Corruption Digest - January 27, 2006

As my new book Hostile Takeover prepares to be released in the Spring, here is your January 27, 2006 briefing on how America's political system is being sold to the highest bidders. To sign up to receive the Corruption Digest in your email box, just go to www.davidsirota.com and enter your email address on the righthand side.

WHITE HOUSE CORRUPTION
The New York Times reports that White House officials formally "acknowledged that, yes, photographs did exist of President Bush in a classic grip-and-grin with Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican lobbyist at the center of a bribery and corruption scandal in the capital." Bush officials, however, "argued on Air Force One - and on NBC, ABC and CBS - White House receiving-line photos like these are so common as to be almost meaningless." They did not say anything about the earlier Associated Press report confirming that Abramoff and his lobbying team logged 200 contacts with the Bush administration in just its first 10 months in office. In a press conference this week, Bush said he would formally block the release of the pictures of him with Abramoff, despite them likely being taken by the official White House photographer...Watchdog groups are outraged that the White House has nominated a lobbyist to head the National Highway Transportation Safety Board.

CONGRESSIONAL CORRUPTION - BOTH PARTIES
Roll Call reports "Democrats and Republicans might not agree on all things lobbying, but they seem united on doubling the current one-year cooling-off period for newly minted advocates. And that has Congressional staffers, who already had an eye toward employment on K Street, stepping up their job-seeking efforts."...The Washington Post's Al Kamen reports on how lawmakers of both parties - while publicly feigning outrage about the Abramoff scandals - are continuing on with business as usual in terms of shaking down lobbyists for cash.

CONGRESSIONAL CORRUPTION - REPUBLICANS
Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum (R) - one of the lead Senate liaisons to the infamous K Street Project at the heart of the Abramoff scandal - is now pretending he had nothing to do with the operation. And he's getting caught and exposed for his lying...Montana Sen. Conrad Burns (R) this week held his big birthday bash with lobbyists - and Public Citizen nailed Burns for his inconsistency. Specifically, the nonpartisan watchdog challenged Burns to follow the same lobbying disclosure laws that he is trumpeting in his support for a bill by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Burns only signed onto that legislation after he was publicly exposed for being embroiled in the Jack Abramoff scandal...The Washington Post reports that "Republican lawmakers yesterday ended their long practice of routinely summoning lobbyists to the Capitol to try to persuade them to hire their aides and colleagues, in the wake of the Jack Abramoff political corruption scandal. GOP lawmakers for years have regularly presented lists of job openings on K Street to lobbyists to encourage them to hire Republicans over Democrats."...

CONGRESSIONAL CORRUPTION - DEMOCRATS
Roll Call reports on the push by senior Democratic Reps. David Obey (WI) and Barney Frank (MA) to enact a plan to publicly finance all House elections. They "will introduce the plan, which would bar all candidates from fundraising and self-financing in their campaigns, when the House reconvenes next week." As Obey said, "Instead of dialing for dollars, Members could actually be in their committees, learning what their bills would actually do. You could actually have a Congress that’s 50-50 between politics and legislating. Right now it’s 90 percent politics and 10 percent legislating." Roll Call notes that "many congressional Democrats have long embraced the principle of public financing — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), for instance, is a longtime backer of the idea — and Obey has pushed similar plans in the past." Yet, with many House Democrats having ascended in the current system, "it seems unlikely that even many of Obey’s Democratic colleagues will be cheering his new proposal." Find details of the Obey-Frank proposal here...Roll Call reports "House Democratic leaders are preparing to offer the toughest lobbying reform package yet, with a measure that would in some ways be more stringent than other bills offered so far." Specifically, House leaders circulated a plan with "provisions that force lawmakers to report when they are sponsoring earmarks, require them to pay fair market value for travel on private jets and create an office of public integrity to oversee these and other new lobbying rules."... The Associated Press reports that Democratic opponents "of the five-year, $40 billion GOP budget-cutting plan are hoping to capitalize on the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal in a long-shot bid to stop the bill when it comes to a final vote in the House next week...Critics say the budget plan, which would affect Medicare, Medicaid, student loans and other programs, is a prime example of the lobbying clout of powerful business groups and the often heavy-handed way Republicans run Congress."...Despite outside groups preparing well-crafted ethics complaints against top GOP leaders, House Democrats have no immediate plans to file complaints against Republicans when the ethics committee is up and running again, according to a top Democratic lawmaker...The Hill also reports that Democratic Rep. Brian Baird (WA) "wants to end an inside-the-Beltway version of insider trading as part of his party’s larger lobbying-reform effort." Currently, lobbyists get secret tips "from their contacts on Capitol Hill and pass [them] along to hedge-fund clients, who in turn may use the information to buy or sell a stock...Several K Street firms supplement their lobbying incomes through this type of 'political intelligence' work...The problem, Baird says, is the trading on information that is not yet public and therefore not readily available to other investors who can’t afford to hire lobbyists."

STATE CORRUPTION
In Tennessee, the Chamber of Commerce (not surprisingly) is attempting to defeat a new ethics reform package...In Montana, political columnist George Ochenski notes that politicians in Big Sky country have shown that clean money campaigns can be winning campaigns too. "Gov. Brian Schweitzer simply refused to take money from political action groups (PACs) and still managed to raise considerable sums and win the election," he writes. "There was no law requiring him to turn those dollars away, he did it because he knows there’s an unspoken quid pro quo—when you take the money, it comes with an expectation of future cooperation. Nor was he alone. Bob Raney, among others, took no PAC money in his race for the Public Service Commission and he won. Whitefish Rep. Mike Jopek did likewise and he won."

THE CORRUPTION INDUSTRY
The Washington Post reports that Paul Miller, head of the American League of Lobbyists, told Congress yesterday, "Our government is not corrupt, lobbyists are not bribing people, and members of Congress are not being bought for campaign contributions." That stands in stark contrast to what the American public thinks, according to polls. Nonetheless, Miller said, "I don't think we can say with certainty that the current system is broken." The Hill Newspaper reports that "big trade associations — lobbyists — are getting ready to fight the sharp tightening of lobbying regulations...Miller said a coordination effort is under way among several of the biggest business lobbying groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and others."

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