Eideard

Jack Abramoff and Dickhead

Ethics reforms put in place since the influence-peddling scandal surrounding high-rolling lobbyist Jack Abramoff haven’t cleaned up the system “at all,” a now-free Abramoff says.

Abramoff served three and a half years in prison for conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion before his release last December. In an interview…he said the reforms imposed after his guilty plea have little effect while campaign finance remains untouched.

“You can’t take a congressman to lunch for $25 and buy him a hamburger or a steak or something like that,” he said. “But you can take him to a fund-raising lunch and not only buy him that steak, but give him $25,000 extra and call it a fund-raiser — and have all the same access and all the same interactions with that congressman…”

“There’s an arrogance on the part of lobbyists, and certainly there was on the part of me and my team, that no matter what they come up with, we’re smarter than them — we’ll just find another way through,” he said.

The high-flying Republican lobbyist pleaded guilty to a raft of federal corruption charges in 2006 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors investigating Washington influence-peddling. He admitted illegally showering gifts on officials who provided favors for his clients in a probe that led to convictions or guilty pleas for 20 lobbyists and public officials — including Ohio GOP congressman Bob Ney and Stephen Griles, the Bush administration’s deputy interior secretary.

Between the two phony political parties – and a Supreme Court packed with rightwing political appointees – democratic processes in legislation and regulation continue to be removed as quickly as they were the day Newt Gingrich rolled out his contract on the American people in 1994.

Abramoff was the champion of gaming the system designed by corrupt corporate ideologues, agreed to nowadays by both Democrats and Republicans. He ought to know how it works.

Members of the congressional Super Committee have received more than $300,000 from 93 special interests in just six weeks since they were appointed, according to an analysis of FEC data by iWatch News. More than a third of the money came from health-related interests as the committee of 12 debates serious cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

The donations from political action committees slightly favored the Republicans on the panel…Republicans got 84 donations for $181,000; Democrats received 63 donations totaling $121,000.

The analysis covered Aug. 11, the day the committee was formally announced, through Sept. 30, the end of the third quarter reporting period. And those dollar amounts will likely increase when the Senate contributions, which are not filed electronically, are submitted to the FEC…

The select panel has until the day before Thanksgiving to finish its work…

Of the 93 special interest groups who donated via their PACs…seven gave at least $10,000. They were:

FedEx, the shipping giant — $10,500
Pfizer, the pharmaceutical manufacturer — $10,000
The National Beer Wholesalers Association, a trade association for beer companies — $10,000
The American Dental Association, the trade association for dentists around the nation — $10,000
Walt Disney Productions, the entertainment conglomerate — $10,000
Chevron, the oil giant — $10,000
The Associated General Contractors of America, the trade association of the construction industry — $10,000
Fresenius Medical, a major dialysis provider— $10,000

A mix of health and pharmaceutical companies made up at least $111,500 of the donations, by far the biggest business sector. One focus of the Super Committee is to find ways to save money on health care, which many have speculated means potential cuts into Medicare and Medicaid.

RTFA for examples of the cut-and-paste hogwash used to justify the existence of the gladhanders.

Not all members of the committee are raising big bucks around their committee membership. Sen. John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, promised last month that he would raise no money until the committee’s work is completed in late November. Sen. Jon Kyl is not running for re-election.

Her new dream is time off for good behavior

The good news is she doesn’t have cancer.

The bad news is she faces criminal charges.

The Horizon City Police Department has filed criminal charges against a young woman who raised the sympathy of a community along with thousands of dollars in donations by claiming she was dying from cancer.

Police officials said Tuesday that a three-month investigation found that Angie Gomez, 18, had no record of having leukemia, as she claimed while allegedly collecting about $17,000 in donations.

Gomez is accused of theft by deception over $1,500, a state jail felony. The case has been sent to the district attorney’s office as a non-arrest, meaning she has not been taken into custody.

“There is nothing to indicate she had cancer. There is no medical records, no doctors,” Detective Liliana Medina said. The investigation determined there were no other suspects in the case, Medina said.

Gomez had an infectious smile, a positive outlook and a tragic tale. Gomez was a senior at Horizon High School when her story unfolded earlier this year. She graduated in June.

Gomez told a tale of having leukemia as a child and was now fighting a fatal resurgence of the cancer. She told classmates that doctors in January had given her six months to live. Classmates and teachers at Horizon High School rallied around her and held fundraisers…

The kind of fraud that perpetuates myths about charities commonly being frauds.

We’re all cynical enough. I’d be the last to claim otherwise – though I claim to be an optimist and a cynic. Point is – throw the book at someone who hustles people for their good will and kind hearts.

An oil firm whose chief executive has bankrolled the Conservatives won exclusive rights to trade with Libyan rebels during the conflict, following secret talks involving the British Government.

The deal with Vitol was said to have been masterminded by Alan Duncan, the former oil trader turned junior minister, who has close business links to the oil firm and was previously a director of one of its subsidiaries.

Mr Duncan’s private office received funding from the head of Vitol before the general election. Ian Taylor, the company’s chief executive and a friend of Mr Duncan, has given more than £200,000 to the Conservatives.

Vitol is thought to be the only oil firm to have traded with the rebels during the Libyan conflict. Oil industry sources said that other firms including BP, Shell and Glencore had not been approached over the deal. One well-placed source said this was “very surprising” because other companies would have been keen to be involved.

Last night the Coalition was under pressure to disclose details of Mr Duncan’s role in securing the deal, worth about £618million. The firm is thought to have supplied fuel and associated products to the rebels and traded oil on their behalf.

The controversial firm has previously been fined for breaching sanctions and paid money to Arkan, the Serbian warlord, allegedly for oil contracts.

Sources at other oil firms described the situation as “highly unusual”…

Last night, Downing Street officials said there had been no impropriety…“We are confident that the correct procedures were followed.”

Vitol declined to comment. However, sources close to the firm said that, although the Government had “clearly been helpful” in facilitating the deal, the American government and others were also involved…

Well, that guarantees that all ethical standards were observed. Right?

The SETI Institute’s search for extraterrestrial intelligence is back on track, thanks to more than $200,000 in donations from thousands of fans. “We’re not completely out of the woods yet, but everybody’s smiling here,” the institute’s chief executive officer, Tom Pierson, told me today.

In April, the institute had to put its big ear for hearing E.T.’s radio call, the 42-antenna Allen Telescope Array in Northern California, into “hibernation” due to budget woes. The biggest hit was the loss of funding by the University of California at Berkeley, the institute’s partner for operating the antenna array.

The SETI Institute has been around for decades: It stepped in to help keep the search for alien radio signals active after NASA cut off funding for the quest in 1993. It’s not the only organization doing SETI, but it’s the leader in the field. The Allen Telescope Array, or ATA, was launched with $50 million in contributions from software billionaire Paul Allen and others — and if the array ever takes in 350 linked antennas, as it’s designed to do, it would rank among the world’s premier radio-telescope facilities.

But in light of the financial challenges, that’s a huge “if” right now. In fact, until last week it wasn’t certain if or when the ATA would come back online…

Pierson said the institute’s managers and scientists were drawing up a plan that would restart science operations in September…

Eventually, astronomers at the SETI Institute hope to use the ATA to listen for signals from the most promising planetary systems identified by NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting mission. Jill Tarter, the institute’s director of SETI research, said in April that the fund-raising target for the Kepler follow-up project would be $5 million.

Two websites you need to know about, to consider aiding and participating: setiQuest is a locus for data sifting – SETIstars remains to receive donations.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

Michael Steele measures the narrowness of Republican honesty
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Remember “soft money,” the shadowy torrents of unregulated cash supposedly designated for “party building” or other such nebulous activities that caused such political heartburn in the 1990s?

The ban on soft money was one of the few provisions of the McCain-Feingold Act to survive challenge in the courts.

Now the Republican National Committee is making a major new legal effort to remove the ban. It intends to take its challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Soft money used to be an equal opportunity issue for Democrats and Republicans back in the 1990s, and a prime culprit in the obscene amount of money being spent on campaigns. In 1997, President Bill Clinton conceded soft money had fueled a blitz of Democratic party advertising, but argued Republicans had abused it more. The “abuse” was that both parties had used soft money, as opposed to “hard money,” indirectly or directly to influence specific elections…

The latest challenge to the soft money ban is pretty much an all-Republican effort.

The soft money ban received a major boost last month in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the federal appeals court in Washington sometimes called the second most powerful court in the United States. The appeals court upheld the ban, but the setback for the RNC was strictly temporary…

The proposed challenge was part of a legal presentation to the RNC, Politico reported. The Supreme Court upheld the soft money ban in a “facial” challenge — the ban allegedly was unconstitutional on the face of it. But the new RNC challenge would be “as applied” — a challenge based on how the ban was being applied.

Politico reported the presentation said the RNC expected to ask for immediate expedited review in the Supreme Court if it lost on the lower level.

In fact, the RNC did lose its challenge in the Washington appeals court last month. The appeals court said it had a simple reason for ruling against the RNC: The challengers wanted the appeals court to do something the Supreme Court had yet to do.

The Republican Party is now carrying forward the projected strategy – which will give the Supreme Court another opportunity to return the most political power to the corporations with the most money.

An American tradition that has little or nothing to do with democracy or liberty. Not that today’s conservatives would notice.

Murkowski viewing a traditional Senate image of payoffs in gold
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

In a speech to Congress, a Republican senator from Alaska announced she would use an obscure and rarely used measure to try to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its powers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as a dangerous pollutant…

Murkowski’s motion of disapproval, though unlikely to become law, is widely seen as a barometer for the chances of getting a climate change bill through the Senate this year…

According to the Centre for Responsive Politics, Murkowski, from the oil-rich state of Alaska, has received $244,000 in campaign funds from oil and gas companies since 2005, and consulted two energy industry lobbyists before launching today’s proposal…

Murkowski was joined today by Mary Landrieu, a Democratic Senator from Louisiana who has repeatedly expressed concern for her state’s oil refining business; Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas; and Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Murkowski also claimed support from governors of her home state of Alaska, Mississippi and West Virginia as well as business organisations. Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, has also expressed support for Murkowski.

But there has also been a strong push back against Murkowski from environmental organisations and other business groups. A coalition of 80 companies from Virgin America to eBay wrote to Obama today urging action on climate change…

Murkowski’s strategy hinges on using the Congressional Review Act, a law used for the first time in the early days of the George Bush era to throw out new ergonomic standards for workplaces passed under Bill Clinton. The measure would require only 51 votes for passage and the Senator is confident of signing up all 40 Republicans as well as some Democrats.

Isn’t it amazing how closely reactionaries and cowards stick together?

Next couple elections, it’s time to kick a few more bought-and-paid-for butts out of office.

Would you take money from this man?

Scott Rothstein relished his flashy persona — the spiky hair, the Ferrari, the multi-million-dollar mansion. He was Bronx raised, Fort Lauderdale rich, and the politicians, charities and businesses that accepted his money rarely asked where it came from.

Until now.

On Tuesday, a Florida judge placed Mr. Rothstein’s law firm in receivership after his partner sued and federal authorities began investigating whether he defrauded investors of up to $400 million with a Ponzi scheme based on selling legal settlements.

Even without criminal charges, the accusations are already leading to panic from Tallahassee to Miami, and what appears to be the largest giveback of donations in the state’s political history.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Republican Party of Florida, which received more than $500,000 from Mr. Rothstein, his wife and his law firm since 2002, said it would place contributions from the most recent election cycle ($148,244) into a victim compensation fund.

Minutes later, the Democratic Party of Florida said it had just refunded a $200,000 donation received two months ago from Mr. Rothstein’s firm, followed by Gov. Charlie Crist’s Senate campaign, which said it would refund $9,600 in donations from Mr. Rothstein and his wife…

In all, election records show that in the last seven years, Mr. Rothstein has contributed to more than 20 Florida lawmakers from both parties; the Republican Party in six states; and a wide range of national leaders, including Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, and Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader and a Democrat, who received $4,800 in June.

Har!

The Vatican made a loss last year as the weaker dollar reduced the value of donations from the faithful in the United States.

Almost a quarter of the $79.8 million worth of offerings it received came from collections made in US churches. But as the dollar lost 15% of its value against the euro, the Catholic Church’s governing body made a loss of $14.3 million in 2007.

The Vatican Television Centre, which broadcasts the Pope’s regular audiences in St Peter’s Square and reports on his visits abroad, made a profit of almost 500,000 euros, while the Vatican Publishing House ended the year with a surplus of 1.6m euros.

Doesn’t everyone worry about religions going out of business?