As Ben Franklin so aptly stated at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation at the Constitutional Convention:
“A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”
If you like Congressional gridlock and insider politics, then you’ll love this decision. If you think the lobbyists for the banks, insurance firms, and oil companies need more power, you’ll love this decision. But if you value fairness, democracy and the free speech of ordinary citizens, this is a disaster. It is an immoral decision that puts the Roberts’ Court on the side of Wall Street and the big money lobbyists against the interests of Main Street America.
– Nick Nyhart of Public Citizen
Hooray!!
[UPDATE]: Here’s Lawrence Lessig’s pre-flight take on the decision:
Perry’s travels — a meeting with film executives in Los Angeles, a gathering with GOP leaders in Aspen, Colo., a visit to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan — were outlined in interviews with his aides and in documents examined by The Associated Press. But a detailed financial accounting of each trip is not easily accessible, and is in some cases off limits.
Out-of-state travel is part of Perry’s job, his aides say.
“As governor and CEO of a state that’s the 12th-largest economy in the world, it’s important that he continue to promote Texas as the best place for business, both nationally and internationally,” said Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle.
Perry visited Iraq on U.S. Defense Department trips in January and July. In August, he went to Israel on a trip organized and partially paid for by one of his campaign donors and by the investment firm Doheny Global Group. He also visited California, New York, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, Colorado, Florida and Mississippi in 2009.
[...]
But an open government advocate questions whether there’s enough information available about the Texas governor’s trips.
“Are we getting the full story?” said Keith Elkins, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. “Any time you have the head of government, especially the governor … taxpayers and voters are interested in that.”
Texans should be able to easily find out what business the governor is doing and whom he’s doing it with, Elkins said. He cited a recent KTVT television report he said revealed new details about Perry’s Israel trip: documents showing the Perry family members and friends who went along as well as the state officials who oversee energy policy who went, plus the information that Perry’s security officers stayed at the swanky King David Hotel at a cost of $17,000 to the state.
Perry’s travel is typically paid by a patchwork of sources including his campaign, private donors and the economic development non-profit group TexasOne. Much of his 2009 travel cannot yet be viewed on state disclosure reports.
State-paid Department of Public Safety officers travel with Perry to provide security, but specifics of those costs are closed to the public, thanks to a bill passed in this year’s legislative session. Only summaries of the security costs can be obtained. A summary by DPS showed that security for the Israel trip cost $58,775 for the officers’ air fare, lodging, meals and other expenses and $15,609 for overtime pay.
The Doheny group organized and paid for Perry’s stay in Israel and for First Lady Anita Perry’s commercial flight to the country, the governor’s office said.
Perry flew to Israel aboard the private plane of Texas campaign donor Doug Pitcock, head of Williams Brothers Construction, a round-trip charter flight donated to TexasOne and valued at $180,000, Castle said. Anita Perry joined him for the trip home.
As Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus writes to the members of the Texas House in the cover letter to the interim charges he laid out yesterday, “..these charges and the recommendations you develop will form the basis for major legislation we will consider next session”. The letter also made clear that some things were left out, “In the coming weeks, I intend to propose several additional items of statewide importance for the House to study.”
The interim charges include everything from efforts to manage feral hogs (which is a big problem), to whether blogs should be considered “political advertising”. All of the items from the Appropriations, Energy Resources, Environmental Regulations, Higher Education, Human Services, Natural Resources, Public Education and Redistricting Committees should be read in full.
But here are a few that caught my eye (EOW comments are in italics):
House Committee on Corrections
1. Examine implementation of the diversion pilot programs, juvenile case management system, and other policy and funding initiatives to determine whether the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission and the Texas Youth Commission have adhered to legislative directive in implementing these programs, and the impact of these programs on commitments at the Texas Youth Commission.
[...]
House Committee on Elections
3. Examine the prevalence of fraud in Texas elections. Study new laws in other states regarding voter identification and recommend statutory changes necessary to ensure that only eligible voters can vote in Texas elections. (This is Voter ID. Read BOR’s take on this issue. Suffice it to say that Straus is unable to tell the right wing to give up on this.)
4. Review the Texas campaign finance law in judicial races in light of the recent United States Supreme Court decision Caperton v. Massey. (This case involves preventing a judge from hearing a case involving a person who has made campaign contributions to benefit the judge.)
[...]
House Committee on General Investigating and Ethics
2. Review the definition of “political advertising” and determine whether the definition should be expanded to include content contained in blogs and other types of Internet communications. (These links give some background on what this may be about, FTC’s New Rules for Bloggers: A Quick Guide, FTC idiocy, and The FTC & Bloggers: New Rules.)
[...]
House Committee on Land and Resource Management
2. Examine unresolved issues relating to eminent domain legislation introduced during the 81st Legislative Session. Monitor any pending litigation. (Still on the agenda even after passage of the Constitutional Amendment earlier this month.)
[...]
House Committee on Transportation
1. Monitor the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to ensure the agency is implementing recommended legislative, sunset, and Grant Thornton management audit changes.
2. Review the organization and operation of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs). Consider the relationship between MPOs and TxDOT regarding transportation planning and programming.
3. Study the practices and procedures used in the development of toll roads and make recommendations as necessary. (Toll roads are still on the agenda. Nothing here on the gas tax or transportation financing. Hopefully we will hear about that in the coming weeks.)
One interesting item is that there is nothing in the charges about gambling, gaming, slot machines, horse racing, and the like. The charges should be at least scanned for items of particular interest. Because as Straus wrote, they are the basis for the next legislative session in 2011. No matter who is Speaker, or who wins the statewide races next year, the effort and research put in on these issues, and those in the Senate when Lt. Gov. Dewhurst releases the charges for the Senate, are the frame which the 82nd Legislature will begin it’s work.
Roll Call staff reporter Paul Singer applied pressure on Rep. John Carter to clarify how he could have made no profit on a 2007 stock transaction. In the space of a single day, that pressure has resulted in Carter admitting he has income disclosure problems. On Wednesday, Singer wrote:
Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) appears to have pulled off an unusual feat: selling more than $100,000 worth of Exxon Mobil Corp. stock — when it was selling at historic highs — without making a profit, according to financial disclosure forms filed by the Congressman.
Carter’s office says that the disclosure reports are accurate and that no capital gain is reported because no capital gain was made. Carter spokesman John Stone said that with stocks held over long periods of time, the wide fluctuations in the value of oil shares make it entirely plausible that Carter could have had a large sale without making a profit.
“You don’t have a story,” Stone said. “We checked with the accountant and [the forms] are correct.” [Emphasis added].
Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) acknowledged Wednesday that he failed to disclose nearly $300,000 in profits from the sale of Exxon stock in 2006 and 2007, and his office said he will file amended financial disclosure forms with the House ethics committee as soon as possible.
Singer reports that this is the second time that Carter has filed amended financial disclosure forms with the House ethics committee after Roll Call raised questions about the accuracy and completeness of his reports. One year ago, Roll Call contacted Carter’s office to ask questions about two transactions involving shares of ExxonMobil stock (XOM) Carter received from his father. Roll Call is reporting that a 2006 sale netted Carter $199,000, and the following year a second stock sale produced $97,000 in profit.
The House ethics committee requires members to disclose their personal finances to make it more difficult for Representatives to conceal potential conflicts of interest.
Among the numerous shortcomings of the House ethics enforcement mechanism is that it relies on members to file complaints against one another. Members have at times avoided raising concerns about other members’ reporting because often a member who complains about another’s disclosures finds that errors in his own numbers are subsequently brought to light.
Carter has been the point man for Republicans seeking to strip Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) of his gavel because of an ongoing ethics committee investigation of his finances. Rangel has admitted to making myriad errors on his financial disclosure forms over the years, failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of assets and income.
By our reckoning, Carter is oh-for-two on accurately reporting his Exxon stock transactions. One might not describe that as “making myriad errors”, but the size of the two mistakes, $300,000, is roughly equivalent to all the gains Carter is accusing Rangel of omitting. That doesn’t excuse Rangel or vindicate him. However, it does show that Carter is afflicted with a degree of blindness to his own transgressions. Otherwise, he might have taken a less visible role in trying to bring Rangel down.
This lack of self-awareness explains a lot about John Carter. It leads to a superiority complex that permeates his staff. Look at the initial belligerent rebuttals offered by Carter spokesman John Stone Wednesday. There was no apology offered Thursday for the misinformation delivered the day before. Carter, through Stone, did at least thank Roll Call for their efforts.
After investigating the matter more thoroughly Wednesday, spokesman John Stone said in an e-mail, “Congressman Carter thanks Roll Call for bringing this to his attention, and for reporting that he did accurately report the sales of his stock, just not the amount of the sales….
One can only hope Carter will be humbled by this, but it is not likely to come to pass. Carter’s attacks on Rangel aim to paint all Democrats as corrupt. Ultimately, the Republicans hope to use Rangel to their political advantage in 2010. It would be highly surprising if this incident altered those plans at all.
One can almost hear the justifications being discussed in the back rooms on Capitol Hill right now. Republicans will claim that Carter’s were errors of omission, and that they involve personal financial dealings that are entirely separate from his official duties as a United States Representative. They’ll argue that Rangel is a crook, peddling influence.
However, when one looks at Carter’s solid pro-API voting record, his ethical lapses hint at deception. In 2006, when Carter was pocketing $199,000 in profit, he was voting against rolling back $5 billion in oil industry tax breaks. In 2007, when he was depositing another $97,000 in gains, he was in the minority voting against legislation to address climate change (HR3221 and HR6).
Carter and the Republicans will keep trying to shift the focus on Rangel’s ethical challenges, but there’s a clear record of Carter voting his own personal financial best interest, then mistakenly failing to properly disclose the gains. Such behavior is reprehensible and reflects poorly on the office he holds. The question is when voters in Texas’ 31st Congressional District will correct the repeated mistake of electing this hypocrite to represent us.
[Read EOW's previous reporting on Carter's Exxon-Mobil stock HERE and HERE].
Rep. John Carter (R-Round Rock) has made Rangel’s ethics problems his personal crusade to over the last year or so. It’s as if Carter is trying to get revenge on Rangel, for Tom DeLay’s unethical behavior that forced him from office.
All of that being said, Congressman Rangel needs to step down from his role as Chairman on the House Ways and Means Committee until his case is resolved.
As chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, Rangle is one of the most powerful people in government. Yet despite serious allegations of corruption, he continues to chair his committee. As Gail Collins writes:
Republicans are, however, completely right about Rangel. Whenever a powerful committee chairman has so many problems that you need a timeline to keep all the allegations straight, he is a liability. When those problems revolve around things like failure to pay taxes, it is not a good plan to have him be in charge of tax policy.
Memo to House Democrats — the “culture of corruption” crosses partisan lines. Last time the Democrats looked the other way — with William Jefferson — Republicans picked up a seat in one of the most Democratic districts in the nation. Next time, they may pick up the entire U.S. House of Representatives.
Rangel should step down from his chairmanship until the ethics committee completes its work and issues a final report.
As we believed with DeLay and his problems, the same is true for Rangel. Until his ethics issues are resolved he should step down from his leadership position.
Texans for Public Justice has a report our today on that asks the question Who bankrolled Texas’ High-court Justices In 2008? It’s called Interested Parties[.pdf].
Three incumbent Texas Supreme Court justices were re-elected in 2008 with the help of $2.8 million in campaign money — half of it from lawyers, law firms and lobbyists.
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Three big defense firms gave totals of more than $50,000 apiece to the three justices: Haynes & Boone, Vinson & Elkins and Fulbright & Jaworski. The PAC of the HillCo Partners lobby firm also gave a total of $65,000 to the three justices. One of HillCo’s clients, Houston homebuilder Bob Perry, gave this PAC $290,000. Perry accounted for 32 percent of all the money that HillCo PAC raised in the 2008 election cycle. Four tables in the next section list the top contributors to the three justices, collectively and individually.
The Energy & Natural Resources category was the justices’ No. 2 funding source, accounting for 12 percent of the money that they raised. The top contributors from this sector were Dallas oil man Louis Beecherl, the Bass family’s Good Government Fund and Exxon Mobil General Counsel Charles Matthews.
The Ideological & Single-Issue Category came next, accounting for seven percent of the total money raised by the three justices. Leading this group were two business tort group, Texans for Lawsuit Reform and the Texas Civil Justice League, joined by the Republican Party of Texas.
The PAC of Fort Worth-based investment fund manager Geoffrey Raynor led the Finance sector, which accounted for 5 percent of the money raised by the three justices.
The only way to fix this is with real campaign finance reform, with limits on giving, and transparency. For more see EOW’s reporting form earlier in the year on the speech Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson gave to the legislature, What is the state of the Texas judiciary?
Elise Hu posted a video today of Kay Bailey Hutchison talking about campaign reform in “some” very general terms, vague even. She things we need “some”. She also thinks Texas needs a cap on how much individual donors should be able to give. When asked what the cap should be she said she didn’t know yet. She hasn’t made the final decision but there should be “some amount beyond which we don’t go”. Judging from this story, Hutchison says political contributions too large, maybe $100,000?
U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has received huge contributions in her race for governor, is now calling for limits on the size of campaign donations in Texas, where enormous cash gifts are commonplace.
Hutchison herself has gotten at least six donations of $100,000 and 21 contributions of $50,000, records show. All told, donors giving her at least $10,000 or more contributed over $3.3 million to her campaign in 2009.
The senator, who is challenging Gov. Rick Perry in the Republican primary, called for limiting the size of donations during a brief campaign stop in Waco Monday, according to video gathered by the online news site Texas Tribune. She didn’t specify what the restrictions should be. Perry opposes donation limits.
The final vote was 8-15 with 5 Democrats–Sens. Kent Conrad (D-ND), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Tom Carper (D-DE), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT)–voting with all Republicans to kill the proposal.
It needs to be made clear that the reason this, and another public optoin amendment failed, was not because of the GOP members of the committee, but because of the Democrats. It can’t be for fiscal reasons, since it’s likely all those who voted against are worried about the cost of health insurance reform. And a public option will bring down the cost of any bill, CBO Estimates Show Public Plan With Higher Savings Rate.
Unfortunately it leaves the specter of health insurance lobby donations to those Senators as a motivating factor. David Sirota does a great job of showing why that is even a consideration, The Mathematics of Corruption.
In case you were looking for a good, succinct mathematical example of what corruption really looks like, consider this:
I’d say that just about sums it up: On issues of economic and corporate power, you can basically take the majority percentage of public support for a given measure and expect to get that many Senate votes against it.
Perhaps no other issue Congress deals with touches every American as intimately as health care. Yet a new poll by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health finds that, so far, the public feels profoundly shut out of the current health overhaul debate.
“Most people don’t feel that they personally have a voice in this debate,” said Mollyann Brodie, director of public opinion and survey research for the Kaiser Family Foundation. “In fact, 71 percent told us that Congress was paying too little attention to what people like them were saying.”
Nancy Turtenwald is one of those people. The tourist from Milwaukee was walking around the sparkling new visitor center at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday. She was quick to agree with poll findings that the lawmakers debating the massive health overhaul bill just a few blocks away weren’t much interested in problems like hers.
“I don’t think they are people like us, you know?” she said. She thinks Congressional lawmakers know very little about the daily lives of the average American — and the health care costs they face. “How often do they go and buy gas and bread and stuff to see what it’s really like for the people like us?”
So who does Turtenwald think Congress is listening to? “Lobbyists, and people who will get them reelected.”
It’s pretty hard to disagree with that when you watch an ad like this and see how much money Democratic chair of the Senate Finance Committee Max Baucus takes from the health care lobby.
Chuck Schumer and Max Baucus just said that there were not 60 votes for the public option in the Senate.
The Public Option doesn’t need 60 votes. It needs 51. That is, unless the GOP filibusters it. What Baucus and Schumer are saying — explicitly — is that there are Democrats who would support a GOP filibuster to keep the public option from having an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate. They are saying that there are Democrats who would vote with the GOP to block a vote on something that the President says he supports — a public option.
That is a very serious charge. It’s tantamount to party treason. Schumer and Baucus need to say who these members are immediately.
It’s been EOW’s contention for some time, that this is exactly why some Senators don’t want a public option to come to the floor for a vote. Because if it does they will vote for cloture, and it will become law. That’s why killing it in committee is so important to them.
Texans for Public Justice released “a comprehensive study of the financing of Texas’ 2008 legislative elections” called Money in PoliTex. From the press release:
The online Money in PoliTex report analyzes $95 million raised by 312 major-party legislative candidates. It provides district-by-district summaries of campaign funds and a complete contributor list for each of Texas’ 181 sitting lawmakers. Political fundraising looks recession proof. Texas legislative candidates raised 25 percent more money for the 2008 election ($95 million) than the preceding one in 2006 ($76 million).
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Scintillating Money in PoliTex findings include:
The House’s 281 major-party candidates raised $70.3 million, with winners collecting $50.6 million (72 percent of the total).
Thirty-one major-party candidates for 16 Senate slots raised $24.7 million, with winners accounting for $16.7 million (68 percent).
The No. 1 interest group, Lawyers and Lobbyists, spent almost $15 million (16 percent).
Texas’ top 126 individuals collectively spent $45 million on the 2006 elections.
Legislative candidates owed 22 percent of their war chests ($21 million) to 702 whopper checks that were each worth $10,000 or more. Small donations of up to $100 accounted for just 3 percent of the money.
Legislative candidates raised 82 percent of their money from mailing addresses outside the districts that they sought to represent ($78 million).
Seven Senate incumbents and 61 House incumbents were reelected without any major-party opposition in the primary or the general election.
The full report is here with complete donor lists for every member of the Senate and House from the 81st session.
We have a health care emergency in America. There’s a very simple fact to keep in mind about fixing the health emergency and the Republican party. They know that if President Obama and the Democrats are able to pass a health care plan that puts an end to our current health care emergency, and brings about doctor-patient care, (which is what a public option would bring about), then they will be in the minority again for a long, long time. That is the main reason the GOP is against this, because helping the American people, in this instance, will hurt their party.
Of course another reason they fight against fixing the health care emergency is because they receive large amounts of money from insurance corporations. As do some Democrats as well. (On that front, in the Senate the chart below is especially helpful. This chart doesn’t just show who brings in the most corporate cash, but how dependent each senator is on that cash compared to the cash they get as donations from their own constituents).
It is worth noting, by the way, that the six senators on Baucus’s mini-committee are especially egregious in this regard. They rank #1 (Mike Enzi), #6 (Chuck Grassley), #11 (Kent Conrad), #13 (Baucus), #14 (Jeff Bingaman) and #20 (Olympia Snowe) in the share of contributions received from corporate PACs (an average of 47.5 percent of their funds overall).
It’s more than worth noting. Maybe they should have to wear the advertisements on their clothes so we would know who owns them?
The part that’s largely been left out of this debate, that hopefully is about to get much more attention is the enourmous amount of profits insurance corporations make off premium paying Americans, or George Lakoff calls private taxation.
Private Taxation. Insurance companies have the power to tax and they tax the public mightily. When 20 percent to 30 percent of payments do not go to health care, but to denying care and profiting from it, that constitutes a tax on the 96 percent of voters that have health care. But the tax does not go to benefit those who are taxed; it benefits managers and investors. And the people taxed have no representation. Insurance company health care is a huge example of taxation without representation. And you can’t vote out the people who have taxed you. The American Plan offers an alternative to private taxation.
It’s taxation without representation. While we can see the insurance corporations are well represented in the Senate, and especially on the Senate Finance Committee, who’s representing the people? Congressman Henry Waxman will soon be shining a light on the insurance corporations profit-taking as they deny coverage, Waxman Opening another Front in Healthcare Debate?
Democrats on a House committee are seeking detailed financial records from dozens of large insurance companies, officials disclosed Tuesday, part of an investigation into ”executive compensation and other business practices” in an industry opposed to President Barack Obama’s plan to overhaul health care.
The request included records relating to compensation of highly paid employees, documents relating to companies’ premium income and claims payments, and information on expenses stemming from any event held outside company facilities in the past 2 1/2 years.
It’s long past time that insurance paying Americans, many who get denied care by insurance corporations bureaucrats, know what they’re money is going to instead to the care they were promised when the insurance corporation denies, or rations, they’re care.
While this debate lasts all Americans must know that we have a health care emergency in this country. One party has a vested interest in keeping that emergency going. Many politicians, especially small state U.S. Senators, also have a vested interest in keeping that emergency going. It’s up to the rest of us to end the emergency.
