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October 10, 2005
Monday Night Clippings (Penalty-Free, Even)
"Fare thee well, Uncle Bill
See ya in the mornin'
Yes, sir."
Unlike a great many fellow brigadiers, I did not get started blogging because of Bill Hobbs (nor was it South Knox Bubba). I started blogging because of Ron Gunzburger, but I sort of backed into it. I frequented his website before it became a blog, and after it (sort of) became a blog (now it has an RSS feed and everything) I decided to do my own. But now I'm way off topic. Bill Hobbs has been a great read, a worthy ideological opposite sometimes, and an invaluable ally at other times. I know you know that his political commentary will be missed, and that I don't have to say that, but I just did. Pah. (Side note: In January of this year, Gunzburger announced that he was quitting. Did he take a hiatus? Yes. Did he end it after a relatively short period of time? You bet.)
UPDATE: Someone sure turned up the A.C. It's chilly in here.
Just after I started up two new categories for the purpose of highlighting legislators whose Capitol chairs need new arses in them, I realized that I should also perhaps point out legislators who are submitting the kinds of bills that are needed to clean up the place. State Senator Rosalind Kurita (Bob Corker's general election opponent, maybe?) is one. Another lives closer to home here: Rep. Dewayne Bunch of Cleveland. He is submitting a bill that would ban legislators from voting on issues being pursued by their employers. In other words, if a piece of legislation favoring (hell, authored by, is more like it) the oil and gas industry were to come up for a vote, and the chairman of the subcommittee in charge of considering that bill happened to work for an oil and gas exploration firm, he would be prohibited from exercising a vote, due to the conflict of interest. I like it — and no, I don't think it is aimed at House Majority Leader McMillan. Legal scholars: tell us what's wrong with the picture, though. Selective prohibition of voting by elected representatives seems a swampy sort of place to wander. Any other ideas? (I hate to bring it up, but "full-time legislature" did just pop into my mind.) Whatever the case, Dewayne scores a "bunch" of points for trying.
The next two items are from the "I'm just now getting to them" file.
There is a new verb in the lexicon, courtesy of TVA: "nickajack." (Think "hijack," "carjack.") That's about all I'll say, cuz R. Neal is better at it anyhow. Okay, then.
My future employer (heh!), the Center for Public Integrity, disclosed last week that close to eighty members of Congress have employed corporate lobbyists as the treasurers of their campaign PACs or leadership PACs. So what? Well, it's like this. Lobbyists throw all kinds of money at our elected officials in order to sweet-talk them into voting the way the lobbyists' clients want. Right or wrong, that's what happens. They are there to "massage" legislation through to a specific desired end. When those same persons become chief fundraisers for the PACs, not just any PACs, but re-election PACs, then How. In. The. Hell do you expect the candidates (because, you know, Congresspeople are candidates 24/7/365/2) to avoid sucking up to their PAC treasurers' vested interests, instead of paying maybe one bit of attention to the voters who put them there?
You wanna know something interesting? The article leads off by mentioning a real hot-shot lobbying guy, one Bill Oldaker. He is the treasurer for quite a few PACs, including the Titans Fund. What is the Titans Fund? It's Congressman Harold Ford, Jr.'s leadership PAC. Oldaker has helped raise over a half million dollars for it. Now, this is confusing stuff, so don't think that I'm sitting here saying that Ford is using that money for his Senate campaign. The way I understand it, this is money that he'd be using to help others run. It'd be interesting, though, to see from whom it was raised, and how the recipients have voted on those donors' interests. Here's an example:
[I]n 2004 four committees that [Oldaker] managed donated a combined $30,000 to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the ranking member of the transportation appropriations subcommittee. In that same year, Oldaker lobbied Congress on transportation appropriations issues for at least five of his clients.
Are there any other Tennessee delegates who use lobbyists as their PAC treasurers, you ask? Why, yes. There is one more. Rep. Marsha Blackburn's WedgePAC employs a Paul Ketchel (a former(?) pharmaceutical lobbyist), so they make the page.
I think this is one reason why, when the DCCC called up the other night to ask if I wanted to donate $110 as a symbol of the 110th Congress (and then when I said I didn't, asked if I wanted to donate $26 to represent 2006), I only said "no, I don't" but I felt like saying "no, go get your corporate-lobbyist-fed PAC money, you don't need my pocket change." Plus, I'm not a Democrat.
Miscellaneous | By joe lance | 10:32 PM