Eideard

Even pigs wear boots to a Gingrich press conference

Newt Gingrich made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in consulting fees from two contracts with mortgage company Freddie Mac, according to two people familiar with the arrangement.

The total amount is significantly larger than the $300,000 payment from Freddie Mac that Gingrich was asked about during a Republican presidential debate on Nov. 9 sponsored by CNBC, and more than was disclosed in the middle of congressional investigations into the housing industry collapse.

Gingrich’s business relationship with Freddie Mac spanned a period of eight years. When asked at the debate what he did to earn a $300,000 payment in 2006…the former speaker lied and said he offered lessons from history.

Gingrich said this morning that the payments were for “strategic advice over a long period of time.” His fees were sent to his consulting firm, The Gingrich Group, not to him personally…well, that’s a big difference, eh?

Gingrich’s first contract with the mortgage lender was in 1999, five months after he resigned from Congress and as House speaker…His primary contact inside the organization was Mitchell Delk, Freddie Mac’s chief lobbyist, and he was paid a self- renewing, monthly retainer of $25,000 to $30,000 between May 1999 until 2002, according to three people familiar with aspects of the business agreement.

During that period, Gingrich consulted with Freddie Mac executives on a program to expand home ownership, an idea Delk said he pitched to President George W. Bush’s White House.

“I spent about three hours with him talking about the substance of the issues and the politics of the issues, and he really got it,” said Delk, adding that the two discussed “what the benefits are to communities, what the benefits could be for Republicans and particularly their relationship with Hispanics…”

While campaigning in Iowa this week, Gingrich, 68, was asked about his relationship with Freddie Mac. He said he did no lobbying “of any kind…”

RTFA if you can stand the stink of Gingrich’s lies. I’d recommend wearing rubber boots, as well.

More Gingrich lies, of course. As more comes out into the light of day, Newt has to rearrange his lies to suit the occasion. A reflection of the cesspool that is Congressional ethics.

Doctors who earn money for cardiac stress testing are much more likely to prescribe the tests than those who don’t, a new study has found.

Researchers at Duke University studied data on 17,847 patients nationwide who had cardiac bypass surgery or coronary angioplasty, checking to see how often doctors prescribed nuclear stress tests and echocardiograms later than 90 days after discharge…

Among doctors who billed for administering and interpreting a stress test, 12.6 percent prescribed the test, compared with 5 percent of those who were not paid for testing. Results for echocardiograms were similar: 2.8 percent of patients were tested by doctors who billed for both test and interpretation, and 0.4 percent by those who were paid for neither.

After controlling for the patient’s age and disease characteristics, the doctor’s specialty and other factors, researchers found that a patient of a doctor earning money from testing was more than twice as likely to be tested as a patient of a doctor without financial interest in the tests.

“If you’re having symptoms or a change in health status, testing is appropriate,” said Dr. Bimal R. Shah, the lead author of the analysis and a fellow in cardiology at Duke. “But in situations where there aren’t any clinical indications for tests, these reimbursement structures seem to be associated with increased testing use.”

Do you think so? Cripes.

Yes, I found that he got a spif for the referral – and, no, I never went to him, again.

Thanks, Eric

It was the deathbed request from the mother of a longtime fugitive that finally led the FBI to William Walter Asher III.

For 36 years, Asher had been on the run — ever since he escaped from a prison camp in 1975 rather than serve time for a deadly robbery.

But last week, federal agents caught up to him. He had changed his name, worked for a trucking company and lived with a woman who had no idea about his criminal past…

For years, it seemed that the FBI would never nab Asher.
In 1966, he and three accomplices robbed a San Francisco bar, shooting and then beating the bartender to death, authorities said.

Asher was 20 at the time…He was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The file would have closed there. But eight years into his sentence, Asher escaped from a prison in El Dorado County, California — aided by a female accomplice…

In 2005, shortly before she died, Asher’s mother asked relatives to get in touch with her son. “She asked various family members to assist her in using the ‘secret’ number to call ‘Billy,’” the FBI said. Agents had been tipped off about the conversation by a source.

Armed with that information, agents scoured phone records of people who they believed may have helped fulfill the mother’s request.

They found two phone calls made to a home in Salida, California, to a man named Garry Donald Webb. The calls had been made two days before the mother died…

Authorities placed the home under surveillance. They also kept a watch on a trucking business where he was said to work.

On Friday, agents saw Asher leaving the home and confronted him.

“After some initial discussion Asher admitted his true identity,” the FBI said.

Which illustrates more than anything else is that “unidentified sources” – someone who expected payment and got it – is still one of the most important constituents of modern police work.

The happy family

Former Senator John Ensign appears to have violated federal law in a sex-and-lobbying scandal that drove the once-rising Republican star from office…

The Senate ethics committee said it found “substantial credible evidence” against Ensign, and referred the case to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. In a report capping its 22-month probe, the panel listed possible charges, including “potential obstruction of justice” for what it described as Ensign deleting “relevant documents and files…”

Ensign, 53, first elected to the Senate from Nevada in 2000, resigned last week after earlier announcing he would not seek re-election.

Ensign admitted in 2009 to having had an affair with Cynthia Hampton, who worked for his campaign, and whose husband, Douglas, was a legislative aide to the senator.

The Senate ethics investigation focused, in part, on $96,000 that Ensign’s parents gave to the Hamptons, which Ensign’s attorney has characterized as a gift.

Douglas Hampton was indicted in March on suspicion of trying to lobby and seek assistance from his former boss on behalf of his new employers, an airline and an energy company…

Ensign had been a member of Senate Republican leadership and was seen as a potential future presidential contender.

He’s certainly as qualified for the presidency as just about anyone the Republican Party has put forward in the last century.

I’ll say it again. Too bad Christians get credit for inventing hypocrisy – Congress is so much better at it.

UPDATE: Watch the Rachel Maddow Show, tonight on MSNBC, Friday, 13th May – she is on the story, on the facts of this sleazy joint enterprise of Conservative Congressional Christians working to cover-up the fall of this creep.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

With Republicans hoping to recapture a number of statehouses in November, the media conglomerate headed by Rupert Murdoch is inserting itself into the races in bold fashion with a $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association.

The contribution from Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation, which owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and other news outlets, is one of the biggest ever given by a media organization, campaign finance experts said.

Democrats seized on the donation as evidence of the News Corporation’s conservative leanings, with Media Matters for America, a liberal group that has tangled often with the company, calling it “an appendage of the Republican Party…”

Jack Horner, NewsCorp spokesman [can you believe that's his name?], said that the company’s corporate side made the donation with no involvement by its news operation and that the gift would not have any impact on newsgathering operations. “There is a strict wall between business and editorial,” he added.

Officials at the governors’ association did not respond to requests for comment. The contribution, first reported by Bloomberg News, was made in June and is included in the Republican group’s most recent second-quarter filings…

The News Corporation and its political action committee, News America Holdings, have given donations over the years to both Democratic and Republican candidates and causes, but never in the amount approaching the June donation, records show…

Of course, the sleaziest end of the pool of American corporate scumbags always distributes largesse to a range of political lackeys. That’s how they’re paid to practice their lackeydom.

The donation generated significant buzz in Washington on Tuesday. Much of it focused on Fox News, whose stable of highly rated, conservative hosts have made it the frequent target of liberals [and anyone else who stands up for a Free Press], who accuse the network of blurring the line between news and opinion.