Business As Usual: Congress Continues To Scam US Public

Lobbyists Foresee Business As Usual: Post-Abramoff Rules Expected to Be Merely a Nuisance

Some of Washington's top lobbyists say that they expect to find ways around congressional efforts to impose new restrictions on lobbyists' dealings with lawmakers in the wake of the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal, and that any limits will barely put a dent in the billions of dollars spent to influence legislation.

Though Congress may ultimately vote to eliminate a few of the more visible trappings of special pleading, such as gifts, free meals and luxurious trips, lobbyists say they have already found scores of new ways to buy the attention of lawmakers through fundraising, charitable activities and industry-sponsored seminars. An estimated $10 billion is spent annually to influence legislation and regulations, and that spending is not likely to be diminished by the proposed lobbying changes, these lobbyists contend.

Standing up and making it appear that you support change is apparently more important than really making a difference. Un-elect them all! Vote for "NONE OF THE ABOVE!"

And yet another view...

Lobbyist Reform as a Shell Game

See the reform, find the reform, win if you get the reform... Where's the reform?

The political gods had to guffaw when Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania was designated by the Republicans to be their headlined champion in the current reform effort to rein in lobbying abuses. In truth, Mr. Santorum had long been the G.O.P.'s eager point man in courting the lobbyists of K Street. But in January, as the Jack Abramoff scandal nipped at Congress, Senator Santorum swore off further inner-sanctum sessions with lobbyists, just in time for his tight re-election fight.

Enter Capitol reality: As Congress drifts through a lobbying debate that leans toward cosmetic evasions, Mr. Santorum has been as avid as ever in wooing power lobbyists. The Washington Post reported that the senator had maintained his elite meetings with special-interest brokers.

Clear and Present Dangers: American Theocracy

While I am a proponent of relying on one's religious beliefs to aid in discerning what is right and wrong in personal decisions, I believe that religious fredom is fully supported when religion and government are kept separate. A failure to do so allows such things as we see in Afghanistan, where a religious ideology prevents a man from changing his religion in accordance with his conscience and his perceived call from God. Evidently, Kevin Phillips, a conservative political strategist, has "seen the light" and now perceives the ultra-conservative Christian Right as a threat to US democarcy.

Four decades ago, Kevin Phillips, a young political strategist for the Republican Party, began work on what became a remarkable book. In writing "The Emerging Republican Majority" (published in 1969), he asked a very big question about American politics: How would the demographic and economic changes of postwar America shape the long-term future of the two major parties? His answer, startling at the time but now largely unquestioned, is that the movement of people and resources from the old Northern industrial states into the South and the West (an area he enduringly labeled the "Sun Belt") would produce a new and more conservative Republican majority that would dominate American politics for decades. Phillips viewed the changes he predicted with optimism. A stronger Republican Party, he believed, would restore stability and order to a society experiencing disorienting and at times violent change. Shortly before publishing his book, he joined the Nixon administration to help advance the changes he had foreseen.

Phillips has remained a prolific and important political commentator in the decades since, but he long ago abandoned his enthusiasm for the Republican coalition he helped to build. His latest book (his 13th) looks broadly and historically at the political world the conservative coalition has painstakingly constructed over the last several decades. No longer does he see Republican government as a source of stability and order. Instead, he presents a nightmarish vision of ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and dangerous shortsightedness. (His final chapter is entitled "The Erring Republican Majority.") In an era of best-selling jeremiads on both sides of the political divide, "American Theocracy" may be the most alarming analysis of where we are and where we may be going to have appeared in many years. It is not without polemic, but unlike many of the more glib and strident political commentaries of recent years, it is extensively researched and for the most part frighteningly persuasive.

Deficit Demagogues

Demogogues hell, these are traitors to even their own principles and ideologies. It would seem that it is okay to be entrenched in an ideology as long as it is profitable and gives rise to power and influence... But once power, profit and influence are established, screw the ideas and the principles... We'll pick and choose.

Less than a week after he denounced the "wayward path" of deficit spending to a gathering of 2,000 Republican Party stalwarts, Senator Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader and would-be president, was busy presiding over business as usual in the Senate. Last Thursday, Mr. Frist, 49 of his fellow Republican senators and one Democrat approved a $2.8 trillion budget for 2007. The budget vote came just hours after Mr. Frist and 51 other Republicans voted to raise the nation's debt limit for the fourth time in five years — this time by $781 billion, to nearly $9 trillion. All of that increase will be needed to pay for earlier tax cuts and spending increases, and, if the Republicans get their way on taxes, to pay for future deficit-financed tax cuts.

Wayward, indeed. Mr. Frist has voted for every major spending increase and tax cut backed by President Bush since 2001. As the Senate leader for more than three years, he bears even greater responsibility than his fellow enablers for the country's dismal financial condition. Yet he is certainly not alone these days in calling for greater budget restraint while pursuing reckless policies. Other Republican presidential hopefuls, notably Senator George Allen and Senator John McCain, have also been coming out forcefully as fiscal conservatives.

Lawmakers Holding Solid Seats Spend as if They Were Shaky: Use of Campaign Treasuries Is Coming Under Scrutiny

It would appear that the Republicans are afraid that, perhaps, the public is wising up to the flip-flop standards that are being practiced in government, especially in the hallowed halls of the Capital Building and the West Wing of the White House. It also appears that the Republican mantra of controlling spending is just a hoax.

Rep. Spencer Bachus hasn't drawn a serious opponent in the past three elections. So far, his only 2006 challenger is a write-in with $49 in the bank.

But the Alabama Republican burns through significant sums of campaign cash, as do plenty of other House members sitting in safe congressional seats. Among the items billed in 2005 to Bachus's campaign account and his "Growth and Prosperity" political action committee: $6,689 for U2 concert tickets and expenses as part of a campaign event; $1,298 in lodging in Vail, Colo.; and $270 for the catering of an "American Idol" party.

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) spent $15,835 of campaign funds on condolence flowers for constituents, Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) used $8,328 of his campaign war chest to buy gifts for his staff, and Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) was reimbursed for a $1 "meal" at a local gas station, which his staff believes was bottled water.

Some lawmakers say that such expenditures are routine and completely legal under Federal Election Commission rules. But these spending practices are beginning to attract attention from watchdog groups and the news media, as the 2006 congressional campaigns heat up and Congress considers measures to crack down on the perks of office.

Politics Drives a Senate Spending Spree

It would also seem that the mantra of fiscal responsibility is also a hoax...

The largess demonstrated by the Senate in padding its budget with billions of dollars in additional spending this week showed that lawmakers are no different from many of their constituents: they don't mind pulling out the charge card when money is tight.

Just hours after opening a new line of credit through an increase in the federal debt limit, the Senate splurged on a bevy of popular programs before approving a spending plan that was as much a political document as an economic one, its fine print geared to the coming elections.

Forced to choose between calls for renewed austerity and demands for more money, many Republicans joined Democrats in reaching deeper into the Treasury, leaving the party's push for new fiscal restraint in tatters.

Some of their colleagues said it was an open-and-shut case of nervous politicians ducking a tough spending stance to avoid starring in negative campaign commercials. Republicans in some of this year's tightest races — Conrad Burns of Montana, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Jim Talent of Missouri and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island — all backed the chief budget-busting provision as they endorsed an extra $7 billion for medical research, education and worker safety.

Slapping King Coal's Wrist

It would also appear that all of the concern congress critters dispayed about the coal industry's utter contempt for safety and safe operations has gone the way of other safety legislation... anyone want to bet there was a lot of lobbyists spreading the wealth, er... word on behalf of the Coal Kings?

The Bush administration's accommodation of the mining industry — notably by packing the mine safety agencies with pro-management appointees — has produced a marked decline in major fines for negligent companies. A recent data analysis by The Times documented a risky, business-friendly downturn in penalties since 2001. At the same time, nearly half of the announced fines still go uncollected.

With a rash of 24 mine deaths so far this year, Congress is considering tougher fines of up to $500,000 for culpable companies. But what good are fines if they are not being forcefully used by the federal agencies supposedly responsible for workers' safety? This question must be asked in deadly earnest in the case of the Sago Mine in West Virginia, where a dozen miners perished in January. The company was later found to have been cited for 273 violations in two years' time, not one of them costing more than $460.

Under present practices, fines are rarely levied at the maximum level, and even then companies can negotiate the penalties downward through an industry-friendly appeals process. Fines as low as $60, if collected, amount to jaywalking tickets.

Major Changes Raise Concerns on Pension Bill

It would appear that anything that would actually benefit those of us actually working for a living will never get a fair deal. In yet another scam move by congress, big businesses that are in the business of screwing over people who want to retire--and in my view that is almost every company that offers a 401K or seeks to remove their responsibility for providing real pensions--are getting a walk-through in congress.

With a strong directive from the Bush administration, Congress set out more than a year ago to fashion legislation that would protect America’s private pension system, tightening the rules to make sure companies set aside enough money to make good on their promises to employees.

Then the political horse-trading began, with lawmakers, companies and lobbyists, representing everything from big Wall Street firms to tiny rural electric cooperatives, weighing in on the particulars of the Bush administration’s blueprint.

In the end, lawmakers modified many of the proposed rules, allowing companies more time to cover pension shortfalls, to make more forgiving estimates about how much they will owe workers in the future, and even sometimes to assume that their workers will die younger than the rest of the population.

On top of those changes, companies also persuaded lawmakers to add dozens of specific measures, including a multibillion-dollar escape clause for the nation’s airlines and a special exemption for the makers of Smithfield Farms hams.

As a result, the bill now being completed in a House-Senate conference committee, rather than strengthening the pension system, would actually weaken it, according to a little-noticed analysis by the government’s pension agency.