Would The Death Penalty Be Effective In Cases of Corporate Pollution?

The first in my family to go to college, I got through a state university on scholarships, student loans, and selling pot. The very first scholarship I ever won was a NYC essay contest sponsored by the UN. I came in second. The question was whether or not the death penalty should be abolished. The winner wrote it should be; I wrote it shouldn't. I was only 15 at the time but, unlike every friend I have, I still believe in the death penalty. The difference now is that I recognize it isn't fairly applied and innocent ppeople are killed... so it can't be used. I just voted to abolish it in the state of California earlier this month-- although, in principle, I'm still very pro-death penalty. I think of excellent ways to make the world a better place by applying it properly nearly every day.

This week I was driving along listening to a radio program, the one above, about hexavalent chromium water pollution in Hinkley, California and I came up with a GREAT idea that would make America an even more super-duper country. A public execution for a dozen people... on TV. These folks: (You're going to be disappointed if you look for Karl Rove and George Bush and Dick Cheney on the list.)

• David R. Andrews, Pepsico former chief lobbyist
• C. Lee Fox, former Vice Chairman of AirTouch Communications
• Fred J. Fowler, Chairman, Spectra Energy
• Roger H. Kimmel, Vice Chairman, Rothschild, Inc
• Forrest. E. Miller, former Vice President, AT&T
• Barbara L. Rambo, CEO, Taconic Management Services
• Lewis Chew, Executive VP. Dolby Labs
• Anthony F. Earley, Jr., Chairman and CEO, PG&E
• Maryellen C. Herringer, former Executive VP, APL, Limited
• Richard A. Meserve, President, Carnegie Institution
• Rosendo G. Parra, former Senior VP, Dell
• Barry Lawson Williams, Williams Pacific Ventures

Never heard of any of these people? You don't think they're the evilest scumbags that come immediately to mind? First, the hint is in the bolded name, Anthony F. Earley, Jr., Chairman and CEO, PG&E. The dozen people are PG&E's Board of Directors. That's where the buck stops for the giant $50 billion San Francisco-based energy (electricity and natural gas) company with 19,424 employees.

If you saw the classic 2000 film Erin Brockovich you know all the background already. Hinkley, California is in San Bernardino County and its 2,000 people-- that was when the movie came out; there are considerably fewer now-- are represented by one of the most corrupt congressmen in all of American history, Republican predator Jerry Lewis, who is passing the seat along to Paul Cook-- no, not the drummer from the Sex Pistols, his reactionary protégée who just beat out crackpot teabagger Gregg Imus earlier this month. Hinkley's groundwater was polluted with hexavalent chromium between 1952 and 1966, making the area nearly uninhabitable-- although people have their homes and businesses there. PG&E bought a lot of homes up after the contamination was first discovered but they told even more people that their homes were "safe." They weren't safe and those people are sick now-- and PG&E is offering to buy their homes now.

Julie Heggenberger, a 36-year-old mother of two, was just a teenager when PG&E agreed to pay $333 million to residents who claimed they had been made ill by toxic well water. For decades, workers at PG&E's nearby compressor station dumped the chemical hexavalent chromium into waste ponds that seeped into the town's groundwater.

"I sat and I listened, and I was just like — these are the words they were telling us in '97," Heggenberger says. "Even at the time, some people were like, 'Why are you staying?' But we really did feel safe. PG&E said this plume ... it'll never spread, the contamination was back in the '60s, it's over."

Heggenberger, who suffers from Crohn's disease, says she never considered leaving before. She has deep family roots here.

"But when I was in the hospital the second time and all of this has been brought up again ... I said I just want out. That's where I am now. I just want to leave."

Pacific Gas & Electric acknowledges the toxic plume is larger than once thought, but disputes that it is actually growing.

"The reason that it's larger is because we are testing in areas that haven't been previously tested," says Jeff Smith, a spokesperson for PG&E.

"A couple of options for local residents who live within a mile of the contaminated area from PG&E's past actions here-- what we offered was either a whole household water-treatment system or, for those that were interested, a property-purchase program," he says.

More than 200 property owners, over a quarter of the town, have elected to sell their homes to the utility. Along long stretches of asphalt, country mailboxes sprout like desert flowers amid scatterings of boarded-up houses.

Theresa Schoffstall says her home just outside the boundary of the contaminated area does not qualify for the buyout, but her next-door neighbor's home does.

"I'm not an expert in all of this, but to me it's just common sense in a way, the water flows and if it's 200 feet from me, how can mine be different?" she says. "That's what I don't understand."

Schoffstall fears the home she and her husband built 12 years ago is now worthless, but most of all she worries about her children. The family has stopped drinking the water.

"But I'm still cooking and we still shower and we have a swimming pool, and a lot of times people are telling you that's harmless, but I don't want 10 years from now, all of a sudden, [to hear,] 'Remember we told you it was harmless? Now, no its not,' " she says.

Anthony F. Earley, Jr.

So what does all this have to do with executing the Board of Directors on television? Well, this kind of corporate environmental pollution happens all over and all the time. Jerry Lewis did nothing for his constituents and someone like Paul Cook will do exactly the same now that they're his constituents. They're more interested in PG&E's corporate campaign contributions (and candidate Cook already accepted $2,000 from PG&E this year). But do you think any corporation would ever pollute another town again anywhere in the country if these twelve one percenters were given last cigarettes and blindfolds, lined up against a wall and shot? I say we take a chance and see what happens! And I say we send Jerry Lewis in there with them for good measure and see if it makes congressmen behave any better going forward.

Congress' Most Corrupt Member, Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Finally Retiring

California working families had good political news this week with the announced retirements of reactionary congressmen Elton Gallegly and the even more heinous Mormon fanatic Wally Herger. And then there are the rumors, which grow louder by the day, that either David Dreier or Darrell Issa will forego another run for the House in order to challenge Dianne Feinstein, a suicidal mission even for the richest Member of Congress (career criminal Issa). But there's even better news. Last week we mentioned the rumors that Jerry Lewis, the most corrupt man in Congress, was considering cashing in his chips. Confirmation arrived yesterday when Lewis contributors confirmed that their puppet in DC has told them he won't run again.

We have confirmed that longtime Republican Congressman Jerry Lewis of the Inland Empire has been making phone calls to supporters today indicating that he is not running for re-election. We are not prepared to say this means he actually is retiring, since he has been rumored to be retiring before, and he keeps running again, and again.

Lewis of course is known as the “Minority Maker” as he was dubbed by the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board for being a prolific proponent of egregious pork-barrel spending in Washington, D.C. The Journal credited Lewis with bearing some of the burden for the 2006 epic loss of the House by Republicans, because of GOP over-spending.

Lewis’ current seat was divvied up in redistricting and there were questions about which seat he would actually chose to run in. If Lewis does retire, this could set the state for moderate San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael Ramos to run. Ramos was a proponent of Governor Brown’s tax increase proposal last year, which was controversial in GOP circles. Also possibly running could be State Senator Bob Dutton, and also there is rumor that if Lewis doesn’t run, Congressman Gary Miller might slide over and run for one of the two “Lewis” seats. Also Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt and Assemblyman Paul Cook… Lots of potential candidates in this area.

Again, we can confirm that Lewis is telling people he will retire this year. We can only cross our fingers and hope it’s true. Don’t miss this video below as a reminder of the big spending ways of the “Minority Maker”…

Be Still, My Heart... The End Of California's Most Corrupt Politician, Jerry Lewis?

I probably shouldn't get all worked up. Just skimming the report yesterday by Texas on the Potomac I noticed some errors, but... Jerry Lewis being among even an error-ridden "12 most endangered incumbents of 2012" is the kind of thing that makes my world go round. (I know, sad.)

I'll come back to Jerry Lewis in a moment, but while we're on the subject of "sad," I want to mention that Dennis Kucinich is also on this list. Were we to lose Kucinich to an outrageous GOP gerrymandering farce, it would be a great tragedy not just for Ohio but for the whole country. Alan Grayson has been urging his own donor base to contribute to Kucinich's campaign. “Congress," he wrote, "is full of replaceable parts. But Dennis Kucinich is not one of them. Dennis is unique. Now Dennis Kucinich is in the toughest race of his 15-year career in Congress. The Republicans have tried to gerrymander him out of Congress. He needs your help, and he needs it now.” Grayson supporters donated $50,000 to Kucinich in one day after that one e-mail. What makes this all the more tragic is that the primary pits Kucinich against another strong progressive fighter-- progressive on just about everything but women's choice, where she's absolutely horrible-- Marcy Kaptur. But in terms of economic populism, the two of them are equal. The district includes many more Kaptur voters than Kucinich voters, so this is going to be painful.

Another shocker on the Texas on the Potomac "12 most endangered" list was Brad Miller, but author Rick Dunham has this analysis all wrong. He doesn't seem to realize that Miller isn't running in the part of his district that has been turned into a haven for conservatives, but that he's going up against David Price in a primary. In November we explained why Miller is a better choice than Price.

Price voted for several of the "free trade" deals, including the worst ever-- NAFTA, and just a few weeks ago, he voted for the horrible deals with Korea, Colombia and Panama. Brad Miller voted against every trade deal that's come up with the exception of one with Australia, a country with a similar enough standard of living to ours that it would not put American workers into competition with very poorly paid workers... David Price has consistently been on the wrong side. Brad Miller has consistently been on the right side.

...Tragically, Price voted for all the financial deregulation in the nineties, which allowed banks to become too big to fail, erased the separation of commercial and investment banking (Glass-Steagall), and prohibited any regulation of derivatives. Other Members of Congress have told me that Brad has been the leading critic among members of bank practices, and introduced the House version of the Kaufman-Brown bill that limited banks' total assets to two percent of the GDP. That would have allowed banks with more than $300 billion in assets, which are huge banks, but would have required the six biggest banks to split into more than 30 entities (not all would be banks). He has also been a tireless advocate for separating certain bank functions to avoid conflicts of interest and he introduced legislation to prohibit servicers of mortgages owned by others (securitized mortgages) from holding second liens on the same homes. That effectively would have required the largest banks to spin off their servicing affiliates. Most recently he introduced the legislation to make it easier for bank customers to move their accounts to create effective competition in consumer banking.

And speaking of banking, let's look at bankruptcy. Price voted for the God-awful bankruptcy bill that became law in 2005, which made it almost impossible for middle-class families to seek bankruptcy relief from overwhelming debt, and made it impossible ever to reduce student loans in bankruptcy. There are peer-reviewed academic publications by economists that find that the bankruptcy law changes fueled the explosion of subprime mortgages because families had no way out of debt, so they borrowed against their homes. Also, lots of young people are now unemployed and have crushing student loan debt that will almost certainly be with them for most of the rest of their lives. Brad Miller voted against that bankrutpcy bill and he was the first Member of Congress to introduce the legislation to allow modification in bankruptcy of home mortgages ("cramdown"), and was one of the leaders of that fight throughout. That had a lot to do with why Alan Grayson, also then a member of the House Financial Services Committee told Blue America that "Brad Miller is exactly what people hope that their representatives will be: thoughtful, independent, selfless, smart, and completely committed to their well-being. There are very few Members of Congress who are willing to tell a well-connected lobbyist to get lost; Brad is one of them."

Brad voted against extending all of the Bush tax cuts last December, and signed a letter circulated by Barbara Lee to the "supercommittee" to oppose any cuts to Medicare or Social Security to reduce the deficit. Price voted to extend the Bush tax cuts, and signed the opposite letter to the supercommittee urging that "mandatory spending"-- in other words, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security-- be "on the table" to reduce the deficit.

It's still going to be a tough race for Miller-- you can help him here-- but Rick Dunham picked Miller for his list for the wrong reasons. His name and Kucinich's were the two on the list that got me nervous. I hope Jon Tester is reelected in Montana because he's better than the freak running against him, but not because he's lived up to the populist promises he made when Blue America supported him in the 2006 primary and general election. He's been pretty disappointing. We also supported Larry Kissell, and I actually hope he loses his seat. He's grotesque and doesn't belong in public office. In my mind it's a toss-up between him and John Barrow (also on the list) as to which Democrat has most earned a place on the garbage pile of political history.

Obviously I'm overjoyed to see Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) on the list, because it means Elizabeth Warren will be a U.S. Senator, the best of all outcomes this year. Far worse than Brown, though-- and also on this endangered list-- are clueless-for-anything-but-comic-relief teabaggers Allen West (R-FL), Bobby Schilling (R-IL) and Blake Farenthold, R-TX), all destined to be looking for new jobs come January 2013.

Now for Jerry Lewis. This is what Dunham had to say:

After 34 years, the changing demographics of California may end the career of the state’s senior Republican lawmaker. Lewis’ Republican base was split in his state’s nonpartisan map-drawing, and his house is now in a Democratic-leaning district that also is home to Democratic Rep. Joe Baca. If Lewis chooses to run again, he’d have an uphill campaign in new territory. Or he could move to a nearby (and very Republican) district that is the epicenter of the state’s Tea Party movement. If he does that, he faces a tough primary.

That other district is the new 8th and all kinds of freaks have crawled out from under various rocks to run for the seat. Lewis still hasn't said what he'll do-- at least not publicly. The primary's in June, and so far we have four contenders: Gregg Imus, cofounder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, Victorville Mayor Ryan McEachron, Victorville Councilwoman Angela Valles and Hesperia ex-Mayor Bill Jensen, who was also founder of the High Desert Tea Party. They're all anti-immigrant fanatics, hatemongers and anti-regulation morons. And once Lewis declares for sure he won't run, two GOP establishment types of the Lewis mold are likely to be heard from: San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt and Assemblyman Paul Cook from the Yucca Valley.

Republicans Get Down To Dividing Up The Spoils

The new Republican House chairmen are busy doling out subcommittee chairs this week. Yesterday there was a big hurrah when Texas freak Lamar Smith, tragically the new head of Judiciary, eliminated the House's most anti-Hispanic bigot, Steve King (R-IA) as the top Republican on the Immigration and Enforcement panel. Not that anyone is too excited about the slug he picked instead, California racist Elton Gallegly (although... Gallegly's district is now around 25% Hispanic, which will lead to some interesting organizing possibilities). Still, it's great to get Tom Tancredo's successor's hands off the steering wheel. Smith seemed to target the two worst and most conspicuous clowns on his committee, King and Louie Gohmert, with denial of advancement.

But the big subcommittee moves yesterday were all about Appropriations-- the fount of free-flowing corporate bribes. Or I should say "founts," plural. Regardless of which party is in control, all the most corrupt Members try to get on Appropriations. Under Republicans it was Abramoff's favorite committee and under Democrats, Jack Murtha used it the same way Republicans do. Boehner knew he couldn't get away with reinstating as blatant a criminal as Jerry Lewis as chair so he made sure someone just as corrupt, but less likely to get indicted, Hal Rogers (R-KY), "the Prince of Pork," got the plum assignment. And this week Rogers selected his "12 cardinals," the all-powerful subcommittee chairs whose main functions will be to squeeze money out of special interests for Republican election campaigns.

The biggest source of corruption has always been the Defense subcommittee-- that's where Lewis served before becoming Appropriations Chair and that're why Duke Cunningham is now serving time in a federal prison. It's certainly one of the most singularly corrupt places on Capitol Hill and Rogers picked a singularly corrupt earmarker as subcommittee chair, C.W. Bill Young of Florida, who was granted a rules waver to get the position, despite his reputation of playing fast and loose with the taxpayers' money. Rogers deemed Jerry Lewis (and Young), "chairmen emeritus," a make believe position that allows these 2 crooks to sit on all subcommittees.

Heading the Appropriations Committee's Agriculture subcommittee will be Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) who had also wanted the defense position, Rogers said. [Kingston immediately announced he will work to deny food safety efforts any funding, working hand in hand with Frank Lucas, new head of the agriculture Committee another vicious opponent of food safety.]

The Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee will be overseen by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and the Energy and Water subcommittee will be overseen by Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.).

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) will head the Financial Services subcommittee while Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) will head the Homeland Security subcommittee formerly headed by Rogers. Aderholt is switching subcommittees from the Legislative Branch subcommittee.

The Labor and Health and Human Services subcommittee will be headed by Rep. Dennis Rehberg (R-Mont.).

The Interior and Environment subcommittee will be headed by Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) while the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs subcommittee will be headed by Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas). Culberson had been seen as in line for chairman of the Homeland Security appropriations panel. [Simpson is eager to do his bit to end the EPA's regulatory functions by defunding them and leaving the environment to the polluters, his campaign financiers.]

Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) will be in charge of State and Foreign Operations while Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa) will be in charge of the large Transportation spending account.

Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla.) will head the Legislative Branch subcommittee which controls the smallest amount of spending. He is switching from the Military Construction subcommittee to do so.

Streams Of Consciousness- Nov. 29

It's widely reckoned in the Senate that Arkansas ConservaDem Mark Pryor is the dimmest bulb in that body. He as much as admitted it in an on-camera interview with Bill Maher for the film Religulous 2 years ago when he excused his pandering to superstitious rednecks back home by smirking that there's no IQ test to be a Member of the Senate-- as if we didn't know. Watch:



Now as the lame duck session kicks in-- and Pryor thinks about his reelection bid in 2012 in a state that just decimated elected Democrats-- there is every reason in the world to believe that Pryor will be roosting on the other side of the aisle on the high-profile, divisive issues where Democrats can most use him. He's likely to vote against the DREAM Act, as he did in 2007, and he's telling the media that he'll oppose repealing DADT as well, possibly being the very vote to kill the effort, something that is sure to cause him the same grief progressives just gave Blanche Lincoln. The man who cynically claims he believes in talking snakes also says being gay is a sin. He told the Democrat-Gazette that "he opposes repeal; that he thinks homosexuality is a sin and that he has reservations about housing gay troops with straight troops (as if this hasn't occurred forever). He's been fully indoctrinated by the Religious Right's false arguments-- that military chaplains won't be able to continue to preach morally justifiable discrimination; that gays are just lying in wait to assault straight soldiers if only given the cover of open service."

And Speaking About DADT...

The Senate got it's third-- after Lindsey Graham and Miss McConnell-- notorious Republican closet queen today, as Illinois' Mark Kirk was sworn in. ThinkProgress welcomed him by pointing out that, although he insists he never ran into any gays during his 21 years in the military, he did promise during the campaign that he might be open to repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell. As when Kirk often says something, he was lying. It's a trait most closet queens like Kirk have honed down to a science.

That's especially sad because poll after poll has been showing most Americans think DADT should be repealed. A new one released today by PEW confirms all the rest of them. Opposition to gays serving in the military has steadily declined from 45% in 1994 to just 27% now. And support for equality for gays serving our country in the military has risen in that time period from 52% to 58%.

Large majorities of Democrats (70%) and independents (62%) favor allowing gays to serve openly. Republicans are divided (40% favor, 44% oppose). Among conservative Republicans, far more oppose than favor allowing gays to serve openly (52% to 28%).

Nearly half (48%) of white evangelical Protestants oppose letting gays serve openly in the military, while just 34% support this proposal. Majorities or pluralities across other religious groups favor allowing gays to serve openly.

The balance of opinion across age groups is in favor of letting gays serve openly. Those 65 and older are the only age group in which fewer than half (44%) favors this; still just 28% of seniors are opposed to gays and lesbians serving openly while an identical percentage offers no opinion.

Two-thirds of college graduates (67%) favor gays and lesbians serving openly, as do more than half of those with some college experience (55%) and those with no more than a high school education (54%).

And, predictably, Know Nothings, currently called Tea Partiers, are in complete opposition to gays serving in the military. I guess that's part of smaller government or something... not the bigotry and hatred some people use to equate them to the Taliban.

Teabagger Congressmen Looking For Places To Sleep

Maybe they didn't expect to ever win or maybe they expect to be defeated in 2012, but the Wall Street Journal estimates that around 15% of the freshmen are planning to sleep in their offices instead of getting apartments in Washington. In 2008 it was kind of funny when we wrote about this in regard to Utah kook Jason Chaffetz (above with his cot, looking for a Capitol Hill office).

"Since I'm here on a temporary basis, I don't see any need to have a permanent kind of residence," says Rep.-elect Joe Heck, a Nevada Republican, who was thinking roll-out cot when he looked at office space this month.

Earlier this month, freshman lawmakers drew lots and chose the three-room suites they and their aides will inhabit in one of three House office buildings.

For many of them, a key selling point was not proximity to the House chamber, where they'll vote, but to the House gym, where they'll shower.

Rep.-elect Tim Griffin, an Army reservist, stood near the gym in the Rayburn House Office Building and used some compass software on his phone to navigate the paths to potential offices.

"We want to get as close to Rayburn as possible," Mr. Griffin, an Arkansas Republican, told an aide. "I've got to walk all the way down this hall in the morning."

He settled on a suite in the Longworth building with plenty of space for the six-foot sofa he says will be his bed for the foreseeable future. "I don't want to see you in your bathrobe," Rep.-elect Cory Gardner (R., Colo.), a non-office sleeper, told Mr. Griffin as freshmen rushed about Capitol Hill looking at available offices.

...Nobody seems to know for certain how many lawmakers currently dwell in their offices; estimates range into the dozens. The practice appears to crest after Republican wave elections.

In the mid-1980s, then-Speaker Tip O'Neill (D., Mass.) rousted the office sleepers, including Texas Republican Dick Armey, who later became House majority leader and is now a booster of the anti-Washington tea-party rebellion. "The theory was the offices weren't for sleeping," says Stan Brand, who was House general counsel at the time. "They were for transacting business."

Mr. Armey moved out briefly, then quietly started sleeping on his office couch again, according to a former aide.

After Republicans took the House in 1994, ending four decades of Democratic control, the number of office sleepers grew. The new speaker in 1995, Georgian Newt Gingrich, gave the practice his blessing.

...Freshman Todd Rokita (R., Ind.) was floored when shown a 600-square-foot, $2,000-a-month studio. He'll sleep in his office instead. "I'm not doing this as a political stunt," he says. "I'm doing this because I'm a cheap bastard." Most House members earn $174,000 a year and maintain homes in their districts.

Professor Cornbread

I got every question right. See if you do too-- and learn about why term limits should be on the table and up for discussion-- especially if read with Frank Rich's terrific NY Times column from yesterday in mind.



Two Execrable Choices For New House Appropriations Chair

The old guard wants career criminal Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and the right guard, lead by the hysterical Club For Growth is insisting on extremist Jack Kingston (R-GA). Lewis would have to get a waiver of GOP rules to grab the chair again and many of loathe to grant it since it is no secret Inside the Beltway that although Rove successfully defused the criminal investigations, Lewis was far more guilty of rank corruption than his less cautious sidekick Duke Cunningham, currently rotting in prison. In the end it will be, more or less, Boehner's decision and he and Lewis have worked very closely in the past.

Each of the three candidates running for the post have downsides for GOP leaders, making their decision all the more difficult.

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) is pitching himself as “battle-ready” and tested, but given his long record as a pork-barrel spender his selection could enrage tea party-backed freshmen. They might be more likely to support Kingston.

Kingston is marking himself as the outsider candidate since he sponsored anti-earmark legislation in 2007, though his record is not earmark-free. Taxpayers for Common Sense says Kingston obtained $66 million in earmarks in fiscal 2010 compared to Rogers’ $93 million and $97 million for Lewis.

But the fact that Kingston is more of an outsider could be a problem for leaders, since he could be more difficult to control.

An appropriations chairman can win loyalty for the leadership by pressuring agency officials to fund pet projects under threat of reduced funding for other projects. Some observers believe Kingston could balk at such requests from leaders.

Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) also has a long track record of bringing home the bacon and he therefore has similar liabilities and strengths as Lewis. But the Kentucky Republican helped himself by announcing his support for the GOP earmark ban. In letters to colleagues he has pledged to open up the appropriations process to the wider membership.

But some supporters of the other candidates say Rogers has not performed well in front of the media and that could be a liability given the importance of explaining GOP spending positions to the public. In response to the criticism, Rogers has promised to prioritize media outreach in letters to colleagues touting his candidacy.

Lewis’s track record as a fundraiser for GOP lawmakers is a mark in his favor. It was seem as the deciding factor when Lewis fended off a 2004 chairmanship challenge from Rogers.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch said that Lewis will be calling in his chits before the Nov. 30 meeting, reminding members of past favors.

The Senate broke a GOP filibuster on Tom Harkin's FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S.510) today. Every Democrat plus 14 Republicans voted for cloture, which passed 69-26 in the face of mindless, ritual opposition from DeMint and his pack of hyenas. The bill gives the FDA the authority to proactively work on preventing foodborne illnesses instead of just reacting after an outbreak occurs.

"The statistics are that Americans are getting sick and they are dying because of food borne illnesses," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a chief architect of the measure.

Food recalls are now voluntary, but the Senate-passed legislation would give the FDA the power to order food producers to recall their products, a step that could prevent tainted food from reaching consumers' tables.

Food producers would have to increase safety requirements and record keeping to keep the food supply safer. The bill would also increase safety standards for imported foods.

Some Republicans, including Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., opposed the bill, saying it represented a government overreach that would create unnecessary burdens on food producers and increase food prices.

If The Afghan Police Are The Solution To Our Problem, We Might As Well Just End This Thing By The Weekend


Did you watch Peter Galbraith explaining the utter futility of trying to train an Afghan police force on 60 Minutes last night? He sounded like the only person in the report who wasn't on powerful Mazar-i-Sharif opiated hash. If you missed it, you can watch the segment below. Get through all the silly feel-good prpoaganda and listen carefully to Galbraith. And then think about what happened there today.

A gunman in an Afghan police uniform has killed six US service members in eastern Afghanistan, officials say.

The man opened fire during a training mission in Pachir Wagam district, Nangarhar province, said Nato. He was also killed in the incident.

US officials later confirmed that all six were Americans, but declined to give further details.
The Taliban issued a statement saying it was responsible for the killings, AP news agency reported.

Spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the gunman had joined the border police in order to kill foreign soldiers.

"Today he found this opportunity and he killed six invaders," he said.
Nato said the incident was being investigated.

"An individual in an Afghan border police uniform turned his weapon against International Security Assistance Forces (Isaf) during a training mission today, killing six service members in eastern Afghanistan," Monday's statement said.

Congress' Most Corrupt Republicans Demanding Their Share Of The Spoils

Not all the most embarrassing congressional Republicans are freshmen teabaggers like Florida sociopaths Allen West, Daniel Webster, Steve Southerland and Sandy Adams. Some have been in the House for decades-- like Big Oil's favorite shill Joe Barton, first elected to represent the Dallas suburbs in 1984, and Jerry Lewis, the prototype of congressional corruption who has been the congressman from the Inland Empire since 1978. And each of these two is seeking demanding exemptions from the rule that term limits chairmen of House committees.

Miraculously, Lewis has managed to avoid the same fate as his partner in crime Duke Cunningham, primarily due to the intervention of Karl Rove, who engineered the removal of two consecutive U.S. Attorneys investigating Lewis' myriad bribery scandals. It is widely known Inside-the-Beltway that Cunningham was just sloppy small potatoes compared to the systematically corrupt Lewis. But Cunningham is rotting in prison and Lewis... is demanding his position back as head of the House Appropriations Committee, the fount of incredible opportunities for congressmen with larceny foremost on their minds. Tea Party activists-- or at least organizations claiming that mantle-- are growling at Boehner to not grant Lewis (or Barton) the waivers they'd need to take up their old chairmanships.

“Term limits exist to prevent individual members from centralizing power and undermining the principles of republican government and the Republican Party,” said Club for Growth President Chris Chocola. “Waiving the limits and breaking their own rules before the new Congress is even sworn in will send a clear and depressing signal that House Republicans still don’t ‘get it.’”

Lewis is seeking a waiver to serve another term atop the spending panel but faces stiff competition not only from GOPs leadership-- which has sent signals that it is averse to circumventing term limits-- but also other lawmakers seeking the gavel.

Favorite among those lawmakers is Kentucky Rep. Hal Rogers, a 29-year veteran of Congress. He has reached out to freshmen and incumbents, promising reform and to keep in place the earmark moratorium. Rogers is also making clear that it’s not smart for the conference to reverse its rules on term limits. Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston is also being floated as a contender who favors an earmark ban.

Needless to say, Lewis has been one of Congress' most egregious earmark abusers and one of the most hysterical defenders of the practice. In fact, in most Republican lawmakers' minds, Lewis is the personification of the earmark scandals. On the other hand, he's a close Boehner ally and someone who knows how to squeeze a great deal of campaign cash out of Big Business for the Republican Party-- as well as for himself.

But the "campaign" to run the House Energy and Commerce Committee is even more explosive! Barton made a national spectacle of himself when, as ranking Republican on Energy Commerce, he apologized to BP after they agreed to pay for the cost of the oil spill. (A basic tenet of Republican "freedom" is the freedom of Big Business to exploit and pollute in the quest for profits-- a portion of which is reserved for supporting GOP politicians, of course-- while the taxpayers are expected to clean up the mess. Barton was just too obvious about it and embarrassed the party.) Barton has gotten bigger bribes from Big Oil than any member of the House-- ever-- $1,480,630. The only members of Congress who have gotten more from Big Oil directly are four especially corrupt senators: John McCain, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Phil Gramm and John Cornyn. And that has been the source of power for Barton. He represents a comfortably gerrymandered district and has no need to actively campaign for reelection. A dead pig in a red t-shirt would beat any Democrat in Texas' 6th congressional district. This year Barton took 107,104 votes (66%) to 50,683 (31%) for his Democratic opponent, In 2008 he won 62% and in 2006 he won 61%. Democrats rarely win a third of the vote there. Instead he uses the vast sums of money he scoops up from grateful corporate supporters-- $2,121,169 this year, for example-- to buy power inside the caucus. Since 1989 he's taken in $17,696,568, his biggest contributors being Anadarko Petroleum, Lockheed martin, RRI Energy, AT&T, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. and the National Association of Realtors. Other big donors include Exxon Mobil, Comcast and Valero Oil.

Where this gets interesting is that the next in line for the chairmanship isn't a die hard reactionary like Barton, but a mainstream conservative with a reputation for being as honest as Barton is corrupt, Fred Upton (R-MI). But Barton has mobilized his supporters-- including Hate Talk Radio hosts-- to attack and smear Upton as though he were a Democrat!

Rush Limbaugh last week criticized Upton for teaming up with Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) on a measure to phase out the incandescent light bulb that was folded into the 2007 energy law.

“Now this would be a tone-deaf disaster if the Republican leadership lets Fred Upton ascend to the chairmanship of the House energy committee,” Limbaugh said last Thursday on his radio show. “This is exactly the kind of nannyism, statism, what have you, that was voted against and was defeated last week. No Republican complicit in nannyism, statism, can be rewarded this way. But seniority may rule the day.”

Beck wasn’t as subtle, calling Upton a “socialist,” according to WKZO radio in Kalamazoo, which is in Upton’s 6th District.

For his part, Barton has denied that he’s the source of an unsigned 22-page analysis of Upton’s voting record on everything from taxes to industry regulations, social issues, health care, defense, energy, environment and telecommunications. There’s also a separate three-page summary with the title “Fred Upton: Part-Time Republican?” Americans United for Life, a conservative anti-abortion group, is expressing concern about Upton’s potential chairmanship.

The attacks on Upton could open the door for Reps. John Shimkus of Illinois and Cliff Stearns of Florida, a House GOP staffer said. Shimkus voted for the final 2007 energy law, as well.

“It’s a problem for Mr. Upton,” the aide said. While Upton has been publishing op-eds in conservative websites and newspapers, “it might be a little too late. Maybe he should have been doing it for the last two years.”

Shimkus, best known for tweeting daily prayers, like the one he did above this morning, and for his shameful role as the guardian of the House pages who was unable or unwilling to stop sex predator Mark Foley from exploiting the teenage boys he was supposed to be protecting, has made a fool out of himself in recent days by explaining his energy policies based on the story of Noah's Ark.

Charlie Rangel And Washington's Bipartisan Culture of Corruption

The original raison d'être for this blog was to help investigate the Washington Culture of Corruption as personified by a southern California band of brothers on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, Jerry Lewis and Duncan Hunter being the two most outstandingly corrupt. In the end a sloppy, overly greedy, alcoholic small fry, Duke Cunningham, was nabbed and thrown into prison. Lewis, Hunter, Darrell Issa, John Doolittle, Ken Calvert, Bill Young, Dana Rohrabacher, Virgil Goode and several other Republicans are still at large and haven't been seriously investigated for their roles-- almost all of them more serious than Cunningham's-- in the bribery scandal. That said, DWT started calling for Democratic congressional crook Charlie Rangel to step down in 2008.

With Rangel's case now becoming a mega-issue in the Republican drive to replace Nancy Pelosi with John Boehner as Speaker-- i.e., win the midterms-- and with Fox driving the story in the national media, this is a mess that should have been cleaned up long ago. More and more Democrats are finally starting to call on Rangel to step down-- the latest being House Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC)-- and even though most of them are craven Blue Dogs and cowardly Republicans afraid voters are about to dispense with their services, wastes like Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Mike Arcuri (Blue Dog-NY), Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID), and Zack Space (Blue Dog- OH), legitimate Democrats and allies of Pelosi's like Betty Sutton (D-OH), John Yarmuth (D-KY), Patrick Murphy (Blue Dog-PA) and Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH) have joined in now.

Interestingly, one of the most reactionary of the Blue Dogs, Alabama's Bobby Bright, has taken a distinctly contrarian, even principled, position.

Rep. Bobby Bright (D-Ala.), a Blue Dog Democrat and top Republican target in 2010 given the conservative nature of his Alabama congressional district, responded "absolutely not" when asked if Rangel should step down.

"We have a procedure in place and we need to let that procedure work," Bright said. "It's easy politically for politicians to voice their opinions, but it's the true statesman and rational people who say, 'let the process work.'"

If the charges are found to be true, Bright added, Rangel should face the consequences including possible expulsion from the House. But until then, he said, members should hold their fire.

Sounds good coming from Bright. Funny, though, it's also what Republicans desperately want. GOP staffers actually cooperated with Democratic staffers on the Ethics Committee to work out a smooth and as graceful a transition out as could be expected-- a final step in the Inside-the-Beltway incumbent protection racket (and not unlike what was done for crooks like Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert) but Republicans Members killed it because they want Rangel twisting slowly in the wind for as long as possible. This is a gold mine for the Republican Party and they have no intention of leaving any veins unmined. Meanwhile, Jerry Lewis-- for whom Karl Rove disposed of not one, but two, U.S. Attorneys-- is the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee and could become Chairman of that Committee if Boehner becomes Speaker.


UPDATE: New York Sun Comes to Rangel's Defense

A good friend of mine, a hugely successful attorney told me he studied the "charges" against Rangel and he said they're a joke and that no jury would vote to convict him of fraud in a million years and that this really is a media lynching. It shocked me... although I'm not sure why. So is this defense of Rangel believable?

On its face, the alleged infraction strikes us as not only petty but also illogical. No one carped when Mr. Rangel used earmarks to steer something like $1.9 million in taxpayer funding to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Affairs at City College. But his use of congressional stationary to approach people like David Rockefeller and ask them to contribute to City College to educate minority students in public service is somehow taken as scandalous.

The statement of alleged violations issued by a House investigative subcommittee reckons the charitable contributions to the Rangel Center “constituted indirect gifts” that were “attributable” to Mr. Rangel. He, incidentally, is described as “respondent,” though, since he himself requested the investigation, the “respondent” could just as easily be the Ethics Committee.

The reason these contributions are “gifts” and “attributable” to Mr. Rangel seems to be that he would have an office in the Rangel Center and the center would allow him to store and archive his papers and “to perpetuate his legacy.” But the papers themselves would no longer be Mr. Rangel’s, because he is giving them to a university that is owned by the public. The logical move is to send Mr. Rangel not a subpoena but a thank you note.

One of the contributors to the Rangel Center, Eugene Isenberg, chairs a company, Nabors Industries, that had an interest in a matter before Ways and Means. It got decided in a way that benefited Nabors. No quid pro quo is in evidence, or even, so far as we can tell, alleged. The Isenberg check was a gift to Mr. Rangel only by the logic of the Ethics Committee.

What really happened is that Messrs Rangel, by his papers and name and time, and Isenberg, by his $100,000 check, each gave to the same charity, a center to help uplift minority students to careers in public service. The approach to Mr. Isenberg, moreover, was made not by Mr. Rangel, though the two talked on September 19, 2006, in the presence of the president of City College, Gregory Williams. The meeting had been arranged by a paragon of political probity, Robert Morgenthau, the district attorney of New York County, whose grandfather had gone to City College.

The commitment by Mr. Isenberg to make a contribution to the Rangel Center was made in a meeting between Mr. Isenberg and Mr. Williams, at which Mr. Rangel was not even present. The meeting took place on November 9, 2006, before Mr. Rangel acceded to the chairmanship of Ways and Means, and at a time when Nabors had no matters pending before the committee.

It turns out that when Mr. Morgenthau was United States attorney for the Southern District, he gave Mr. Rangel his start. And over the years Mr. Morgenthau made, separately, the acquaintance of Mr. Isenberg and learned of his interest in minority education. For that reason he sought to bring him together with the Rangel Center. Mr. Morgenthau has been defending Mr. Rangel throughout this drama.

Illogic also infects the controversy over the alleged abuses of the rent-controlled apartment that Mr. Rangel’s political committee used as an office. Mr. Rangel’s defense filing pointed out that it was an un-renovated, vacant space in a building in which there was a 20% vacancy rate. It was allegedly rented in Mr. Rangel’s name, but the landlord accepted its use by a political committee.

The Ethics Committee seems to reckon this added up to a benefit to Mr. Rangel. But how so? It might be a benefit to his political committee, but not even that is clear. There’s a lot of office space in Manhattan. The benefit, if there is one, seems to be that Mr. Rangel’s political committee is conveniently located near his modest residence. Call out the National Guard, we say.

The squabble over Mr. Rangel’s errors on his tax return strikes us as indicating nothing so much as the need for tax reform. Mr. Rangel’s tax error was not nearly as serious, in our view, as, say, Secretary Geithner’s. But if the chairman of Ways and Means can’t figure out his taxes, how can the rest of us long-suffering Americans?

Here the Ethics Committee could order Mr. Rangel to have lunch with Steve Forbes, who is the leading advocate of a flat tax that would be easy to understand and hard to dodge. Mr. Rangel, as Ira Stoll pointed out over the weekend in a defense of Mr. Rangel at futureofcapitalism.com, has shown a certain a savvy in respect of capital gains.

Mr. Rangel doesn’t deserve the bum’s rush he is getting from President Obama. Let the president remember his haste in respect of Shirley Sherrod. When Mr. Rangel was 20, he was lying in a ditch in Korea, while the corpses of many of his fellow GIs lay nearby, either slain in combat or frozen to death. Private Rangel rallied his comrades and led 40 of them out from behind enemy lines. Instantly recognized as a hero, he was decorated for valor.

Two Weeks From Today We Get To See If California Voters Are Ready To Give Dishonest Incumbents The Ole Heave-Ho

They could start their own lobbying firm next year

Primary candidates all over America must be looking at Rand Paul's ability to go up against the GOP Establishment machine and just decimate Kentucky Party boss Mitch McConnell's hand picked recruited protégé and, believe me, many are thinking something along the lines of "If that doofus can do it, I can do it." I know; I spent some time on the phone talking with them yesterday. And they can't. One guy I was on the phone with, who's challenging Jerry Lewis from the right, is Eric Stone. He ran against Lewis in 2008 too, one of three Republicans on the ballot. He's not a stupid guy and he knows how corrupt Lewis is and how vulnerable he should be. But I got the distinct impression that he's waiting for someone to deliver the nomination to him on a silver platter. There was nothing-- no strategy, no energy, no passion, no hope, no life... just some paranoia that if he pops his head up out of his hole he's liable to get it smacked. I don't know why he's running. He did manage to achieve one thing-- he wrote a candidate statement for the Board of Elections. I got the feeling he has a hope-- a faint one-- that people will read the statement in their Official Voter Information Guide and decide to vote for him instead of the guy the district has been electing since 1978. Here's the statement:

The power of knowledge and wisdom; the courage and conviction to move forward the solutions necessary to propel us far past the ills plaguing our system of government are my qualifications.
 
Combined with:

*The skills to bring the jobs home from over 30 years of both large and small business experience are key to our local economic recovery.
 
*Workable plans to restore the intended purpose/form of government set forth by our Founding Fathers back from the hands of multi billion dollar, needlessly controlling “special (power over you) interest” groups.
 
*Proven track record to champion new business enterprise directly challenging, when it became necessary, a self-dealing government body to successfully get the job done.
 
*Paramount in serving you is the unwavering “NEVER SELL OUT” INTEGRITY taught to me, by example from my father, a retired WWII United States Air Force, Colonel.

Officially (Federally) recognized, licensed, hands-on experience in local government and federal deficit financing including State and Federal bureaucracy experience (both good and challenging alike) with pinpoint careful budgeting skills adhering to spending limits are all key preparations to serve you with Honor.
 
On the lighter side but no less important the wisdom to “ask that your vote not prosper special interests” but rather ask how much better could the lives of the people you love be if government were exclusively responsible to benefit “We The People”, then absolutely –
Definitely Vote for Eric R. Stone.

Although Eric is running against an incumbent in a year incumbents are supposed to be unpopular and against an incumbent who not only voted for the no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout-- twice, once on September 29, 2008 and then again on October 3, but also helped John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan strong-arm and bribe another 26 reluctant Republicans into voting for it-- like Charlie Dent-- who were needed to make it pass, Eric is failing to exploit any of Lewis' myriad vulnerabilities.

I had such high hopes for the teabaggers to at least be able to weed out some of the trashiest of the corrupt southern California Republicans, especially Lewis, Mary Bono-Mack and Ken Calvert. But with just two weeks to go, it looks like the only incumbent in these parts likely to fail to win renomination is a Democrat-- or at least a putative Democrat-- out-of-step Blue Dog Jane Harman, the one who bragged about being the best Republican in the Democratic Party. Like Lewis, Calvert and Bono-Mack, Harman is a conservative and a corporatist who voted for Bush's no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout. Unlike Jerry Lewis' opponent, though, Harman's-- progressive firebrand Marcy Winograd-- has been all over her for it.

"Before bailing out Wall Street, Congress should have bailed out the American people who were victimized by predatory lenders selling bad loans. Any bail out should have been tied to a moratorium on foreclosures and a "First Right to Rent" rule, requiring banks to offer homeowners facing foreclosures a chance to rent their homes at market value.

"Had the government included in the bail-out low interest loans for such homeowners, we would not be facing massive foreclosures, blighted neighborhoods, lower property values, and county coffers starved for money for social services.  Instead, Washington politicians turned their backs on struggling homeowners and turned over the keys to our treasury to the same institutions that engineered our economic decline. All of this came at lightening speed, at a dizzying pace, with little time for thought or reflection or for demands that the recipients of the bail-outs funnel money back into local economies, into low-interest loans for small businesses, the most vulnerable to collapse.  

It was a lousy deal, one with no strings attached, that was sealed overnight. When dawn came and we looked around, Wall Street was still an unregulated casino. Had I been in Congress, not only would I have taken to the floor to argue for a foreclosure freeze but also for a return to regulation and limits on how big banks could become. No bank should hold more than 10% of our national deposits.
Otherwise we're back to square one, with banks too big too fail calling the shots on Capitol Hill.

"Congressional representatives with significant stock holdings in banks involved in TARP should have recused themselves from the bail-out vote. According to the most recent financial statements, my opponent Jane Harman had anywhere from one to five million dollars invested in Goldman Sachs at the time that she voted for the bail-out. In essence, she was voting to bail out
her own portfolio at taxpayers' expense."

It's not an argument a conservative can make with a straight face. All they can do, in effect, is say they would have let the American financial system collapse, a position extreme right anti-government members of Congress-- like Mike Pence, Darrell Issa, Virginia Foxx and Michele Bachmann-- were more than delighted to take.

Last week Ben Goad, writing for the Press-Enterprise took a look at the Inland Empire GOP primaries and didn't come up with much. Certainly Mary Bono Mack had aroused more antipathy from the teabaggers than any other Republican on the West Coast. And teabaggers have vague but palpable understandings that both Calvert and Lewis are egregiously corrupt and in and out of ethics and criminal difficulties. In Calvert's case, the Fox News Special on his corruption cases didn't do him any good. Watch it if you haven't seen it already:



Goad started with Mack, who, he points out "will square off against Clay Thibodeau in her bid for an eighth term in the 45th Congressional District, which includes Moreno Valley, Hemet Murrieta and Riverside County's desert communities."

Through March, Thibodeau had raised less than $20,000 for his campaign, while Bono Mack had collected more than $1 million.

Thibodeau, an author who lives in Hemet, said he is poised to pull off an upset with help from the conservative wing of Riverside County's Republican Party.

"People vote, money doesn't," Thibodeau said. "So we went after people, not money."

...To the west, Calvert, R-Corona, faces a challenge from Chris Riggs, a commercial real estate broker from Corona. Riggs said he has already amassed significant support throughout the 44th Congressional District, which includes Riverside, Corona, Norco, and a sizable part of Orange County. Riggs, whose war chest also is dwarfed by that of his opponent, pointed to primary upsets in Utah's contested U.S. Senate seat and a congressional seat in Maryland as evidence that voters are angry at the status quo.

"People are absolutely sick and tired of incumbents," Riggs said.

To overcome his fundraising disadvantage, Riggs is looking to social networking websites and a new law allowing congressional candidates to place candidate statements in sample ballots sent out to voters. In Riverside County alone, more than 813,000 ballots are being sent out to registered voters.

"It's a cheap, effective way to reach a lot of people," said Riggs. Calvert narrowly won a ninth term two years ago, when he edged out Democrat Bill Hedrick, who is running again this year. Calvert campaign consultant Scott Hart said the nine-term incumbent is fully engaged in the primary.

"We've got to get over this hurdle first," Hart said. "We're not taking anything for granted."

Eric Stone, a Republican challenging Lewis, R-Redlands, also is banking on the sample ballot law change to get his name out. A real estate project manager from Cedarpines Park, Stone said he would bring a renewed focus on the constituents in the 41st Congressional District, which includes Redlands, the Pass, parts of the High Desert and San Bernardino County's mountains.

"Special interest groups have hijacked our system of government at their benefit and our expense," he said.

Goad might have missed something in two of the races-- enough genuine dislike for Bono-Mack and Calvert to put the earnest and hardworking Thibodeau and Riggs over the top. Thibodeau comes off very arrogant and has already drawn attention to himself as a potential ethics problem-child. Riggs, on the other hand, comes across less as a teabagger and more as a straight ahead hard core conservative. He's working hard and taking his campaign very seriously-- and counting on God to help him-- really.

Riggs calls the biggest part of the district-- western Riverside County-- "the Bible Belt of California" (and that's probably why he lives there). Why is it a big deal that mega-churches dot the landscape as if in parody? For starters, on November 23, 1993 Calvert was caught by Corona Police receiving oral sex from a heroin addicted prostitute, which is the same year he divorced his wife. Couple this with the fact that the anti-Choice crowd which dominates GOP politics in the desert feels betrayed by his recent YES votes for federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research and that he didn't join 55 far right crackpots who sponsored some kind of the Sanctity of Life Act, that Riggs would have probably written. All this has placed Calvert in as an awkward a relationship with the Sunday morning church crowd as his votes fro Bush's Wall Street bailout has put him with the teabaggers.

To further complicate matters for an incumbent who is hardly known by his constituents for anything other than his moral and ethical shortcomings, he is involved in a high-profile illegal land deal where he and his partners purchased 4.3 acres of land from a Public Agency that is part of his own Congressional District without competition, and media outlets are now reporting he has been asked to give a deposition regarding this foray into out-and-out criminality prior to election day. And the reason Calvert's high-priced consultant told Goad they're taking the primary so seriously is because Riggs, a 31 year old Christian Conservative, with a picture-perfect family-- 4th kid on the way-- (the antithesis of the hard-drinking, whore-mongering, money-grubbing and philandering Calvert-- who is known in Washington as the one Republican to make David Vitter look like a choir boy), is challenging him from the right! And, he's hammering him for all he's worth.


On the surface, Riggs’ disadvantage has been his fundraising and he's running a race that looks more like what grassroots bottoms-up Democrats do than what you'd expect from the button down, strict hierarchy party. But Riggs is smart and limited resources has him relying on the passions of volunteers to make him competitive. He landed a strategist out of Sacramento to help on principle rather than retainer. He has attorneys and accountants handling the administrative spectrum pro-bono, and has assembled a team through his connections in those mega-churches to handle his website and social media efforts (Riggs is crushing an 18 year incumbent on Facebook fans, while the hapless Calvert makes an idiot of himself daily on Twitter, clearly not his medium). Riggs' campaign reached every absentee voter home that has a published phone number last week with an aggressive auto-call, and they have managed to accumulate tens of thousands of registered Republican email addresses and have been firing pointed-- even barbed-- emails over the last few weeks. Riggs managed to get on the Faith Family Freedom & California Taxpayer Protection slates, each of which hit 40,000 high propensity Republican voter households over the last 10 days, complete with a little education on Calvert’s record on supporting the Bush Wall Street bailout.

A recent Fox News poll showing that 71% of likely Republicans voters in America, if given no information other than whether someone is an incumbent or a challenger, said they would vote for the challenger. With only 32,740 votes cast in the 2008 Republican Primary in the 44th District, out of roughly 145,000 registered Republicans, it is not a stretch to assume that the crazed, racist, pissed off teabaggers and the dedicated church going types are the ones who will be showing up on June 8th. If this is the case, Calvert just might be looking for a job on K Street sooner than he expected. Maybe he and Jane Harman could open a bipartisan lobbying firm.

Harman is home free if she can somehow manage to derail Marcy Winograd's huge momentum. Calvert, on the other hand, would probably not been able to beat Bill Hedrick this year-- even if an earnest conservative hadn't left him half dead on the side of the road. Electing Marcy Winograd and Bill Hedrick are two ways to fix what ails America so please consider a donation here at our Blue America ActBlue page.

Rick Renzi's Going To Spend A Lot Of Time In Prison-- But What About Jerry Lewis?

Last year, after months and months of bickering and posturing and half measures, the Republican House leadership finally forced serial criminal Rick Renzi (R-AZ)-- the R is for "racketeer"-- to retire from politics. He was replaced by a quasi-Democrat who votes with the GOP more frequently, at least on important substantive issues, than she votes with the Democrats. (Her ProgressivePunch score is a dismal 32.61.) Today the Justice Department announced that it has expanded its case against Renzi, adding 5 new corruption charges against the former key John McCain ally and campaign operative.

Prosecutors added insurance fraud and racketeering accusations in a second superseding indictment filed in late September. It is the second time the government has added charges to the original indictment, first filed in February 2008.

The government added a conspiracy to commit insurance fraud charge to the indictment. Explaining the charge, the government argued that Renzi, co-defendant Dwayne Lequire and others willfully embezzled funds and premiums from a risk retention company called Spirit Mountain to pay Renzi’s “substantial personal expenses.” Lequire helped conceal the embezzlement by transferring other funds into accounts of Renzi’s insurance company, Patriot Insurance, including proceeds from a line of credit and the real estate deal at the heart of the corruption case against him, the prosecutors allege.

Renzi is accused of telling executives for Resolution Copper Mining that he would not support a land swap bill unless they bought his former business partner’s property. Another company agreed to the deal, and Renzi pocketed more than $700,000 from it, according to the indictment.

The trial has been postponed while the judge deals with a barrage of Renzi motions to get the charges dismissed, to get evidence suppressed and to disqualify the prosecution team, etc. So far all of the obstructionist motions that have been ruled on have been denied. That got him to just file more. Meanwhile, the remnants of the most corrupt regime to have ever infested the nation's capital took a failed stab at forcing Charlie Rangel step down from his Ways and Means Committee chair. "To allow Mr. Rangel to continue to serve," says GOP hatchetman John Carter (R-TX), "as Chairman of the very committee with IRS oversight, without paying a nickel in penalties, and with no end in sight to his ethics investigation, sends a clear message to the American public that this government refuses to abide by the same laws they impose on the working people of this country."

It kind of makes you wonder what message the right-wing fringe loon Carter and his partisan cohorts thought was being sent to the American public while California Congressman Jerry Lewis was the head of the Appropriations Committee-- spending a million dollars a year fending off a halfhearted Bush Justice Dept. investigation while arranging for earmarks for every campaign donor he's ever had. And he's still up to his old tricks, just this week putting in for a $3 million earmark for Goldman Sachs, Pegasus Partners and Resource Capital Funds. In Lewis' case, Karl Rove was able to get rid of not one, but two-- Carol Lam and Debra Yang-- Justice Department attorneys sniffing around a little too close for comfort.

I don't doubt that Rangel has played fast and loose with rules governing ethical conduct-- and possibly criminal conduct; he is, after all, a politician. The Ethics Committee is investigating him, and I'll be interested in seeing what they come up with. Meanwhile, if Rangel set out to rip off the taxpayers of America and worked really hard at it, he might catch up with Rick Renzi before the next Republican wins the White House-- but he'll never catch up with Jerry Lewis.

Which brings us to a simple question: Why hasn't the new Administration staffed up the Justice Department? The answer, of course, is pure Republican obstructionism. They are simply holding up confirmations for months and months over their unrelated series of manufactured hissy fits. After senseless months of bottling up the nomination of Tom Perez to head the civil rights division, when it came to a vote yesterday Perez was confirmed 72-22, only the worst and most blatant obstructionists-- like Sam Brownback (KS), Miss McConnell (KY), Jeff Sessions (KKK), Jim DeMint (SC), John Ensign (NV), David Diapers Vitter (LA) and John Thune (SD)-- voting no. Confirm US Attorneys who will investigate criminal activities of members of Congress? I don't think so.

Coincidentally, People For the American Way president Michael Keegan was highlighting the obstructionist aspect of this problem today as well, pointing out Republicans' refusal to confirm Dawn Johnsen to her Justice Department post.

“For months now, Senate Republicans have been blocking the confirmation of President Obama's nominees to key positions in the federal government. Dawn Johnsen, the President's eminently qualified nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, has been waiting longer than almost anyone else–nearly eight months!
 
“But they can’t play politics with justice forever. People are getting fed up with the constant obstruction. The logjam will be broken soon, and it couldn’t happen quickly enough.
 
“Dawn Johnsen enjoys the support of former OLC heads from Republican and Democratic administrations. Republican Senator Richard Lugar, her home state Senator, has endorsed her. She served with distinction as acting head of OLC during the Clinton administration. Legal scholars and current and former colleagues have attested to her legal acumen and integrity.
 
“Simply put, Dawn Johnsen is anything but a controversial nominee. But she and other highly qualified nominees are being held hostage in a game of petty politics. Americans want the best possible people in charge of government, and it’s time for Senate Republican leaders to call off their blockade.”

Jerry Lewis-- A Congressman Whose Constituents Would Really Benefit From Health Care Reform

When Karl Rove fired not just one, but two U.S. Attorneys investigating several massive corruption schemes with Rep. Jerry Lewis at its center, many said he was the luckiest man in Congress-- or at least the one who knew best how to work the system. But if he's the luckiest, his Inland Empire constituents are among the least lucky.

The median income in CA-41 is $38,741, significantly lower than the state of California's $47,493. But income isn't the only place where quality of life sinks in Jerry Lewis' sprawling San Bernardino County district. The home foreclosure rate is one of the worst in California and one of the worst in all America. Over 15,300 homes have already been foreclosed on and the 4 year projection of foreclosures is 50,906-- fifth highest in the state after the districts represented by Republicans Dan Lungren, Tom McClintock, Ken Calvert and Mary Bono-Mack. On March 5 Lewis and his four colleagues voted against HR 1106, the bill meant to help families save their homes. As usual, Lewis was putting the greed and avarice of banksters-- who have lavished $733,480 on his political career-- over the interests and needs of his own constituents. And it is no different when it comes to the debate over health care reform.


A former insurance salesman, Jerry Lewis doesn't just want to prevent health care reform, he wants to abolish Medicare! His role in the debate can be summed up in one word: "obstructionist." He freely admits that his talking points on health care reform are written by the Lewin Group, a subsidiary of United Healthcare, a die-hard opponent of reform and a major GOP campaign contributor. Lewis uses every scare tactic-- from government take-over of health care to death panels-- to persuade his hard-pressed constituents that they don't want the kind of health insurance coverage he and his family enjoy. And the district is one of the most desperately in need of reform anywhere in California. If the bill Lewis always rails against, HR 3200, is signed into law, 115,000 uninsured individuals in the district would gain access to high-quality, affordable health insurance (of the 138,000 who have no insurance at all.) An official report from the House Commerce and Energy Committee looked at the impact HR 3200 would have on CA-41. It makes it difficult to understand why the Representative from this district has made a crusade out of opposing health care reform (until you notice that the Medical-Industrial Complex ($584,189) and the Insurance Industry ($250,479) have been even more generous to him than Wall Street has.

• Help for small businesses. Under the legislation, small businesses with 25 employees or less and average wages of less than $40,000 qualify for tax credits of up to 50% of the costs of providing health insurance. There are up to 10,400 small businesses in the district that could qualify for these credits.

• Help for seniors with drug costs in the Part D donut hole. Each year, 13,000 seniors in the district hit the donut hole and are forced to pay their full drug costs, despite having Part D drug coverage. The legislation would provide them with immediate relief, cutting brand name drug costs in the donut hole by 50%, and ultimately eliminate the donut hole.

• Health care and financial security. There were 1,600 health care-related bankruptcies in the district in 2008, caused primarily by the health care costs not covered by insurance. The bill provides health insurance for almost every American and caps annual out-of-pocket costs at $10,000 per year, ensuring that no citizen will have to face financial ruin because of high health care costs.

• Relieving the burden of uncompensated care for hospitals and health care providers. In 2008, health care providers in the district provided $55 million worth of uncompensated care, care that was provided to individuals who lacked insurance coverage and were unable to pay their bills. Under the legislation, these costs of uncompensated care would be virtually eliminated.

• Coverage of the uninsured. There are 138,000 uninsured individuals in the district, 18% of the district. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that nationwide, 97% of all Americans will have insurance coverage when the bill takes effect. If this benchmark is reached in the district, 115,000 people who currently do not have health insurance will receive coverage.

• No deficit spending. The cost of health care reform under the legislation is fully paid for: half through making the Medicare and Medicaid program more efficient and half through a surtax on the income of the wealthiest individuals. This surtax would affect only 2,120 households in the district. The surtax would not affect 99.3% of taxpayers in the district.

Residents of Redlands, Yucaipa, Big Bear, Banning, Hesperia and Apple Valley would have just have had to suck it up in the past. This year, however, Lewis has drawn a Democratic opponent with an entirely different point of view, Pat Meagher.

Meagher isn't another Democrat who would fit neatly into the category, "well-he's-better-than-Lewis." He certainly is, but he's also better than other Democrats running for Congress-- and plenty who are already in Congress. Eager to join the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Meagher is serious about representing ordinary working families in San Bernardino. When it comes to health care reform, Meagher has a lot more to say than Lewis. Yesterday he told us that he's been "a consistent and outspoken proponent of H.R. 676 which is a single-payer Health Care system similar to Medicare-for-all. Unfortunately in the current debate, single payer has been removed from the table. This means that to affect true reform we must have a viable public option. Merely tinkering with regulations should in no way be confused with true Health Care reform. It is time that Congress stands up for the people of this great country, instead of standing up for the profits of the insurance companies."

At the end of July, when Lewis first issued a press release outlining why he would oppose health care reform, Meagher countered with his own statement:

Representative Lewis is wrong when he insists that the reform plan “will amount to transferring control of our entire health care system to the federal government”. President Obama has repeatedly said that the aim of his program would not be to have a government takeover of health care, rather it would be to make existing companies more responsible and provide competition through a government option similar to what Congressman Lewis himself enjoys. Competition is the basis of the American capitalistic system. Republicans call for it in our educational system, yet when it comes to health care, they say No.
 
Representative Lewis is correct that we have a “terrible economy”, but he fails to mention that this is the result of former President Bush and the Republican controlled Congress that allowed the interests of banks, mortgage companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and insurance companies to reign over the needs of the people. Access to a quality health care system should be a right for all Americans, it should not be reserved for the privileged. America’s health care system ranks is 37th in the world for quality. We have seen health care costs rise annually over the cost of inflation for the last decade. Doing nothing, as Lewis proposes, is far more expensive than any plan under consideration. 
 
Representative Lewis is wrong when he says that small businesses will bear the brunt of this health care reform. The health care system in the United States is employer based.  Employer mandates, inserted at the Republican’s demand, are exempt for businesses with 50 or fewer employees. Small business owners are already suffering as they loose quality employees to larger companies that can afford health plans and struggle to pay for health insurance for themselves. Their costs are pushed even higher by large companies, like Walmart, that fail to provide any insurance for their employees, and the 50 million uninsured who drive up costs using Emergency rooms for routine ailments. Initial versions of the bill showed that employer costs, if they did not participate in a plan themselves, would be $750 annually for each full-time employee, and $375 for part-timers.
 
Representative Lewis complains that “Putting a government bureaucrat in charge of health care choices that should be made between a patient and a doctor is unacceptable.” He is defending a system where a penny-pinching bean counter employed by an insurance company, and we should remember that before entering public service Lewis sold insurance, whose sole responsibility is to make profit for that company is the one making the decisions now. We have all heard stories, or lived them, that end with “but they didn’t cover that.” I would much prefer to have a government bureaucrat whose sole job is to represent the people inserted into this process. This is supposed to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people. This is a concept that is lost on Mr. No as he defends the status quo.
 
Representative Lewis admits that “we face difficulties and inequities within our overall health care system. Then he whines that the reform plan is being “rammed” through Congress. The fact is that 2 Senate committees and 3 HOUSE committees are debating this bill. If House member Lewis would participate in the legislative process, instead of being Mr. No, he would see the bipartisan effort that is taking place. If Representative Lewis chooses not to involve himself in the process, maybe he should step aside and let someone else represent the needs of the constituents of the 41st district.

If you want to see another Democrat in Congress strongly coming back against GOP lies and misinformation the way Pat Meagher has with Jerry Lewis, please consider donating to his congressional campaign. And remember, even $5 and $10 donations mount up and help our candidates let the voters know that there really is a choice.