Patricia McKeon’s Finance Report-- As Queer As A $3900 Bill

If you've been following our coverage of the exciting Buck McKeon-Lee Rogers congressional race (25th CD-- Simi Valley, Santa Clarita, Porter Ranch, Antelope Valley in northeast L.A.) you probably know that Buck’s supremely unqualified wife, Patricia, is also running for state Assembly, a move that is angering many local Republicans. In fact the Republican Party in the district has been torn apart, ole Buck has drawn two GOP primary opponents and barely a day goes by without a high profile Republican pledging to support Dr. Rogers. Oh, yes, the Cook Report and DCCC back in Washington might not figure this out until the first Wednesday of November but the Assembly race is having a sizeable impact on the congressional race. The Assembly district is located almost wholly within the congressional district. McKeon is getting so nervous, he sent his campaign manager, his deputy chief of staff, an intern, and a video tracker to record Rogers at a recent press conference to call out McKeon on a quid pro quo for a government land transaction.


McKeon’s former district director, Scott Wilk is the other Republican candidate. He's very well liked and respected among Republicans in the area. By running his wife for no apparent reason other than to create future employment for their hopelessly incompetent sons and to funnel corporate campaign cash into their household, Buck has created a bitter, intractable GOP family feud that could well bring about his own political doom.

Salon has reported the influx of war industry contributions to Patricia's Assembly campaign-- the only state legislative campaign any of these armaments manufacturers and war contractors are donating too. And the congressman-- who just happens to be the chair of the House Armed Services Committee and the biggest recipient of war industry bribes of any Member of Congress, can't seem to give anyone a straight answer about what this is all about.

What is not expected is that one of these contributors is a gay anti-defamation activist. Paul Morabito, co-chair of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) advisory board, gave a maximum donated of $3,900 to Patricia McKeon for Assembly. The McKeons are outspoken and virulently anti-LGBT gay-discriminators. Buck donated $5,000 from his own campaign committee-- in other words, his donors’ money-- to promote California Proposition 8, which eliminated the right of same-sex couples to marry. The McKeons, who are Mormon, helped coordinate the Mormon church’s efforts in California to support the same-sex marriage ban.

Buck McKeon’s has one of the worst records on LGBT rights in Congress. He voted for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the Defense of Marriage Act, a constitutional ban on marriage equality, a ban LGBT adoptions in the District of Columbia. He voted against the repeal of DADT, the 2009 hate crimes bill, and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. He has a 0% rating from the Human Rights Campaign. Last year, he tried to write language into the National Defense Authorization Act prohibiting military chaplains from officiating same-sex weddings on federal property, even after the repeal of DADT. Defeating him has been a priority on the Act Blue Worst Homophobes in Congress page.


The McKeon’s use their office and donors’ money to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Why would Paul Morabito, a co-chair of the GLAAD board, support Patricia with a maximum donation? He lists his occupation/employer as investor/self on her report, but he is listed as a lobbyist with the US Senate for USHF Communications Company, LLC. Opensecrets.org shows a relatively new PAC with $20,000 in cash and no dispersements and lists their industry as “unknown business.” But, apparently Patricia McKeon had dinner with Paul Morabito in January and discussed homeland security-- an area where she would have little knowledge and no influence... but her husband has immense influence, influence he routinely uses to push the special interests of his campaign donors.

It's obvious that McKeon is taking advantage of his position for personal gain. He runs his campaign committee like a family business, employing members of his family at above market rates. He pays his wife up to $100,000 per year to be his treasurer. She pays her campaign treasurer $450 per month. Before he became the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, he voted with the defense industries 25% of the time. In 2011, he voted in agreement with their lobbying 100% of the time and his defense contributions increased 444%. He took a dicey home refinance loan from Countrywide at a discounted interest rate and without fees. His new house won't be worth so much money; we heard he had all the mirrors removed because he just couldn't look at himself any longer.




UPDATE

Rich Ferraro, a publicist for GLAAD let us know that the organization no longer has any connection to Morabito. He told us that "The GLAAD Board of Advisors-- which Paul Morabito sent a release out about a few years ago-- does not currently exist. It was planned, but did not come to fruition and GLAAD never issued a press release about it." Meanwhile we're learning an awful lot about the shady connections between Morabito and the McKeons. There's even a question if Buck violated any laws by soliciting a contribution from a paid lobbyist for his wife's campaign.

What a mess! GLAAD, EqualityCalifornia, AT&T, and the threat to Net Neutrality

by Ken

I don't know if you've been following the fracas, so far focused mainly on GLAAD (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) -- leading to the resignation of executive director, Jarrett Barrios earlier this week -- surrounding the disclosure that a number of organizations that over time had accepted substantial contributions from AT&T and even had a man with close ties to the company on their boards had filed statements of support for AT&T's plan to dismantle Net Neutrality which were in fact written by AT&T. (GLAAD does oustanding work on public, notably media, misperception on LGBT issues. The universsally admired work of its highly energetic and highly effective staff can't have been made easier by the hubbub of these last couple of weeks.)

Yesterday FDL's Teddy Partridge reported this latest development (links onsite):

Troup Coronado, AT&T Handmaiden, Leaves Equality California Institute Board

By: Teddy Partridge, Friday June 24, 2011 10:56 am

Having slithered off the GLAAD board of directors amidst other departures announced in that organization’s long-awaited statement, Troup Coronado, Esq., — the AT&T handmaiden who’s the source of all this travail in LBGT organizations that took “stands” on the T-Mobile merger and net neutrality — has left the Equality California Institute Board of Directors as well.

It’s a good thing, too, since Troup Coronado’s anti-gay efforts in the Heritage Foundation and the GWBush Administration are coming to light, as well as his smarmy history of breaking “ethics” rules in place during the Wild West Denny Hastert/Tom Delay era as a House lobbyist.

Earlier this week, Equality California withdrew a letter to the Federal Communications Commission from its then-Executive Director, Geoff Kors, about net neutrality. Here is I-ED Carroll’s recent e-mail and his letter to the FCC withdrawing that letter:

On behalf of Equality California I have sent the letter copied below to the FCC withdrawing our previous letter. As it says in the letter it was never our intention to oppose Net Neutrality.

And on behalf of myself I made an error in an interview yesterday with Chris Geidner in which I said that Equality California doesn’t have a policy with regard to our policy positions. In fact, there is a policy that allows the Executive Director to make decisions on policies that are core to the mission of Equality California. On issues that are outside of our core mission, such as support for our friends in labor or in the reproductive rights community, there is a policy that requires the board to weigh in if a board meeting is timely, or directs the matter to the Executive Committee. In the event of an urgent policy choice the ED can seek counsel from the Board President. I apologize for any confusion this might have created. I’ve only been Interim ED for 7 weeks!

Jim Carroll

June 22, 2011

The Honorable Julius Genachowski
Chairman, Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street SW, Room 8-B201
Washington, DC 20554
RE: Withdrawal of letter dated October 12, 2009 – Broadband Industry Practices (WC Docket No. 07-52)

Dear Chairman Genachowski and Commissioners:

On October 12, 2009, Equality California submitted a letter to the Commission urging the preservation of an “open and accessible Internet” and requesting an effort to reach out to the LGBT community. It has come to our attention that the phrase “open and accessible Internet” can be taken to indicate opposition to net neutrality, which was neither our intention nor our organization’s position. We fully support the principles of net neutrality.

Accordingly, we request that you withdraw our letter of October 12, 2009.

Very truly yours,

Jim Carroll
Interim Executive Director
Equality California

Equality California promises a statement shortly; when I receive it I will append it as an update to this post.

Teddy, you'll note, is pretty tough on the orgs who've taken Troup Coronado into their bosom. Actually, it's not entirely clear that he has been engaged in unremitting evil masterminding.

For that matter, there's been a lot of anguish in the LGBT community over the vilification of AT&T. It's pointed out that the company has an unusually good record on its treatment of LGBT employees as well as its financial support of LGBT organizations and causes -- money that's admittedly a drop in the bucket for a company of its size but that may spell life or death for the recipients of its largesse, always hard-pressed for cash, and obviously much more so in the desperate climate following the economic meltdown. Was it wrong for orgs to accept, even welcome support from a source that has long seemed on board with their causes?

It seems kind of far-fetched that AT&T planted Troup Coronado on those boards as the linchpin of a scheme to infiltrate LGBT orgs to engineer the support that will put their anti-Net Neutrality crusade over the top. At the same time, it's a little scary to discover that some LGBT activists don't understand how damaging the AT&T-engineered breach of Net Neutrality will be, not just for LGBT causes, but for everyone who isn't a top-dollar supporter of the corporatist state.

Net Neutrality sounds like such an abstract, minor technical issue, sort of the way "media concentration" did all those years when annoying Cassandras were warning of its danger to free and open expression. Well, nothing ever was done to slow the onrush of media conglomeration, and here we are in a world where an alarmingly paltry number of media moguls control an alarmingly large portion of what passes for mass-consumed news.

If the result hasn't been quite as dire as the Cassandras warned (at least not yet), it's in good part because of the unforeseen rise of the Internet, making possible the widespread dissemination of non-corporate-blessed content. Thank goodness the corporatists won't be able to get their grubby mitts on that!

Oh, wait.

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No, we're not going to reproduce THE cartoon, but we're riveted by the spectacle -- is NY Post editor Col Allan really defying Rupert Murdoch?

Is our Rupert going to have to fix this mess himself?

by Ken

I have mixed feelings about reproducing "the cartoon" -- you know, the one where the cops shoot the chimpanzee, and one says to the other, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill" -- the latest outrage perpretrated under the guise of "humor" by the New York Post. It seems the cartoonist in question, Sean Delonas, has an extensive history of really ugly cartoons that find "humor" in blatant racial and anti-LGBT bigotry.

So here's what I suggest: Go to this glaadBLOG post, CALL TO ACTION: Sean Delonas & The New York Post, which not only reproduces this particular offending cartoon but contains lots of excellent links to other righteous blogscreams of anger and in particular a link to a slideshow of Delonas’ defamatory and anti-LGBT cartoons gathered by GLAAD.

Pugnacious Post editor Col Allan had defended the Delonas fiasco, which drew outrage from all over the map, including but hardly limited to the Rev. Al Sharpton, as “a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist." Left unexplained, of course, is what connection there is between the unfortunate incident of the chimp, Travis, who actually had to be shot in Connecticut, not what you would think of as a potential laff riot to begin with, and the writing of the stimulus bill.

Last night on Countdown, Michael Wolff -- the man who literally wrote the book on Rupert Murdoch (The Man Who Owns the News) -- seemed confident that, as he had indicated on his blog, Mr. Murdoch himself was so upset by this development that Allan's days at the paper were numbered. The assumption is that Col has been preparing for a return to Australia anyway. Wolff insisted that Rupert actually likes Obama, and wants good relations with him -- also reminding us of his theory that Murdoch has in fact been liberalized by his present wife.

Of course Allan wouldn't be summarily dispatched. Our Rupert doesn't do that, not least because it would suggest that he's responsive to outside pressure, something he's spent his entire professional life disproving. But there was no question that word would come to Allan from above to make this mess go away, and soon enough Col would be Australia-bound.

Returning to Countdown tonight, after the Post issued a half-assed non-apology that in fact attacked many of its attackers, Wolff was as astonished as anyone. Col Allan ("an incredibly angry man," Wolff assures us), instead of retreating, and far from going quietly, is fighting back -- apparently all by himself. "The most isolated man in the state of New York," is how Wolff described him. Reportedly, nobody at the paper is supporting him. Even the Page Six people, for goodness' sake, are referring angry callers to the news desk.

And there's a general feeling that in these parlous times our Rupert may be vulnerable, especially when threats are made to reopen the matter of the federal waiver by which his News Corp. is allowed to own both multiple TV stations and also a newspaper in the New York market.

Now it gets interesting. Surely by today Master Rupert's wishes had been conveyed to Col Allan, and it seems clear that he's not honoring them. Is this going to require direct intervention from the master? Will the Post actually have to own up to, and maybe even renounce, its unstated but open policy of courting readers with crude racial and sexual bigotry? Stay tuned.

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