Jane Harman, who represents California’s 36th District, may be the wealthiest member of Congress. She may also be running second as the member of Congress who has seen the greatest accretion of net worth since attaining her House seat in 1994.

According to an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation called Fortune 535, Rep. Harman’s net worth in 2006 may have been $409,426,887, up from $241,334,326 in 2000. (Sunlight bills itself as “a catalyst to create greater political transparency and to foster more openness and accountability in government.”)

The site allows inspection of each member of Congress in terms of net worth. Tabs lead to “Wealthiest,” “Greatest Change,” “Started with $0 or less,” and “Ended 2006 with $0 or less.”

It’s great fun. But Fortune 535’s worth is not its revelation of congressional wealth; rather, it demonstrates the weaknesses in the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 that requires financial disclosures by members of Congress. That’s why “may” is the operative word regarding Rep. Harman’s wealth.
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Q: How can you tell when politicians are lying?
A: When they say they aren’t.

As we wade deeper into the silly swamp that is Electoral Trainwreck ‘08 I realize that most nights I wind up giggling myself to sleep. My old friend Disraeli famously observed that people tend to get the government they deserve, and as I’ve noted before, the average US citizen is barely smart enough to come in out of the rain, and under no circumstances should be entrusted with something as important as the franchise. Stupid is as stupid votes. Full Story »

“In a campaign of surprises,” writes Daniel Henninger in a recent Wall Street Journal column, “none has been more breathtaking than the falling away of Clinton supporters, loyalists [and] friends. Why?”

The answer, of course — after all, this is the WSJ — is “Money.”

Henninger explains. “Once Barack proved conclusively that he could raise big-time cash, the Clintons’ strongest tie to their machine began to unravel.”

Not the clearest writer, what he seems to mean is that big-money Democrats no longer feel compelled to donate large sums to the Clintons. Full Story »

Despite one presidential candidate’s proclamation that hope is nigh, little appears visible.

Pennsylvania votes Wednesday in what reasonable people might wish is effectively the last of a primary season in which presidential aspirants have effectively revealed their character by tearing down each other to become the last man or woman standing. That intent is much of the content of their words, ads and deeds.

Why should voters value destructive behavior? Why should voters value stridency? Why should voters value the invective that candidates (and their side men and women) throw at each other with such little concern for accuracy?
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On Jan. 1, Federal Election Commission records show, Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.) had $862,809.75 in his campaign operation, Reynolds For Congress.

From Jan. 1 to March 31, FEC records show, he raised $271,851.79. Allowing for spending by his campaign ($123,825.39), Rep. Reynolds finished the first quarter with $1,010,835.55. That’s a nice piece of change for a Republican incumbent to take on any challengers, eh?

But on March 20, Rep. Reynolds became the 29th Republican in the 110th Congress to announce his or her intended departure (or actually leave) the House, saying:

While there is always more to do, elected officials are only temporary stewards of the people’s trust. That’s why today I am announcing that I will not seek and be a candidate for reelection. [emphasis added]

Now that Rep. Reynolds won’t be a steward of the public’s trust, what kind of a steward will he be of the million bucks of other people’s money tucked away in his campaign fund?
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Has the financial tipping point of life vs. death finally arrived? Do you now need to be financially healthy (meaning rich) to ease suffering from or survive diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, hepatitis C and some cancers (such as metastatic breast cancer)?

The lead story in the print edition of today’s New York Times reports this chilling fact:

Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases.

With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.

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I still do not know whom I will vote for as president. That’s because what I wish to know, candidates will not tell me — whom they’ll appoint to office. It is through appointments to judgeships, cabinet posts and other executive branch positions that presidents implement their policies and impress their will upon government and therefore the governed.

Alan Pergament of The Buffalo News, in his review of PBS’ “Bush’s War,” said it well:

At a time in which America is preparing to elect a new president to deal with Bush’s war, it reminded me of something I learned from my college courses in political science: It doesn’t so much matter who becomes president as it matters whom he or she chooses to put in his or her Cabinet. [emphasis added]

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It’s fair to ask whether a college kid should have to wash dishes in the dining
hall to pay his tuition when his college has a billion dollars in the bank.

— Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, “the ranking Republican on the Senate committee that oversees tax policy, [who] has written to the nation’s 135 leading universities, asking them to explain what they do with their tax-free endowments“; according to The New York Times, “Last year a record 76 American colleges passed the $1 billion mark in total endowments”; March 18.

I liken N.C.L.B. to a mile race. Under N.C.L.B., students are tested rigorously every tenth of a mile. But nobody keeps track as to whether they cross the finish line.

— Bob Wise, a former West Virginia governor who is president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a group that seeks to improve schools; according to The New York Times, “… many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later”; March 20.
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Daniel Kester of Williamsville, N.Y., believes some actions of his representative in Congress are hypocritical. So, fed up and using information available online, he sat down and penned a letter to the editor of The Buffalo News:

Last year, Exxon-Mobil made a profit of more than $40 billion. This is the highest profit any American company has ever made. While I congratulate Exxon on this achievement, it does make me wonder why my congressman, Tom Reynolds, found it necessary to vote to continue to give tax breaks to Exxon and other oil companies (House Bill 5351). At the same time, Reynolds voted against tax credits for wind, solar and other alternative energy sources that could actually help reduce global warming.

I can see the sense in giving tax breaks to struggling Western New York companies. But tax breaks for Exxon? What was he thinking? This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that he has received more than $165,000 in contributions from the oil and gas industry, would it?

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Guest Scrogue Josh Nelson is a blogger, activist, and avid news junkie. He is currently the Online Grassroots Coordinator for a large environmental non-profit. He blogs primarily at The Seminal, where he is an editor. In his spare time he enjoys arguing on the Internet, spending time with good people and talking politics. He can be reached at josh@theseminal.com.

For my first (and hopefully not last) post at Scholars & Rogues, I want to highlight an individual who is both a scholar and a rogue who could use some help.

Last week, esteemed professor and free culture scholar Lawrence Lessig announced two new projects. Watch this video, in which Lessig introduces the two projects. Full Story »

Perhaps the most disingenuous word a journalist can deploy is seemed. My newsroom godfather taught me that the use of seemed, seems or other forms of the word means the reporter is guessing, that the reporter has found no clear evidentiary link between Fact A and Fact B.

In its now highly ridiculed story about Sen. John McCain’s relationships with lobbyists, particularly with Vicki Iseman, The New York Times used seemed twice:

But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest. [6th graf]

One of his efforts, though, seemed self-contradictory. In 2001, he helped found the nonprofit Reform Institute to promote his cause and, in the process, his career. It collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlimited donations from companies that lobbied the Senate commerce committee. Mr. McCain initially said he saw no problems with the financing, but he severed his ties to the institute in 2005, complaining of “bad publicity” after news reports of the arrangement. [31st graf]

To seem means to be judged to be; to appear to be true, probable, or evident; or to appear to be something. As a transitive verb, seem is used to suggest uncertainty — not, as The Times failed to do, tie one set of facts to another set of facts and thus conclude with certainty we gotcha.
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For the moment, consider me as two-term Sen. Denny. (I’ll wait a moment until the laughter subsides.) It shouldn’t surprise you, then, that I am, in essence, more a professional fundraiser than a politician. I need money to remain in office — and I need money to acquire influence while in office in case I should seek higher office.

Giving money to other politicians binds them to you. It represents not-so-subtle I.O.U.’s to be collected if, for example, I decide to run for president.

So I establish a “leadership political action committee.” Call it DocPAC. My fellow members of Congress have them, y’know, and so do a lot of other politically savvy folks. We raise money through these leadership PACs independent of our regular campaign committees. And here’s what makes them politically useful: I can give up to $5,000 per election to any federal candidate. And believe me, those party hacks, er, loyalists, immediately become my pals.
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I believe my current participation could be a distraction.

— major league baseball pitcher and accused steroids and HGH cheat Roger Clemens, in withdrawing from a scheduled appearance at an “event, which takes place largely at Disney Hollywood Studios, and lets fans interact with athletes and ESPN personalities and watch live ESPN programming”; Feb. 20.

I’m very excited about watching this game. I do want to thank your coaches. Thanks for coaching. Thanks for teaching people the importance of teamwork. I like baseball a lot, so thanks for teaching them how to play baseball, too.

— from President Bush’s remarks at a “tee ball” game between the Little Dragons and the Little Saints at Ghana International School in Accra, Ghana; Feb. 20.
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With the race to win Democratic presidential nomination still too close to call, the decision most likely will not be determined by the people, but by the “superdelegates” during this summer’s Democratic National Convention. Superdelegates are Democratic Party members - those belonging to the National Committee, members of Congress, former leaders and other elected officials - and they represent 19.6% of the votes at the convention.

In the latest edition of Capital Eye, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics’ newsletter, it’s reported that Democratic superdelegates have received $904,200 in campaign contributions from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the last three years. Full Story »

Feb. 12, 2008
The Honorable Hillary Clinton
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Sen. Clinton,

When I stepped into the voting booth in the New York state primary Feb. 5, I pulled the lever for Sen. Barack Obama, not you, my state’s junior senator. But I had misgivings.

Not any more. Any doubts I had about the wisdom of my choice of Sen. Obama vanished when you chose not to show up on Capitol Hill to vote on the critical cloture vote on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act bill. As passed by the Senate, that bill would grant retroactive legal immunity for the telecommunication companies that aided the federal government in spying on Americans. Although Sen. Obama (and you) did not vote on final passage (a foreordained formality by this point), he showed up to vote on the issue of cloture. He voted when it counted. You didn’t.
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It was only a matter of time.

John Edwards Drops Out of Presidential Race
– Former Senator’s Campaign Adviser: ‘It Just Became Clear It Wasn’t Going to Happen’

Former Senator John Edwards, D-N.C., will drop out of the Democratic presidential race on Wednesday.

“It just became clear it wasn’t going to happen,” a senior Edwards adviser tells ABC News’ Rick Klein.

Edwards, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 2004 before joining Senator John Kerry, D-Mass., as his vice presidential candidate, had placed poorly in several early contests, lagging behind rivals Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. Full Story »

I earn between $50,000 and $75,000 a year. I have three degrees. I teach at a small Catholic liberal arts university. I own several cameras. I have two vehicles, one four-wheel-drive, the other high-mileage. I belong to two environmental organizations. I commute more than 10 miles to work. I contribute to three non-profit organizations. I am single. I buy clothes from Lands’ End and L.L. Bean. I collect Rotring pens and pencils. I play guitar and piano. I read science and detective fiction, purchased mostly from Barnes & Noble and Amazon. I have two iPods, one computer and two TVs. I have several credit cards. I drink beer. I once owned a handgun. I have a mortgage. I have voted since 1964 as an Independent or Democrat.

To our presidential candidates, I am not Denny Wilkins, an individual human being: I am a set of data points, one of about 168 million sets of data points collected by both the Democratic and Republican national committees. They are interested in me only because I am an eligible voter. Democratic and Republican presidential candidates will base their direct-mail, push-poll, robo-call and volunteers-knocking-on-my-door messages on computerized analyses of me as data. I will be micro-targeted by candidates’ campaign organizations for the sole purpose of producing a vote for a candidate.
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Let’s say I want a new job. I’m not rich or powerful, so my employer is hardly likely to allow me to take a few weeks off — let alone more than a year — to search for a new job. My employer expects me to do my job. If I want to look for a new job, I’ll have to do it on my own time — and probably secretly.

At the moment, there’s a gaggle of politicians who have jobs — important jobs — who are running around the country looking for a new job. And none of their current employers seems to be complaining all that loudly. They should be.

I am one such indignant employer. I’m irritated that the woman I hired to do a job for me — be an fully effective senator for the state of New York — is too busy seeking a new job that she’s falling down on her current job.

This isn’t a complaint solely about Sen. Hillary Clinton. Accompanying her on the campaign trail are other officeholders seeking a new job while supposedly working to improve the lot in life of the people who hired them to perform competently in their current jobs.
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The results of the latest S&R poll are in.

What issue will be foremost in your thoughts when you vote for a president in 2008?

1. Civil Liberties (28)
2. Economy and Class (26)
3. Iraq and Military Issues (20) Full Story »

You know, America is probably wondering why, why do you care? And one of the reasons we care about the suffering in Sudan is because we care about the human condition all across the face of the earth. And we fully understand that when people suffer, it is in our interest to help. And we also understand that when people suffer it makes it more likely that some may turn to the ideology of those who use murder as a weapon. So it’s in our national security interest and it’s in our — in the interest of our conscience to confront this, what we have called a genocide.

— President Bush at a Jan. 17 press briefing after meeting with Rich Williamson, U.S. special envoy to Sudan.
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