The Favor Factory

Mon 07/31/06 at 10:26 am

The Favor Factory
How a top House Appropriations aide didn’t have to wait to lobby

AS ONE OF THE top appropriations staffers to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), Letitia White made a nice salary. Ms. White, who oversaw the dispensation of earmarks for Mr. Lewis, earned almost $118,000 in 2000 and nearly $125,000 in 2001. But the following year, Ms. White took a hefty pay cut: Her pay dropped to slightly over $113,000. An effort to save the taxpayers money?

Don’t bet on it. The rules — such as they are — that require congressional staff members to wait a single year before lobbying their former committees apply only to those who earn a certain amount — in 2002, $112,500. Even though Ms. White was a bit over that limit, her pay cut, on an annualized basis, put her $80 below the cap — and cleared the way for her to join a lobbying firm and rake in $670,000 in lobbying fees during her first year in business. Why endure a cooling-off period when your former boss makes you a hot commodity?

Ms. White’s lucrative trip through the revolving door was detailed by Paul Kane last week in Roll Call. The story reported how in March 2002, Ms. White and her husband went on a nearly $9,000, nine-day trip to Italy paid for by defense contractor General Atomics. The company received $6.1 million in two separate earmarks in the defense appropriations bill passed that year. Ms. White left the appropriations staff on Jan. 8, 2003; she joined the lobbying firm renamed Copeland, Lowery, Jacquez, Denton & White on Jan. 9. Name partner Bill Lowery is a former Republican congressman from California who is one of Mr. Lewis’s closest friends. And guess who Ms. White signed up as a client on her first day? General Atomics.

The company was just one of 16 clients — mostly defense contractors whose interests were overseen by Mr. Lewis as chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee — whom Ms. White secured that year. Those clients received about $22 million in earmarks in the next round of spending bills. That kind of success paid off: By 2004, Ms. White was reporting lobbying fees of almost $1.5 million.

In a statement to Roll Call, Mr. Lewis, who now chairs the appropriations panel, said, ” I have always made every effort to carefully follow the rules of the House of Representatives in all aspects of my Congressional work. I am confident that any review will confirm this.” A spokesman for Ms. White said she consulted the House ethics committee about how to handle job negotiations and “recused herself from any official activity that involved a prospective employer or client.”

This is just a piece of the increasingly disturbing picture emerging about the goings-on at the appropriations panel, which lobbyist Jack Abramoff memorably dubbed the “favor factory.” We’ll examine other aspects of the story in another editorial. Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed a number of Copeland, Lowery clients and examined the financial disclosure forms of Mr. Lewis and his staff. Whether crimes were committed remains to be determined, but this much is clear: There’s quite an odor emanating from the favor factory.


Finally

Sun 07/30/06 at 2:35 pm

The day finally comes
when you have to lift your dog
down from the truck.
It doesn’t matter that for years
he has cleared that distance
in a bound.
Or that he hates for you
to pick him up.
He stands at the tailgate
eyeing the distance;
does he think his leg
may give in again?
He waits a long time
as if just surveying the scene —
not asking for help,
just enduring it.
With a dignity
That makes you cry. mjh

7/17/06


Lucky Dog

Sun 07/30/06 at 2:33 pm

Lucky Dog


Utilities giving big bucks to global warming skeptic

Sat 07/29/06 at 5:07 pm

Utilities giving big bucks to global warming skeptic
By SETH BORENSTEIN | Associated Press
July 27, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) - Coal-burning utilities are passing the hat for one of the few remaining scientists skeptical of the global warming harm caused by industries that burn fossil fuels.

Pat Michaels _ Virginia’s state climatologist, a University of Virginia professor and senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute _ told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists’ global warming research. So last week, a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign to help him out, raising at least $150,000 in donations and pledges.

The Intermountain Rural Electric Association of Sedalia, Colo., gave Michaels $100,000 and started the fund-raising drive, said Stanley Lewandowski, IREA’s general manager. He said one company planned to give $50,000 and a third plans to give Michaels money next year.

“We cannot allow the discussion to be monopolized by the alarmists,” Lewandowski wrote in a July 17 letter to 50 other utilities. He also called on other electric cooperatives to launch a counterattack on “alarmist” scientists and specifically Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” …

Michaels is best known for his newspaper opinion columns and books, including “Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media.” However, he also writes research articles published in scientific journals.
- - -

Progress Report Archives 2006 - American Progress Action Fund

WHO IS PAT MICHAELS?: Pat Michaels is a climate scientist based at the University of Virgina. John P. Holdren, a Harvard scientist, told the Senate Republican Policy Committee that Michaels has “published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science.” In 2003, Michaels famously “proved” that global warming was mostly hype by mixing up degrees and radians. In 2004, Michaels told Business Week, “We know how much the planet is going to warm. It is a small amount, and we can’t do anything about it.” This year, Michaels completely misrepresented a study by University of Missouri Professor Curt Davis to falsely claim that Antarctica has been gaining ice in recent years. Michaels’ views about climate change are at odds with the conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a rigorously peer-reviewed report that involved thousands of scientists from over 100 countries, which concluded, “There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities” and that, absent aggressive mitigation efforts, future warming will be significant and dangerous.
- - -

On the Roof of Peru, Omens in the Ice By Doug Struck, Washington Post Foreign Service

[Researchers] have confirmed a rapid recession of glaciers worldwide. Snows on Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro, extolled by Ernest Hemingway as “wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white,” will be gone within 14 years, Thompson estimates. Glaciers in the Alps, the Himalayas and throughout the Andes are also shrinking, he and other researchers have found.

The dramatic rise in carbon dioxide that has accompanied the industrial age has brought a spike in global temperatures. Scientists have found that the jump in temperatures is even greater in the upper atmosphere, where the glaciers reign on silent mountain peaks.

Glaciers store an estimated 70 percent of the world’s fresh water. Water that falls as snow moves through the slowly churning ice and may emerge from the glacier’s edge thousands of years later as meltwater. Humans have long depended on the gradual and faithful runoff.

The melting of glaciers in the Himalayas, which feed seven great Asian rivers, will bring “massive eco and environmental problems for people in western China, Nepal and northern India,” a World Wildlife Fund report concluded last year.

“The repercussions of this are very scary,” agreed Tim Barnett, a climate scientist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. “When the glaciers are gone, they are gone. What does a place like Lima do? Or, in northwest China, there are 300 million people relying on snowmelt for water supply. There’s no way to replace it until the next ice age.”


O’Niell’s Is Back — For Some

Sat 07/29/06 at 10:33 am

O’Niell’s Pub recently opened on Central and Washington. Glowing reviews appeared in the Alibi and iQ; neither mentioned an important fact…

Like many others, we’ve been looking forward to the return of O’Niell’s for some time. O’Niell’s had the best burger in town. Unfortunately, we will not be able to enjoy the new location because it allows smoking everywhere at all hours, something your review failed to mention. We used to eat at O’Niell’s Uptown every week, until they opened it to smoking all the time, at which point it became as unbearable as the Central location.

The staff suggests we sit on the patio, but that doesn’t help if someone at the next table is smoking.

It’s too bad O’Niell won’t extend his legendary hospitality to those of us who can’t enjoy a burger and beer with smoke. A smoke-free section or hours would open his place to more of the community. mjh


UNMH Shuttle begins Rail Runner Express service

Thu 07/27/06 at 1:51 pm

UNM Today: UNMH Shuttle begins Rail Runner Express service
University Hospitals Parking & Transportation Department has announced UNMH shuttle service between the Alvarado station in downtown Albuquerque and the UNM main hospital to accommodate Rail Runner Express riders. The service begins today, July 14. …

To meet the needs of most morning-arriving hospitals employees and visitors, the shuttle will be available at the Amtrak stop at the Alvarado station at:

• 6:25 a.m. to pick up passengers from the 6:30 a.m. train (no initial shuttle stop at UNMH)

• 7:30 a.m. to pick up passengers from the 7:35 a.m. train (leaves UNMH shuttle stop at 7:15 a.m.)

• 8:40 a.m. to pick up passengers from the 8:45 a.m. train (leaves UNMH shuttle stop at 8:25 a.m.)

In normal conditions, you may expect the shuttle to arrive at the main hospital
within approximately 10-15 minutes.

To meet the needs of most afternoon-departing hospitals employees and isitors, the shuttle will leave UNM Hospitals at:

• 3:45 p.m. to drop off passengers for the 4:10 p.m. train

• 5:05 p.m. to drop off passengers for the 5:25 p.m. train

• 6:10 p.m. to drop off passengers for the 6:30 p.m. train


President Bush has issued his first veto ever

Thu 07/27/06 at 1:35 pm

Letter: Veto aims to please Bush’s few remaining supporters - Opinion
Editor,

President Bush has issued his first veto ever.

Why wasn’t this plastered over every newspaper in the country? For the first time in seven horrible years of incompetent leadership, President Bush actually vetoed a bill. This time, instead of cynically circumventing the Constitution by attaching a ’signing statement’ to a bill he doesn’t agree with, at least he did the proper, legal thing and vetoed it.

Of course, this historic veto is against stem cell research. The message seems to be that science, which actually helps humanity, will not be tolerated. Death and destruction are far more profitable than saving lives. Bush has already spent most of his presidency standing in the way of our constitutional protections. Now, he is standing in the way of scientific advancement.

This man clearly has a great legacy to look forward to.

The question is, why the veto this time? The answer: religious idiocy. This guy is so beholden to the religious right, he has no choice. If it’s not the Zionists, it’s the fundamentalist Christians. Frankly, they are the only supporters he has left. Anyone with a functioning brain stopped listening to him years ago.

But what’s even more stupid is new White House spokesman Tony Snow’s ridiculous reply to a reporter’s question as to why Bush chose this moment for his historic veto: “The simple answer is he thinks murder’s wrong.”What? Was he serious? It’s always the same story - it’s perfectly OK to murder innocent civilians by the thousands in illegal acts of aggression, but it’s not OK to kill tissue that is not even alive.

Jason Darensburg

UNM student


We’re Back!

Thu 07/27/06 at 8:28 am

Merri and I got back yesterday afternoon from a 12-day camping trip that took us through parts of New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. We were above 10,000 feet much of the time. We think that big storm may have followed us home.

Over the next week, I’ll be posting some thoughts from the trail and a few of the 1,000 photos we took.

As always, we are first struck by how much space our house has, after spending almost two weeks in the camper with 2ft x 4ft floorspace. Of course, on the road, all of the outdoors is our other room.

Then there is the free-flowing water. Our first night back, we used more water than we did most of our trip.

peace, mjh


Jeffrey S. Shockey, the Two Million Dollar Man

Wed 07/19/06 at 6:12 am

$2 Million Payment to Former Lobbyist Raises Eyebrows By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum

You’ve probably never heard of Jeffrey S. Shockey. So, for simplicity’s sake, think of him as the Two Million Dollar Man.

The 40-year-old congressional staffer last year collected nearly $2 million in severance payments from his former employer, a lobbying firm that specializes in winning benefits from the committee he now serves. Many longtime Washingtonians are shaking their heads in disbelief over the payout’s enormous size, its ad hoc method of calculation and the fact that Shockey received it while working as a senior congressional aide. …

Federal employees are prohibited from supplementing their incomes with money from private sources, especially from lobbyists who have business before the government. Shockey says his payment was justified and within the rules. But experienced lobbyists around town question both its economics and its propriety.

The situation is an example of a common occurrence — the spinning of the “revolving door” between the public and private sectors. Shockey is deputy chief of staff of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. Before that he was a partner for five years in a lobbying firm that made its living extracting goodies from the same committee. And before that he worked for Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), who was then a member of the committee and is now its chairman. …

Lobby shops often give parting gifts to colleagues who go into public service as a way to maintain strong relations. But the amount tends to be nominal and strictly tied to past performance to avoid even the appearance of paying a federal official in exchange for favorable treatment — an exchange that would be illegal.

Why, then, would Shockey’s former firm pay him so much? The reason, several seasoned lobbyists speculated, must have been the firm’s desire to keep its communications with Shockey and the appropriations panel absolutely seamless. “There would be no need to pay out that amount of money unless you needed to maintain a superlative relationship with that person after he leaves,” one veteran lobbyist said. …

Congressional appropriators like Lewis were once hesitant to explicitly fund pet projects for fear of being accused of playing favorites and of micromanaging the government. But that was a long time ago. The Republican Revolution of 1994 ushered in a new congressional majority that professed to be distrustful of government but also worked overtime to maintain its control by directing federal aid into popular programs that would help reelect GOP members. …

Publicity over the investigation has broken up the partnership. The firm’s two Democratic partners, James M. Copeland and Lynnette R. Jacquez, told their Republican colleagues last month that they were leaving. The reason, they said, was that ethical and legal questions threatened to destroy their professional reputations and ruin their commercial prospects.


U.S. Cybersecurity Chief May Have a Conflict of Interest

Tue 07/18/06 at 6:11 am

U.S. Cybersecurity Chief May Have a Conflict of Interest Associated Press

The Bush administration’s cybersecurity chief is a contract employee who earns $577,000 under an agreement with a private university that does extensive business with the federal office he manages.

Donald “Andy” Purdy Jr. has been acting director of the Homeland Security Department’s National Cyber Security Division for 21 months. His two-year contract with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has drawn attention from members of Congress. By comparison, the Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, is paid $175,000 annually.

Purdy is on loan from the school to the government, which is paying nearly all his salary. Meanwhile, Purdy’s cybersecurity division has paid Carnegie Mellon $19 million in contracts this year, almost one-fifth of the unit’s total budget.

Purdy said he has not been involved in discussions of his office’s business deals with the school. “I’m very sensitive to those kinds of requirements,” Purdy said. “It’s not like Carnegie Mellon has ever said to me, ‘We want to do this or that. We want more money.’ ” …

Purdy, a longtime lawyer, has held a number of state and federal legal and managerial jobs. He has no formal technical background in computer security.


The Decider Speaks

Mon 07/17/06 at 6:10 am

The Ties That Bind the Tongue

President Bush , at his news conference yesterday with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi , noted, as he almost always does, “that it was not always a given that the United States and America [sic] would have a close relationship. …”


Guadalupe Outlier Trip

Sun 07/16/06 at 12:16 pm

Guadalupe Outlier Trip (mjh)

My “quest” for the Guadalupe Outlier began years ago, when I first heard of an outlier along the Rio Puerco near Cabezon.


War of Words on Bank Story

Sun 07/16/06 at 6:08 am

War of Words on Bank Story By Howard Kurtz, Washington Post Staff Writer

For the Wall Street Journal editorial page, there may be no more juicy target than the liberal press appearing to undermine the Bush administration’s war on terror. …

The problem: The Journal itself had published a front-page story about the classified program on June 23, the same day as the Times.

The Journal’s conservative editorial page weighed in yesterday by arguing that what the two newspapers had done was very different….

The editorial makes clear that the administration handed the Journal the same information that President Bush and Vice President Cheney, among others, have been denouncing the Times for publishing. …

In a Fox News poll released yesterday, 60 percent of those surveyed said the Times did more to help terrorist groups by publishing the information, while 27 percent said the story did more to help the public. Forty-three percent called what the newspapers did treason.

House GOP Chastises Media By Charles Babington, Washington Post Staff Writer

The GOP-crafted resolution, approved 227 to 183, also condemned the unidentified sources who leaked information of the program. It said the House “expects the cooperation of all news media organizations” in protecting the government’s capability “to identify, disrupt, and capture terrorists.” …

Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) continued to gather signatures on a letter urging House leaders to revoke the credentials that allow New York Times reporters to move about the Capitol. …

Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.) chastised the Republicans. “You know better than to seek to amend the First Amendment,” which protects a free press, he said. He noted that Republicans have vilified the Times, which has a liberal editorial page, but barely mentioned the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page is conservative.


More Rock, Less Talk

Sat 07/15/06 at 6:04 am

Stars & Stripes
Future military radio menu could be more pop, less talk
Hip-hop-heavy content recommended for stations around the world

By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, June 3, 2006

WASHINGTON - Military radio stations around the globe soon could be playing more hip-hop, more pop hits, less country music and no sports or political chat shows.

The biggest change proposed in the review would be centralizing most programming decisions in the United States, and creating a pair of music stations for broadcast worldwide.

The first station would feature hip-hop, rap, pop music and other similar formats. A second station would have classic rock, alternative bands and a mix of other Top 40 songs.

Popular talk radio programs such as Rush Limbaugh and those from National Public Radio, as well as country music, would be relegated to a third station, broadcast only in a few select areas with three military radio frequencies.

www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=36735&archive=true

www.stripes.com/06/jun06/afrts.jpg

The Radio Equalizer: Brian Maloney: Limbaugh, Hannity, AFRTS
“if both liberal and conservative programming are dealt the same blow, where’s the bias?

Because conservative talkers are many times more popular with the troops than their liberal counterparts, the right will suffer greatly, while “progressives” have much less to lose. That’s because very few stationed overseas are listening to the lefties.”

With this kind of data, how could anyone determine that nearly all political talk radio should be eliminated from the two proposed primary worldwide broadcast stations? Why not remove the unpopular liberal shows and keep the rest?

radioequalizer.blogspot.com/2006/06/limbaugh-hannity-afrts.html

GOP takes aim at PBS funding - The Boston Globe
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff | June 8, 2006

WASHINGTON — House Republicans yesterday revived their efforts to slash funding for public broadcasting, as a key committee approved a $115 million reduction in the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that could force the elimination of some popular PBS and NPR programs.

On a party-line vote, the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees health and education funding approved the cut to the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes money to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. It would reduce the corporation’s budget by 23 percent next year, to $380 million, in a cut that Republicans said was necessary to rein in government spending. …

The same appropriations subcommittee called last year for an even more drastic cut of $223 million from public broadcasting programs. At the time, Republicans attacked the PBS for programming they said represented out-of-the-mainstream viewpoints, highlighting in particular a “Postcards From Buster” episode that featured lesbian couples and their children in Vermont.

But, in a defeat for House leaders, 87 Republicans joined unanimous Democrats in bucking an attempt to cut funding from the stations.

www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/06/08/gop_takes_aim_at_pbs_funding/


#
Powered by WordPress with Pool theme design by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds. 48 queries. 2.045 seconds. Back to Top