The NFL? Really?

(Click on image to enlarge and then please return.)

I don't know why I was so surprised by the fact that the NFL has  lobbyists, but I was.  This news brief from Open Secrets is quite interesting. (You'll have to scroll down a bit to find the article.)

...[T]he NFL spent $1.14 million on lobbying last year. That's down from its record $1.62 million in 2011, but the league has come a long way in its political influence since 1998, when it spent just $360,000 to lobby tax, gaming, and broadcasting issues, according to OpenSecrets.org data.

Now the NFL has much more legislation to monitor. Last year, it lobbied TV programming and copyrights, human growth hormones, player safety and antitrust issues, sports betting and concussion legislation....

As Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington points out, the lobbying spike is largely in response to heightened congressional scrutiny of the league's hormone testing policies, treatment of retired players, procedures for dealing with concussions and, related to all of those, its disability policies. Concussions and their long-term consequences have created a particularly heated debate, as OpenSecrets has reported.  ...

The National Football Players Association isn't nearly as active as the NFL on K Street, just as players are far less likely to make campaign contributions than league and team managers. The NFLPA spent $120,000 lobbying in 2012 and $230,000 the year before, mostly to weight in on antitrust, labor and telecommunications issues on behalf of the union's players. The players' union doesn't have a PAC.   [Emphasis added]

I guess the anti-trust issues are at the top of the list of concerns the NFL owners are fussing over, and rightfully so.  Like other pro sports in this country, the NFL has been given a license to skate when it comes to monopolies and the like.  What intrigues me about the chart, however, is that when head injuries to football players really hit the news, the NFL really hit the lobbying trail, making certain Congress didn't look too hard on the issue, so hard that it might impair the league owners from continuing to make millions.

That the NFL players' union would get involved makes sense in light of that, although it isn't pouring the kind of money into the effort their owners are. 

Sound familiar?

Dancing To The Beets

Generally, whenever we hear of lobbyists and the special interest groups they represent, we think of Wall Street, banks, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and oil and gas companies. Farmers don't usually come to mind, but it turns out that sugar beet farmers are one of the most successful groups at lobbying Congress and have been for quite some time.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribute:

With roughly 500,000 acres of sugar beets planted across Minnesota and North Dakota, American Crystal Sugar is the nation's largest producer of refined sugar through beet farming. It generates 15 percent of the country's sugar supply.

But much of the cooperative's financial success is cultivated in Washington D.C.

American Crystal Sugar has become one of the country's most powerful lobbying groups, doling out cash contributions to lawmakers at levels approaching big-business groups like the American Bankers Association. And it's all for a single objective: To guarantee tariffs and price supports allow sugar beet farmers to make money, even if it drives the cost of sugar above the global market.

"They're considered one of the strongest lobbies there is," said Larry Graham, president of the National Confectioners Association, a candy-makers group which has fought in vain against the sugar program.

Price supports for beet sugar inflate sugar prices for food makers and restaurants, costs the food industry often passes on to consumers in everything from candy and cakes to cereal and soda pop. Some economists estimate that Americans pay at least $1 billion more for sugar a year than they would in an open market. ...

The sugar industry and its supporters, though, say the sugar program -- unlike most farm subsidies -- involves no government payments and keeps consumer prices stable. "It's a stable industry, and that's what's needed in this country, something stable," Rutherford said.

Yes, stability is nice, but at what cost? Even assuming the candy makers have their own ax to grind and have inflated the cost somewhat, there's a lot of money flowing out of American's pockets paying for the tariffs and price supports. That certainly seems to belie the holy mantra of the "Free Market."

And while I don't begrudge farmers being able to make money for their efforts, I do wonder about some of the side effects of their lobbying efforts:

To protect sugar subsidies, American Crystal's political arm gave $1.16 million to 177 House and Senate candidates in 2011, and spent more than $1 million for lobbying. ...

American Crystal Sugar is especially generous with members of the House Agriculture Committee, which plays a key role in food policy and the five-year farm bills that set out subsidies. In 2011, the cooperative contributed to 37 of the committee's 46 members. More than half of the committee, including chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and Peterson, the ranking minority member, received $10,000, the maximum donation allowed in an election cycle. [Emphasis added]

That's a lot of sweetener flowing in the process, and we're paying for it.

Another Revolving Door

We're used to seeing former congress critters and their staffers move from their congressional offices to new offices on K Street or corporate board rooms. We're also quite familiar with White House staffers signing on with private concerns anxious for their expertise and contacts. Well, cashing in on government service is not just for civilians.

This weekend the Boston Globe published a remarkable article on the role retired generals and admirals have in defense contracts. They get hired not only by the Pentagon to serve as consultants, but also by many of the same contractors they had dealt with while on active duty.

Among the Globe findings:

■ Dozens of retired generals employed by defense firms maintain Pentagon advisory roles, giving them unparalleled levels of influence and access to inside information on Department of Defense procurement plans.

■ The generals are, in many cases, recruited for private sector roles well before they retire, raising questions about their independence and judgment while still in uniform. The Pentagon is aware and even supports this practice.

■ The feeder system from some commands to certain defense firms is so powerful that successive generations of commanders have been hired by the same firms or into the same field. For example, the last seven generals and admirals who worked as Department of Defense gatekeepers for international arms sales are now helping military contractors sell weapons and defense technology overseas.

■ When a general-turned-businessman arrives at the Pentagon, he is often treated with extraordinary deference — as if still in uniform — which can greatly increase his effectiveness as a rainmaker for industry. The military even has name for it — the “bobblehead effect.’’

A huge chunk of the federal budget goes to the Pentagon, and clearly that part of our government would like to see the flow continue. It's pretty obvious from this article just why that is. It's an investment for the future. Unfortunately, it's not the nation's future which is uppermost in these generals' and admirals' minds.

Landing On Their Access

For some, government work is a sweet gig: work for a couple of years as a congress critter, aide, or civil servant and then leapfrog into a high paying lobbying job for such organizations as those representing the oil industry. Today's Washington Post details just how government grooms people for the promotion:

Three out of every four lobbyists who represent oil and gas companies previously worked in the federal government, a proportion that far exceeds the usual revolving-door standards on Capitol Hill, a Washington Post analysis shows.

Key lobbying hires include 18 former members of Congress and dozens of former presidential appointees. For other senior management positions, the industry employs two former directors of the Minerals Management Service, the since-renamed agency that regulates the industry, and several top officials from the Bush White House. Federal inspectors once assigned to monitor oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico have landed jobs with the companies they regulated.

The analogy that immediately comes to mind is that of a professional sports, with the government serving as the minor leagues training ground for many who move on to the high-paying big leagues. The sad part is that the system is being gamed by both sides of the aisle:

The analysis suggests the industry has focused on hiring former lawmakers from oil-producing states. Fifteen of the 18 former members of Congress who now lobby for oil and gas firms are from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma or Kansas.

Dozens more previously worked as aides to lawmakers from those states. At least three industry lobbyists, for example, previously worked for Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), an outspoken critic of President Obama's oil-drilling moratorium in the gulf.

The article mentions some of these movers as collecting from their future employers even while still in the minor leagues, listing a couple who've been busted for their larceny.

As outrageous as this seems, it gets worse. The door between the government and the oil companies has long swung both ways, with the most successful in the private sector able to return to government in powerful policy making slots, thereby greasing the appointee's return to the private sector.

There's something dreadfully wrong with this picture.

Taking A Day Off

I guess I partied too hard with the folks in the apartment building last night because I am in no mood to blog this morning. That's a shame, too, because normally an article about earmarks like this one would have sent me through the roof.

Remember how the House promised "no more earmarks" to benefit for-profit companies? I sure do, and I was pleased by the announcement for some very good reasons:

Adopted because of repeated scandals over wasteful spending — the bridges to nowhere and expensive pet projects like a water-taxi service — the ban was intended to help eliminate earmark abuses. Critics say spending on earmarks, which added $16 billion to the federal budget last year, diverts money from higher priorities, typically does not require competitive bids and is often directed to experimental research that will never be used.

Well, thanks to some sneaky lobbyists, some ethically challenged members of the House (many of them Democrats), and some of our major universities, creative ways around the rule have been paved.

But I'm tired, my sinuses ache from all the fireworks smoke I inhaled, and I have a touch of dyspepsia from all the rich food I ate, so I'm not going to summon what little energy I have this morning to issue any kind of rant.

Go read the article and then bust some china. Or go back to bed and pull the covers over your head, which I what I am going to do.

Made-To-Order Sausage

My weekly visit to Watching America was rather enlightening. There were far fewer articles which dwelt exclusively on President Obama. Most of the articles dealt with matters of current US policy, domestic and international. The article that drew my attention, however, was one that explored how our Congress operates.

From France's Liberation:

Just in time for this Thursday’s “health summit,” called by Barack Obama in an effort to save his health care reform plans, comes a new study from the Center for Public Integrity: There are currently no less than 4,525 lobbyists trying to influence health care reform legislation, meaning that for each elected representative in the American Congress, there are eight lobbyists.

Businesses and organizations (hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical labs, doctor’s associations, etc.) trying to affect health care legislation spent over $1.2 billion on lobbying last year. “It was money well spent” notes the Center for Public Integrity, whose report presents several examples of the lobbyists’ successful campaigns, including the elimination of a provision for a new public health care plan as well as numerous propositions to save money. The American Medical Association (AMA) spent $20 million last year to lobby congress on behalf of doctors. The association successfully struck from the bill a $300 annual tax that would be paid by doctors who care for those insured by Medicare or Medicaid (public insurance programs for the elderly and the indigent) and a provision to tax plastic surgery. [Emphasis added]

I was intrigued by the article for several reasons. First of all, I was unaware that the report had been released. I did a quick Google check just to make certain I hadn't slept through a couple of days of reporting by the traditional US media. The release of the report didn't show up in the first 20 articles (although a few bloggers mentioned it). Apparently our vaunted free press didn't consider the report newsworthy, even though it was released just before the White House Summit on health care reform. I had to find out about the report from a French newspaper.

Second, even though the US MSM didn't consider it newsworthy, a French newspaper surely did. Not only that, but Liberation also showed a sophisticated knowledge on just how our Congress operates, including the fact that special interests were willing to spend enough money to ensure that the reform bill would suit them, even enrich them. The French, who have universal access to health care, must be laughing themselves silly over their ally's penchant to pass laws favoring the highest bidder.

Third, and most important, was the report itself, which can be found here. We all know that K Street has an inordinate amount of power over Congress, but this report shows just how that power has been purchased, right down to the last dollar. During his campaign, President Obama promised to limit the influence of lobbyists, but it was to K Street he turned when he issued the invitation to discuss reform at a White House meeting which initiated the health care reform proposals. That isn't change; it's going along to get along, which appears to be his modus operandi for leading this nation.

The sad part is that even if congressional Democrats are able to get this bill passed, the public which elected them are going to be purchasing the sausage that was made to order for someone else, and it will cost us dearly.

Spending Our Money

On Saturday, I posted on Billy Tauzin's retirement from the lobbyist business. He was apparently nudged out by his bosses at PHARMA for giving away too much in the negotiations with the White House on health care reform. Apparently lobbyists shouldn't be quite so liberal with the big corporate dollars, even if those dollars did buy some pretty generous concessions from the White House.

PHARMA isn't the only lobbying group in DC doing business these days. The banksters we bailed out have gone full tilt in making sure there are no bothersome regulations put into place that will save us from another financial meltdown.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Even as the financial industry has sought to keep a low public profile, some of the country's largest banks have ramped up their spending on lobbying to fight off some of the stiffest regulatory proposals pending in Congress.

Lobbying expenditures jumped 12% from 2008 to $29.8 million last year among the eight banks and private equity firms that spent the most to influence legislation, according to data compiled from disclosure forms filed with Congress.

The biggest spender was JPMorgan Chase & Co., whose lobbying budget rose 12% to $6.2 million, enough for the firm to have more than 30 lobbyists working for it. Among other banks, spending on lobbying rose 27% at Wells Fargo & Co. and 16% at Morgan Stanley.

"I have never seen such a scrum of bank lobbyists as I have in the last year -- and I've worked on quite a few bank issues over the years," said Ed Mierzwinski, a lobbyist for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a coalition of state consumer organizations. "It seems like everybody is out of work except for bank lobbyists." [Emphasis added]

The whole point of the proposed legislation is to prevent the insane financial nonsense that drove up bonuses but drove down the economy. When the banks received hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to keep them afloat, the White House and Congress quickly discovered that the mantra "too big to fail" just did not sit well with an electorate that lost homes and jobs in the recession deepened by the shenanigans of banks and Wall Street. Once the government got the message, some attempt, albeit a half-hearted one, to rein in the financial institutions was put into play. Apparently those financial institutions didn't get the same message.

The intensified efforts on Capitol Hill have come as banks, facing unrelenting anger over the financial crisis and government bailouts, have avoided publicly resisting a push to reform the industry. Many of the firms even reduced campaign contributions by their political action committees last year. And three big banks that have faced especially heavy public criticism -- Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. -- cut back or held steady on lobbying last year.

But the increased spending by other firms -- as well as by industry groups -- suggests financial firms are making their voices heard more than ever.

"Despite the decline in credibility with the public, the banks appear to have increasing power" on Capitol Hill, said Travis Plunkett, a lobbyist with the Consumer Federation of America. [Emphasis added]

Congress now has a dilemma: the mood of the electorate is, to say the least, sour and an election looms for a goodly number of those currently serving. It will be interesting to see just whom those in Congress will choose to serve.

How Sausage Got Made

It apparently is all about access, according to an article in today's NY Times, and former staffers of Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska who moved on to cushy jobs on K Street had plenty of it. It was a simple system: work for the Republican Senator for a while, keep him happy, and have him secure you a job with a major lobbying firm.

Until recently, there were few better ways to start a lobbying career than by leaving the office of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.

With 40 years of seniority on important Senate committees, Mr. Stevens, a Republican, wielded unrivaled power over industries like fishing, forestry, communications, aviation and the military, steering billions each year to pet Alaskan projects like Eskimo whaling, missile defense and even salmon-based dog treats called Yummy Chummies.

His power made his good will a valuable commodity on K Street, where many lobbying firms are located. During the past five years, just nine lobbyists and firms known primarily for their ties to Mr. Stevens reported over $60 million in lobbyist fees, not including other income for less direct “consulting.” The most recent person to leave his staff to become a lobbyist reported fees of more than $800,000 in just the last 18 months.

While Sen. Stevens was the most notable of easily accessible congress critters, he certainly wasn't the only one, nor is the list just Republican in persuasion. The article suggests that Rep. Charles Rangel (D.-NY) has his own coterie. Mr. Rangel's power, however, has just been diminished somewhat by his replacement as chair of a powerful committee by Rep. Henry Waxman (D.-CA). Still, K Street gets greeted warmly on The Hill, much more warmly than the rest of us, the ones members of Congress were elected to serve.

Yes, the Alaskans benefited from Mr. Stevens' power, but clearly the real beneficiaries were not the citizens, but rather powerful interests within the state. The more honest of the lobbyists frankly admit that:

Others turned to dark humor, lashing out at the voters who cut off the main wellspring of the political pork that Alaskans — and their lobbyists — have enjoyed for so long. “They don’t understand the connection between Ted and the way of life they have come to take for granted,” read one e-mail message circulating among former Stevens staff members on K Street. “For those of us long on the dole, the coming reality will take some getting used to.” [Emphasis added]

Good luck with that.

For the rest of us, the problem remains. Lobbyists are already looking for new friends on the hill and at the White House, and they undoubtedly will find them. Our job is to make it clear to our representatives that lobbyists and their clients don't vote more than once and there are more of us than there are of them. To do that, we all are going to have to be better informed as to has all of that extra access.

Articles like this NY Times one are a good start, but only a start and one that in this case comes after the fact. At this stage of our vaunted free press's history, I don't expect to find anything substantive about those not under indictment or convicted. That means we are going to have to do our own digging. Fortunately, there are sites on the net which do summarize campaign contributions by industry.

And, of course, we still have the old fashioned ways of forcing our way into our representative's consciousness: telephone calls, faxes, emails, even visits to local and DC offices can be effective if done in large enough numbers. Organizations such as Move On and Take Back America regularly send out emailed calls to action. The larger bloggers do likewise. What is required is our informed response.

Selah.

Crooked Cop

There has been so little news on the Jack Abramoff investigation that I had pretty much forgotten about it. I guess I assumed that once a couple of congresscritters got disgraced and Abramoff himself got nailed the investigation was over. Clearly I was wrong. This AP article, published in today's Los Angeles Times, indicates that the investigation is ongoing and even includes the Justice Department itself as a target.

The Justice Department lost one of its own to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal Tuesday as a former high-ranking department attorney pleaded guilty to conflict of interest.

Robert E. Coughlin II admitted in federal court in Washington that he accepted meals, concert tickets and luxury seats at Redskins and Wizards games from a lobbyist while helping the lobbyist and his clients. He pleaded guilty to a single conflict-of-interest charge and faces up to 10 months in prison under a plea deal with the government. ...

Coughlin, 36, lives in Texas. He accepted the gifts from 2001 to 2003 while working on legislative affairs for the Justice Department. He later became deputy chief of staff of the department's criminal division -- the division handling the Abramoff probe -- before he resigned a year ago, citing personal reasons.

The lobbyist directly involved was not Jack Abramoff, but rather one of his lieutenants, Kevin Ring, who is still under investigation. Abramoff appears in the court papers as "Lobbyist B" and as Ring's hectoring boss, pressuring Ring to close the deal for one of his clients, the Choctaw Tribe.

What is so astounding is that Abramoff's corruption reached into the Justice Department itself. At the same time, what is so heartening is that there are still some in the Justice Department who take their jobs seriously enough to root out the corruption in their midst.

The Power of K Street

Republicans are fond of pointing out that there have been no terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11 whenever people in the rest of the country begin to chafe at the erosion of our civil liberties in the name of terra!terra!terra! The only problem is that there was in fact another terrorist attack on American soil after 9/11. In October, 2001 five people were killed and a couple of dozen others were made sick by being exposed to anthrax which had been sent through the mail from the East Coast. The investigation into that attack still hasn't yielded much in the way of information and no one has been charged.

For months after that attack there was some serious scurrying about as the Department of Health and Human Services tried to find a way to counter any other such biological attack. Unfortunately, the only anthrax vaccine on the government shelves had a few problems with it: multiple doses over a long period of time were required. DHHS and the administration put out a request for a new vaccine which would be more useful because more timely. A company stepped forward with a promising product, and then all hell broke lose from the company that had the old contract. A superb investigative piece in today's Los Angeles Times describes just what happened.

...the old vaccine is still the only one available -- and the government is buying it in mass quantities for the Strategic National Stockpile.

The manufacturer, Emergent BioSolutions Inc. of Rockville, Md., prevailed in a bitter struggle with a rival company that was preparing what federal health officials expected to be a superior vaccine. The episode illustrates the clout wielded by well-connected lobbyists over billions in spending for the Bush administration's anti-terrorism program.

Emergent's rival, VaxGen Inc. of South San Francisco, had spent four years developing a new anthrax vaccine and had won an $877.5-million federal contract to deliver enough doses for 25 million people. The contract threatened Emergent's very existence. The old vaccine, its only moneymaker, would likely be obsolete if VaxGen succeeded. [Emphasis added]

VaxGen hit a glitch in the development, but it was the kind of glitch that the government's science advisors were certain could be overcome fairly quickly. However, that glitch was just the wedge Emergent was looking for when it unchained the K Street dogs.

Emergent responded by mobilizing more than 50 lobbyists, including former aides to Vice President Dick Cheney, to make the case that relying on the new vaccine was a gamble and that the nation's safety depended on buying more of Emergent's product.

The company and its allies in Congress ridiculed VaxGen and impugned the competence or motives of officials who supported the new vaccine. The lobbying effort damaged VaxGen's credibility with members of Congress and the Bush administration, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.

As a result, the contract with VaxGen was cancelled and we are now stuck with Emergent's vaccine and with all of its attendant problems:

The existing vaccine often caused swollen arms and muscle and joint pain. Inoculation required six injections over 18 months, followed by yearly booster shots. The estimated shelf life was just three years.

Here's how one respected biodefense described Emergent's victory:

...Dr. Philip K. Russell, a vaccinologist and retired Army general who was a senior biodefense official in the Bush administration, described the outcome as "a big, dramatic failure."

"National security took a back seat to politics and the power of lawyers and lobbyists," said Russell, who supported the decision to award VaxGen the contract. [Emphasis added]

And with this administration, that certainly comes as no surprise.

Putting A Leash On Lobbyists

One of the promises the Democrats made while campaigning for the November, 2006 election is that they would clean up the corruption in Congress. It appears that they are finally getting around to doing something on that issue, according to an article in today's NY Times.

Congressional Democrats reached tentative agreement Friday night on a major overhaul of lobbying rules that would for the first time require lawmakers to identify lobbyists who assemble multiple donations and turn them over to candidates. ...

The tentative proposal puts new requirements on lobbyists as well as on lawmakers, and orders disclosure of contributions that have become alternative ways to curry favor with politicians by giving to entities like favored charities, special awards and honors and presidential library funds. Lobbyists would also have to disclose at least twice a year if they paid for meetings or retreats.

The measure would set a one-year ban on lobbying for former House members and senior staff members, and two years in the Senate. New restrictions would be put on lobbying by spouses, and lobbyists would be required to disclose any previous experience in the executive or legislative branches.

Politicians would be banned from trying to pressure firms and associations to hire certain lobbyists based on partisan background — the so-called Republican K-Street project. Lawmakers and top aides would have to recuse themselves from issues where there could be a conflict because of negotiations for future employment, and such negotiations would have to be disclosed within three business days. New public databases would be established of lobbyists’ disclosures as well as of lawmaker travel and personal financial data. Penalties for violations would be increased.

That's a rather nice, if ambitious, start. Cutting the financial umbilical cord between Congress and K Street is necessary if we are to stop the Abramoff-style pillaging of the government. Although Sen. Mitch McConnell has indicated that Republican senators "probably" would vote for the proposal, actually getting such a bill through the House and the Senate is far from certain.

The agreement has been tentatively reached in the Democratic caucus, and only in informal meetings because one Republican senator stopped any formal conference on the issue. It would have been nice if the NY Times had revealed just who that senator was, but I guess we should be satisfied that the story was reported at all.

But if the 110th Congress manages to get this kind of reform passed, then maybe they can turn to the other part of the issue, that of Congressional ethics.

We'll see.

An Example Of What Works

On May 16, I put up a post on the nomination of Michael Baroody to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Mr. Baroody, a lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers (the very people Mr. Baroody would be regulating), had an unusual severance package. In today's NY Times we learn that Mr. Baroody has withdrawn his name from consideration, presumably to avoid answering questions about that severance agreement.

A senior lobbyist at the National Association of Manufacturers withdrew his nomination to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission on Wednesday as a growing number of senators questioned both his suitability and a $150,000 departure payment that the association was preparing to give him. ...

Senator Bill Nelson, the Florida Democrat who earlier this month put a hold on the nomination, said in an interview Wednesday afternoon that he believed that Mr. Baroody withdrew because he did not want to make public the details of his $150,000 severance package, as several senators had demanded. ...

His nomination began to founder after the disclosure last Wednesday that he would be receiving a $150,000 special payment from the association, and that the severance package was amended by the association in January, shortly after he was identified as the top candidate for the post.

The White House had continued to defend Mr. Baroody publicly. But unlike in the cases of other contentious nominees, it refused to expend any significant political capital by lobbying on his behalf. Nor did President Bush appear to be willing to appoint him during a Congressional recess, as he has other nominees who have run into problems on Capitol Hill. [Emphasis added]

One new detail that has emerged in the last week is that the severance agreement was amended once the news that Mr. Baroody was the top contender for the job broke. While what that amendment involved isn't known, it apparently caught the White House by surprise, which might explain why the White House uncharacteristically gave up on the nomination.

I think another factor just might be that the White House simply doesn't have enough "political capital" to expend on such a nomination. Bush's numbers in even the most conservative of polls are in the basement. His appointee to the World Bank has just been forced out of the job in disgrace. His Attorney General is fighting for his job. Many of his top aides at the White House and in key cabinet agencies have resigned to spend more time with their families.

Apparently the Democrats in Congress haven't noticed all of that, which is maddening. If they had been paying attention and done the math, maybe they wouldn't have caved in on the Iraq War funding bill; maybe they would have resubmitted the bill with the withdrawal time line, which is what a majority of Americans want, and kept resubmitting it, each time explaining to the country that they support the troops, but it's time to bring them home. If they shift the blame for lack of funding to the man who vetoes the bill which allows for funding, the chances are pretty good that the people who gave them the congressional majority expecting just that kind of behavior would understand and approve.

Pushing back on the little things worked. It just might work on the big things as well, but this crop of Democrats apparently don't have the courage to even try.

Continuing The Tradition

Mr. Bush has nominated a lobbyist from the National Association of Manufacturers to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission. [Cue the "fox to head security of national hen house" chyron.] Although this is not especially startling news, given this administration, there were a couple unique twists to the story as reported in today's NY Times:

A senior lobbyist at the National Association of Manufacturers nominated by President Bush to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission will receive a $150,000 departing payment from the association when he takes his new government job, which involves enforcing consumer laws against members of the association.

The lobbyist, Michael E. Baroody, wrote recently to the commission’s general counsel that the severance was an “extraordinary payment” under a federal ethics rule, requiring him to remove himself from agency matters involving the association for two years. Under the rule, a payment is “extraordinary” if an employer grants it after learning that the employee is being considered for a government position and it is not part of an established compensation or benefits program.

Mr. Baroody said in the letter that the payment would not prevent him from considering matters involving individual companies that are members of the manufacturers’ association, many of whom are defendants in agency proceedings over defective products or have other business before the commission. Nor would it preclude him from involvement with smaller trade groups like those representing makers of home appliances and children’s products that have alliances with the association. [Emphasis added]

First of all, severance pay is usually given to an employee who has just been involuntarily terminated as a financial cushion or to keep the employee from complaining too loudly. While the article quotes an industry source who claims that this kind of payment is not that rare an occurrence for someone going into government service, the payment still looks like a before-the-fact bribe.

Second, while at least Mr. Baroody was conscientious enough to report the payment to the commission as required by law, he made it clear that he felt he should still be able to deal with individual members of the association that had been his employer.

Hello? Mr. Baroody was a lobbyist, and the individual members of NAM were his clients, the very people he is now supposed to be regulating.

Mr. Baroody's nomination requires Senate confirmation, and hearings are coming up before the Senate Commerce Committee next week. Senator Nelson of Florida has already sent the signal that he is displeased by the nomination. Now we get to see whether the promises made by Democrats going into the November, 2006 election are going to be kept

Just Friends Helping Friends

Rep. John Doolittle (Republican, California) finds himself in the crosshairs of the latest phase of the Abramoff investigation. His response is somewhat laughable: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is simply trying to establish his credibility with the Democratic-led Congress by going after a poor, innocent Republican.

Indeed.

Today's Sacramento Bee has an editorial which presents a somewhat different view of what is going on. The editorial details some of the evidence the Justice Department has uncovered in their investigation:

What is known about Doolittle's links to Abramoff, whom he calls a close friend? In 2000, Ring e-mailed Abramoff expressing Doolittle's interest in finding work for his wife. Abramoff's firm hired Julie Doolittle from September 2002 through January 2003 (paying her $27,000) and from July 2003 through February 2004 (paying her $40,000). During that period, Doolittle wrote letters on behalf of Abramoff's Indian clients and sought federal earmarks for the Northern Marianas Islands. Ring handled these accounts.

Buckham, another close friend of Doolittle and founder of the Alexander Strategy Group lobbying firm, hired Christine DeLay from 1998 to 2002 and Julie Doolittle from 2002 to 2005. Julie was paid about $30,000. During that period, Buckham introduced his defense contractor client, Wilkes, to John Doolittle. Wilkes held a $50,000 fundraiser for Doolittle. Wilkes and his associates also gave Doolittle's committees $118,000. Julie Doolittle received 15 percent fundraising commissions on most of these contributions. From 2002 to 2005, Doolittle sponsored $37 million in earmarks for Wilkes' firm for technology the Defense Department hadn't requested.

Mr. Doolittle is certainly entitled to the same presumption of innocence that any other American is entitled to (assuming, of course, he is not being held in Guantanamo Bay). Still, if the facts as set forth in the Sacramento Bee's editorial are accurate, things don't look too good for the man. Generally, if there is the odor of dead fish decaying in the sun around, somewhere there is a dead fish decaying in the sun.

End Of More Than Free Trade

The wool is coming off the eyes of a lot of commentators as the depradations of the cretin in chief amass. Today it's Lou Dobbs, pointing out that the legions of lobbyists fighting against the public's interest, and using public funds to do their dirty work, made huge inroads in the six years of GOP domination.

He especially hates to see the offshoring of jobs, and maintains that there can be no free trade under the conditions imposed by republics. With our own borders opened up to the incoming trade of other nations without reciprocity for our imports in other countries, we have no such thing as 'free' trade.

Thirty-one years of consecutive trade deficits and the loss -- in just the last six years -- of millions of manufacturing and good-paying middle-class jobs to outsourcing have been the result of what I consider this unconstitutional ceding of power to the executive branch in the form of fast-track authority.

Last week, I testified to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade that our failed "free trade" of the past three decades has been the most expensive policy the U.S. government has ever pursued.

I also told the committee: "The pursuit of so-called free trade has resulted in the opening of the world's richest consumer market to foreign competitors without negotiating a reciprocal opening of world markets for U.S. goods and services. That isn't free trade by any definition, whether that of classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo or that of current propaganda ministers who use the almost Orwellian term to promote continuation of the trade policies followed for the last three decades." Extending fast-track authority assures that continuation.

I'm not alone in the view that free-trade-at-all-costs has harmed American workers. Princeton University economist and former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman Alan S. Blinder has joined Nobel laureates Paul Samuelson and Joseph Stiglitz and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers as skeptics of the benefits the faith-based economists in this administration love to tout.

Blinder is now stating loudly that a new industrial revolution will put as many as 40 million American jobs at risk of being shipped out of the country in the next decade or two. Blinder has said, "Economists who insist that 'offshore outsourcing' is just a routine extension of international trade are overlooking how major a transformation it will likely bring -- and how significant the consequences could be. The governments and societies of the developed world must start preparing, and fast."

Our economy has suffered growing inequality in the distribution of wealth, and it is increasingly becoming obvious to all but the White House cabal that seeks to increase its own holding at any cost to the national interest. Speaking out now is good. I will not ask why there has been such resounding silence from so many who are now concerned.

Getting Busy

Yesterday I commented on some of the tactics being used by K Street to make sure it doesn't lose any influence in the new Democratic congress. Most lobbyists have spent the last twelve years working closely with the Republicans to get what they and their clients want, usually leaving Democrats completely out of the loop. Now those lobbyists are faced with a Congress led by the party they shunned.

The first big battle for one of the major industries is over the Medicare Part D program which prevents the federal government from negotiating for the best prices on prescription drugs for seniors. PHARMA has gotten busy, according to an article in today's NY Times.

Hoping to prevent Congress from letting the government negotiate lower drug prices for millions of older Americans on Medicare, the pharmaceutical companies have been recruiting Democratic lobbyists, lining up allies in the Bush administration and Congress, and renewing ties with organizations of patients who depend on brand-name drugs.

Many drug company lobbyists concede that the House is likely to pass a bill intended to drive down drug prices, but they are determined to block such legislation in the Senate. If that strategy fails, they are counting on President Bush to veto any bill that passes. With 49 Republicans in the Senate next year, the industry is confident that it can round up the 34 votes normally needed to uphold a veto.

...The drug industry is anxiously waiting to see details of the Democratic proposal. Lawmakers are weighing several options. At a minimum, Congress could simply repeal the ban on price negotiations, without requiring Medicare officials to do anything. Many House Democrats want to go further. They would direct Medicare officials to negotiate prices for a government-run prescription drug plan, which would compete with dozens of existing private plans.

The government could negotiate prices for all drugs or just for brand-name drugs that have no competition. Alternatively, Congress could require manufacturers to provide a specified discount, so Medicare would get the “best price” available to any private buyer.

The pharmaceutical industry is certainly getting busy, and like most big industries and their lobbyists, it has all sorts of connections with Congress, as is detailed in the article. One of the main leaders for PHARMA is former Congressman Billy Tauzin, who walked into his cushy job shortly after ramming through the current prescription drug plan. Several other former congressmen or staffers are on board with PHARMA or other lobbying firms retained by the industry. The revolving door between Congress and K Street has been whirling pretty effectively, at least so far.

Continuing the Battle

Almost two weeks ago I commented on the post-election flurry of activity on K Street.

Lobbying is not in and of itself dishonorable. It is a way for a particular interest group to get lawmakers' attention on the differing perpsectives on an issue being considered. The dishonorable part comes when money and special benefits like lunch, or trips abroad, or the use of corporate jets get exchanged for votes. Nancy Pelosi has promised to get tough on such practices and to get new House Rules into effect which will put teeth into that promise.

I am frequently embarrassed by the depths of my naivete, and this is one of those times. Today's Washington Post indicates that K Street has no intention of losing its yank in Congress, and the lobbying industry has not only come up with new ways to get their way, they have found the pols to play along.

The Democrats' takeover of Congress this month has turned official Washington upside down.

Labor and environmental representatives, once also-rans in congressional influence, are meeting frequently with Capitol Hill's incoming Democratic leaders. Corporations that once boasted about their Republican ties are busily hiring Democratic lobbyists. And industries worried about reprisals from the new Democrats-in-charge, especially the pharmaceutical industry, are sending out woe-is-me memos and hoping their GOP connections will protect them in the crunch.

...In addition, in a move that is raising ethical questions, some Democratic lobbyists are planning to take congressional staff jobs, attracted by the chance to wield real clout. [Emphasis added]

How canny is that? If the appointment calendars are closed to lobbyists, then placing someone on the inside should get the job done just as effectively at a lower cost, since these one-time lobbyists are obviously taking a cut in pay.

Despite this focus on gaining access to authority, Democratic congressional leaders have expressed disdain for their predecessors' fealty to "special interests." That is why they are planning an elaborate assault on lobbyists during their first week in session. Through changes in laws and in House rules, Democrats hope to ban lobbyist-provided gifts and travel to lawmakers and to create an Office of Public Integrity to oversee the disclosures that lobbyists must make about clients and fees.

All well and good, but I suggest the ethical concerns be broadened to include this latest end-around and any future attempts to circumvent the news laws and rules.

A Blue K Street

With the shift to a Democratic-controlled Congress have come several shifts in other institutions. The press has been busy filling us in on Harry Reid's and Nancy Pelosi's penchant for earmarks and pork, with various articles on John Murtha's brush with an FBI investigation (in which he declined the bribe offered) and other Democratic congress critters' ethical lapses. It's as if journalists want to make sure that the public doesn't get any funny ideas that things are going to change in Washington, that Democrats are any different than Republicans when it comes to corruption and malfeasance. Today, the NY Times has an article which discusses how lobbying firms are now being inundated with resumes from Democrats looking for work on K Street.

Once into the article, however, one senses that business just might not go on as usual in the lobbying industry.

Democratic lobbyists are fielding calls from pharmaceutical companies, the oil and gas industry and military companies, all of which had grown accustomed to patronizing Republicans, as the environment in Washington abruptly shifts.

The Republican Party lost its grip on Congress and is now bracing to lose its hold over K Street, the bustling corridor that has become synonymous with the lobbying industry. The so-called K Street Project, an effort engineered by Republicans to dominate the trade, is unraveling, and Democrats say they intend to pass sweeping reforms rather than reverse the project for their benefit.

“The Republicans’ view of lobbying is we give people money, we buy them lunch and then go up and tell them what to do,” said Mr. Elmendorf, whose client roster included Shell Oil and Ford before the election and has grown since then. “We go in and make public policy arguments. The business community is going to have to reorient their view.” [Emphasis added.]

Lobbying is not in and of itself dishonorable. It is a way for a particular interest group to get lawmakers' attention on the differing perpsectives on an issue being considered. The dishonorable part comes when money and special benefits like lunch, or trips abroad, or the use of corporate jets get exchanged for votes. Nancy Pelosi has promised to get tough on such practices and to get new House Rules into effect which will put teeth into that promise. The House Ethics Committee will actually function as it was originally intended to, she has asserted.

If she carries through on her promises, then she will have accomplished a lot. Perhaps then the mainstream media will find other things to write about.