Back in the good ol’ days, you’d merely text your old pal I.B. Loaded, CEO of Amalgamated Rules Bender Inc. Loaded’s given you tons of cash over the years for your campaigns. He, his wife and children, his employees, his vendors — all have seen the wisdom of slipping dough to you, your official campaign committee, and, of course, your “Leadership PAC.”

And, of course, Loaded would have his Gulfstream V (I mean, rather, his corporate-owned private jet) fly into Reagan National to pick you up (after, of course, a taxpayer-paid car and driver deposited you, your luggage, and golf clubs there). Loaded himself would be on the plane to entertain you and see to your every need. After you’d both consumed a few hits from Loaded’s stash of 40-year-old Glen Garioch, he’d probably steer the conversation into an arcane tax-policy issue that would likely benefit Amalgamated Rules Bender Inc. to the tune of millions of dollars.

You’d be the only passenger on a sophisticated jet costing $59 million with an hourly operating cost of about $7,000. Yet, before 2007, you’d only pay the cost of first-class airfare to LA — maybe a grand or less, depending on discounts. Then Congress shut the door to corporate-provided air travel by passing the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

And this week, those idiots at the Federal Election Commission reopened the door.

The act plainly states “a candidate for election for Federal office … may not make any expenditure for a flight on [a noncommercial] aircraft unless … the candidate, the authorized committee, or other political committee pays … the pro rata share of the fair market value of the flight.”

But the FEC changed that by redefining when a member of Congress is or is not a “candidate.” Here’s the explanation from The Campaign Legal Center:

Yet the FEC today adopted a final rule nonsensically declaring that a candidate is not a “candidate,” for the purpose of this statute, when that candidate “is traveling on behalf of another political committee (such as a political party committee or Senate leadership PAC).” Instead, where a candidate claims to be traveling “on behalf of” their own leadership PAC, or one of the many committees controlled by their political party, or any other political committee—the old rules apply, allowing that candidate to pay the price of a commercial air ticket instead of the price of the private plane the candidate is actually flying on.

To make matters worse, FEC Chairman Walther published a statement explaining his decision to provide the necessary fourth vote for the final rule put forth by his three Republican colleagues on the FEC. Preposterously, Chairman Walther cited comments filed in the rulemaking proceeding by the Campaign Legal Center, together with Democracy 21, suggesting that we support this new rule gutting HLOGA. Chairman Walther wrote: “The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 agreed and indicated their support for ‘retain[ing] the existing reimbursement rate structure for non-candidate travel.’” (emphasis added). While we did support retaining the old rate for non-candidate travel, nowhere in our comments did we suggest that candidates should be considered to be engaging in non-candidate travel through the simple expedient of claiming that they are flying “on behalf of” their leadership PAC or other federal political committee. Chairman Walther should know better.

Candidate travel is candidate travel—period.

The FEC’s new rule illegally contradicts the plain meaning of the statute. Unfortunately, gutting or ignoring federal law—that Commissioners would have written differently themselves—has become a recurring habit for the FEC. In an earlier rulemaking, the FEC gutted the intent of another key aspect of HLOGA, allowing lobbyists to easily evade required reporting of bundled campaign contributions.

Provision of non-commercial travel by corporations (and unions) to members of Congress or federal candidates is simply more legalized corruption.

So I wonder how long it will be before enough members of Congress step up to close this loophole by updating the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. Days? Weeks? Next century?

Well, i have an idea. Call it the Nelson Muntz Initiative…

It’s not exactly mine; many people have proposed it half-jokingly. Why just joke about it and let the grimy politicians have the last laugh when we have the power to make the joke on them?

If the quest for decriminalizing marijuana has taught us anything, it’s that the surest means to political victory is to take the process out of the hands of politicians. State referendums on that issue have spat in the face of Washington D.C. thirteen times so far, and there are more on the way.

Assuming that i’ve got my Constitution understood correctly, if two thirds of states pass a law it becomes federal law whether Congress likes it or not.

I’m shooting for “or not”.

I’d like to see Americans get together and make sure that every state in the union has a referendum by 2012 that forces federal politicians to display their sponsorships. It’ll be just like NASCAR…except, apparently, clockwise. The corporation or lobbyist or PAC that contributes the most to a politician is forced to put the biggest logo on the politician’s uniform. The smaller the contribution, the smaller the logo.

The politicians will be forced to wear the new uniforms whenever they’re are acting in an official capacity. So, they’d wear the uniforms on the floor of the Senate, House and inside the West Wing. They’d wear the uniform when appearing on television, on the campaign trail, at fund raising events and even state visits.

I want to see all the Senators who rail against health care reform do so with insurance company logos all over their expensive suits. I want to see the damned-near-monocled politicians who make the decisions about banking regulations do so with Goldman Sachs embroidered across their backs. And i damned sure want to see the names of the defense contractors on the wardrobes of all the soft-handed sons-of-bitches who send good men off to die without a damned good reason.

Dress them all up like the clowns that they’ve proven themselves — over and over — to be.

As J.S. O’Brien commented on Dr. Denny’s piece, the more mature manner of solving this problem — public financing — has more than a few devils in the details. Not the least of which is that the politicians aren’t going to give up their gravy train willingly, and the fact that rational and mature is the quickest way to political defeat in the USofA. So, fuck ‘em. They can keep the contributions and the shady relationships; we’ll at least get to laugh at them.

About the only thing most of them have is obscene levels of vanity, we might as well hit ‘em where it hurts, eh? And they wouldn’t be able to fool so many of the uniformed if their wardrobe did the media’s job.

I might be crazy, but would you be surprised if my plan worked? This isn’t a Left or Right issue. My guess is that the majority of Americans would be on board and would vote “yes” on Nelson Muntz…if for no other reason than our national love for enjoying the misfortunes of others. And who really likes politicians? Allow Americans a real chance to give the politicians a swift kick to the taint and they’ll take it.

Who’s with me? We need some lawyers to write the referendums and cadres of cynics in all fifty states to collect the petition signatures. After that we’ll let democracy decide. It may suck only marginally less than other forms of government, but i believe that it would come through for us on this.

As a felon, Jefferson has had equally despicable company: Rep. Andrew J. Hinshaw, R-Calif. (accepting a bribe); Rep. Charles Diggs Jr., D-Mich. (payroll kickback scheme); Rep. Michael Myers, D-Pa. (accepting bribes from FBI agents impersonating Arab businessmen); Reps. John Murphy, D-N.Y., Frank Thompson, D-N.J., John Jenrette, D-S.C., and Raymond Lederer, D-Pa. (Arab businessmen bribery scandal, a.k.a. Abscam).

And Rep. Mario Biaggi, D-N.Y. (extorting money from a defense contractor); Rep. Mel Reynolds, D-Ill. (sex with underage campaign worker, bank fraud); Rep. Walter Tucker III, D-Calif. (accepting and demanding bribes); Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill. (felony mail fraud); Rep. James A. Trafficant, D-Ohio (bribery, conspiracy and racketeering); Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (accepting bribes from defense contractors) and Robert W. Ney, R-Ohio (Abramoff scandal). I’m sure readers can name more.

The collective misfortune of these men is that they got caught. Each undoubtedly said to himself, “I am invincible. I am a member of Congress.” They all assumed membership in the biggest-of-all-members-only clubs provided a get-out-of-jail-free card. But the real reason they believed they could get away with accepting bribes and committing extortion is that members of Congress have been doing it legally for years.

Jefferson may serve 13 years. Prosecutors say he probably earned less than $400,000 despite seeking millions in illegal bribes from “oil, sugar, communications and other businesses, often for projects in Africa,” said The New York Times. But he’s raked in about $6.45 million in campaign contributions since 1990, half from political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics database. More than $600,000 came from lawyers and law firms. (Wonder if the sharks will return his calls now.)

Prosecutors focused on the $90,000 federal agents found in Jefferson’s freezer. The public should have been more focused on Jefferson’s legal sources of campaign bucks, in the same way it should have paid less attention to the penis of that other two-faced Louisiana legislative poseur, Sen. David Vitter, and more attention to the sources of his campaign funding.

We the voters, the people who have watched health-care costs starkly climb ever higher, who see taxes rising exhorbitantly at all levels, who witness the quality of education for our children wither, who watch jobs vanish overseas and unemployment rise, and who are frightened that decades-old safety nets are tattered beyond repair, have become so inured to the corrosive role of money in politics that we forget that politicians are continously but legally bribed by monied interests. And it should stop.

Ask Glenn Greenwald of salon.com. In a video for Larry Lessig’s change-congress.com, he explains how Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind., are threatening to filibuster any health-reform plan with a public option. Lieberman, says Greenswald, is “drowning in campaign contributions” from the health-care industry — more than $2.5 million — and his wife landed a cushy job in 2005 with PR flacksters Hill & Knowlton, representing pharma giant Glaxo. Several months later, Lieberman sought to steer incentives to Glaxo to develop vaccines.

“This is the kind of legalized corruption, legalized bribery, that runs the United States Senate,” says Greenwald. “Only in this case it is particularly sleazy and transparent because Lieberman is ready to gut the major initiative of the Democratic Party.”

Bayh’s wife, says Greenwald, “sits on the board of directors of WellPoint, one of the largest health-insurance companies in the nation. [The Bayhs] own, by their own disclosures, between $500,000 and a million dollars in WellPoint stock. … When Sen. Lieberman threatened to filibuster the public option … the value of the stock of the health-care industry skyrocketed … and personally benefited the finances of the Bayh family.”

Bayh’s wife was paid more than $2 million between 2005 and 2008. Bayh, in 2008, received $500,000 in campaign contributions from the health-care industry, says Greenwald.

“It’s really clear corruption,” says Greenwald.

Politicians defend their financial associations with large corporations (and unions) and wealthy individuals. They call it “campaign financing.” Sadly, we’re too accustomed to this shameless dance now, aren’t we?

A member of Congress, or someone who aspires to be one, gets on the phone and calls people who have lots of money. Often those people run very large enterprises, such as corporations (or unions). Those corporations, driven by the dictum “maximize shareholder income” (or, increasingly, “maximize CEO compensation”), would like members of Congress to make those tasks easier. Politicians say such donations only provide access to their ears, not their actions. The big corporate and PAC donors — or their hired lobbyists — say they’re only legitimately promoting the causes of their companies and clients.

Bullshit. It has been known for decades that lobbyists are often in the room, helping congressional staff write — or writing themselves — legislation. Earlier in this decade, tax-law experts from General Electric shaped an export tax reform bill that saved GE hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lobbyists’ dictation of politicians’ words and deeds has become even more blatant. New York Times reporter Robert Pear wrote Nov. 14 that lobbyists wrote and sought to have supportive statements about health-care reform placed by members into the Congressional Record prior to the Nov. 5 vote:

In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident. Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies. … Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists. [emphasis added]

A lobbyist created the messages and supporting documents and e-mailed them to members. Lobbyists denied any malevolent intent. Said one, quoted anonymously by Pear: “This happens all the time. There was nothing nefarious about it.”

In the past five years, Genentech has spent nearly $10 million on lobbying expenses. In the past decade, Genentech has contributed more than $1 million to federal candidates. Pear reports Genentech’s PAC has made contributions to some of the members who used its talking points and that company officials had hosted fundraisers for some.

And, of course, there’s no quid pro quo, right? Wrote Pear: “Evan L. Morris, head of Genentech’s Washington office, said, ‘There was no connection between the contributions and the statements.’” [emphasis added]

Bullshit again. It is, as Greenwald says, legalized corruption. Imagine if I, as an individual voter living in a rural district, had asked my congressman to insert under his name words I wrote about health-care reform into the Congressional Record. He would say no. (Or rather, the staff member I’d get shunted off to would say no.) But when Genentech said jump, 42 members of Congress asked, “How high?”

Don’t kid us. It’s legalized corruption. Remarks members of Congress revise and extend into the Congressional Record, we now see, have been actually written by lobbyists. So what do the clowns we elect to office do for the $174,000 we pay them (and with very nice health-care bennies, too)?

A handful of Republican senators, led by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C, think they have an answer — a constitutional amendment to limit how long a person may serve in Congress. Apparently, senators would get 12 years, while representatives would get only six years. (Imagine that bill’s conference committee, eh?) On his Senate website, DeMint writes:

As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buy off special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork, in short, amassing their own power.

Don’t be misled. After all, what’s to prevent the current system of lobbyists, legalized corruption, and greed from buying new sets of politicians every six or 12 years? Being new, they’ll come cheap, too.

Members of Congress need mountains of money to obtain and retain political power. They spend hours each day dialing donors and asking for, or demanding, campaign contributions. That’s the extortion part of the equation. Donors demand at least an ear and now, we see, actual words printed in the Congressional Record. That’s the corruption part. All that separates many uncharged and unjailed members of Congress from Jefferson and his imprisoned pals is an FBI wiretap.

Changing the politicians through term limits has little merit. Instead, get rid of the current system of campaign finance. If members of Congress were willing to bail out banks with hundreds of billions of dollars, demand that they allow the public to outbid special interests. Lobby members of Congress (yep, I said lobby) to drastically and dramatically overhaul public election financing. Demand that members of Congress place in the federal budget each year sufficient billions of dollars to pay for every federal and statewide election in the country. Give incumbents and challengers alike plenty of public money. But cut them off at the financial knees if they accept a single dime of corporate, union, or PAC money.

If our politicians continue to insist on being bought, let the public do the buying.

Those 267,574 people who voted “no” — which would approve the same-sex marriage law — were not dissuaded by an anti-gay coalition of conservatives and churches wielding more than $3 million, including more than $2 million from out-of-state donors, according to a report by the National Institute On Money In State Politics.

Much of the sparring over the referendum was funded on both sides by groups outside the state of Maine. Given that gay marriage has been a wedge issue for years, that’s hardly surprising. But in Maine?

Those who backed the gay marriage law ponied up 12 to 1 over donors to the anti-gay donors and had more money — $5 million. But they lost. The institute’s report, written by Tyler Evilsizer, says:

The measure pitted conservative groups and churches against gay-rights groups, a few wealthy donors, and more than 10,000 smaller donors from Maine and around the country. Question 1 attracted over $9 million, or 72 cents of every dollar raised around Maine’s seven ballot measures. [emphasis added]

But press attention, money, and political capital focused on a wedge issue to divide people of good conscience and faith and divert their attention from far more pressing matters. Maine needs more attention to the condition of its roads, bridges and airports than it does in the bedrooms of loving, consenting adults who wish to make a lifelong commitment.

The blunt end of the money hammer used in Maine against gays was primarily wielded by a group called Stand For Marriage Maine. Like all political communicators and niche interest groups these days, it has a website. But its site is notably deficient. It does not have links such as “About Us” or “Who We Are.” Such links usually provide a list of financial supporters, coalition partners, and the names and contact data for organization officers and staff. Stand For Marriage Maine does not provide such information on its website.

Wading through the organization’s press releases and media stories is needed to learn that Marc Mutty is chairman of Stand for Marriage Maine, that Scott K. Fish is communications director (releases provide a phone number) and that Bob Emrich is a member of the group’s executive committee.

That lack of clear, easy-to-find disclosure makes it difficult for those interested in the issue to find out more about the bona fides of donors and supporters who worked to repeal Maine’s gay-marriage law.

Why not explain “Who We Are”? Only conjecture is possible. It is, perhaps, easier to operate in ideological shadows. According to Mr. Evilsizer’s report, here are the principal sources of money that drove the effort to repeal gays’ right to marry in Maine. A few groups are well known outside Maine.

StandForMarriageMaine.com | $2,650,052
Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland | $553,608
Focus On The Family Maine Marriage Committee | $114,500
Family Research Council Action | $25,000
Maine Marriage PAC | $11,539
Maine Grassroots Coalition | $9,410
Marriage Matters in Maine | $2,678
Maine4Marriage | $230
Proponents’ total $3,367,018

Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, asked Maine ethics officials to investigate the organization. He said it was laundering money. His August letter

contained allegations religious organizations are hiding contributions to the Stand for Marriage Maine campaign. The letter reports how the National Organization for Marriage, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, the national office of the Knights of Columbus and Focus on the Family had contributors give the money to their organizations, and in turn gave the money to the Stand for Marriage Maine to hide the donors’ identity.

But a federal judge ruled on Oct. 29 that the “state can compel the National Organization for Marriage to disclose the identities of donors who contributed to its effort to repeal Maine’s gay-marriage law.” In that story, the Portland Press Herald said NOM — based in Washington, D.C. — had funneled $1.6 million to Stand For Marriage Maine. A resolution of the lawsuit was “months away,” the story said — well after the Nov. 3 referendum. Mr. Evilsizer’s report contains a breakdown of donors to Stand For Marriage Maine showing NOM’s $1,622,152 donation.

But his report notes that financial supporters of gay marriage in Maine “from Away” were also plentiful. Those who supported the gay-marriage law raised $5,678,579.

The Human Rights Campaign, which bills itself as “the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization,” donated $267,589 to the principal umbrella organization, No On 1 Protect Maine Equality. The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force gave $139,056. Esmond Harmsworth, a founding partner of the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency in Boston and New York, gave $100,000. Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders of Boston gave $91,258.

The website of No On 1 Protect Maine Equality also has a “Who We Are” page that lists its coalition partners. Its “Contact Us” page list its physical address, mailing address, phone number and e-mail address. Its campaign manager is clearly identified as Jesse Connolly.

The gay marriage caravan now moves on, it seems, to New York state. Gov. David Patterson wants a same-sex marriage bill, passed twice in the state Assembly, on the floor of the Senate for debate on Tuesday.

And the money, both for and against, will likely move on as well.

According to The New York Times, former Sen. Daschle has been spending quality time in the White House holding forth on health-care reform. Reports The Times: “He still speaks frequently to the president, who met with him as recently as Friday morning in the Oval Office. And he remains a highly paid policy adviser to hospital, drug, pharmaceutical and other health care industry clients of Alston & Bird, the law and lobbying firm.”

He says he’s not a lobbyist. He says he’s a “resource” for his clients and former legislative colleagues. “I do not tailor my views to any specific group or client.”

How believable — or unbelievable — is that claim?

The 900-lawyer firm he works for has received more than $5 million in lobbying fees so far this year, much of it from companies and associations with an abiding interest in influencing the outcome of health-care reform efforts. From 2005 (when the firm’s lobbying revenues nearly tripled) to 2008, the firm’s lobbying fees totaled $24.2 million, according to the lobbying database of the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Mr. Daschle joined the K Street firm after losing his Senate re-election bid in 2004 to Sen. John Thune. Mr. Daschle is an expert in health-care matters; Alston & Bird has numerous clients interested in health-care reform; and the firm’s annual lobbying fees skyrocketed. Surprise!

The Washington Post pegged Mr. Daschle’s salary at $2 million. He also received $2 million last year from business partner Leo Hindery, whose gift of a car and driver led to Mr. Daschle’s withdrawal from cabinet consideration.

“We know that many power brokers never register as lobbyists, but they are every bit as powerful,” said Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation watchdog group.

Over his congressional career, Mr. Daschle has enjoyed considerable financial support from the health-care industries. Since 1998, he has received $1,517,020 in campaign contributions from PACs and individuals associated with the health-care fields.

After amending his tax returns for 2005 through 2007 for failing to disclose income (the car and driver) from Mr. Hindery, he paid $101,943 in back taxes plus interest. Then he withdrew from consideration for secretary of Health and Human Services. In this post, he would have served as point man for the president’s health-care reform plans.

But, reports The Times, he appears to have sufficient access to the president’s ear to be an effective advocate on health care. But for whose benefit?

White House officials say they appreciate his help. “He is one of a number of people that provides outside advice to the White House, and the president greatly appreciates that advice and Tom’s friendship,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a spokesman for the White House who previously worked for Mr. Daschle. Mr. Pfeiffer added that the former senator was “a recognized expert on health reform who knows more about the legislative process than just about anyone.”

Critics, though, say his ex officio role gives Alston & Bird’s health care clients privileged insights into the policy process. They say Mr. Daschle’s multiple advisory roles illustrate the kind of coziness with the lobbying world that Mr. Obama vowed to end. If he had been confirmed as health secretary, Mr. Daschle would have been subject to strict transparency and ethics rules. [emphasis added]

Mr. Daschle has not registered as a lobbyist. Nor does he have an enviable track record of disclosing the health-care clients in his portfolio when addressing public-policy issues — as he failed to do on Aug. 16 on NBC’s Meet the Press. He told host David Gregory this:

Well, David, I guess the, the basic question is, are we building this new system for the American people or for the insurance companies?  I mean, that’s really the key question.  How will they be better served?

But, complains Time’s Michael Scherer:

Left unmentioned was the fact that Daschle, in his capacity as a high-paid consultant at the law firm Alston and Bird, is once again working closely with lobbyists for UnitedHealth, the largest U.S. industry player, aiding the company’s effort to convince moderate Senate and House Democrats to, among other things, kill the public option and keep company profits high.

(BusinessWeek’s Chad Terhune and Keith Epstein think the insurers have already won.)

Here’s how his employer describes Mr. Daschle’s role:

Senator Tom Daschle is a Special Public Policy Advisor in Alston & Bird’s Washington, D.C., office, and is a member of the Legislative & Public Policy Group. As a non-attorney, Senator Daschle focuses his services on advising the firm’s clients on issues related to all aspects of public policy with a particular emphasis on issues related to financial services, health care, energy, telecommunications and taxes. In addition, he advises on trade and international matters. He spends a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy.

Mr. Daschle could not formally lobby for a year after leaving the Senate because of ethics rules. Five years later, he has not registered as a lobbyist. Yet he maintains a portfolio of health-care industry clients, gives paid speeches to health-care industry groups, and has, apparently, unlimited access to the White House and its decision makers — including President Obama.

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. Mr. Daschle should register as a lobbyist.

Flip, from 2007:

I promise that when I am elected to Congress, I will always put the American public above everything else. Unlike 99.9% of Congressional Candidates, I have never accepted a single cent of Corporate PAC money … [emphasis added]

Flip, from 2007:

I believe if you’re going to talk about campaign finance reform, you have to be willing to do it to prove your point. And I did and I would not be able to look myself in the mirror if I took money from ExxonMobil. My opponent gets over 70% of his money from PACs… Of all the issues we face, the core issue has to be campaign finance reform because nothing will change til we get the Board Room out of the voting booth. [emphasis added]

Flop, from 2009:

I’m not going to go to the working families of the 29th Congressional District and ask them to fund a congressional campaign when my opponents aren’t willing to do the same thing. I believe in playing on a level playing field [emphasis added].

Rep. Massa argues that he must accept corporate PAC money because the GOP does. He hides behind the “level playing field” argument. Why now? He beat the GOP incumbent without it. His only announced Republican opponent, Corning Mayor Tom Reed, has yet to be offered serious money from the National Republican Congressional Committee — which heavily funded the incumbent he defeated.

Rep. Massa knows the GOP wants this seat back. He wants a fat war chest and he wants it fast to deter any serious GOP challengers (and, perhaps, a Democratic primary one). That’s what incumbents do. That reflects his swift, dramatic shift from principled challenger to Beltway insider.

To disguise this, he suggests he does not want to return to hitting up district voters who are hard-pressed economically, “the working families,” as he labels them.

But that argument is disingenuous. He didn’t depend heavily on the “suffering middle class,” those he now says he wishes to protect from being dunned for contributions.

Federal Election Commission records, aggregated by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, show that Rep. Massa raised $2,151,657 for the 2008 election cycle, $600,000 more than the GOP incumbent. He did not rely as heavily as he claims on the “suffering middle-class” district residents: His top 29 contributors gave him nearly $680,000. And ActBlue contributed nearly half of that. The list of these 29 contributors is dominated by labor unions ponying up $10,000 each.

Sliced another way — by industry totals— $1,292,621 of his total $2.1 million came from the usual suspects of campaign finance: Democratic and liberal organizations; leadership PACs; retired individuals; other candidate committees, lawyers and law firms; industrial, building trade, public sector and transportation unions; the securities and investments community; real estate and health professionals; and others.

As of the June 30 FEC quarterly filing deadline, Rep. Massa has raised $515,119 for the 2010 election cycle. More than half — $284,975 — has come from PAC contributions. His leading contributor is, again, ActBlue, with $73,000. The list of top industries for 2010 is similar to that for 2008. Those industries have given $310,772 so far.

Rep. Massa will need much more than the $2.1 million he raised for 2008. The national GOP wants that seat. And 2010 will be the year that New York state loses one seat in the House due to redistricting. Rural districts like the 29th are always convenient targets to be cut. If the 29th gets whacked, he’d have to run against, perhaps, longer-term New York congressional incumbents. Perhaps that influenced his change of financial heart.

Rep. Massa has said that he would not take corporate PAC money from harmful interests, such as cigarettes and Big Oil. Perhaps he’ll post a clear definition of “harmful” on his re-election website — if and when he announces for 2010.

Congress is taking a vacation from its hard work of fixing health care (yes, sarcasm intended). All the members are town-halling like mad, trying to divine the will of the electorate. Which Rep. Massa will tour District 29 this month?

This one, from June 2007:

I believe that we also need to address the problem of lobbyists in Washington, and as such, I do not accept Corporate PAC money. Thus I am reaching out to all of you to support my grassroots campaign. I am asking for 1000 people to step up and donate $100 to my campaign so we can tackle the issue of global warming in Washington. I need you to join me. Together, we can change the world.

Or this one, from February 2009:

[GOP critics] want to attack me for taking legitimate political action money that they are taking 10 times more of. I don’t quite get why the pot is calling the kettle black.

photo credit: Esquire

These 27 nominees contributed $144,431 to President Obama and $57,900 to once-rival and now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reports the center. They have bundled (collected, as middleman, donations from others) at least $5 million for the president’s campaign and at least $1,782,500 for the president’s inauguration.

The president’s most recent nominee as ambassador to Germany, former Democratic National Committee finance chair and former Goldman Sachs executive Philip D. Murphy, and his wife “have contributed nearly $1.5 million to federal candidates, committees and parties since 1989, with 94 percent of that sum going to Democrats, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis. They also contributed an additional $100,000 to Obama’s inauguration committee.”

But this isn’t the real news. According to figures kept by the American Foreign Service Association, President Obama is making political patronage nominations to ambassadorships at twice the rate of the previous nine presidents.

The president has made 59 ambassadorial nominations as of July 1, according to American Foreign Service Association records — 35 are political nominees (1 confirmed, 19 nominated, 2 announced, 2 rumored); 24 are career Foreign Service nominees (4 confirmed, 21 nominated, 4 announced, 6 rumored).

According to the association, 110 of the current 175 ambassadorships are filled by career Foreign Service professionals (63 percent) and 45 by political nominees (nearly 26 percent). So far, the president’s record on nominations is reversing that ratio.

About 60 percent of President Obama’s ambassadorial choices so far, according to the association’s data, have been non-career, or political patronage, nominations. That’s nearly twice the average percentage of political nominees in previous administrations. The 40-year average, from presidents Kennedy to Clinton, for nominees is 30 percent political patronage and 70 percent career Foreign Service, according to the association.

Even President George W. Bush, who led the previous nine presidents in political patronage through ambassadorships, made only 36 percent of his 370 ambassadorial nominations political.

In its “Statement on Ambassadors,” the association argues:

The primary authority for choosing Ambassadors rests with the President, and the United States has a long tradition of public service by private citizens. This is appropriate and valuable, and private citizens should continue to serve in the diplomatic field. However, the value of this tradition of public service is undermined when individuals are chosen as ambassadors primarily for the size of their contributions to political campaigns, or for their personal friendship with the President. [emphasis added]

Twelve days before he took office, President Obama said:

I want to recruit young people into the State Department to feel that this is a career track that they can be on for the long term. And so, you know, my expectation is that high quality civil servants are going to be rewarded. You know, are there going to be political appointees to ambassadorships? There probably will be some. [emphasis added]

So far, some is an understatement. If the president continues to nominate political loyalists and fundraisers at this early rate, he’ll easily surpass President Bush’s 36 percent rate of political nominees. Perhaps the Senate, which must confirm nominees, should take note of this trend.

President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to change the way Washington works and curb the influence of lobbyists. … During the campaign, federal lobbyists could not contribute to or raise money for the campaign. … [T]he president-elect is taking those commitments even further by announcing the strictest, and most far reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history.”

Presumably, that means President Obama wishes to end the pay-to-play philosophy that pervades the practice of politics. Well, he’s got some explaining to do, because what he promises is not always what he does.

Case No. 1: Yes, the president said he’d nominate some of his financial backers as ambassadors. But the number’s growing. According to the Center for Responsive Politics:

President Obama announced another 10 names for ambassadorships last week, and in doing so, he awarded another set of big donors and bundlers with plum positions representing U.S. interests abroad. The new nominees for ambassadors to Belize, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Romania and Switzerland — along with their spouses and dependent children — have contributed at least $637,800 to federal candidates, parties and committees since 1989, CRP has found. Nearly that entire sum has gone to Democrats, including $32,775 to Obama himself and $8,300 to former primary opponent and now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. These individuals also brought in at least $1.1 million for Obama’s presidential bid as bundlers, and at least another half-a-million as bundlers for his inauguration.

To date, this brings the contribution histories of Obama’s ambassador nominees to roughly $1.8 million in donations since 1989. The 19 ambassadors that CRP has found in our campaign contribution database, along with their spouses and children, have given more than $98,200 to Obama personally, bundled at least $3.4 million for his 2008 presidential run and bundled another $1.4 million for his inauguration.

Do these nominations transgress on his promise of change? Well, these people paid — and now they get to play. To be fair, however, presidents have rewarded financial backers with ambassadorships since the birth of the Republic. Let’s wait a bit and see how his record stacks up against the nomination histories of Presidents Bush I and II and Clinton. But President Obama’s nominations of financial backers are troubling in light of his promise of change.

Case No. 2: Jeff Zeleny, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, reported this earlier this week:

When President Obama arrived at the Mandarin Oriental hotel for a fund-raising reception on Thursday night, the new White House rules of political purity were in order: no lobbyists allowed.

But at the same downtown hotel on Friday morning, registered lobbyists have not only been invited to attend an issues conference with Democratic leaders, but they have also been asked to come with a $5,000 check in hand if they want to stay in good favor with the party’s House and Senate re-election committees.

The practicality of Mr. Obama’s pledge to change the ways of Washington is colliding once more with the reality of how money, influence and governance interact here. He repeatedly declared while campaigning last year that he would “not take a dime” from lobbyists or political action committees.

So to follow through with that promise, Mr. Obama is simply leaving the room. [emphasis added]

I have written about campaign finance for years. I never expected any politician, including President Obama, to live up to any promise to curb the influence of money in politics. Is he following the letter or spirit of his promise of change with regard to political money? Or has he merely developed a system of sidesteps to maintain the appearance of sticking to a promise?

Does this matter? Should we care that the president of the United States promises reform over the influence of money in politics but balks at bold, transparent steps to achieve it? Yes, on both counts.

Surely he will seek re-election. Recall, please, that presidential candidates in the 2008 cycle spent $1.8 billion. That’s more than double the $883 million presidential candidates spent in the 2004 cycle.

Is there any reason to believe — with out-of-power Republicans wanting back in and a Democratic president seeking re-election — that the cost of the 2012 election won’t be twice as high as 2008?

President Obama will need a boatload of bucks. He may philosophically wish to curb the influence of money in politics, but he will continue to be ruled by the need for the money to maintain power … as his opponents will be in their attempts to regain power.

On the president’s “Ethics” page at the White House website, this phrase is repeatedly used: “in the spirit of transparency …” So far, it’s mere fiction.

He will continue the charade of “stepping out of the room” because he needs the money. Can’t say I blame him … but I expected better.

That’s the conclusion of three University of Kansas professors who undertook an empirical analysis of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 to study rates of return for money spent on lobbying, reported The Washington Post in an April 12 story by Dan Eggen.

This law — this shady excuse for a law with a name only charlatans could love — allowed companies that had earned profits overseas to inexpensively bring that money back into the States. The customary tax rate on such profits was 35 percent. But this elegantly named process — repatriation of profits — gave companies a one-time chance four years ago to haul the money home, paying only 5.25 percent.

The act was a tax holiday sought by a coalition of companies, primarily big pharmaceutical and high-technology corporations, all because they sought to pay little or no taxes on profits generated overseas — and they concocted a successful scheme to pull it off.

Mr. Eggen summarized the Kansas professors’ study:

The largest recipients of tax breaks were concentrated in the pharmaceutical and technology fields, including Pfizer, Merck, Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson and IBM. Pfizer alone repatriated $37 billion, representing 70 percent of its revenue in 2004, the study found. The now-beleaguered financial industry also benefited from the provision, including Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, all of which have since received tens of billions of dollars in federal bailout money. [emphasis added]

Critics argued that the act would benefit multinational corporations to the detriment of domestic firms, reported Jonathan Weisman of the Post in August 2005. Even the Bush White House was dubious over the alleged economic benefits of the bill:

“There will be some stimulative effect because it pumps money into the economy,” said Phillip L. Swagel, a former chief of staff on President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, which had opposed the tax holiday. “But you might as well have taken a helicopter over 90210 [Beverly Hills] and pushed the money out the door. That would have stimulated the economy as well.”

In 2006, Washington Post business columnist Allan Sloan wrote of Ford Motor Co.’s abuse of the misnamed act:

It’s almost enough to make you laugh — bitterly, of course. Here was Ford Motor Co. announcing yesterday that it had cut 10,000 jobs last year and that it will cut up to 30,000 more. But shedding jobs at muscle-car acceleration rates didn’t stop Ford from pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars courtesy of the American Jobs Creation Act. … Hello? How can you simultaneously cut jobs and benefit from the American Jobs Creation Act? Welcome to the wonderful world of Washington nomenclature. [emphasis added]

Mr. Sloan estimated that Ford saved $850 million in taxes, not the $250 million the company suggested in its press release.

So how did corporations that don’t believe in paying their appropriate share of taxes finagle this?

Here’s one story, as reported by Mr. Eggen:

The provision was championed in part by the Homeland Investment Coalition, a group of companies and trade associations that was formed to push for the repatriation holiday. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), one of the disbanded coalition’s members, said in a statement Friday that “repatriation of profits provided a new source of investment for American companies.”

“PhRMA supported the legislation four years ago as part of a broad business coalition because of the additional economic benefits the bill would provide,” senior vice president Ken Johnson said. “It meant jobs and skilled training for American workers, as well as a shot in the arm for local economies.” [emphasis added]

This coalition of multinationals had worked on getting its profits home earlier— and falsely articulated its intent regarding jobs. In 2003, seeking support for the then-named Invest in the U.S.A. Act of 2003, the coalition sent a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Max Baucus, ranking member. The letter said that “The $135 billion currently offshore that would be invested in America would benefit the U.S. economy by increasing domestic investment in plant, equipment, R&D and job creation” among other benefits, including investments in emerging technologies, funding for pension plans hurt by stock market declines, and, especially:

“[i]mproving the long term financial strength of U.S.-based companies by reducing domestic debt loads, strengthening corporate balance sheets, and lowering corporate bond rates; increasing dividends to shareholders (which can be productively redeployed); and raising equity market valuations by increasing funds available for share repurchases.”

Parse it any way you wish — creating jobs was the intended political cover for any member of Congress to sign on as a co-sponsor of the legislation.

But did the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 actually lead to a net gain in jobs? Nope. Did it provide “a new source of investment for American companies”? Not even close. And supporters of this tax holiday tried to get another such tax break. Reported Mr. Eggen:

… the Congressional Research Service and others have since found that many companies cut jobs in the wake of the tax break and that nearly all the money was used for stock buybacks or dividends. Supporters failed in a bid to include a similar tax break in this year’s stimulus legislation, and a Senate subcommittee has launched an investigation into how companies used their tax savings under the 2004 program. [emphasis added]

Any congressional investigation lags reporting by The New York Times by four years. An August 2005 Times editorial said:

A month ago, Hewlett-Packard announced it would lay off 14,500 workers by November 2006. Meanwhile, the company is about to repatriate $14.5 billion in profits it has in overseas accounts at a measly tax of 5.25 percent — an 85 percent discount off the normal corporate rate. The cut-rate repatriation, offered by Congress to American companies that bring profits held in foreign lands home in 2005, was sold to the public as a one-shot deal to generate cash for new hiring. But as its critics warned, the tax cut is functioning instead as a handout for America’s most profitable companies.

Hewlett is just one example. Normally, the tax on a $14.5 billion repatriation would be about $5 billion. Because of the bargain rate in 2005, Hewlett expects to pay roughly $800 million. Hewlett also expects its layoffs to cost the company about $1 billion. Thus, in Hewlett’s case, the tax holiday has not only failed to create jobs, but has also more than covered the cost of cutting workers from the payroll.

Dozens of other companies are also bringing billions home with no mention of new hiring. [emphasis added]

Drug companies especially needed to bring the overseas profits home — but not, as the act’s name suggests, to create jobs. They had big financial problems looming. Patents on brand-name drugs worth billions in sales were about to expire, leading to competition by companies producing generic versions.

Upcoming patent expirations for [Pfizer] include Lipitor in 2011, ‘the little blue pill’ Viagra in 2012, and the allergy medicine Zyrtec in 2012 as well. The loss of these patents would see Pfizer losing more than $14 billion in revenue. [emphasis added]

During the last six months of 2004, as the bill was manuevered successfully through Congress, the stock prices of drug companies were falling, in part because of scandals over the safety of drugs that had long been approved by the FDA. For example, government regulators said Merck & Co.’s arthritis drug Vioxx may have led to more than 27,000 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths before it was pulled from the market in October 2004.That happened just two weeks before the American Jobs Creation Act was signed into law by President Bush. Merck badly needed its overseas profits, if only to deal with what might be a litigation bill of $10 billion to $15 billion.

Merck, like other companies, also had developed what Motley Fool columnist Robert Steyer in February called

a version of Pfizer’s “Lipitor disease” — a best-selling drug with limited remaining patent life accounting for a huge percentage of revenue:
• Merck lost protection on Fosamax early last year.
• Merck is seeing protection disappear by 2012 on the two drugs that made up 40 percent of revenue through the first nine months of 2008 — Cozaar/Hyzaar and Singulair.
• Bristol-Myers’ Plavix, creating 27 percent of 2008 revenue, gets chopped in 2011.
• Lilly’s Zyprexa, bringing in 23 percent of last year’s revenue, is also done for in 2011.

Big Pharma knew long before 2004 it needed to get every last dollar of overseas profits back into the States — at the lowest tax rate possible. It had to shore up declining revenues and dividends to stockholders — and to fuel big mergers, which it saw as the best cure for Lipitor disease.

But job creation? Merely a fig leaf for public consumption to make this tax holiday palatable to politicians. Jobs were lost, not created.

By August 2007, as the AP graphic shows, pharmaceutical companies had announced thousands of jobs cuts just two years after the repatriation of overseas profits.

Four years ago, Mr. Weisman of the Post reported others were lining up at the tax-break trough:

Procter & Gamble Co. intends to bring home $10.7 billion, and Johnson & Johnson Inc. has an $11 billion plan. Schering-Plough Corp. could bring back $9 billion. This week, Hewlett-Packard Co. announced it will repatriate $14.5 billion in the second half of the year, mainly for “strategic acquisitions,” said Ryan Donovan, an HP spokesman.

Strategic acquisitions made possible by a jobs creation act? More than 800 companies took advantage of the tax break.

Here’s another way to examine passage of the 2004 act. Cui bono politically?

Apparently, the congressional sponsor and 40 co-sponsors did. Let’s look at how just one member of the coalition — the pharmaceutical industry — sought to influence members of Congress through donations to their campaigns.

The Ways and Means Committee, by constitutional fiat, is the chief tax-writing committee of the House of Representatives. The 2004 bill was primarily a creation of the House.

Former congressman Bill Thomas (R-Calif) served as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the run-up to the bill’s passage. He’s listed as the prime House sponsor of the American Jobs Creation Act. During his congressional career, the pharmaceutical industry gave his campaign more than $407,000.

The bill had 40 sponsors. All but one were Republicans. A review of the campaign contributions records of these 40 men and women aggregated by the Center for Responsive Politics showed that since 1998, the pharmaceutical industry has given their campaign committees $4.49 million. Of those 40 co-sponsors, 14 served on the Ways and Means Committee: They have received, since 1998, $2.5 million from Big Pharma.

Recall that, thanks to the act’s tax break, Pfizer repatriated $37 billion.

Former Rep. Nancy L. Johnson, Democrat of Connecticut (where drug-maker Pfizer has a significant research and development presence), received more than $692,000 from Big Pharma between 1998 and her departure from office. She is now a senior public policy adviser (er, lobbyist) for Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz and serves on the Pfizer U.S. Health Advisory Board.

The bill had no serious opposition in Congress. The Senate voted 69-17 on the bill; The House, 207-16. Their acquiesance allowed an average rate of return of 22,000 percent for the corporations who lobbied for this bill, say the Kansas professors.

If $1 invested in lobbying earns a $220 return, as the Kansas study suggests, then the pharmaceutical industry has invested, for the 41 sponsors and co-sponsors of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, about $4.5 million. That’s a return of $990 million. That’s pretty good ROI for buying only 7 percent of the members of Congress.

According to Paul Kane and Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post, donations are down — way down. Consider the first two months of 2005, 2007, and 2009: $48.8 million in ‘05; $41.6 million in ‘07; and a paltry $30.7 million this year. That’s expected, write the Post reporters, in the early months of odd-numbered years after presidential or mid-term contests.

It’s known as “donor fatigue.” It’s particularly bad at the moment because so many candidates dunned so many donors in an election year that saw the presidential election cost more than a billion dollars.

Toss in a nasty, hundred-year storm of a recession and whew, you’ve got trouble raising money for the mid-term political wars to come in 2010. Remember, the money needed for mid-term elections is needed now, not a year from now. Name-recognition efforts of challengers must begin now if they expect to have a prayer toppling incumbents.

Meanwhile, lobbying is a growth industry. According to the Center for Responsive Politics:

While companies across the board were losing record amounts of money and laying off employees last year, at least one industry seemed to weather the recession: lobbying. Special interests paid Washington lobbyists $3.2 billion in 2008, more than any other year on record and a 13.7 percent increase from 2007.

So what’s this mean? Big dollars aren’t flowing to politicians; they’re flowing to K Street lobbying firms. The federal government is handing out bailout money like candy. If you’re a deep-pocket corporate donor awash in recession blues, how would you invest your money?

Yep — lobby for part of that bailout bonanza. You can always buy a politician with the ROI later.

But … I doubt it. An obstacle lies squarely in the path of politicians’ ability or willingness to act sensibly and selflessly. That obstacle is money. Or, rather, the pursuit of it to grasp and maintain power, prestige, and wealth.

Despite any number of outrageous conflations of influential wealth and influenced legislation, and despite the protestations of the masses with fewer dollars over the power of the few with many dollars, and despite the laughable “reforms” Congress attempts occasionally, money is not going to leave politics.

Wishing won’t make it so. Neither will endless, whining posts by bloggers like me. Money is part of the DNA of politics and will remain so (thanks, in part, to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the “Millionaire’s Amendment” in McCain-Feingold).

“We need transparency,” yell the populists, the progressives, and those just plain pissed off. “We need more disclosure,” they shout.

Sure. Why not. Badger Congress into writing legislation uninfluenced by lobbyists that would produce more transparency and more disclosure of all that money. (Hope the Senate gets around to allowing electronic filing of campaign finance reports …)

That, of course, is unlikely, because so much money is involved — and so much power. Full, easy-to-access transparency of every political dollar means easy-to-access identification of those who may be trading donations for access to legislators. Ditto lobbying expenditures.

The Democratic and Republican parties along their hench-committees — the national committees, the congressional campaign committees, and the senate campaign committees — collected more than $3 billion for the 2008 election cycle — and more than $12.8 billion since 2000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That does not count fundraising by individual congressional and presidential candidates, which is likely billions more.

Many of our representatives in Congress began their political careers running for statewide offices back home. Well, in 2008, that was pricey, too. Fundraising for all candidates and committees — governors, state House and Senate seats, other statewide posts — exceeded $1.9 billion, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Since 2000, according to the institute’s data, state political races have accounted for $13.1 billion in fundraising.

That’s about $46 billion in political spending in just eight years (and doesn’t count lobbying expenditures aimed at state legislators and state agencies).

Some months ago, I argued that, because the paltry public funding raised through the IRS check-off represented so little money, Congress should add $10 billion a year to the federal budget to pay for every single election in the United States. The public, I argued, must outbid the monied, corporate influence seekers who fund political campaigns in exchange for access to politicians unavailable to you and me.

Well, I must have taken a Phelps-sized bong hit before I wrote that post. The likelihood that Congress would approve public financing of political campaigns so substantial that office seekers would forego any other campaign contributions is damn small. Non-existent, in fact. The lobbyists whose influence depends on infusing money into politics will not let that happen.

Since 2000, lobbyists have spent $20.3 billion to lobby Congress and federal agencies (most notably, regulatory agencies), according to the center.

Sadly, politics operates in a world inhabited by money raised through lobbyists and other influence seekers and peddlers, bundlers, 527s, inauguration committees, state and national party campaign committees, convention committees and, probably, leftover Nixon bagmen.

It’s difficult, too, to tell the difference between a politician and a lobbyist, because they’re often the same person. Revolving Door, a study of the nexus between governing and lobbying by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, found that “17 of 24 former Bush Cabinet members have taken positions with at least 119 companies, including 65 firms that lobby the government and 40 that lobby the agencies they headed.”

It’s not just former executive branch members selling access for profit. Since 2005, 195 members of Congress have fled Capitol Hill for K Street to become lobbyists — and cash in on their access to their former congressional colleagues. And don’t forget the senior congressional staff members that flit back and forth from K Street to Capitol Hill.

Since the early ’90s found former House Speaker Tom DeLay gaming the system to secure and hold GOP power, politics has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. There’s so much money to be made by so many entities, from the broadcasters who sell air time for ads, to political consultants who poll the populace and design the ads, to the companies that provide computers and phones, and even caterers. In the business of politics, there’s plenty of money to go around.

Writes Robert G. Kaiser, associate editor of The Washington Post, Feb. 2:

Washington is broken: Lobbyists and special interests have turned our government into a game that only they can afford to play. They write the checks, and the citizenry gets stuck with the bill. Politics is no longer a mission; it’s a business.

All of this is damn disgusting. Plenty of folks are fed up with the role of money in politics. So consider these two points:

1. Money will remain in politics and in fact increase.
2. People are fed up with the behavior of those pouring money into politics and profiting.

At what point will Fact 2 erode the impact of Fact 1? Not soon, argues Mr. Kaiser in discussing President Obama’s pledge to curb lobbyists’ influence in D.C.:

But slowing the revolving door will not be nearly enough to dismantle the Washington culture of money, lobbying and self-dealing that has metastasized over four decades. This culture has created multimillionaires and provided a grand style of life to thousands. It has helped moneyed interests protect their status and privileges, undermined government regulation of business and turned our elected officials into chronic money-chasers. Real reform will require more than presidential fiat.

But consider the failure of former Sen. Tom Daschle’s failed nomination for an Obama Cabinet post because the solon-turned-sinecure was too dumb or too selfish to pay about $140,000 in income taxes on a car service provided by an influential friend. Because of Sen. Daschle’s moronic — or arrogant — mistake, the public learned that his carefully crafted common-man image was merely an artifice.

Consider, too, the similarly errant, stupid tax behaviors of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who failed to pay $34,000 he owed until offered a cabinet job. And the idiocy of Nancy Killefer, “chosen to be the White House chief performance officer, who once had a $900 lien placed on her house for failing to pay unemployment taxes on household help.”

Has the outrageous, callous behaviors revealed of politicians and political wanna-bees cracked the public’s tolerance for business-as-usual Washington, D.C., politics?

Perhaps. But I’ll bet you $46 billion over the next eight years it hasn’t.

“Wanna make some serious money real fast — and legal? Yeah, really — legally.

“All you gotta do is give me about $114 million. That’s all — and I’ll give you an ROI of 258,449 percent. Yep. You heard right — 258,449 percent. You’ll make $295.2 billion.

“That work for you?”

Apparently, yes. The Troubled Asset Relief Program, the now-fabled, poorly supervised “TARP,” has been quite a lucrative return on investment for companies getting the taxpayer-funded bailout bucks.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics:

The struggling companies whose freewheeling business practices have contributed to the country’s economic woes are getting a lucrative return on at least one of their investments. Beneficiaries of the $700 billion bailout package in the finance and automotive industries have spent a total of $114.2 million on lobbying in the past year and contributions toward the 2008 election. … The companies’ political activities have, in part, yielded them $295.2 billion from the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), an extraordinary return of 258,449 percent.

Says the center’s director, Sheila Krumholz:

Even in the best economic times, you won’t find an investment with a greater payoff than what these companies have been getting. Some of the companies and industries that have received payments may now consider their contributions and lobbying to be the smartest investments they’ve made in years.”

Now, who received the most in campaign contributions from these companies? Why, the politicians who are charged with oversight of TARP expenditures.

According to the center:

They include Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs (he received $854,200 from the companies in the 2008 election cycle, including money to his presidential campaign) and Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chair of the Senate Finance Committee (he received $279,000). In total, members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Senate Finance Committee and House Financial Services Committee received $5.2 million from TARP recipients in the 2007-2008 election cycle.

President Obama’s campaign received at least $4.3 million in donations from employees at these companies.

The center provides a chart listing TARP recipients as of Feb. 2, campaign contributions for the 2007-2008 cycle, lobbying expenditures for 2008, the amount of TARP money received, and what the center terns “return on investment.” Some ROIs reach into millions of percent.

It’s interesting but infuriating reading, of course, and the analysis is somewhat flawed and unfair. Not all of the lobbying expenditures were directly targeted at obtaining TARP money. Many of the campaign contributions may actually have been given because of a corporate donor’s belief in a particular candidate (please, stop laughing.)

But that amount of money placed into politics by corporations that control global financial markets amounts to an enormous megaphone. Politicians can’t help but hear, let alone be deafened, by voices that loud.

The center’s analysis is instructive. It reminds us yet again of the corrosive role of Big Money in political decision making.

Critical first steps, many would argue, were his appointments of former rival and New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of State and adviser Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations. The president has sent former senator George Mitchell to the Mideast and Richard Holbrook to Afghanistan and Pakistan as special envoys. So far, so good.

Presidents appoint ambassadors to represent American interests abroad. Presumably presidents appoint seasoned, experienced foreign diplomats to such delicate tasks. So President Obama has dozens of ambassadors to appoint. And the first rumor is … Dan Rooney as ambassador to Ireland? The owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and president and co-founder of The American Ireland Funds?

Neither the White House nor Mr. Rooney have commented. Now, Mr. Rooney may be qualified to be an ambassador. But with a State Department stable filled with foreign-policy professionals, why would a president need to appoint the owner of a professional sports franchise as an ambassador?

Well, we all know the answer, don’t we? Patronage. Presidents hand out ambassadorships like candy to those who helped — financially — put them in the White House.

In June 2007, Scholars & Rogues examined the ambassadorial appointments of three presidents:

President Bush’s 36 percent rate exceeds the 29 percent of President Clinton’s ambassadorial nominees who were non-career appointees. During George Herbert Walker Bush’s presidency, about 31 percent were non-career appointees.

According to a Scholars & Rogues examination of records at the Office of the Historian of the Department of State, George W. Bush has made 370 ambassadorial nominations — of which 133 have been non-career appointees rather than career Foreign Service officers. President Clinton’s 431 nominations included 127 non-career appointees. The first President Bush made 272 nominations, of which 85 were non-career appointees.

The post also examined the financial connections to President George W. Bush’s campaigns of those appointed to patronage ambassadorships.

The post discerned that under these three presidents, some nations knew only non-career, or patronage, appointments. The Obama White House website, under a section called “Renewing American Diplomacy,” says:

Obama and Biden will rebuild our alliances to meet the common challenges of the 21st century. America is strongest when we act alongside strong partners. Now is the time for a new era of international cooperation that strengthens old partnerships and builds new ones to confront the common challenges of the 21st century — terrorism and nuclear weapons; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. …

To make diplomacy a priority, Obama and Biden will stop shuttering consulates and start opening them in difficult corners of the world — particularly in Africa. They will expand our foreign service, and develop our civilian capacity to work alongside the military. [emphasis added]

President Obama has a promise to keep to the electorate — improve American diplomacy. He ran on that platform. But he — as did the presidents before him — has a political need to retain or curry favor with political donors. Eventually, you’ll see some Obama appointments that produce a “What the …” response.

Should you wonder whom to look for as potential patronage appointments, consider this Center for Responsive Politics list of the 561 bundlers who secured at least $63 million for President Obama’s campaign. Then there’s list of employers of President Obama’s top contributors. And this list of the top 20 industries that contributed to his campaign.

Should you wish to keep track of how seriously President Obama views ambassadorial relationships with foreign governments, check the White House website for “Nominations and Appointments” from time to time — as S&R will.

President Obama promised voters better government and better diplomacy. Let’s keep track of whom he appoints to do that.

Across the Atlantic, in the UK, the FTSE 100 index of companies contributes 3.3% of Her Majesty’s tax take. Even if you add in the salaries and other taxes that these companies manage on behalf of Treasury, it is no more than 7%.

The US taxation system is what is known as progressive; it falls more heavily on the wealthy than on the poor. The intention is that it is to be fairer. And so, in the US, the top 10% of taxpayers contribute 70% of taxes, and the top 1% contribute 40% of taxes. Conversely, the bottom 40% of registered taxpayers actually received more money back through tax grants than they contributed through their incomes.

Depending on how you feel about rich people, you could be cheered or charged about such information. However, you shouldn’t be surprised at the consequences.

Since 2000, the number of lobbyists in Washington has doubled to 34,750.

Because, you see, when a small number of businesses are responsible for such a large proportion of the tax-take, they have a special interest in ensuring that the money is spent on their interests, and a lot of influence in making sure it happens.

Oil companies, which pay taxes of around $ 60 billion, received $ 12 billion back in special tax concessions. Hardly a surprise when they’re actually paying 1.4 times more tax than they earn in profits.

That old joke, “When you owe the bank $100, they own you. When you owe the bank $1billion, you own them,” is still true. When a government depends on a very small base for its tax revenue then it is also in the pocket of their special interests.

Just as true is that, when a government pushes all its money into a few specialist vehicles designed to deliver on its promises (such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Medicare and Medicaid) it also stimulates them to spend vast amounts of money ensuring the largess continues.

Charities, too, vary widely in the amount they spend on fundraising relative to the amount they spend on their stated mission (from 15 to 25% for “good” ones, through to 95% for “bad” ones).

The point here is that this is hardly wise investment. If you put all your money in one investment, then that is a very concentrated risk. Most investors regard diversification as critical.

A call to a senior executive at Sony this week about how they were dealing with the credit crisis resulted in the response, “ Same as always, some parts of the business are up, and some parts of the business are down.” Sony is highly diversified, so they can ride this out.

But a government that depends on such a focused number of businesses for its tax take is going to have to ride up and down with those businesses. And when those self-same businesses demand a $700 billion bailout because they fucked up, then the government belongs to them and has to play ball.

As the US election runs to its final conclusion, it is very tempting to demand of politicians that they take more tax from the few than spreading the load around.

The consequence will be a government even more in hock to special interests.

Park for a minute and tell us something. After you’re elected president, what are you gonna do with those buffoons running the Minerals Management Service that collects each year oil and gas royalties of $10 billion from oil companies? The Interior Department’s inspector general says top officials there have been involved in “financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.”

And while you’re at it, what about Nancy Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission? You plan to let her keep on defending “trips she took that were paid for by the industries that her agency regulates“? You gonna let her keep on telling Congress that her agency does not need a larger budget to police the the industries that produce the nation’s consumer goods?

You know, toxic goods like “the 518,028 tubes of toothpaste [falsely labeled as Colgate] worth an estimated $730,419 that were shipped into the country and distributed to bargain retail stores in several states last year”? Or the 21 million toys recalled because of excessive levels of lead paint?

And what are you gonna do about flip-flopper Stephen L. Johnson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency who says “yes” until the White House, critics say, tells him to say “no”? Mr. Johnson initially told California it could limit tailpipe emissions from motor vehicles at higher-than-federal standards — but, critics say, reversed himself after a nudge from the Bush administration. Yes, he’s the guy who heads an agency that during the Bush administration once produced an annual federal report on air pollution with no section on global warming.

Yes, he was the guy in charge when the EPA — to save industry about $6 million in paperwork costs — instituted a “newly revised Toxics Release Inventory rule [that] will also make it possible for hundreds of large corporations to avoid reporting specific amounts of toxic chemicals they release into the air, land, or water, environmentalists warn.” [emphasis added]

And while you’re at it, do you plan to appoint someone as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission just ’cause he was a special assistant to the president, or a member of your transition team, or the general counsel to your campaign? You know, like President Bush did for current chair Kevin J. Martin?

You remember Mr. Martin, don’t you, the guy who faced “a congressional inquiry into the FCC’s procedures and allegations of flawed research studies, suppressing data, ignoring public input and holding hearings with minimal notice”? Yes, that guy, the one who told Congress that there’s no need to make rules to prevent an Internet service provider, like, say, Comcast, from creating “a ‘fast lane‘ for certain Internet content and applications” that would, in effect, create favored tiers of access for some commercial users over others.

And what are you gonna do about Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who ducked any responsibility for the scandal rattling the $85 billion student loan industry with a bland statement that “We monitor these programs vigorously” and that the system was “crying out for reform”? And what about her work with No Child Left Behind, the 2001 law requiring schools to track the progress of students in math and English? Given that the government never fully provided the states with funding to appropriately enact the law, has it worked? How hard did she actually push for full funding? Should she stay? Go?

And there are so many others. Do you plan to examine the performance of the head honchoes in the Securities and Exchange Commission? Where were the regulators when financial institutions were tossing out subprime loans like candy? Did the SEC act with sufficient alacrity “to examine the role of the rating agencies in lending practices by the mortgage industry”?

You plan to retain Christopher Cox as chairman of an agency that’s supposed to regulate industry? Do you believe him when he says he’s “actively on the lookout for possible securities fraud?” You know, of course, that as a congressman he pushed a bill that would restrict investors’ ability to sue industry? And that as chair, critics fear he’s still pushing to protect industry, not regulate it? Is that the kind of SEC you want?

What about those fine folks at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, led by John Dugan? His bio says Mr. Dugan is the “administrator of national banks and chief officer of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC supervises about 1,700 federally chartered commercial banks and about 50 federal branches and agencies of foreign banks in the United States, comprising nearly two-thirds of the assets of the commercial banking system.” Hmmm. Big banks are tumbling fast and furious. You gonna keep him?

What about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission? It will become more on the spot as the nuclear power industry gears up to do its self-promoted part in ending our reliance on foreign energy sources. What about those agencies with lots of words in their names that deal with transportation safety in the air, on land and over the water? ‘Cause you know, of course, that the nation’s infrastructure is screwed up beyond belief. Who’s gonna fix it for you? And are you gonna keep on selling off interstate highways and other infrastructures to private investors instead of refurbishing them?

And was creating the Department of Homeland Security really a good idea? Who’s gonna untangle that debacle? And, sheesh, who are you gonna name to run FEMA?

C’mon, Barack. ‘Fess up, John. You are fully aware that as president you determine through your constitutional appointment authority how your administration functions through the roughly 2,000 people you name to administer federal departments and agencies.

So back off those lame, endlessly repetitive stump speeches. If you continue to claim the federal government is a) inefficient, b) too large), c) too small, d) ineffective or e) all of the above, talk turkey. Name names. Tell voters precisely the credentials and qualifications you’ll be checking off on folks who apply to work in your administration.

You’ve been lucky so far. The big-time media “analysts” and “commentators” and “contributers” and “anchors” have let you off the hook. You get to divert our attention from the core of governmental chaos by talking only about gay marriage (good? bad?), Iraq (in? out?), Supreme Court appointments (no litmus test?), elitism (him, not me!), education, (more teachers now, please), crime (more police now, please), illegal immigration (it’s really bad, of course!). You get to avoid most of what really counts.

So give us the real red meat. Who’s really gonna run the government? Tell us.

And we know you’re not going to be personally sifting through a gazillion résumés to fill thousands of government posts. So who’s gonna do that?

Your “transition team,” of course. Why don’t you tell us now instead of after the election whom you’ll appoint to that team? The makeup of your transition team will tell us much about the qualifications you’ll be looking for in your administrative appointments.

But, of course, you won’t talk about this. Presidential candidates rarely do. And our wonderful media, far more interested in personalities, horse races and conflict (because conflict is what really sells papers and pumps up TV ratings), will harrumph, harrumph mightily and ask more stupid questions that you pretend to be offended by.

You’ve really got it easy, don’t you?

Well, well, well….

There’s been a spurt of 527 activity on behalf of Sen. John McCain, but Barack Obama campaign has suddenly gone silent on the subject.That’s because, after of year of telling donors not to contribute to 527 groups, of encouraging strategists not to form them and of suggesting that outside messaging efforts would not be welcome in Obama’s Democratic Party, Obama’s strategists have changed their approach.

An Obama adviser privy to the campaign’s internal thinking on the matter says that,with less than two months before the election and with the realization that Republicans have achieved financial parity with Democrats, they hope that Democratic allies — what another campaign aide termed “the cavalry” — with come to Obama’s aid.

Obama has made no attempt to hide that he’s a control freak. He’s ordered donors to stay away from 527s and called all the money to his campaign directly. He’s cold-shouldered the grassroots and Netroots. And he’s ignored the blogs like a high school quarterback ignores his 14 year-old sister when his friends are watching.

He’s played to the center – which isn’t a bad strategy in and of itself – but in the process has made a show of distancing himself from all the fringe freakbat liberals out there to the left of Ken Salazar. He and Biden have been so complimentary of John McCain that I half expect them to haul out the kneepads and chapstick at any moment.*

Of course, you can see the reason for all the civility. McCain has himself run a civil, honest and fair campaign so far. Errr, no, wait. That’s not right. He’s lied about Obama so badly that FOX freakin’ News called him on it!

Well, still. It’s not like the real power brokers in the GOP won’t rein him in if he gets too out of hand, right? (By the way, can anybody here explain how an obscure noun like “swiftboat” got to be a verb?)

A week and a half ago, at the end of a gloriously staged spectacle in Mile High Stadium, Barack Obama was King of the World. Since then his opponents have put on an epic display of ballistic podiatry by focusing the world’s undivided attention on the worst VP nominee since Dan Quayle (and frankly, I think I prefer Quayle; truth be told, Palin scares me worse than Marilyn Quayle). Life’s great, right?

Except, if we’re to place any stock in the most recent round of polls (which I don’t, completely – but there’s no excuse for him having placed himself behind the 8 ball this badly), he’s now running from behind in a world where his opponent has made significant gains on the money front.

So now Barack has come around to the idea that his campaign needs the sort of opponent-tenderizing capability that only a snarling 527 can provide. Or maybe he was led around to the conclusion by his advisers. Not sure that matters. All that matters is that it’s late in the day. Maybe too late – I’m not an expert on campaign law and procedures, but I’m seeing some folks questioning whether it’s technically doable at this point, and if so, is it too late to really raise the cash needed to do it right? (Whatever may be happening on the 527 front, there’s no outreach to the blogosphere yet. Maybe he just assumes they’ll fight to the death for him because, well, what the hell choice do they have. And he may well be right. Still, you want people fighting out of love and passion instead of dread and spite if at all possible.)

Of course, the serious racist stuff hasn’t started to fly yet, although it certainly will. It won’t come from McCain, but it will come from his surrogates. You know, kind that Obama has made clear he doesn’t need.

I respect that Obama wants to run a high-road campaign, that he wants to win the right way. But I’m starting to suspect a bit of arrogance on his part – it’s one thing to want to win the right way and another entirely to assume that it can be done, despite all evidence pointing the other way.

Maybe his new “No Maverick” ad is a sign that he’s getting it, finally. Time will tell, and I guess we’ll know soon enough if he adapted in time.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting here thinking: lack of experience, indeed….

* Thanks to Nick Langewis for this disturbing turn of phrase.

I am not a bad man (although to read all the news articles one would think I was Osama Bin Laden), but I did many bad things.

I am not a bad man, but I did many bad things.  This has become a sort of mantra among our criminals, both the garden variety and white-collar sort, these days.  It used to be that people would say, “I done wrong.”  Now, they say, “I made some mistakes” or, even better, “Mistakes were made,” or my all-time favorite, “I made some bad choices.”  It’s not uncommon to hear parents of vicious, violent, juvenile criminals who kill children in drive-by shootings say, “He’s a good kid who made some bad choices.” 

So, when do the “mistakes” and “bad choices” add up to making someone a bad person?  Well, when those mistakes involve deliberately hurting other people for your own gain, that makes you a bad person in my book.  The only issue is with degree.  Abramoff’s self-pitying reference about being compared to Osama Bin Laden notwithstanding, he is a very bad person, indeed. 

Abramoff goes on to say to Judge Huvelle:

As I have sat alone in prison, realizing what my actions have done to permanently injure people, especially my family, I see that my crimes all had the same cause – my short-sighted and selfish view that the ends could justify the means.

Well – duh.  If the end is your personal enrichment, Mr. Abramoff, and the means to get it is defrauding other people and, in your case, your nation, then all you have told us is that criminals (yes, bad people, Jack) see their own selfish ends as being far more important than the means that hurt others.  And, Jack, you didn’t give a flying happy about the people you hurt until you got caught and thrown in prison now, did you?

The fact is, Jack Abramoff and those like him (many of whom work on K Street, I suspect) are common criminals and cancers on the Republic.  People like Abramoff shorten the life of any republic because they give people yet another reason to believe that their government is corrupt.  There were Abramoffs in the Roman Republic, too. 

Abramoff got his sentence reduced by Judge Huvelle, and that’s as it should be.  He cooperated with the prosecution and sent some more scumbags to prison.  Prosecutors need the sentence-reduction carrot to catch as many bad guys as possible.  But there are two things that stink to high heaven, here.  The first is that the sentencing guidelines are too light to begin with.  Someone who did what Abramoff did should be subject to at least a 25-year maximum, which would give prosecutors a lot of leverage for negotiating sentence reduction while still seeing that traitors like Abramoff serve a very long time in the end.  The second is that Abramoff’s actions and letter makes it clear that he repents only getting caught.  He has offered the Chippewas about two cents on the dollar for what he stole, and the tribe says that he has not apologized to them.  His letter is laced with self-pity and self-serving references to the hardship his family is enduring. 

So tell me, Jack, when has anyone ever been sent to prison without causing hardship for his family?  Why are you so special?

Oh yeah.  I forgot.  You’re special because you think you are.

Rot in jail.

The percentage of respondents in national polls who believe Congress is doing a good job is buried in the teens, even lower than approval ratings for President Bush, now trending in the mid- to high-20s. The re-election rate for House members in 2006 was 94 percent (down from 98 percent in ‘04); the rate for senators was 79 percent in 2006 (down from 96 percent in ‘04), according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Incumbency rules. Many voters might argue that collectively, members of Congress are greedheads mired in the trappings of power wrapped tightly around them by corporate lobbyists paid millions of dollars to either extract largesse from the Hill or prevent lawmaking or regulatory rule-writing that would be bad for business. But …

After meeting their House representative or senator face to face, those same voters might say: “Gee. What a wonderful person. He really cares about us folks back here in the district.” Ah, the flitting pleasure of being glad-handed, looked in the eye and backslapped by a professional politicians whose favorite line is: “I’ll have my staff look into it. Thanks for calling this to my attention. Hey, how’s [insert name of appropriate spouse, child or relative, usually whispered by an aide at the pol's elbow]?”

So what standards of performance should voters apply when considering whether to re-elect an incumbent? Such staggeringly high re-election rates suggest voters keep mindlessly sending miscreants back to the Hill to continue digging the deepest, blackest of holes in which to bury taxpayers and any notions of sound public policy.

What does the incumbent do for constituents?

My congressman, like all members of Congress, will help you obtain presidential greetings, obtain a flag flown over the Capitol, apply to a service academy, intervene with a federal agency (until it gets too messy, of course), prod along a passport request, get a White House tour, and generally navigate the federal government.

All politics is local, said Tip O’Neill, the former speaker of the House. Members of Congress know this. Successfully helping a constituent with a problem virtually guarantees a vote. Having a long history of constituent service is a significant advantage of incumbency.

But should constituent service now be viewed from the perspective of “all of us” instead of just “me“? Voters need a collective view of an incumbent’s performance instead of “what’s in it for me.”

Does the incumbent demonstrate appropriate flexibility in his or her long-term congressional mission as current events unfold over time?

This is a delicate point. Wisdom in Congress is in short supply because polling results have replaced incumbents’ brains. Incumbents who alter a position over time are often accused of becoming informal footwear — flip-floppers. Voters must discern whether an incumbent’s change of mind reflects a sincere desire to find the wisest position instead of the politically adroit one. Voters need to question closely their incumbents’ alterations of position to determine the validity of their motivations.

Does the incumbent demonstrate sufficient knowledge and competency in applying policy to national problems?

More than 80 percent of respondents to national polls do not approve of the collective performance of members of Congress. That’s a charge of mass incompetence. Individually, members of Congress may be competent in applying policy to problems but unable or unwilling to do so because of perceived political restrictions. It’s not always easy for a voter with her hand on the lever to determine her member’s competency.

She could consult her member’s voting records, legislation actually filed, and follow her member’s work on the committees the member has been assigned to.

But it’s not difficult to determine if a member of Congress is unwilling to act independently based on that member’s knowledge and competency. A voter may critically read the press releases on her member’s congressional Web site and compare that wording with talking points from the White House (if the member’s party holds the presidency) or with the Web site rhetoric of the national party organizations in either the House or the Senate.

Small pockets of individual competency may actually reside in Congress, but they remain aisle-locked by a lack of independence and political courage.

Is the incumbent immune to the blandishments of lobbyists?

There is no vaccination that can prevent the nose of a member of Congress from catching the tiniest whiff of a subtle quid pro quo. Should incumbents listen to lobbyists? Yes, they should listen. But not trade favor for favor — or dollars.

Voters know that incumbents (and challengers are not immune) in their mediated campaign posturings will, with a throaty harrumph, harrumph, rail against the evil special interests and promise to stand up against them when returned to the hall of Congress.

But what is the relationship between the incumbent and lobbyists? Check the incumbent’s campaign fundraising over time. What percentage of his or her funds come from political action committees (and what were they)? Did any PACs represent interests before committees on which the incumbent serves? Did representatives of lobbyists contribute to wording of legislation associated with the incumbent? Do the lobbyists represent corporations in the incumbent’s district that depend on federal government spending?

Does the incumbent believe that being a member of Congress has higher responsibilities than maximizing the pork delivered to his or her district?

Incumbents are irrevocably wedded to the belief that voters are sufficiently impressed by the size of the taxpayer-funded government largesse delivered to the district to assure their votes. In fact, incumbents will go to almost unbelievable lengths to associate themselves with every damn federal dollar they can. Read the press releases on their congressional Web sites. Each time you see the phrases “secured,” “helped secure,” “voted for,” and “announced grant,” add up the dollars. That’s what I did when my congressman claimed he’d brought a quarter of a billion dollars into the district in his first term on the Hill.

Overemphasizing an incumbent’s influence in securing the district’s rasher of bacon is dishonest. Assigning as the principal responsibility for a member of Congress carving out the most pork for the district is selfish … and it actually offends other members of Congress (who think it minimizes their pork).

Read the incumbent’s press releases for whiffs of pork. Ferret out the incumbent’s earmarks. Determine the incumbent’s priorities. Who does the incumbent really serve?

Does the incumbent provide ready, easy access to pertinent information on his or her congressional Web site?

Usually, voters must spend oodles of time and energy finding information that appropriately measures an incumbent’s performance. For example, does the incumbent have links that clearly show his or her voting record, requested earmarks, fundraising efforts, and daily calendars and phone logs showing whom he or she speaks with?

If voters desire a Congress whose approval rating may rapidly ascend from the bickering swill of a cellar in which it now resides, they must ignore the carefully chosen clothes, the ivory-white smiles, the franked, flashy, colorful mailings labeled “Legislative Reports,” the 30-second spots that briefly flash the incumbents’ cheerful families into consciousness, the local TV news showing the incumbent backed by flags and impressive-looking bookcases touting his or her latest legislative success … and all that other pretentious crap.

Determining the competency of an incumbent is hard work. They don’t make it easy. If voters want a Congress they can be proud of, they’ve got to do the work necessary to roust the current, incompetent incumbents.

(Thx to my colleague and longtime Gannett national correspondent John Hanchette for his insight.)

Young man, you have the gift of gab. Keep it up and some day you’ll be President of the United States.

— an old Republican to a young Warren G. Harding after his first political speech, according to a New York Times obituary of President Harding; Aug. 3, 1923.

I predicted that New Orleans would come back as a stronger and better city. That’s the prediction I made. I also pledged that we’d help. And $126 billion later, three years after the storm — we’ve helped deliver $126 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money. (Applause.) And I thank you for applauding on that statement, but I know you’re applauding the American taxpayer. A lot of people around the country care deeply about the people down here. And so it was — you know, it was money that we were happy to spend.

— President Bush, speaking at the historic Jackson Barracks in New Orleans on the recovery of the Gulf Coast region three years after Hurricane Katrina; Aug. 20.

Let no one suffer the illusion that $126 billion has gone straight to where it is needed and where it belongs.

— Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., in an interview with The Associated Press, saying that the New Orleans recovery was far from complete and that key projects won’t be finished without more federal money; Aug. 20.

Q: Gordon, can you tell us where the negotiations stand with Iraq and the United States, Secretary Rice’s talks? And what are the major sticking points in that agreement for the troop withdrawal?
MR. JOHNDROE: I think you probably heard from Secretary Rice, now in Baghdad — you certainly have some comments from her on the plane, that she made last night on the plane into Baghdad. Discussions are ongoing. We have made some progress in the recent days on an agreement with the Iraqis, but there is no final agreement yet. We will continue to have these discussions with the Iraqis.

— exchange between reporter and White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe at Crawford, Texas, press briefing; Aug. 21.

Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it. … You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.

— Will Rogers

No leader has taken greater risks in the struggle against terrorism than President Musharraf of Pakistan and no country has more at stake in the fight. This past week, in his address to the American people, President Bush commended President Musharraf’s strong leadership. Pakistan’s success will be a success for all of us in the fight against terrorism and Pakistan deserves support from us all.

— Paul Wolfowitz, speaking at the 38th Verkunde Conference on Security Policy in Munich, Germany; Feb. 2, 2002.

The only option is negotiation. Using force against the militants in the tribal area is only in the interests of the U.S.

— Shafi Ullah, 29, a civil servant in Pakistan; a poll conducted by the International Republican Institute shows that 71 percent of responding Pakistanis oppose their country’s cooperation in the U.S. war on terror; Aug. 22.

George McGovern understood from the very depths of his being that napalm, and gas, and 500,000 Americans in the swamps of Vietnam was not the answer to the people of Vietnam or the people of the United States. George McGovern, ladies and gentlemen, had another solution for Vietnam. … George’s concept for underdeveloped countries is food; his concept is shelter, education, health, opportunity, and to bring a sense of brotherhood to submerged billions of people, wherever they may be.

— Sen. Abraham Ribicoff, D-Conn., nominating Sen. George McGovern for president at the Democratic National Convention; Aug. 28, 1968.

1. Larry Ellison, Oracle Corp., $84.6 million
2. John Thain, Merrill Lynch & Co., $83.1 million
3. Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp., $67.6 million
4. Richard Adkerson, Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold Inc., $65.3 million
5. Bob Simpson, XTO Energy Inc., $56.6 million
6. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., $53.9 million
7. Kenneth Chenault, American Express Co., $51.7 million
8. Eugene Isenberg, Nabors Industries Ltd., $44.6 million
9. John Mack, Morgan Stanley, $41.7 million
10. Glenn Murphy, Gap Inc., $39.1 million

— The Associated Press’s list of the highest-paid chief executive officers in 2007; says the AP: “The total pay figures are rounded, and are based on the AP’s compensation formula, which adds up salary, perks, bonuses, above-market interest on pay set aside for later, and company estimates for the value of stock options and stock awards on the day they were granted last year”; Aug. 21.

Q: But the Iraqis — officials are saying on the record this 2011 date. Do you dispute that? Do you have any reason to lead us away from it?
MR. JOHNDROE: I am not going to negotiate from the podium. President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki had a good conversation this morning in discussing the agreement. And our team and the Iraqi team are continuing discussions now. I think it’s fair to say — and I think everyone understands this — that when negotiations are hopefully coming to an end, when you can see the end in sight, there are a lot of details that have to be worked out, and I think we’re in the process of working out details right now.

— exchange between reporter and White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe at Crawford, Texas, press briefing; Aug. 22.

It is now evident that speculators in the energy futures markets play a much larger role than previously thought, and it is now even harder to accept the agency’s laughable assertion that excessive speculation has not contributed to rising energy prices.

— Rep. John D. Dingell, D-Mich., in a Washington Post story by David Cho that reports a Commodity Futures Trading Commission inspection of the books of Vitol, a private Swiss energy conglomerate, found that the firm held 11 percent of all oil contracts in July on the New York Mercantile Exchange; the commission said Vitol was “holding oil contracts as a profit-making investment rather than a means of lining up the actual delivery of fuel”; Aug. 21.

[A]s a group, the 173 [Republican and Democratic convention] donors have been heavily engaged in the struggle for federal political influence since the last presidential election. Since 2005, their Political Action Committees, executives and other employees have contributed, under campaign finance law limits, $180 million to federal candidates and political parties, an average of over $1 million per organization. Contributions to the conventions are unlimited and come directly from corporate treasuries, so they can increase this amount considerably. During the same period, these convention donors have also spent over $1.3 billion to lobby the federal government, an average of $7.6 million per organization. Large convention donations may give the donors’ lobbyists more clout with those they seek to influence.

— from a report by the Campaign Finance Institute (in collaboration with the Center for Responsive Politics) titled “Party Conventions’ Financiers Have Spent Nearly $1.5 billion on Federal Campaign Contributions and Lobbying Since 2005″; Aug. 20; emphasis added.

This is probably one of the single most significant food safety actions done for fresh produce in many years.

— Robert Brackett, chief scientist for the Grocery Manufacturers Association; according to a New York Times story by Gardiner Harris, the GMA originally “petitioned the [Food and Drug Administration] in 2000 to allow manufacturers to irradiate a wide variety of processed meats, fruits and vegetables and prepared foods”; Aug. 21.

It’s a total cop-out. They don’t have the resources, the authority or the political will to really protect consumers from unsafe food.

— Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food and Water Watch, on the FDA’s decision to allow some irradiation of food; Aug. 21.

$17,400,000

— the total lobbying expenditures of the Grocery Manufacturers of America since 1998, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

I would ban that too if I knew the students were using it in class. What we want to encourage in these students is active intellectual experience, in which they develop the wide range of complex reasoning abilities required of the good lawyers.

— Robert S. Summers, a professor at Cornell Law School who has banned use of laptop computers in his course, in a New York Times story about some colleges’ decisions to provide iPhones and Internet-enabled iPods to students; Aug. 20.

A larger question is whether the IOC is genuinely trying to govern in these Olympics, or whether it has become a mere bag man for Chinese organizers and corporate sponsors. It’s hardly without precedent for a state to cheat, or for a sports federation like FIG to fail in its oversight or fold under pressure from a host government.

— from a column by Washington Post writer Sally Jenkins castigating the International Olympic Committee for inaction regarding whether some Chinese gymnastics were legally old enough to compete in the Beijing Games; Aug. 22.

If you were going to choose a gender-specific role model, why one of these four cardboard characters? As American women have won more and more rights, the feminist movement has had the luxury of branching off in many, even contradictory, directions. Feminist icons run the gamut from activist Gloria Steinem to porn star Jenna Jamison … not to mention our first viable female Presidential candidate in Hillary Clinton. One friend suggested we organize a boycott of the Sex and the City movie. But it’s just not that important. In an ideal world, former fans wouldn’t show up because they’ve moved on. The movie—neither a hit nor a stinker—would simply go out with a whimper, just like any idea whose time had come and gone.

— Lindsey Gerdes, a staff editor for BusinessWeek in New York, in her Starting Out column; March 25.

Occasionally, I get a letter from someone who is in ‘contact’ with aliens. I am invited to ask them anything. And over the year’s I’ve prepared a little list of questions. The aliens are very advanced, remember. So I ask things like, ‘Please provide a short proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem’. I write out the simple theorem equation with the exponents. It’s a simulating exercise to think of questions to which no human today knows the answers, but where a correct answer would be recognised as such. It’s even more challenging to formulate such questions in fields other than mathematics. Perhaps we should hold a contest and collect the best responses in ‘10 Questions to Ask an Alien’.

— the late astronomer Carl Sagan from “The Demon Haunted World.”

photo credits:

• Sen. George McGovern: Rapid City (S.D.) Journal
• Chinese gymnast He Kexin: Xinhua
• the most distant galaxies known: European Space Agency et al

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

S&R readers might recall that Rep. John R. “Randy” Kuhl, R-N.Y., in June sent me and his other constituents a franked, four-color mailer announcing his latest scheme for improving government (you know, the task that taxpayers pay him and his 434 House confreres $169,000 a year each to accomplish).

His gimmick: Voters should send him their ideas for “fixing Washington”; he and his staff would select the top five and put them up for a vote on his House Web site. After “voting” ends Sept. 12, the winner, as Rep. Kuhl wrote in his monthly e-mailed newsletter, the Kuhl Khronicle, “will be introduced on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. I am thrilled to see my constituents getting directly involved in the legislative process.”

The continuing unconscionable abdication of independent, intelligent thought by my representative in Congress leaves me dumbfounded.

As I wrote in June, it’s no surprise he’s needed his constituents’ help. According to the Library of Congress’ Thomas database, Rep. Kuhl has introduced only 17 bills in the 110th Congress. Many are honorifics and procedurals or bills with no or few co-sponsors. (Give him credit, however, for seeking to extend SCHIP funding.)

It’s worth nothing, however, that his constituents — more than 400 submitted ideas — came up with some sound proposals (at least the top five, as picked by Rep. Kuhl and his staff).

Here they are, precisely as listed on Rep. Kuhl’s House Web site:

1. Make Stop-Loss illegal. Suggested by Andrew Anissi, Pittsford, NY (Stop-Loss is an involuntary extension of one’s military service, typically at the end of a tour of duty, due to unit requirements.)
2. Allocate a percentage of NASA’s annual funding to go toward studying alternative energy. Suggested by Elaine Johnson, Pittsford, NY
3. Award a $75 million dollar prize to the college, university, or private sector organization that finds an economically viable alternative for gasoline. Suggested by Cindy Bacchetta, Pittsford, NY
4. Make universal default on credit cards illegal. Suggested by David Matz, Bonaventure, NY. (A Universal Default Clause states that a creditor can raise your interest rate if you have been late on any of your loans.)
5. Impose term limits on all members of Congress. U.S. Representatives should be limited to six two-year terms (12yrs) and U.S. Senators to two six-year terms (12yrs). Suggested by Armand Marianetti, Farmington; John Gobe, Stanley; Peter Haidt, Pittsford; Mary Kelly, Ellicottville; Janis Becker, Caneadea; Martin Adduci, Machias; Dave Zacharias, Canandaigua; Robert Rutt, Rochester; Alexander Hoffarth, Rochester; Duane Granger, Pittsford

They’re all good ideas. But why did he need constituents’ help in bringing them to the floor of the House? It’s as if none of these had ever occurred to him or his staff — otherwise, presumably, he would have already filed legislation to promote them.

Rep. Kuhl has frequently boasted of regularly communicating with his constituents. In fact, he pledged when running for election and re-election that would he visit each town and village in his district. And he’s done so: “I held a public Town Meeting in every Town in the 29th Congressional District each years [sic] since being sworn-in to office. That’s 145 town meetings every year!”

So what? He has rarely reported on the issues discussed at those meetings, and journalists rarely cover them. His legislative record suggests nothing of public-policy substance occurred in each of those 145 “town meetings” during his terms in office. Hence, it seems, he has turned to his constituents to “fix Washington.”

Questions abound here. Rep. Kuhl has a lifetime rating of 82 percent by the American Conservative Union. His voting record displays staunch support of President Bush. So how were the winning entries selected? On what basis? Was any ideological litmus test applied?

I don’t know, because the congressman’s Web site doesn’t say. Not only that, each of these ideas is not exactly new or innovative. They’ve all been in the hopper of public opinion for some time. Did his “Fix Washington Project” result from a need to be perceived as innovative and responsive to constituents because he’s in a tough re-election fight against a viable Democrat? And because he trails his challenger in fundraising?

Should you wish to actually vote for one of the ideas, do so here. (You’ll notice, however, that it requires you to provide an e-mail address — an inelegant way to increase Rep. Kuhl’s database of recipients of the Kuhl Khronicle.)

Stay tuned; when a winner’s selected, I’ll report it here.

I, of course, voted for No. 5 — term limits. I want to amend the bill, however, to limit incompetent House members to two terms: That would prevent my representative in Congress from further insulting constituents’ intelligence after this term ends.

Read more about Rep. Kuhl’s “ideas” on public policy:

• High gas prices? My congressman has a plan — blame Democrats.
• My congressman’s ‘best’ idea? A legislative game show.
• My congressman’s advice on oil, gas prices … not so good.
• Bill to cut federal gas tax? Bad idea, bad public policy.