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.”

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was (in the Commission’s view) honest, equitable and balanced.  In 1987, the FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine, prompting some to urge its reintroduction through either Commission policy or Congressional legislation^. Currently, there is an outcry to add “fairness” back into talk radio – which is deemed as unfair by liberals, since the radio waves are dominated by talk show conservatives.
This is a curious issue, since both liberals and conservatives have had their chance at radio. The public decides who to listen to, who has the highest ratings, hence the resulting sponsor money and potential national syndication. If your show is unpopular, it goes off the air with poor share ratings and lack of adequate sponsorship.

Whatever the reason, this medium does not work for liberals. Perhaps conservatives listen to more radio, and it is a preference issue. Maybe liberals watch more tv and do more internet surfing – who knows? Conservatives may have better hosts. Does it matter? Can / should you legislate “fairness”? Why should we? This seems to be the same thought process that condones children not having to fail, and everyone wanting to feel good about life every day.

The entire premise that we legislate and control what types of shows and how much time they receive, sends a chill up my spine. Freedom of speech is only valid when I am saying what you like to hear? My freedom is constrained to “equal time” of 3 hrs per day, for example? As a radio listener, I have a choice whether to change the station or not – let’s leave the solution to this issue there. Let the people decide with their fingers on the radio dial.

Bob Ney’s best known Congressional work was on the election reform efforts founded in the wake of the confused 2000 voting in Florida, and his support and backing for the “Stand Up For Steel” crusade and resulting laws. From 2001 to 2006, Ney was Chairman of the House Administration Committee. As chair of that committee, he oversaw operations in the Capitol complex and was sometimes known as the “Mayor of Capitol Hill”. Ney also gained notoriety when he mandated, as Chairman of the House Administration Committee, that “french fries” be renamed “freedom fries” on House of Representatives food service menus, to indicate displeasure with France’s lack of support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Before he pled guilty, Ney was identified in the guilty pleas of Jack Abramoff, former Tom DeLay deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy, former DeLay press secretary Michael Scanlon and former Ney chief of staff Neil Volz for receiving lavish gifts in exchange for political favors.

On May 18, 2006, the House Ethics Committee announced an investigation into bribery allegations against Ney, and on August 7, 2006, Ney announced that he was withdrawing from the 2006 election race. On September 15, 2006, the Justice Department filed Ney’s guilty pleas to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States and to a charge of falsifying financial disclosure forms. Both charges are related to actions taken on behalf of Abramoff’s clients in exchange for bribes, as well as separate actions taken on behalf of a foreign businessman in exchange for over $50,000 in gambling sprees at foreign private casinos. Ney is the first member of Congress to admit to criminal charges in the Abramoff investigation, which has focused on the actions of several current and former Republican lawmakers who had been close to the former lobbyist. Ney resigned from the House of Representatives on November 3, 2006. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison. He was released on August 15, 2008 after serving 17 months.
Now? He is becoming a talkshow host…so – when all else fails in life, become a “talking head”.

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.

What set Abramoff apart from legitimate Washington power brokers, federal prosecutors say, was his willingness to exploit an extensive network of Capitol Hill contacts — from well-positioned congressional staffers to members of the Republican leadership — regardless of the rules. “The corruption scheme with Mr. Abramoff is very extensive,” Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher said. “Government officials and governmental action are not for sale.” Abramoff’s campaign of corruption officially ended Tuesday (1/3/2006) when he pleaded guilty to conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion. In addition to about 10 years in prison, he may be forced to repay more than $25 million, according to court documents. Prosecutors say Abramoff’s cooperation is central to a wide-ranging corruption investigation that stretches from Capitol Hill to congressional districts across the USA. At least a dozen FBI field offices have been drawn into the inquiry, FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker said. Authorities have declined to disclose the number of possible targets in the ongoing inquiry, but it goes beyond one member of Congress or his office. “No criminal resources of the FBI will be spared in support of this important mission,” Swecker said.

MAJOR FIGURES IN INVESTIGATION
Some leading figures in the Washington corruption investigation:
Jack Abramoff: The central figure is a Republican lobbyist who cultivated ties on Capitol Hill over a decade with two prominent Washington firms, Preston Gates and Greenberg Traurig. Abramoff kept luxury boxes at sports venues where he entertained clients and lawmakers, and he owned a restaurant in Washington.

Michael Scanlon: A former press secretary for Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, he made millions when Abramoff counseled clients to hire his public relations business. Unknown to the clients, the firm did little work but funneled kickbacks to Abramoff, according to prosecutors. Scanlon pleaded guilty to fraud and bribery in November.

David Safavian: The former procurement chief at President Bush’s Office of Management and Budget was charged last fall with lying and obstructing justice in the Abramoff case. Safavian, a former lobbying partner of Abramoff, accompanied the lobbyist in 2002 on a golfing trip to Scotland, and he discussed Abramoff’s interest in acquiring federal property, according to the charges.

Adam Kidan: Abramoff’s Florida business partner pleaded guilty last month to fraud in connection with a deal to buy SunCruz, a company that runs casino ships.

Rep. Bob Ney: An Ohio Republican, Ney is chairman of the House Administration Committee and sometimes is referred to as “the mayor of Capitol Hill.” Federal documents allege that “Representative #1″ helped Abramoff clients in return for trips, meals and entertainment. Ney’s attorney said he’s the lawmaker involved. Ney denies wrongdoing.

The plea agreement outlined a scheme by which Abramoff and his secret partner, public relations operative Michael Scanlon, billed Indian tribes for exorbitant fees, then split the profits. Abramoff hid some of the money from the IRS by directing it to a non-profit group he established, the Capital Athletic Foundation.
Abramoff’s share of the kickbacks from fees paid by four Indian tribes in Louisiana, Texas, Michigan and Mississippi came to more than $20 million, prosecutors said.

Abramoff and Scanlon also provided “a stream of things of value” to public officials to get their help. The stream included “foreign and domestic travel, golf fees, frequent meals, entertainment, election support … employment for relatives of officials and campaign contributions,” court documents say. Among the recipients were a House member identified by the lawmaker’s attorney as Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and members of Ney’s staff. They got trips to the Northern Marianas Islands in 2000, to the Super Bowl in Tampa in 2001, and to Scotland’s storied St. Andrews golf course in 2002, according to the documents. Ney also held fundraising events at Abramoff’s now-defunct Washington restaurant, Signatures. In return, Ney and his aides put statements in the Congressional Record supportive of Abramoff’s interests and helped an Abramoff client get a wireless telephone contract with the House of Representatives, the government charged. In a statement, Ney denied that he was influenced by Abramoff.

Abramoff also funneled $50,000 to the wife of an unnamed congressional aide in 2000 and 2001, in return for the aide’s help in blocking legislation for a client. Abramoff’s guilty plea follows weeks of other scandal news involving government officials.

Republican Tom DeLay stepped down from his position as House majority leader last year after he was indicted on money-laundering charges in a separate case in his home state of Texas. DeLay has close ties to Abramoff, who employed some of the Texan’s former aides and paid for a separate golf trip to Scotland for DeLay. Randy “Duke” Cunningham resigned from the House in November after pleading guilty to taking at least $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors.

A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Dec. 16-18 found that 49% of American adults say they believe “most members of Congress are corrupt.” That’s 1 percentage point below the level of 1994, when voters turned control of Congress over to Republicans. The GOP appears to be tarred by scandal slightly more than the Democrats; 47% said “almost all” or “many” Republicans are corrupt, compared with 44% for Democrats.
Among registered voters, 55% said the issue of corruption will be the “most important” or a “very important” factor in their decision on whom to vote for next year. The poll has a margin of error of +/—3 to 5 percentage points, depending on the question.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan called Abramoff’s confessed conduct “outrageous.”
“He needs to be held to account, and he needs to be punished,” McClellan said. Abramoff was among President Bush’s Pioneers, who raised at least $100,000 for his re-election in 2004.