Redstate

I think there may be a spot in the cell next to Duke Cunningham (let me throw in allegedly somewhere here). If he's guilty, hope he enjoys Federal PMITA Prison.

From their FEC filing:

SMALL BIZ TECH POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE

C00409284   

Non-Party Non-Qualified   

District of Columbia

Total Receipts:                    $115,350

Individual Contributions:          $107,850

Other Committee Contributions:     $7,500

Total Disbursements:               $65,505

Contributions To Other Committees: $15,600

Beginning Cash:                       $0

Latest Cash On Hand:               $49,842

Through: 04/30/2006

I really would like to see Lewis replaced by another Republican. Sadly I think it will take an indictment to get rid this turkey. Besides his corruption (whether or not it rises to the criminal level), most people here know of his roadblocks to even minimal budgetary restraint. I guess a dedication to pork barrel goes hand in hand with corruption.

With California's gerrymandered districts (true of many states, but especially egregious here) very few are competitive, so there's no discipline worrying about the general election. My unresearched but reasonably well informed recollection is that credible Republican primary challenges to an incumbent are close to nonexistent.

And what's wrong with the House Republicans? The Contract with America "term limited" committee chairmanships, but do they have to let Lewis keep his for the maximum allowed time?

Pretty sad, I'm actually hoping a Republican congressman can be proved a criminal, because that's the only way to get rid of Lewis.

to the principles of the Contract With America, one of which was limiting terms of chairmanships.

We not only need to abide by that, we need to strengthen it and rotate those chairmanships MORE often.  

There is something to be said for keeping experienced hands in charge of the committees which deal with security issues, but tenure on budget and appropriations committees just turns a good man bad.

Lewis may have done nothing wrong here, but the Chairman of Appropriations has to be, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion.

That is all.

Duke Cunningham - GOP Appropriations member found guilty of taking mongo bribes and will rot in a cell for a while.

John Doolittle - Under investigation for corruption.

Jerry Lewis - The story above makes me sick.

All three are Republicans who were or are on the appropriations committee.

What is wrong here... I think the system is wrong.  Instead of allowing people to accrue unlimited seniority on the appropriations committee (where crooked congressmen and contractors have an advantage) there needs to be a rotating system for making outlays of federal funds.  Each GOP member should only be allowed to serve on the Committee for  a maximum of four consecutive years at a time.  During that time, they will only be able to serve on subcommittees that have a very limited role in their districts, the old Taber rule of appropriations.  An example appearing that instead of having insiders from farm states serving on the Agriculure subcommittee, one would have urban congressmen (think Chris Shays or Vito Fossella).

Defense would be the same thing.  A member could not serve if there was a major defense contractor in their district.  That would end the temptations right away, while allowing each citizen from a GOP district to be represented by an appropriator on a rotating basis.  

There is a reason that the subcommittee chairmen on Appropriations are known as the "College of Cardinals".  It's because they are largely held unaccountable for their actions.  We need to think seriously about reforming the system to further accountability and I would enjoy reading other grass-roots proposals.

unless it is in their district, and therein lies the problem.  "It's only federal money" is a constant refrain in state government and is a license for profligacy.  In my experience a given bundle of work, i.e., knowledge, skill, ability, and tasks, is worth 10-20% more in government departments with heavy federal funding such as Transportation, Social Services, and Education.  This is because there is not the same accountability to state or local legislative bodies and of the constant refrain of, "if we don't spend it, we have to lapse it, and that reduces our funding base for next year."

Without getting into all the things that are wrong with incremental budgeting at all levels of government, the controlling dynamic is that the system rewards bad performance more directly than good performance.  A manager who spends all available money, and preferably somebody else's as well, gets more money, or at least as much plus inflation in the next budget.  A manager who runs his program effeciently sees his money go to people who don't or lapses the money back to the general fund or to the federal funding source.  The federal manager is then in the same position as I describe for state and local manager.  If the Fed's contractors and grantees, whether public or private, aren't drawing down the money and spending it, he loses it to someone else and likely has his base reduced for the next year.

Everybody likes their potholes fixed, the roads lit, and widened, and guard railed and all the other stuff the whole country has learned to take for granted.  The only one of those things that is likely to be done with locally appropriated funds is fixing the potholes.  Every bit of work in the country that can be associated with roads other than routine maintenance is done with 75 - 90% federal funding, and any good public manager knows how to really make that 100% federal with financial shell games that the Fed is never likely to figure out.  Fed money, without regard to the department, is easy money, and it is aggravated by the fact that having it makes getting state and local money easier as well - can't give up the fed money, so lets appropriate the 10% match, and the spending spiral continues.

While the Earmarking gets a lot of attention since it is so blatant and open, it is easy to earmark money without the blatant identification of where it is going.  State and local governments know this, contractors and lobbyists know this.  When Senator Foghorn suddenly gets interested in some or another project or program, any good public manager is going to start looking for which contributor to Sen. Foghorn is in a business that would profit from it.  Guess who's going to get that contract unless they're so totally stupid that they can't meet the facial requirements of procurement rules; in the only semi-likely event that such rules are being enforced.

I know this is a long, semi-ranting reply to your "change the system," but what you have to recognize is how pervasive the system you want to change is.  The whole country runs on it. If you're outside government, you only see the ones that are corrupt or look like it to the uninformed eye.  If you're inside, you know that everything runs on getting somebody to appropriate some money, preferably not from your government's treasury.  Since the New Deal, to an ever increasing degree, the federal government has been engaged in a massive wealth redistribution, building highways where the local tax base could never build them, e.g., the interstates, dams that states and even regions could never pay for, airports and navigation systems that likewise could never be paid for by the city, state, or even region.  Then you get the same dynamic with the massive social spending that began in the sixties.  And there's always defense; it works the same way, but has a highly organized and discrete constituency.

Fundamentally, we have met the enemy and he is us.  Figure out how to get Americans to give up their roads, their cheap hydropower, their subsidized water and sewer systems, and on, and on, and you can figure out how to change the system.  Sure you can and should bust anybody who takes an open bribe, but those are just the stupid ones.

Jerry Lewis is a crook and more a Democrat then he is a Republican if you look at his voting record ..

He may have been a great comedy actor with Dean Martin back in the day, but he is a horrible politician.

Michael

ignored William Jefferson, also of the Appropriations Committee.

Do you expect a democrat to actually engage on this subject and, say, push out their corrupt people?

As if that would ever happen.

Kerry, who built his entire career on lies he told about Vietnam, is a hero.

Ted Kennedy, who negligently left a girl to drown, is the senior liberal spokesman.

Al Gore, who claims he invented the internet and fought forest fires without having to actually go tothose fires, is now selling himself as a climate scientist.

William Jefferson, caught while cooling the hot loot, safe in his seat.

And who was that guy on the ethics committee?

And of course, let us not forget that Nancy Pelosi is the one who actually apid fines over campaign finance violations.

The man solicited bribes for his friends:

From MSNBC:

Tom Casey, CEO of the now-defunct computer software company Audre Inc., has told federal investigators what he says happened in 1993 when he asked for Lewis' help in getting money for the Pentagon to test software that converted engineering documents to computer formats.

Tom Casey: I just thought, in my opinion, it pressed the boundaries of what was ethical.

In an exclusive interview, Casey tells NBC News that after he made campaign contributions to House members of both parties, Lewis informed him the Pentagon would get $14 million for the testing, and that Casey even could write the language.

Lisa Myers: You were allowed to write language for an appropriations bill yourself?

Casey: Yes, I did. That was Congressman Lewis' suggestion.

Casey says Lewis repeatedly urged him to hire a lobbyist, former U.S. Rep. Bill Lowery, Lewis' close friend, and when that didn't happen, pressed for another favor.

Casey: Congressman Lewis asked me to set up stock options for Bill Lowery in our company.

Casey says Lewis suggested he issue the stock options in Canada -- in someone else's name.

I will admit that I'm a Democrat, but I don't care who is in this seat, as long as it's not held by such a blatant crook.

Negligence isn't the proper term.

Considering Kennedy's actions after the drowning (calling attorneys and advisors before getting help the following day, and the fight over getting the body to Penn to avoid an autopsy) I see not negligence, but willfull abandonment and a malicious, intentful attempt to deceive rather than any attempt to rescue.

This was manslaughter at the least.

generous.

I am, after all, a compassionate conservative.

...hunter, Al Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet. That's a misrepresentation that has been debunked many times and yet it has a life all its own.

Please remember who put all these "Republicans" into positions of power? Tom DeLay, who became a very bad leader, as some of us have been saying for some time now.

Debunked?  So I supose he and Tipper weren't also the subject of Love Story?  Both quotes are readily available (and on audio file).

I'm interested in the how the sources counter those quotes.  There is no doubt as to what was said.  Is there a spin to what he "really meant"?

By Snopes. Our President himself speaks inartfully from time to time himself in ways which could be misconstrued. On this one, Gore was unjustly criticized. There are plenty of other, much more legitimate, reasons to dislike him, however.

opens Gore to the criticism.  Even if you want to give Gore credit and say he did not mean invented as in, it did not exist and he created it, Gore still can be killed for that quote.  To be kind, he is still saying that the internet we knew in 1999 (the time of his statement) is because of Al Gore.  His arrogance that he alone took the initiative and not the private sector, including lib's like the ones he works for at Google.  Al Gore walked over an ant hill and he told everyone he climbed K2 blindfolded.  Most fools don't do it on national TV.

Al Gore's answer to a question from Wolf Blitzer.

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system. "

I am a conservative who is interested about how ordinarily good people, (I used to love Duke Cunningham on Defense Authorization bill debates or Iraq War debates) can be tempted over time to act in heinous ways.  

What I am saying is end the temptations inherent there.  Yes, we should expect our congressmen to be above the gutter tactics, but even a war hero can be caught up in a system that lets senior members think that they've got unlimited power to do whatever they wanted to.  If we made Appropriations a rotating responsibility, no member would even dare to cheat because he'd have to turn the portfolio over to a new member every two years.  I think it's a solution to the whole "College of Cardinals" level of entitlement that many appropriators have.

That when John Taber was Appropriations chair, in the 80th and 83rd congresses, they were both short lived GOP majorities.

Thank you for your reference to Snopes.  It is a great site for myth busting and I withdraw my point about your need for a source.  

Never the less I stand by my assertion.  As Hoover points out, the quote made to Wolf Blitzer is clear.  Gore takes credit for creating the internet.  His other whoppers include my favorite that I listed above about his friend E.S. using him and Tipper as the inspiration for Love Story.

I don't agree with your comparison to Bush either.  That's a stretch.  

it is hard to get anything but monkeys to work for you.  And, based on the scope of their responsibility, we pay Congressmen and Senators as well as high-level appointees peanuts.  This cuts hardest against Republicans.  The typical base Republican does not want to be a public employee or public servant when he/she grows up. (I distinguish between employes and servants as employees and elected or appointed officials).  The bulk of activist Rs are small business people or employees of relatively small businesses.  The business people would almost literally have to close their business to take office; while the business may support them quite well, it isn't likely to be able to support them and a hired management to keep the business running.  The Democrats on the other hand have little wannabe officeholders throughout government and in the vast array of nonprofits that have sprung up around government.  Since "non-profit" is an unnatural act for most Rs, you don't find many of them in the nonprofits and they are almost nonexistent inside the government itself.

So, what we get with Republcan office holders are people who have chosen, not always for good reasons, to become professional politicians and live off what they can make or recieve as such.  Once in power, the temptations are immense and the rules are anything but clear.  Is it corruption if you know that Acme Enterprises is likely to do well off some new program, so you invest in Acme?  Is it corruption if there is some conference, coincidentally in Vegas or Honolulu, on the latest program or widget and the CEO of a company doing business in widgets just happens to be going and calls and offers you a comp ride in his G-5?  You don't even have to be very far up in the appointive ranks to quickly learn that you never have to reach for your wallet when the tab come and a lot of very powerful, very well-heeled lobbyists and consultants and the like are just dying for the pleasure of your company in the swankiest watering holes and restaurants.  It goes on; it's Friday pm and somebody you know, a consultant or lobbyist or whatever, and says, "say, I have tickets for (pick one: play, concert, prize fight, ballgame) and something came up. Can you use them?"  All innocent, of course, since they didn't ask you specifically to do anything.

My point is that it will take more than rotating chairs and the like.  Governments redistribute trillions of dollars and people all over the world, very manipulative people, are vying for advantage in that redistribution.  You are asking for more than any ordinary level of honesty, you are asking for sainthood.  Sure, we should bust anyone who overtly takes a bribe or otherwise plays for pay, but those are only the stupid ones.

I wasn't comparing him to President Bush, whom I hold in the utmost respect. President Bush, a man of principles, is worlds different from Al Gore, a man of hyperbole and hypocrisy. I was merely pointing out that the President has a gift for occasionally having words come out of his mouth which do not express to the rest of us what he intended to express, and which can be taken the wrong way by political opponents.

I agree that Bush is prone to gaffes.  I would call Gore's "gaffes" exagerations at the least.  I'm glad you cleared that up.

There was another tall tale from Gore, but I can't recall it.  It had to do with his sister's death from tobacco and his fight against tobacco, despite the fact that he was once a friend of the tobacco industry.  I think it was a story about how he felt a certain way, but dates and his actions didn't mesh at all closely with the position he was supposed to have taken.

was at the DNC Convention, I think 1996 but could be wrong, when he gave that sad story about his sister dying of cancer.  He talked at length about how evil tobacco was and his opposition since her death.  He just forgot about all those kind things he said about tobacco when he was campaigning for president in 1988, which was after his sisters death.  I think that was probably his worst, most shameless but the internet and media was not a big back then, so he skated a bit.

The internet and talk radio won't let the MSM cover up for the dem's anymore.