Getting To Know The Republicans Willing To Kill Your Children For Koch Money: Meet Mike Pompeo (R-KS)

The other day we took a look at sleazy Kansas freshman Kevin Yoder. A friend of mine in Wichita e-mailed me that, true Yoder is pure garbage-- and probably easier to defeat in 2012-- but that another Kansas freshman, Mike Pompeo, is an ever more extreme and deranged maniac. I promised I'd look into it and see if we could find something worth writing about in regard to Rep. Pompeo-- other than the old story about him sending out a blog calling President Obama an "evil Muslim Communist usurper," which is just standard right-wing rhetoric in the circles where Pompeo runs.

Other than the well-established fact that he's a virulent racist, all I knew about him was that he's a multimillionaire and total corporate shill who's long been in bed with the Koch Brothers (who are his top campaign donors through various front groups they control and fund and who placed one of their employees, Mark Chenoweth, as his chief of staff to make sure he stays in line). In fact Pompeo's a trustee of their fanatically right-wing Kansas Policy Institute. Then I remembered that even after virtually all the Republicans and all the Democrats had been supporting an "early warning system" for parents in regard to toys regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, it was the Koch Bros who started demanding the congressmen they bought and paid for oppose the whole concept. And it was Pompeo who jumped up screeching first. In fact, the Kochs are so politically powerful now that when Pompeo offered the Koch Amendment to kill the early warning system, all but 10 Republicans voted with him to prohibit the establishment of a database to keep track of dangerous and harmful toys for that parents could look though to help them pick appropriate toys. It passed 234-187, since 7 of the most Koch-oriented and corrupt Democrats joined the GOP across the aisle: Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Dennis Cardoza (Blue Dog-CA), Ron Kind (Chamber shill-WI), Larry Kissell (NC), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) and Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC). As for the safety of children... how could that compare to the safety of Koch Industries' bottom line? The Kochs are their wholly-owned congressmembers like Pompeo don't want any databases designed to warn parents about potentially defective products aimed at children around.

It's something Nikki Johns wishes had been around before her infant son died in a drop-side crib: a centralized federal database of people's safety complaints about thousands of products, from baby gear to household appliances and more.

"If I had known there had been children killed in drop-sides, it would have swayed me against them," says Johns, who lost her 9-month-old son, Liam, in a faulty crib that came apart at the side rail and trapped the little boy one night after his mom went to bed at their home in Citrus Heights, Calif., nearly six years ago.

Johns, other parents who have tragically lost children, and consumer advocates are eagerly awaiting March 11, the formal launch date for the government database SaferProducts.gov, where people can share complaints of injury or worse from everyday products such as cribs, high chairs, space heaters and toasters.

But the database, overseen by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, isn't universally popular. Manufacturers and some members of Congress fear such a "crowdsourced" website will be bloated with bogus, inaccurate or misleading reports. One of those lawmakers, freshman Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., sponsored an amendment approved in the House last week to withhold additional funding for the database, which could bring the project to a halt. Prospects for his amendment in the Democratic-led Senate aren't clear.

Despite the Kochs, Pompeo and the rest of the Republican shills, the database went online last week. And here's Rachel, a big Koch fan: