His response: Put on the brakes.
Rather than push for a federal judge to punish the companies by extracting perhaps tens of millions of dollars in damages, Oklahoma’s new chief law enforcement officer quietly negotiated a deal to simply study the problem further.
The move came after he had taken tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from executives and lawyers for the poultry industry.
Source: "Scott Pruitt, Trump’s E.P.A. Pick, Backed Industry Donors Over Regulators" By ERIC LIPTON and CORAL DAVENPORT - NY Times - JAN. 14, 2017
More than $10 million has been given to {members of the House Financial Services Committee } just this year, and most of it has come from the big names the committee oversees. Contributors included employees of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, the Credit Union National Association, the Investment Company Institute, Wells Fargo and many of the biggest accounting firms and insurance companies.
Committee members don’t seem particularly ashamed of the favors they do for those providing the cash. Andy Barr, a freshman Republican from Kentucky, promised to protect a tax break worth $500 million to credit unions. (They gave him $15,000.) And he introduced a bill that would allow banks to give mortgages to people who cannot afford them, undoing a federal rule at the request of the big banks’ lobbyists. (Banks have given him at least $47,000.)
{…}It’s the banks’ way of saying, welcome to the committee and our culture, we hope we can continue to do business. “We make an investment, and we are hopeful that investment produces a return,” an industry lobbyist told Mr. Lipton.
Many Democrats on the panel are just as eager to join the feeding line, but the biggest hypocrites are the Tea Party members who claim to be populists. Tom Cotton, a rising Republican on the committee from Arkansas, recently announced that he would run for the Senate next year because he was sick of seeing favors handed out “to the politically connected and the crony capitalists who bend the power of government for their own private gain.” But that didn’t stop him from accepting $381,000 so far this year from political action committees, mostly from finance and insurance interests with business before his panel.
Source: "The Cash Committee" - NY Times - August 17, 2013
In the 1980s, the military had its infamous $800 toilet seat. Today, it has a $17,000 drip pan.
Thanks to a powerful Kentucky congressman who has steered tens of millions of federal dollars to his district, the Army has bought about $6.5 million worth of the “leakproof” drip pans in the last three years to catch transmission fluid on Black Hawk helicopters. And it might want more from the Kentucky company that makes the pans, even though a similar pan from another company costs a small fraction of the price: about $2,500.
The Kentucky company, Phoenix Products, got the job to produce the pans after Representative Harold Rogers, a Republican who is now the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, added an earmark to a 2009 spending bill.
As of October, the Army had bought 374 drip pans from Phoenix Products at an average cost of $17,000
Tom Wilson, who owns Phoenix Products, {…}and his wife, Peggy, who is the president of the company, have been frequent contributors to Mr. Rogers’s political committee, as well as to Republican groups. The company has paid at least $600,000 since 2005 to a Washington lobbying firm, Martin Fisher Thompson & Associates, to represent its interests on federal contracting issues, records show.
Mr. Rogers, in turn, has been a strong supporter of the manufacturer. He has directed more than $17 million in work orders for Phoenix Products since 2000.
Mr. Wilson said he did not think that his company’s relationship with Mr. Rogers or its Washington connections were a major factor in the Army’s decision to buy his pan. His company got the work, he said, because its drip pan was “just simply a better product.”
Source: "Earmark Puts $17,000 Pans on Army Craft" By ERIC LICHTBLAU - NY Times - May 18, 2012
In just one piece of legislation, the defense appropriations bill for the 2006 fiscal year, [former Pennsylvania senator Rick] Santorum helped secure $124 million in federal financing for 54 earmarks, according to a tally by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group. In that year’s election cycle, Mr. Santorum’s Senate campaign committee and his “leadership PAC” took in more than $200,000 in contributions from people associated with the companies that benefited or their lobbyists, an analysis of campaign finance records by The New York Times shows.
In some cases, while representatives from the companies that got a grant did not donate to Mr. Santorum, their lobbyists did. Vision Technologies, a company based in Arkansas with a plant in Pennsylvania, hired IKON Public Affairs in 2004 to help it pursue federal money, paying the lobbyists $100,000 over the next two years.
The company received a $3 million federal grant in the defense appropriations bill to develop a video system to monitor machinery aboard gas turbine ships. Two of the lobbyists on the account, Craig Snyder and Peter Grollman, contributed nearly $9,000 total to Mr. Santorum’s leadership PAC and his campaign committee, mostly in 2005.
And the lobbying firm Blank Rome, Mr. Santorum’s largest single source of contributions during the 2006 election cycle — the firm’s executives gave more than $100,000 to his campaign — had several clients who got help from Mr. Santorum with earmarks and other legislation.
Source: "Donors Gave as Santorum Won Earmarks" By MICHAEL LUO and MIKE McINTIRE - NY Times - January 15, 2012
The citizen's watchdog group MAPlight.org has found that congressmen who voted for TARP, the "Troubled Assets Relief Program," received nearly 50 percent more in campaign contributions from the financial services industry (an average of about $149,000) than congressmen who voted no. Legislators who voted for the automobile industry bailout in 2009 received an average of 40 percent more in "contributions" from that industry (the less politic call them "bribes") than those who voted against it. And House Energy and Commerce Committee members who voted yes on an amendment in 2009 favored by the forest products industry, to allow heavier cutting of trees, received an average of $25,745 from the forestry and paper products industry. This was ten times as much as was received by each member voting no. This pattern repeats itself over and over.
Source: "Why the Wars Roll on: Ban Campaign Money From Outside the District" by: Ralph Lopez - t r u t h o u t.org - 04 September 2009 | Perspective
The Democratic chairman of a House investigative committee presented documents to the Pentagon on Thursday charging that a top Republican fund-raiser, Harry Sargeant III, made tens of millions of dollars in profits over the last four years because his contracting company vastly overcharged for deliveries of fuel to American air bases in Iraq.
[E]-mail messages, company documents, Pentagon reports and other information ...make the case that Mr. Sargeant repeatedly received contracts to deliver the fuel even though his company was not the lowest bidder.
Mr. Sargeant’s company submitted the highest of six bids, but received the contract anyway. In fact, Pentagon contracting officers complained that the company’s prices were unreasonably high and initially said they could not justify giving the work to Mr. Sargeant.
[T]he Pentagon tried to negotiate a lower price with Mr. Sargeant, but he held firm, saying the prices were reasonable given his expenses. But as a result,...the company has been paid $1.4 billion on four different contracts for the fuel deliveries and made a profit of $210 million after expenses.
Mr. Sargeant’s personal gain from these four contracts may have been $70 million or higher
[I]f the lowest bidder had been awarded the contracts, taxpayers would have saved some $180 million.
Mr. Sargeant...is the finance chairman of the Florida Republican Party and a major fund-raiser for Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign
Mr. Sargeant is one of several dozen people who are listed on Senator McCain’s Web site as having raised $500,000 or more for him. He was the host of a fund-raiser for Mr. McCain at his mansion in Delray Beach, Fla., this year.
Source: "G.O.P. Donor Is Accused of Overcharging Pentagon" By JAMES GLANZ and MICHAEL LUO - NY Times - October 16, 2008
As it has pressed to keep its subsidies, about $26 billion in the current bill, agribusiness has contributed $415 million to federal political campaigns since 1990, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Source:"Holding the Hungry Hostage" - NY Times - December 7, 2007
Millions of people with respiratory diseases have relied on oxygen equipment, delivered to their homes, to help them breathe. A basic setup, including three years of deliveries of small oxygen tanks, can be bought from pharmacies and other retailers for as little as $3,500, or about $100 a month.
Unless, that is, the buyer is Medicare, the government health care program for older Americans.
Despite enormous buying power, Medicare pays far more. Rather than buy oxygen equipment outright, Medicare rents it for 36 months before patients take ownership, and pays for a variety of services that critics say are often unnecessary.
The total cost to taxpayers and patients is as much as $8,280, or more than double what somebody might spend at a drugstore.
The high expense of oxygen equipment ... cost Medicare over $1.8 billion last year.
The government’s overall bill for Medicare soared last year to an average of $8,568 per beneficiary, up from $5,522 in 1999, an increase that outpaces inflation by 34 percent.
Earlier this decade, legislators ordered the government agency to pay less and use the competitive bidding program.
But when officials and politicians have tried to cut these costs, they have often encountered a powerful foe: the companies that sell these devices, who ask their elderly customers to serve, in effect, as unpaid lobbyists, calling and writing to their representatives in Congress, protesting at rallies, and even participating in political attacks against individual lawmakers who take on the issue.
Then the oxygen industry started fighting back. Companies organized themselves into a deep-pocketed lobbying force that has defeated attempts to cut Medicare’s rates, and has attacked the competitive bidding program.
“I would guess we’re grossly overpaying for about 80 percent of the people who receive these services,” said Representative Pete Stark, a California Democrat and senior member of the Ways and Means Committee who recently pushed to cut Medicare’s oxygen spending.
“We’re willing to spend what it takes to make sure we are heard,” said Joseph S. Lewarski of Invacare, an Ohio manufacturer of oxygen equipment.
On Dec. 18, 2005, [Bill Thomas, then a Republican representative from California] inserted a midnight change into the $40 billion Deficit Reduction Act to cut oxygen reimbursements. At the time, Medicare paid for unlimited equipment rentals. Mr. Thomas sought to cap those rentals at 18 months, which would save the government hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
Before the sun rose, Senator George V. Voinovich, an Ohio Republican who has received tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions from executives at oxygen companies [italics added], called another lawmaker to discuss how to block the proposal, according to the senator’s staff members.
He then informed lawmakers overseeing the legislation — which had essentially already been approved by both houses of Congress — that he would upend the entire bill if the oxygen cuts and other modifications were not scaled back, according to staff members who worked closely on the legislation.
“We literally had the legislation signed and ready to go, and then Voinovich threatened to kill it all,” said a high-ranking Congressional staff member who had direct involvement in the process, but requested anonymity to avoid angering Senator Voinovich.
Congress gave into the threat, consenting to 36 months of oxygen payments before ownership transfers to patients, the system that exists today.
Source: "Oxygen Suppliers Fight to Keep a Medicare Boon" By CHARLES DUHIGG - NY Times - November 30, 2007
Even though members of Congress cut back their pork barrel spending this year, House lawmakers still tacked on to the military appropriations bill $1.8 billion to pay 580 private companies for projects the Pentagon did not request.
Twenty-one members were responsible for about $1 billion in earmarks, or financing for pet projects, according to data lawmakers were required to disclose for the first time this year. Each asked for more than $20 million for businesses mostly in their districts, ranging from major military contractors to little known start-ups.
The list is topped by the veteran earmark champions Representative John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat who is the chairman of the powerful defense appropriations subcommittee
Firms benefiting from Mr. Murtha’s help have given at least $437,000 to his campaign since 2005, with about $110,000 streaming in just before this year’s March 16 request deadline.
KDH Defense Systems of Johnstown makes Navy body armor and Army elbow pads in a converted bra factory, and Mr. Murtha asked for a $2 million earmark to help the company improve its bulletproof vests. Another earmark would provide $3 million for KDH to develop a “waterways threat detection system.”
The company’s lobbying firm is KSA Consulting, which employed Mr. Murtha’s younger brother, Kit, until 2006. The firm has contributed $4,000 to Mr. Murtha’s campaign since 2005.
[Representative C. W. Bill Young of Florida, the top Republican on the panel,] requested earmarks for 51 projects totaling $117 million. All but 15 requests benefit defense firms.
The Florida congressman has collected about $150,000 in contributions since 2005 from companies for which he earmarked projects in this year’s bill.
[ Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California, a committee member who is under federal investigation for his ties to a lobbying firm whose clients often benefited from his earmarks], got $85,500 from six companies for which he sponsored earmarks. Science Applications International Corporation, which received a $4 million earmark, donated $5,000 two weeks before the earmark deadline.
Source: "Even Cut 50 Percent, Earmarks Clog a Military Bill" By MARILYN W. THOMPSON and RON NIXON - NY Times - November 4, 2007
But the most controversial provision [of a House Ways and Means Committee $76 billion tax bill] could be to raise $25 billion by revoking a tax break on “carried interest” — income earned by investment managers at private equity funds, venture capital funds, real estate funds and other partnerships. Under current rules, much of that income is taxed as capital gains at 15 percent rather than as individual income at rates of up to 39.6 percent.
Executives at private equity firms and hedge funds, as well as venture capitalists, have been generous contributors to Democrats. Executives at the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s biggest private equity firms, have contributed to both parties. Carlyle executives contributed more than $30,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this year and made contributions to numerous individual Democrats, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut.
But private equity firms are hardly the only group that would be hit. Hedge funds contributed $4.4 million to House and Senate campaigns in 2006, and 77 percent of that went to Democrats, according to Congressional Quarterly’s moneyline.com. Venture capital firms contributed $6.3 million, with slightly more than half going to Democrats.
No Senate Democrat has introduced anything similar to the House provision, though the issue has been a subject of vexing debate for months.
Source:
Former Bush administration officials are peppered throughout Blackwater’s highest executive positions. Erik Prince, the former Navy Seal who founded the company, was a White House intern under President George H. W. Bush and has been a Republican financier since, with more than $225,000 in political contributions.
Mr. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and a “pioneer” who raised $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004. Her husband, the former Amway chief executive Richard DeVos Jr., was the Republican nominee for governor of Michigan in 2006.
Mr. Prince denied yesterday that his connections had anything to do with it, but he certainly has done well under the Bush administration.
The Congressional investigation found that Blackwater charges the government $1,222 per day for each private military operative — more than six times the wage of an equivalent soldier. And still it uncovered instances of overcharging. It reported that an audit in 2005 by the State Department’s inspector general found Blackwater was charging separately for “drivers” and “security specialists” who were, in fact, the same people.
Source: "Blackwater’s Rich Contracts" - NY Times - October 3, 2007
Blackwater was founded in 1997 by Erik Prince, a former member of the Navy Seals, and is privately owned.
The company’s close ties to the Bush administration have raised questions about the political clout of Mr. Prince, Blackwater’s founder and owner. He is the scion of a wealthy Michigan family that is active in Republican politics. He and the family have given more than $325,000 in political donations over the past 10 years, the vast majority to Republican candidates and party committees, according to federal campaign finance reports.
Mr. Prince has helped cement his ties to the government by hiring prominent officials. J. Cofer Black, the former counterterrorism chief at the C.I.A. and State Department, is a vice chairman at Blackwater. Mr. Black is also now a senior adviser on counterterrorism and national security issues to the Republican presidential campaign of Mitt Romney.
Just in recent weeks, Blackwater has also been awarded another large State Department contract to provide helicopter services in Iraq.
Separately, American officials specifically exempted all United States personnel from Iraqi law under an order signed in 2004 by L.Paul Bremer III, then the top official of the American occupation authority. The Sept. 16 [2007] shootings have so angered Iraqis, however, that the Iraqi government is proposing a measure that would overturn the American rule and subject Western private security companies to Iraqi law. The proposal requires the approval of the Iraqi Parliament.
Source: "Blackwater Tops All Firms in Iraq in Shooting Rate" By JOHN M. BRODER and JAMES RISEN - NY Times - September 27, 2007
Amtrak certainly knows how to lose money, but the railroad says it can lose less if only it can get out of the business of hauling cars of "premium" freight like perishables behind its cross-country trains.
Instead, Congress has told Amtrak to increase sharply the number of carloads it hauls or forgo $8.3 million in additional federal money.
The order, contained in the transportation bill signed by President Bush last month, was inserted late in the process by Representative Joe Knollenberg, an appropriations subcommittee chairman from Michigan. The Detroit businessman who owns the only company that supplies such rail cars happens to be a large donor to Mr. Knollenberg, a Republican, and other Michigan lawmakers.
Amtrak says it is losing millions of dollars a year on ExpressTrak because of extra expenses for labor, fuel and maintenance.
Source: "Congressman Adds More Vegetables to Amtrak's Load"By MATTHEW L. WALD and GLEN JUSTICE - NY Times - December 11, 2005
For a crude bully who used to bray about lining up Democrats and anti-war protesters to be “shot,” Randy (Duke) Cunningham [R-CA] cried like a little baby the other day when he finally admitted taking millions in bribes from defense contractors.
He misused his authority to steer federal contracts to the contractors who bribed him, and he doesn't seem to have hesitated to damage the national interest if his personal interests were served.
On a single June evening two years ago, according to the Associated Press, the Speaker's [House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill] Keep Our Majority political-action committee took in more than $20,000 from the Abramoff network at a fund-raiser in a Washington restaurant owned by the lobbyist. A week later, Mr. Hastert and several of his top deputies sent a letter to the Secretary of the Interior, asking her to disapprove a gambling license sought by a tribe competing with one of Mr. Abramoff's clients. While the Speaker's spokesman insists there was no connection between his actions and the money steered into his accounts, such indignant assertions now provoke knowing smiles even among Republicans.
The sale of influence has been institutionalized in ways that earlier generations of politicians never imagined.
Source: "California's 'Duke' heads to the pokey" by Joe Conason - The New York Observer - 12.06.05
The Labor Department's inspector general strongly criticized department officials yesterday for "serious breakdowns" in procedures involving an agreement promising Wal-Mart Stores 15 days' notice before labor investigators would inspect its stores for child labor violations.
The report by the inspector general [Gordon S. Heddell] faulted [Labor D]epartment officials for making "significant concessions" to Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, without obtaining anything in return. The report also criticized department officials for letting Wal-Mart lawyers write substantial parts of the settlement and for leaving the department's own legal division out of the settlement process.
"In our view," the inspector general's office wrote about the Wage and Hour Division, "the Wal-Mart agreement may adversely impact W.H.D.'s authority to conduct future investigations and issue citations or penalty assessments, and potentially restrict information to the public."
Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who asked the inspector general to investigate the settlement, said the report showed that the Bush administration was seeking to do favors for a powerful friend and a major Republican contributor in Wal-Mart.
"The Bush Labor Department chose to do an unprecedented favor for Wal-Mart, despite the fact it is well known for violating labor laws, including child labor laws," Mr. Miller said. "The sweetheart deal put Wal-Mart employees at risk, undermined government effectiveness, and further undermined public confidence that the government is acting on its behalf."
Source: "Labor Dept. Is Rebuked Over Pact With Wal-Mart" By STEVEN GREENHOUSE - NY Times - November 1, 2005
[T]he Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Political Action Committee for Responsive Government, earmarks the vast majority of its contributions to Republican Party political candidates and Republican political committees. Of the $2.1 million the PAC gave in 2004, $1.6 went to the GOP while less than $500,000 went to Democrats.
When Wal-Mart comes to town, ... the company's bottom line is dependent upon the soaking up of hundreds of millions of dollar in taxpayer subsidies extracted from cash-strapped county budgets. (A May 2004 study by the Washington, DC-based Good Jobs First entitled "Shopping for Subsidies: How Wal-Mart Uses Taxpayer Money to Finance Its Never Ending Growth," found that the company has siphoned more than one billion dollars in economic development subsidies from state and local governments across the country.)
Source: "Wal-Marting philanthropy" by Bill Berkowitz - WorkingForChange - 10.27.05
Wal-Mart - by design, by pattern, by system – and we have managers on camera talking about this – they pay their employees so little – and this is a corporation that made $10 billion last year – they pay their employees so little, that the employees are encouraged and guided to get public assistance, Section 8 housing, food stamps, and various healthcare plans provided by the states. It's scandalous that everyone's tax dollars should be going so that Wal-Mart does not have to pay its employees decent wages or benefits.
Source: "BuzzFlash interview: Robert Greenwald" - BuzzFlash.com - 10.28.05
House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner has already announced he would not hold hearings on relief from bankruptcy for Katrina and Rita victims.
[M]y cynical juices are overflowing when considering that Sensenbrenner has received over $90,000 in campaign contributions from the banking and credit card industries since 1989, according to Public Citizen.
Source: "Repeal bankruptcy law for all Americans, not just victims" by Byron Williams - byronspeaks.com - 10.05.05
Rep. Tom DeLay [is] himself the architect of the "K Street Strategy" to convert the entire business lobby into the fund-raising arm of the Republican Party in return for whatever legislative favors the major donors want.
Rep. Roy Blunt, the man Republicans chose to temporarily replace DeLay while he's under indictment, tried to alter a Homeland Security bill in 2003 with a last-minute provision to benefit the cigarette company Philip Morris. Philip Morris had not only contributed heavily to Blunt's campaign, it also employed both Blunt's girlfriend and his son. DeLay gets indicted, and the Republicans replace him with another DeLay.
Source: "Flim-flam and hoo-hah" by Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate - 10.06.05
Citizens elect officials to represent them and pay their salaries via taxes. These elected representatives serve as advocates for these citizens. Their authority is granted to them by the country at large that elects them. (Our constitution refers to "...just powers, derived from the consent of the governed.")
Our elected officials use this authority to create entities such as corporations. They have the authority to regulate the activity of these entities, or to altogether deny permission for these entities to even exist. The authority of the government supercedes the authority of the corporation.
Corporations can hire their own advocates. Elected officials are hired to represent citizens.
These same corporations make enormous campaign contributions to the same officials that we elect to represent us. Although government officials (particularly at the federal level) maintain huge staffs to research and write new legislation, much of the legislation introduced in congress is actually written by corporations. Because of the corrupting influence of campaign contributions (i.e. legalized bribes), the officials that we elect to represent us are beholden to these corporations and special interests and as a result shepherd these corporate authored bills into law. These laws typically benefit the individual corporations that sponsor them, often at the expense of the citizens who elected them to office.
Real campaign finance reform is crucial to wrestling control of the government away from corporate special interests and back towards the citizens that the government is supposed to represent.
Today Ameriquest set aside $325 million in anticipation of a flood of lawsuits from defrauded customers. And at the same time, financial reporters have uncovered some very tricky accounting gimmicks used to keep the mortgage industry looking healthy. President Bush had a quick and decisive response: Today he nominated Ameriquest’s owner and chairman to be ambassador to the Netherlands. Even with the company sinking in lawsuits over its predatory lending practices, Mr. Bush had a compelling reason to appoint the CEO of Ameriquest to the ambassadorial post: Mr. Arnall and his wife "contributed $5 million to a pro-Bush committee in 2003 and chipped in another $1 million for Bush’s second inauguration party." Arnall, his wife and their companies "have been the biggest political contributors to Bush since 2002." Never let it be said that this president let little things like defrauding the public stand in the way of taking care of his friends.
Source: "No Bad Deed Goes Unrewarded in This Administration " by Elizabeth Warren - The Huffington Post - 7/29/05
Dozens of legislators have written Mr. Bush asking him to seriously consider the national security implications of the Chinese communists owning this once proud American oil company [Unical]. According to Roll Call, most of this bipartisan group had received campaign contributions from [Chinese competitor] Chevron.
Source: "A new and different war over oil" by Michael Kieschnick - Working Assets - 07.06.05
In 2003, [Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Republican congressman from San Diego] sold his house in Del Mar, a very upscale town north of San Diego. The buyer was Mitchell Wade, a defense contractor, who paid $1.675 million. Wade later resold the house at a $700,000 loss.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Cunningham is living, rent-free, aboard a 42-foot yacht named the Duke Stir, which belongs to the said same Mitchell Wade. Since 2002, Wade's company, MZM Inc., has received $163 million in defense contracts.
Source: "Pigging out on pork" by Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate - 07.07.05
The amusing case of the congressman whose house was bought by the founder of a defense firm for $700,000 more than it was worth is being exceptionally well-reported by the congressman's hometown paper, the San Diego Union-Tribune. You will not be amazed to learn the congressman in question (Randy Cunningham) oversees the committee that grants contracts to that very defense firm.
The story gets better by the day -- the congressman lives on a yacht in D.C. owned by the defense contractor, and employees of the defense firm say they were threatened with firing if they did not give to the company PAC. Well shut my mouth!
Now here's a jewel of a giveaway to those deserving citizens, the tobacco companies. The Justice Department suddenly dropped its request from $130 billion in the long-running tobacco case to $10 billion. Justice Department lawyers say political appointees at the top of the department were responsible for the decision.
The tobacco industry contributed a total of $54.1 million in individual, PAC and soft money from 1989 through last year, according to Capital Eye, a newsletter put out by the Center for Responsive Politics. Seventy-five percent of its contributions have gone to Republicans.
In addition, the tobacco industry has spent hundreds of millions on lobbying over the same years.
Source: "Super Senate sweep?" by Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate - 6/23/05
On April 23, 2002, lobbyist Richard Bornemann wrote a memo laying out a long-term plan by which Kansas-based Westar Energy could gain influence in Washington by "joining the fold, so to speak," of then House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land. Over the next several months, Westar contributed $25,000 to a Texas political fund affiliated with Mr. DeLay, and Westar employees donated $33,200 to various congressional campaign committees, including those of Mr. DeLay and senior House GOP members in charge of energy legislation.
Westar executives then used their newfound access -- which included an inv9itation to a golfing and fund-raising event at a West Virginia resort -- to press Mr. Delay and his aids for a provision in a pending energy bill that Westar considered vital to a corporate restructuring plan. The provision was included, despite objections of officials at the Security and Exchange Commission.
[The] House ethics committee report on Mr. Delay's relationship with Westar … clearly establishes that executives and lobbyists for Westar were able to make their case directly to Mr. DeLay and his top aides after anteing up substantial sums for GOP political causes.
For example, a May 14, 2002 corporate contribution of $25,000 to Texans for a Republican Majority, a state entity affiliated with Mr. DeLay, was the price of admission for two Westar executives to attend a DeLay retreat with other electricity executives at the Homestead in West Virginia
The June event was organized by lobbyist Drew Maloney, who had been Mr. DeLay's energy specialist until that March. Mr. Maloney stated to the committee, "I was seeking $25-50 K per participant."
Source: "Link between donations, access" - by Dan Morgan - Dallas Morning News - 10/8/04
Critics question what people who raise half a million dollars for the Republican cause expect in return. The secretive ranks of Pioneers, Rangers and now Super Rangers expose the huge influence of cash on US policy. Many gain positions in government. Their firms win billions of dollars worth of federal contracts. Legislation is shaped to benefit their industries.
Since 1998, Bush has raised at least $296 million in campaign contributions. It is believed up to half of that huge sum has come from just 630 people. Last week Bush's 2004 re-election fund hit a record $200m, doubling the total set in 2000, and it is expected to top $250m.
A report by [Texans for Public Justice] revealed that, out of 630 elite donors from 2000 and 2004, almost one quarter were given an appointment from the administration - including 24 ambassadorships and two cabinet positions. In 2002 more than $3.5 billion of federal contracts were given to 101 companies that between them boasted 123 Pioneers or Rangers. 'We believe this is only the tip of the iceberg, too. This is only the stuff that we have been able to find out about,'
Nor is the campaign choosy about where its contributions come from: 146 of the donors have been involved in corporate scandals or helped to run companies that have. Most obvious was Kenneth Lay, former boss of disgraced energy firm Enron. But others have been linked to financial murkiness on Wall Street, pollution problems and even health issues. The network has 78 donors linked to campaign finance scandals.
A classic example is that of West Virginia coal baron James Harless, a Pioneer in 2000 and 2004, therefore contributing at least $200,000 to the Bush campaign. He saw his grandson appointed to a Department of Energy team looking at drawing up new policies. The Bush administration then reversed a campaign promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that bedevil the coal industry and eased environmental restrictions on opencast mining.
Critics say the impact of the elite donors is most obvious in legislation governing energy and air pollution. Bush has eased laws governing old, polluting power plants. In many cases lawsuits against the worst offenders were finally dropped.
Source: Guardian Unlimited/The Observer (U.K.) - "Bush's super fundraisers join the queue for favours" -- May 23, 2004
Twenty years ago, a unit of Southern Company was convicted of making illegal campaign contributions in Florida. Under the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1933, our legacy from Franklin Roosevelt, no big power combine could give a dime to a politician -- no "hard" money, no "soft" money, no money period.
Today, the same payoffs would earn these folks a ticket to a barbeque at President's Bush's ranch. FDR's law has been shot full of loopholes. Enron, formed in 1985, led the rush into this new free market. The Houston operator became the No. 1 contributor to George W. Bush's campaigns, followed by Exxon and the felonious Southern Company.
Source: Boston Globe via Greg Palast.com - "Sheriff Bush Lets The Bad Guys Ride Off In The Dark" by Greg Palast -- August 27, 2003
A 2001 study by Texans for Public Justice, "Pay To Play," revealed that the more money that parties and lawyers in a case contributed to the [Texas Supreme Court] justices [campaigns], the better the odds that the justices voted to take their case. For example, over a four-year period, the justices voted to hear 56 percent of the appeals filed by the two law firms that contributed more than $250,000 apiece to the justices, an acceptance rate 10 times higher than the rate for non-contributors.
Source: Dallas Morning News "High court votes should be public" by Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice -- 10/26/03
The Bush administration has gone to great lengths, even so far as giving false information to Congress, to gut a clean air regulation opposed by electric utilities, an industry that funneled $4.8 million into Bush's 2000 campaign.
Documents and discussions with former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials reveal that Bush appointees made untrue statements to two Senate committees when asked if a weakened New Source Review (NSR) rule was expected to jeopardize lawsuits against electric utilities accused of modifying coal-fired plants in violation of NSR. Contrary to what senators were told, EPA staffers had concluded that the new rule would undercut enforcement cases that had the potential to reduce air pollution from U.S. electric utilities by 50 percent annually.
As early as May 1999, the electric utility industry's trade association had urged members to make bundled donations to the Bush fundraising machine. That arm-twisting bore fruit in August 2003, when the EPA issued a new NSR rule that could shield electric utilities from billions of dollars in fines and compliance costs at their coal-fired plants.
In the 2000 campaign, executives, employees and PACs of the electric utility industry virtually all of which is affected by NSR gave $4.8 million to the Bush campaign, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the inaugural committee.
In 2001, Cheney's energy task force consulted with at least three large utilities facing NSR lawsuits and with lobbyists representing all nine companies facing NSR litigation. ... In May 2001, the task force called for re-evaluations of NSR by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the EPA.
Source: Public Citizen - "Bush Appointees Gut Air Quality Rule and Give Congress False Information About the Consequences" -- October 2003 (via MisLeader.org)
Roughly 214 lawmakers - half Republicans and half Democrats - have filed reports late since July of last year [2004], some waiting up to five years after taking a trip to properly disclose their travels, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, a nonpartisan group that tracks political spending. Travel records have been available for years but did not attract much attention or analysis until recently.
Privately financed trips are a major perk of office in the House and the Senate, as well as one of the few avenues for corporations, trade associations and partisan policy groups to openly spend large amounts directly on lawmakers.
Members of Congress have participated in more than 5,900 trips with a total cost of some $17.6 million since 2000. Though there is no dollar limit on privately financed trips, lawmakers are required to disclose where they visit, who financed the trip and what it cost.
For special interest groups, the trips represent an unparalleled opportunity to spend time with lawmakers and members of their staff in rarified settings. Companies like Microsoft, General Electric, Walt Disney and AT&T have spent tens of thousands of dollars on Congressional travel, as have industry groups like the Nuclear Energy Institute and the United States Chamber of Commerce.
Source: "With Attention on DeLay, a Flurry of Travel Filings (Better Late Than Never, Some Say)" By GLEN JUSTICE - NY Times -June 13, 2005
As Mr. Obama begins his second term in the White House, the donors and bundlers who raised more than a billion dollars to get him there are pressing hard for appointments. The sheer scale of Mr. Obama’s fund-raising machine has led to an especially intense scramble for plum ambassadorships, with as many as 300 people vying for just 30 or so positions, according to several people involved in the process.
For some would-be diplomats, the hunt began the day after Mr. Obama’s re-election in November, when the president’s top aides began asking his leading fund-raisers if they had interest in serving.
Mr. Obama has followed recent tradition in making appointments; like every president going back to Ronald Reagan, he has filled about 70 percent of the posts with career diplomats and 30 percent with political appointees, often but not always top donors.
At least three Obama fund-raisers are interested in Italy this time around, according to people familiar with the roster of potential candidates.
Steve Westly, a California venture capitalist and top Obama fund-raiser, has discussed with administration officials the ambassadorship to China, among other jobs, according to people with knowledge of the talks.
Ellen Susman, a Texas philanthropist who contributed $100,000 to the “super PAC” supporting Mr. Obama, has alerted people involved in the decision-making of her interest in serving as director of the State Department’s Art in Embassies program, responsible for managing the art collection that hangs in American embassies around the world.
[Matthew Barzun, a genial former technology executive who spent 20 grueling months as finance chairman of the president’s national fund-raising operation] will get the United Kingdom post if he wants it, according to several donors and advisers with knowledge of the discussions inside the administration.
Source: "Well-Trod Path: Political Donor to Ambassador" By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG - NY Times - January 18, 2013
Source: Taxpayers for Common Sense via NY Times - 11/4/07
Source: Dallas Morning News - 10/8/04