans:
HouseConFund, $5,000 from Bank of America
GOP Main Street, $5,000 from Bank of America
NRSC, $15,000 from Bank of America
NRCC $15,000 from Bank of America

Interestingly, Goldman Sachs actually reported members of Congress who refused to cash their checks, including Rep. Stephanie Herseth, D-S.D., Rep. Pete DeFazio, D-Ore., and then-Congressman and now chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

Sen. Chris Dodd says Treasury forced him to add language to the stimulus bill last month that specifically excluded executive bonuses included in contracts signed before the bill’s passage. In a dramatic reversal Wednesday, Sen. Chris Dodd confessed to adding language to a spending cap in the stimulus bill last month that specifically excluded executive bonuses included in contracts signed before the bill’s passage. Dodd, D-Conn., told FOX News that Treasury officials forced him to make the change. “As many know, the administration was, among others, not happy with the language. They wanted some modifications to it,” he said. “They came to us, our staff, and asked for changes, and the changes at the time did not seem that obnoxious or onerous.” But the provision has become a flash point for criticism amid the controversy over $165 million in bonuses given out by AIG after securing more than $170 billion in federal aid. The language in the stimulus bill wasn’t specific to AIG, but some have expressed outrage that it appears to have created a loophole. Dodd said the argument put forward by Treasury was that a “flood of lawsuits” would come forward if the change was not made. Dodd said he was unaware of the AIG bonuses at the time the bill was being written back in early February. He also said he has no reason to believe Treasury officials making the argument knew about the AIG bonuses. When asked how administration officials have this kind of leverage over members of Congress, Dodd said, “The administration has veto power. … No one suggested a veto to me, I don’t want to imply that to you. But certainly that’s not an insignificant tool.” On Tuesday, Dodd told FOX News that he didn’t add the exemption. “When the language went to the conference and came back, there was different language,” he said then. “I can tell you this much, when my language left the Senate, it did not include it. When it came back, it did.” Dodd still thinks the Treasury can get the bonuses back, despite the inclusion of a date in the stimulus bill, and he said officials are, in fact, using his very language to claw back the money.
“There is language after that date that says explicitly that the Treasury has the right to modify, reaching back, those bonuses, compensations, if it’s inconsistent with the TARP legislation or contrary to the public interest,” he said. “In fact, it’s that phrase that the administration is relying on this evening as a means by which they can reach back and maybe get these bonuses back,” he said.
Still, Dodd has his enemies. The Senate Republican re-election campaign quickly shot out a statement on the Dodd reversal, as he is a prime target in the 2010 midterm elections and is facing a Republican opponent who, in one poll, is in a statistical tie with him.
“Senator Dodd’s reversal on this issue is both astonishing and alarming,” the National Republican Senatorial Campaign said in a written statement. “Contrary to his statements and denials over the last 24 hours, Senator Dodd has now admitted that he and his staff did in fact change the language in the stimulus bill to include a loophole for AIG executive bonuses.” The group added that Dodd had “misled voters and equivocated on his statements .”

WASHINGTON – The fight over earmarks is not over. For all of President Obama’s promises of reform, a close look at just three of the more than 9,000 earmarks contained in the $410 billion spending bill that he signed last week shows just how hard it will be to clamp down on lawmakers’ pet projects. Take Catalyst Renewables, an energy company that failed to win a $30 million grant from the federal government last year but got a $500,000 earmark courtesy of New York lawmakers.
Or PPG Industries, a manufacturing conglomerate based in Pittsburgh that received nearly $1.2 million to develop windows that double as solar panels, which lawmakers promoted as a one-of-a-kind initiative even though the company has many competitors.
Or the $190,000, secured by Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, for a community center in New Orleans to be built by a nonprofit group founded by her brother, allocated even though the project is defunct.

Billions of dollars in earmarks
The three projects represent just a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars in earmarks in the bill, but they help illustrate why critics continue to demand more restraints and how new rules announced by Democrats on Capitol Hill and embraced by Mr. Obama might serve to block some initiatives but not others. They also help explain why the larger struggle over who decides how tax dollars are spent — Congress, the Obama administration, or state and local officials — will not be resolved anytime soon, making “Congressionally directed spending” the favorite new euphemism on Capitol Hill, even as earmarks remain a small part of overall federal spending. The earmarks in the bill approved last week totaled between $3.8 billion and more than $12.8 billion depending on how the projects are defined, or roughly 1 to 3 percent of the overall spending. The new rules seek to curb the most blatant abuses of the earmark process by requiring competitive bidding for any money that lawmakers want to direct to a for-profit company. The regulations also require a 20-day review of all earmarks by the relevant federal agency. Lawmakers and agency officials, though, say it might be impossible for agencies to review thousands of projects in such a tight time frame, and at such an early stage of the appropriations process.

Supporters defend the new requirements
Supporters, including the House Appropriations Committee chairman, Representative David R. Obey, defend the new requirements, saying they will bring further accountability on top of a 2007 ethics law that required the disclosure of all earmarks and their sponsors. Mr. Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, and others say the competitive bidding rules will allow members of Congress to earmark money for a purpose but not necessarily for a specific for-profit recipient. Critics warn that earmarks can be written in such a way that only a specific recipient can win. A company like Catalyst Renewables, which has its headquarters in Dallas but also has offices in upstate New York, would have had to clear more hurdles to get the $1 million it has received — $500,000 allotments in the last two years — from New York’s Congressional delegation, including Representative John M. McHugh, a Republican who was a sponsor of both earmarks. The company, competing with others last year, failed to obtain a $30 million grant from the Energy Department to build a biorefinery. The company was told that it had not provided sufficient data to win the money. Eric L. Spomer, president of Catalyst Renewables, said the earmark process allowed lawmakers to recognize merit, and finance a smaller aspect of the company’s operations, even though agency officials would not finance the new plant. “We’re a small company and we don’t have a budget for R & D,” Mr. Spomer said. “We knew what we needed to do, but it was a question of where are we going to get the money.”

Worthwhile is in the eye of the beholder
New York lawmakers insist the Energy Department was wrong to deny the grant money. And Mr. Spomer conceded that under a competitive system the company might not have received its earmark either. “Worthwhile,” to be sure, is in the eye of the beholder. When officials at PPG Industries pitched lawmakers for help with their effort to build solar-panel windows, Representative Mike Doyle, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said he recognized a winner. “Nobody else in the world does this work,” declared Mr. Doyle, who sponsored a $1.2 million earmark for PPG. But Covalent Solar, a Massachusetts start-up founded by researchers at M.I.T., said it was one of several companies working to develop nearly identical technology and would eagerly bid for federal money if given the chance. “We would immediately submit a proposal,” said the company’s president, Jon Mapel. Mr. Doyle, who just completed six years on the House ethics committee, said he had long published his earmark requests and would proudly defend his efforts to support businesses in his district. He said that the Energy Department already oversees the program that will direct the money to PPG, making the 20-day review superfluous, and that competitive bidding would be mostly pointless. “If this makes people feel better, go ahead and do it,” Mr. Doyle said. He said he was unaware of competitors who were working on similar technology, but suggested they might not have the track record with the Energy Department that PPG did.

Critics: Focus on local interests is problem
Critics of earmarks say Mr. Doyle’s focus on local interests represents a major problem. “This is Congress picking the winner that happens to be in the lawmakers’ district, rather than unleashing America’s promise and saying, ‘Here’s the problem, here’s what we are trying to fund, and let companies across America see if they can actually meet that need,” said Steve Ellis, a spokesman for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that tracks and opposes earmarks. Mr. Mapel said he worried that bigger, more established companies had an unfair advantage in the earmark process. In its quest for earmarks, PPG was represented by the PMA Group, a lobbying firm being investigated by the F.B.I. for its role in directing campaign contributions to lawmakers who provided millions of dollars in earmarks for the firm’s clients. In a written statement, a PPG spokesman said the company had reviewed the matter and found no evidence of misconduct. Even earmarks for nonprofits can be complicated, as evidenced by the $190,000 secured by Ms. Landrieu for the Lake Area Community Center, a nonprofit group founded by her brother Martin. Ms. Landrieu, in an interview, said she had been aware of her brother’s support for the center but not that he personally had incorporated the nonprofit group. Still, she said, she would have backed the earmark. The project does not seem to violate ethics rules that bar senators from requesting earmarks in which they or an immediate family member has a “pecuniary interest.” It is unclear if a 20-day review by the Department of Housing and Urban Development would have found that the project was defunct and kept it out of the budget bill.
“That project is not off the ground at all,” Mr. Landrieu said in an interview. “There is no funding for it, other than the federal money that has been talked about.” Officials said that projects could always fall apart, and that agencies routinely verified the status of recipients before releasing money. Ms. Landrieu’s office said HUD would not be likely to release money for the project.

Unfair to suggest special treatment?
Mr. Landrieu said it would be unfair for critics to suggest special treatment. “To put the message out or to suggest that you know an earmark is set aside because I was involved in something is a little bit misleading,” he said. “Mary, as my sister, and as a U.S. senator, was extremely interested in helping that neighborhood to recovery, not just that neighborhood but every neighborhood in New Orleans.” Ms. Landrieu said that she supported further reform of the earmark process but that lawmakers often had a better grasp of local needs than agency officials in Washington. “We have to be careful about just jumping to the conclusion that agencies know better and that federal bureaucrats who have never stepped in a place know better than officials who have literally campaigned there door to door,” the senator said. “On the other hand, there have been some gross abuses to the system.”

This story, “Old Problems Resurface in New Earmark Rules,” first appeared in The New York Times.

The House on Wednesday passed a $410 billion omnibus spending bill packed with pet projects requested by Democrats and Republicans alike. The 245-to-178 vote came just a week after President Obama signed one of the largest spending bills in the nation’s history, a $787 billion measure meant to rejuvenate a sluggish economy. The new bill, a reflection of Democratic priorities, increases spending on domestic programs by an average of 8 percent in the current fiscal year, which began in October. On Thursday, Mr. Obama is scheduled to send his budget for the next fiscal year to Congress. He did not take a formal position on the bill passed by the House. “It’s a big document,” a White House official said. “We are still reviewing it.” Republicans, however, did not mince words in describing the spending bill as wasteful. And one watchdog group said the bill provided nearly $8 billion for more than 8,500 pet projects favored by lawmakers, including $1.7 million for a honey bee laboratory in Weslaco, Tex.; $346,000 for research on apple fire blight in Michigan and New York; and $1.5 million for work on grapes and grape products, including wine. Representative John Fleming, Republican of Louisiana, said Mr. Obama’s call for fiscal responsibility, in a speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, was “sandwiched between two wasteful spending bills.” Representative Mark Steven Kirk, Republican of Illinois, pointed out that the new bill came just two days after the White House held a forum to promote fiscal restraint.

If I believed Obama at his word, I expect the bill to be sent back to Congress with the reply: “Clean it up”. Will that happen? If it doesn’t, then I will feel that once again, politicians cannot be trusted, deal only in rhetoric and are only interested in their own personal agendas. Those teary eyed faces on election night – they have been duped as I have. The only difference is that perhaps I recognize it, while they will be in denial for 4 or 8 years….whatever will become of the US? I fear deeply for our children and grandchildren, more so than ever in my life.