Rob Simmons-- Very Much The Wrong Man To Be Calling Any Kettles Black

Rob Simmons, screwing Connecticut seniors

There's no way Chris Dodd couldn't be in the middle of the A.I.G. uproar. First of all, he's the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. But more to the point, Dodd had written a clause and inserted it into the Stimulus Bill limiting excessive executive compensation (including mega-bonuses) for any companies being bailed out by the government. Geithner and Summers talked him out of it for compensation (and bonuses) already contracted. Dodd changed his story on what happened and how it happened a couple times and the media, encouraged by the Republicans and sensing blood in the water, went for the jugular. It hardly helps that Dodd has taken $223,000 in campaign contributions from AIG employees, not to mention $13,238,806 from the finance/insurance/real estate sector, nearly as much as crooked GOP hacks Mitt Romney ($14,650,907) and Rudy Giuliani ($16,632,364) and even more than the some of the worst corporate whores in the Senate, like Joe Lieberman ($9,981,924), Arlen Specter ($5,753,310) and Miss McConnell ($5,013,778), though not nearly as much as the biggest corporate whore of all, John McCain ($32,423,813).

But is failed 3-term GOP congressman Rob Simmons, defeated for re-election in 2006, the right person to be delivering the anti-Dodd message?

"I think it's an outrageous explanation and he's trying to use Washington D.C. double speak to cover his tracks," Simmons said... Democratic consultant Roy Occhiogrosso fired back on [Dodd's] behalf, calling the comments "typical" of Simmons.

"This is one reason he's no longer in office," said Occhiogrosso, who worked on Dodd's re-election campaign in 2004. "He's a discredited former politician who's desperate to get back in the game. The only thing he knows how to do is attack his opponents.

"The other reason Rob Simmons is not in office is because his constituents voted him out," he added. "He voted for policies that are largely responsible for running this country into a ditch."

Occhiogrosso is correct about Simmon's rubber stamp support for all of the worst of the Bush era economic policies that led to the current catastrophe, but before we look at them, let's remember that even though Simmons was in the House for a very short time, the same finance/insurance/real estate sector that has been so generous to Dodd for decades, pumped $1,021,631 into Simmon's short political career. A list of his biggest donors looks like a list of special interests eager to get their hands on taxpayer dollars and influence public policy for their own benefit-- General Dynamics ($91,575), Pfizer ($90,135), United Technologies ($60,450), Dominion Resources ($40,000), the National Association of Home Builders ($40,000), the National Association of Realtors ($40,000), the NRA ($37,650), WalMart ($31,555)... Simmons largely lost his re-election bid because he was seen by his constituents as serving those special interests rather than the interests of ordinary Connecticut families.

While he was in office Simmons was distrusted by the far right that came to dominate his part-- he's pro-choice and pro-gay-- but was always on the wrong side on civil liberties issues and on economic issues. A former CIA spy, Simmons announced he would run against Dodd in 2010, although he may have to engage in a primary battle against CNBC sociopath Larry Kudlow, who also wants to run.

Simmons has a reputation as a moderate because he is pro-choice and pro-gay, positions that don't endear him to the GOP's hard right. But on the economic issues important to the Greed and Selfishness wing of the party, he's never been a moderate, voting to wreck Social Security and to consistently shift the tax burden from the very wealthy to the middle class. In 2004, Simmons was one of the Republicans handsomely paid off by the credit card companies to revise the bankruptcy law in favor of... the credit card companies, a move that has proved devastating to consumers and to the economy. Selling out to the banksters on this bill was hardly an anomaly. From the first moment Simmons got into Congress he worked against the interests of American families and for the interests of Big Business. One of his earliest votes was to in favor of Cheney's controversial energy plans that catastrophically increased American dependence on Middle Eastern oil while shattering Democratic proposals to increase CAFE standards on automobiles. When 16 moderate Republicans crossed the aisle to oppose the bill (including his Connecticut colleague Chris Shays), Simmons wasn't among them.

Simmons has also been an unfaltering advocate of removing opportunities for the public to seek redress in court against medical and corporate malfesance. Every time there was an opportunity to cap damages for victims, Simmons was on the side of Big Business against against consumers and victims; never with the moderates and always with the right-wing of his party. Even when it came to reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada, something that was very much demanded by Connecticut seniors, Simmons was in the vanguard of right-wing Republicans sabotaging the efforts. No to seniors but yes to abolishing the estate tax for multimillions and yes to cutting capital gains on dividends and yes on making Bush's unfair taxes permanent.

We have a long way to go before the 2010 election but if the GOP thinks the people of Connecticut, no matter how disappointed in Dodd they happen to be right now, are about to elect someone responsible for much of the real mess the country is facing, they've got to be smoking something they oppose legalizing.