Sometimes It's Easy To Forget That There's More To The Swamp Than Just Trump

I was shocked once when a friend in Texas told me a Blue Dog candidate for Congress-- an eventual winner-- didn't really care about being a member of Congress as much as he cared about getting prepared for a career as a federal lobbyist. Being a member of Congress is the kind of preparation you need for it-- and almost no one gets rich as a member of Congress-- Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan aside-- but you can certainly become a multimillionaire as a K Street lobbyist.

Something between a quarter and a third of members of Congress who retire-- voluntarily or involuntarily-- don't go back to their beloved hometowns. Instead they stay in DC to become lobbyists or quasi-lobbyists. (And some of the ones who do go back to their home states, become lobbyists there.) No one denies there's a revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street. Some try to deny it reeks of corruption and is part of the swamp that Trump exploded to trick frustrated morons into voting for him.

According the OpenSecrets.org, the last time they counted-- a few years ago-- there were 429 former members of Congress working as lobbyists. Most, though not all, are slimy corrupt conservatives, not just Republicans, but walking-talking buckets of excrement like Joe Crowley, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Dick Gephardt, Tim Mahoney, Heath Shuler, Jane Harman, Harold Ford (Sr and Jr) Bart Stupak, both Bayhs, Tom Daschle, Al Wynn, Joe Garcia, Mike Ross, Bill Lipinski (you-know-whose dad) and Mary Landrieu as well.

Yesterday, Public Citizen looked at the latest congressional revolving doorism-- and it's worse than ever! They make the discouraging point that "Nearly two-thirds of recently retired or defeated U.S. lawmakers now working outside politics have landed jobs influencing federal policy, providing further evidence that members of Congress continue to spin through Washington’s revolving door at astonishing rates.

The report found that 59% (26 of 44) of former members of the 115th Congress (2017-2019) who have found employment outside politics have gone through the revolving door. These lawmakers quickly found employment at lobbying firms, consulting firms, trade groups or business groups that work to influence the federal government. These former lawmakers cashed in on their connections by representing wealthy special interests who can afford to pay top dollar for insider information and influence.

Under current federal law, former federal lawmakers cannot lobby their legislative ex-colleagues for one year if they served in the U.S. House of Representatives and two years if they served in the U.S. Senate. However, they can immediately lobby executive agencies and can be hired by lobbying firms as “strategic consultants” advising lobbyists on how to approach lawmakers but avoiding lobbying contacts themselves.

Notable revolving-door lawmakers from the previous Congress include former U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY), who works for lobbying giant Squire Patton Boggs, and former U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who works for lobbying firm Akin Gump, where he is registered to lobby in favor of the same controversial copper and gold mine in Alaska that he pushed for while in Congress. Those two firms, which are the largest in Washington, D.C., recently hired five former lawmakers between them.

"No lawmaker should be cashing in on their public service and selling their contacts and expertise to the highest bidder. Retired or defeated lawmakers should not serve as sherpas for corporate interests who are trying to write federal policy in their favor," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. "We need to close the revolving door and enact fundamental and far-reaching reforms to our corrupt political system."

The For the People Act (H.R. 1), which passed the House in March, enacts sweeping reforms that should raises ethics standards at all levels of government. Importantly, H.R. 1 would define “strategic consulting” as lobbying, closing that loophole for former members of Congress.

H.R. 1, which is tepid and watered-down and doesn't even go 20% of the way towards cleaning out the swamp, was treated as though the world was collapsing by the GOP and not even one Republican voted for it! And now, McTurtle is refusing to allow a vote on it in the Senate.

By going through Washington’s “revolving door,” lawmakers are effectively trading in on their relationships and knowledge to help companies profit and to enrich themselves-- a pattern that has been in place for many years. The most famous and egregious example of Washington’s revolving door problem came in 2004, when Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-LA) announced he would leave Congress to accept a $2 million a year salary as head of PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry’s main lobbying organization. Tauzin was chief architect of the 2003 prescription drug legislation that prohibited the federal Medicare program from negotiating lower drug prices. Tauzin left PhRMA in 2010, earning more than $11 million in his final year at the trade group,  but remains a lobbyist with clients in health care and other industries.

Currently, federal ethics laws provide minimal protections against influence-peddling by former members of Congress. Former members of the House of Representatives are barred from making lobbying contacts with their ex-colleagues for one year. A two-year ban applies to former Senate lawmakers.

However, loopholes in the ethics laws diminish the impact of these modest “cooling off” periods. For example, former lawmakers can immediately turn around and lobby executive agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, the Federal Trade Commission or the Food and Drug Administration so long as they do not lobby Congress. Former lawmakers are also able to brand themselves as “strategic consultants” who advise registered lobbyists on strategies for approaching lawmakers, but do not make lobbying contacts with lawmakers themselves.  This loophole, nicknamed the Daschle loophole, after former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) who worked for several major D.C. law and lobbying firms for more than a decade but did not register as a lobbyist until 2016, is a common way to meet the technical requirements of the law while ignoring the law’s intended purpose.

Some former lawmakers have been quite open about how easy it to advise corporate clients on lobbying strategy and still comply with lobbying rules.  In 2013, after leaving the Senate to join Covington & Burling for the first time, Kyl told the Washington Post there is a “a huge amount of work that can be done” legally even while restricted by a two-year cooling off period. Kyl added:

Several pieces of legislation would strengthen these ethics laws for former government officials. The For the People Act (H.R. 1), which passed the House of Representatives in March, enacts sweeping reforms that would raise ethics standards at all levels of government. Importantly, H.R. 1 would define “strategic consulting” as lobbying for former members of Congress, subjecting this activity to the existing revolving door restrictions. The legislation would also bar former executive branch officials from doing “strategic consulting” on behalf of a lobbying campaign as well as making direct lobbying contacts for two years after leaving government service.

Lawmakers in both parties have introduced ethics reforms that go further. Legislation by Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) would impose a five-year ban on lobbying for members of Congress and the executive branch. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has proposed to permanently ban all elected officials from lobbying. Sens. Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Cory Gardner (R-CO) have proposed a lifetime lobbying ban for all members of Congress, as have Sens. Mike Braun (R-IN) and Rick Scott (R-FL).

The scumbag walking corruption scandal Pelosi and Hoyer had decided would run the Democratic Party after them, Joe Crowley was hired as a lobbyist by Patton Boggs after AOC beat him in a primary last year. They also hired another loser, Bill Shuster (R-PA), the super-corrupt former chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "Both Crowley and Shuster," reports Public Citizen, "are leading an initiative at the industry-funded Bipartisan Policy Center to find new ways to finance highways and infrastructure, including ending federal reliance on gas taxes, which would benefit oil companies. Crowley also was named an honorary co-chairman of the Pass USMCA Coalition, which is advocating for Trump’s revised North American Free Trade Agreement in Congress. Squire Patton Boggs was the fourth largest D.C. lobbying firm last year, with total lobbying income of more than $24 million. Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham University law professor and former candidate for New York attorney general, tweeted that Crowley 'is selling twenty years of the goodwill of his constituents to the wealthy clients of Squire Patton Boggs.'  Along with former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) Crowley has joined the advisory board of Northern Swan Holdings, which has raised $96 million to expand investing in marijuana cultivation in Latin America as part of a plan to 'invest in new low-cost, large-scale cannabis cultivation and processing centers and build out distribution channels and brands in Europe, Latin America and North America.'"

Did the DSCC or the DNC badger you into wasting money on Blue Dog p.o.s. Joe Donnelly? The woke Democratic base refused to come out and vote for him-- in the midst of a blue wave-- because he voted with the Republicans too much. Republicans didn't vote for him either, of course; they had their own candidate. Public Citizen reported yesterday that he "joined lobbying and law powerhouse Akin Gump in April. Donnelly is advising financial services, defense and health care clients, saying in a statement that he looks forward to 'putting my legislative skills to work on behalf of many of Akin Gump’s clients.' The co-chair of the firm’s public law and policy practice, Brian Pomper, said Donnelly’s experience 'will be invaluable to our clients who are navigating this era of a divided government.' Akin Gump was the top lobbying firm in D.C. last year, with total lobbying income of nearly $38 million. In 2017, when Gallup polled about ethics and professions, nurses were viewed as the most ethical (82%), followed by military officers (71%) and grade school teachers (66%)-- and the bottom of the heap? Lobbyists, of course. The 5 most despised, corrupt occupations:

• Business executives- 16%
• Advertising practitioners- 12%
• Members of Congress- 11%
• Car salespeople- 10%
• Lobbyists- 8%

And here's the kind of congressional bipartisanship we like to see-- bipartisanship to serve the interests of the American people... very different from the kind of swampy bipartisanship we usually do see:

Obama Energy Secretary Named to Board of Utility Giant

A two-party race to the bottom (source)

by Gaius Publius

As one commenter noted after reading this news, "Well, that just says it all." My inner reply: Services rendered; services paid.

From The Hill (my emphasis throughout):

Obama energy secretary named to utility giant’s board

Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has been tapped to serve on the board of electric utility giant Southern Co.

Moniz, who served under former President Obama from 2013 to 2017, will be an independent director on the board.

“I have long admired Southern Company for its innovative approach to research and development within the clean energy space, and look forward to joining the board,” Moniz said in a late Monday statement.

“Tom is an industry leader and I’m eager to work with him and the entire board in helping Southern advance at a time of great change in the energy world,” he said of Tom Fanning, Southern’s CEO.

Its "innovative approach to research and development within the clean energy space" means ... what? "I love how cleverly they keep their profits flowing"?

Or "I love how nicely they reward me for service to their industry"?

Perhaps the latter. The Hill again:

The company is working to build two new reactors at Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia, the only nuclear power plant currently under construction in the country. But they are years away from completion and billions of dollars over budget.

The Vogtle project has benefited significantly from federal government actions, such as major Energy Department loan guarantees announced last year and Congress’s decision this month to extend the eligibility dates for tax credits for newly-built nuclear plants.

Feathering his nest by irradiating yours. That's Mr. Moniz below. If you see him on the street, feel free to say, "Thank you for your service."

Obama Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz (Getty Images)

Services rendered; services paid.

Obama's Energy Secretary Is Not Alone

Other Obama alumni have taken well-paid Big Energy positions. There's an excellent report here, from DeSmogBlog. The case of Obama's "climate czar" Heather Zichal is particularly galling ... or telling. Obama in 2013:

Obama praises departing climate czar

President Obama on Friday praised Heather Zichal, who is resigning from her post as his energy and climate czar....

"For more than five years, I have been fortunate to have Heather Zichal as a trusted advisor," Obama said in a statement on Friday.

"She crafted my energy and climate change agenda in the 2008 campaign, then again on my Presidential transition, and as my top energy and climate adviser at the White House, she has been a strong and steady voice for policies that reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, protect public health and our environment, and combat the threat of global climate change," Obama said.

How does she "combat the threat of global climate change"? By cashing in her chips at the Bank of Big Energy, like Obama's Energy Secretary just did.

Obama Alums Are Pushing Fracked Gas Exports. That’s Exactly What Trump Wants.

...At least five of these Obama officials now work for natural gas export companies, four of them for Cheniere and another for Tellurian.

Though pitched as the “cleaner fossil fuel” by many of these former Obama officials, the high levels of methane in natural gas carry a climate punch....

Heather Zichal

One of those Obama alums, former top White House climate and energy staffer Heather Zichal, now sits on the Board of Directors for Cheniere. She also recently was named managing director of corporate engagement for the environmental group The Nature Conservancy....

Keep those names in mind — The Nature Conservancy and methane giant Cheniere.

About The Nature Conservancy, Naomi Klein had this to say:

In her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, Naomi Klein reveals that The Nature Conservancy actually owns an oil well in Texas and uses the financial earnings which come from it as part of its funding stream. Further, both BP and Chevron sit on The Nature Conservancy's Business Council.

And about Zichal, Obama and Cheniere:

As DeSmog previously reported, White House meeting logs show that Zichal met twice with Cheniere officials in 2013 while she was working under Obama. Not only was Cheniere the first company to receive an LNG export permit from the Obama administration in 2012, it was the first to receive such a permit in over 50 years.

"Working" on the Cheniere Board of Directors seems to pay well: "According to forms filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Zichal earned $90,000 for her service on the board in fiscal year 2016 and another $90,014 worth of stock options, for a total of about $180,000 in compensation."

Zichel is just one of several top Obama officials profiled in the report. Others include a Director of Public Affairs in the Obama Energy Department, a Coordinator for International Energy Affairs, a Chief of Staff in the Obama's Office of Fossil Energy, and several others.

Would Mainstream Democrats Risk the 2018 Election for Money?

It's really hard not to see these actions as venal. Mainstream Democrats — feathering their nest by boiling yours.

It's also hard not to see these actions as risky. Do mainstream Democrats think they won't take a hit in 2018 when they do stuff like this? Do they even care? Or do they imagine the blue wave (if it comes) will sweep them to power no matter what they do? (One could argue that Hillary Clinton risked her own election for money: Did she not know, when she gave all those Wall Street speeches, that she'd start running for president two years later — and that they'd make a difference?)

I'm amazed at what we're witnessing. As low as the Republicans have sink — and they've reached a decades-long Party bottom in their attempts to "win absolutely" for big money donors — mainstream Democrats are giving them a run for their money, a downhill run, looking for their own Party bottom.

This story has "national tragedy" written all over it.

GP
 

Not EVERYTHING Horrible And Disgusting In Government Can Be Blamed On Trump: Opioids

Tom Marino, the corrupt drug kingpin Trump wants to make Drug Czar

When you look at the list of the 30 counties with the worst prescription drug abuse problems in America-- counties where people are overdosing and dying from opioids like oxycodone, hydromorphone, codeine and fentanyl, you are also looking at a list of the counties in the Trumpist heartland that elected Trump president of the rest of us. (There is one outlier, Rio Arriba County in northern New Mexico, which voted for Clinton-- one out of 30.) This is the list of the 30 counties with the worst prescription drug problems and as you can see, 29 of them voted overwhelmingly for Señor Trumpanzee-- not 60-40... they're almost all in the 75% range. The county with the worst drug problem in America, Wyoming Co., West Virginia gave Trump 83.6% of its votes. Some Kentucky counties were even worse-- Leslie Co., for example, gave Trump 89.4% of its votes. These are the desperate and delusional people who listen to the rapacious monkey and believe every crazy, self-serving word that comes out of his filthy, unspeakably profane mouth.

1- Wyoming, WV- 83.6%
2- McDowell, WV- 74.7%
3- Boone, WV- 74.9%
4- Mingo, WV- 83.2%
5- Bell, KY- 79.9%
6- Dickenson, VA- 77.0%
7- Logan, WV- 80.1%
8- Floyd, KY- 72.5%
9- Carbon, UT- 66.3%
10- Mercer, WV- 75.8%
11- Powell, KY- 70.9%
12- Rio Arriba, NM- 24.2%
13- Russell, VA- 78.0%
14- Raleigh, WV- 74.5%
15- Cherokee, NC- 77.3%
16- Summers, WV- 71.1%
17- Johnson, KY- 84.0%
18- Tazewell, VA- 82.0%
19- Leslie, KY- 89.4%
20- Buchanan, VA- 79.1%
21- Martin, KY- 88.6%
22- Jackson, TN- 72.6%
23- Russell, KY- 84.0%
24- Wise, VA- 79.9%
25- Clay, KY- 86.6%
26- Clay, TN- 73.3%
27- Lincoln, WV- 75.2%
28- Webster, WV- 77.3%
29- Harlan, KY- 84.9%
30- Clinton, KY- 85.4%

Over 200,000 have died from a prescription opioid problem that's getting worse, not better. Yesterday, the Washington Post piublished a blockbuster piece by Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein: The Drug Industry's Triumph Over The Tea... even before Trump was elected with the intention of taking a meat cleaver to every rule and regulation he could find that protects consumers and the public at large from the predatory corporations that fund conservatives and conservatism. What they found, in short, was "a targeted lobbying effort able to persuade the Republican-controled to weaken "the DEA’s ability to go after drug distributors, even as opioid-related deaths continue to rise... In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription narcotics onto the nation’s streets."

A handful of members of Congress, allied with the nation’s major drug distributors, prevailed upon the DEA and the Justice Department to agree to a more industry-friendly law, undermining efforts to stanch the flow of pain pills, according to an investigation by the Washington Post and 60 Minutes. The DEA had opposed the effort for years.

The law was the crowning achievement of a multifaceted campaign by the drug industry to weaken aggressive DEA enforcement efforts against drug distribution companies that were supplying corrupt doctors and pharmacists who peddled narcotics to the black market. The industry worked behind the scenes with lobbyists and key members of Congress, pouring more than a million dollars into their election campaigns.

The chief advocate of the law that hobbled the DEA was Rep. Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican who is now President Trump’s nominee to become the nation’s next drug czar. Marino spent years trying to move the law through Congress. It passed after Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) negotiated a final version with the DEA.

Hatch has taken $2,767,140 from the drug sector, more than any member of Congress in history who has not run for president. So far this year he's the #1 recipient of drug industry bribes-- $310,199.

For years, some drug distributors were fined for repeatedly ignoring warnings from the DEA to shut down suspicious sales of hundreds of millions of pills, while they racked up billions of dollars in sales.

The new law makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies, according to internal agency and Justice Department documents and an independent assessment by the DEA’s chief administrative law judge in a soon-to-be-published law review article. That powerful tool had allowed the agency to immediately prevent drugs from reaching the street.

Political action committees representing the industry contributed at least $1.5 million to the 23 lawmakers who sponsored or co-sponsored four versions of the bill, including nearly $100,000 to Marino and $177,000 to Hatch. Overall, the drug industry spent $106 million lobbying Congress on the bill and other legislation between 2014 and 2016, according to lobbying reports.

“The drug industry, the manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and chain drugstores, have an influence over Congress that has never been seen before,” said Joseph T. Rannazzisi, who who ran the DEA’s division responsible for regulating the drug industry and led a decade-long campaign of aggressive enforcement until he was forced out of the agency in 2015. “I mean, to get Congress to pass a bill to protect their interests in the height of an opioid epidemic just shows me how much influence they have.”

Besides the sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill, few lawmakers knew the true impact the law would have. It sailed through Congress and was passed by unanimous consent, a parliamentary procedure reserved for bills considered to be noncontroversial. The White House was equally unaware of the bill’s import when President Barack Obama signed it into law, according to interviews with former senior administration officials.

Top officials at the White House and the Justice Department have declined to discuss how the bill came to pass.

Michael Botticelli, who led the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy at the time, said neither Justice nor the DEA objected to the bill, removing a major obstacle to the president’s approval.

“We deferred to DEA, as is common practice,” he said.

The bill also was reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

“Neither the DEA nor the Justice Department informed OMB about the policy change in the bill,” a former senior OMB official with knowledge of the issue said recently. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of internal White House deliberations.

Those refusing to comment on what happened include President Obama, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Rep. Marino, then top DEA official Chuck Rosenberg and DEA’s former associate chief counsel, D. Linden Barber, who, basically, wrote the bill. Cute.

With a few words, the new law changed four decades of DEA practice. Previously, the DEA could freeze drug shipments that posed an “imminent danger” to the community, giving the agency broad authority. Now, the DEA must demonstrate that a company’s actions represent “a substantial likelihood of an immediate threat,” a much higher bar.

“There’s no way that we could meet that burden, the determination that those drugs are going to be an immediate threat, because immediate, by definition, means right now,” Rannazzisi said.

Today, Rannazzisi is a consultant for a team of lawyers suing the opioid industry. Separately, 41 state attorneys general have banded together to investigate the industry. Hundreds of counties, cities and towns also are suing.

“This is an industry that’s out of control. If they don’t follow the law in drug supply, and diversion occurs, people die. That’s just it, people die,” he said. “And what they’re saying is, ‘The heck with your compliance. We’ll just get the law changed.’”

Joe Rannazzisi came to DEA headquarters as an outsider with an attitude. He worked as an agent in Detroit, where he watched prescription drugs flood small towns and cities in the Midwest.

Hundreds of millions of pain pills, such as Vicodin and oxycodone, ended up in the hands of dealers and illegal users.

Rogue doctors wrote fraudulent prescriptions for enormous numbers of pills, and complicit pharmacists filled them without question, often for cash. Internet pharmacies, supplied by drug distribution companies, allowed users to obtain drugs without seeing a doctor.

“There were just too many bad practitioners, too many bad pharmacies, and too many bad wholesalers and distributors,” Rannazzisi recalled.

Rannazzisi, a burly, tough-talking Long Islander, was assigned to head the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control. He had a law degree, a pharmacy degree and had spent years navigating the DEA’s bureaucracy.

The office was seen as a backwater operation whose 600 investigators had toiled for years over prescription drug cases with little or none of the recognition that went to those who investigated illegal street drugs like heroin or cocaine.

Rannazzisi brought an aggressive approach to the diversion control office.

The year he took over, Linden Barber was promoted to run diversion control’s litigation office, which crafted the legal arguments that supported the team. He was a former Army lawyer who served in Iraq. The cadre of attorneys who worked for him saw him as a tough litigator unafraid of an influential industry.

Barber and Rannazzisi formed a powerful combination that the drug companies would learn to fear. “Early on he did really good work,” Rannazzisi said. “He jumped into the Internet cases when he first came here.”

After shutting down the Internet pharmacies, Rannazzisi and Barber pursued the pain management clinics that replaced them and soon became as ubiquitous in South Florida as the golden arches of McDonald’s. To get there, drug dealers and users would take the “Oxy Express” down Interstate 75.

“Lines of customers coming in and going out,” said Matthew Murphy, a veteran DEA supervisor in Boston whom Rannazzisi hired to be chief of pharmaceutical investigations. “Armed guards. Vanloads of people from the Appalachia region driving down to Florida to get a prescription from a pain clinic and then get the prescription filled, going back to wherever they’re from.”

Back home, each 30-pill vial of oxycodone was worth $900.

DEA officials realized they needed a new strategy to confront this new kind of drug dealer.

“They weren’t slinging crack on the corner,” Rannazzisi said. “These were professionals who were doing it. They were just drug dealers in lab coats.”

Rather than focusing on bad doctors and pharmacists, Rannazzisi and Barber decided to target the companies feeding the pill mills: the wholesale drug distributors, some of them massive multinational corporations.

“I developed the legal framework to pursue actions against distributors,” Barber would later say. “We initiated a record number of administrative actions; the government collected record-setting civil penalties.”

Under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, drug companies are required to report unusually large or otherwise suspicious orders. Failure to do so can result in fines and the suspension or loss of DEA registrations to manufacture or distribute narcotics.

When the DEA suspected that a company was ignoring suspicious sales, the agency filed an “order to show cause.” That gave a company at least 30 days to explain why the agency should not revoke its registration.

In the most egregious cases, the DEA employed an “immediate suspension order,” allowing the agency to lock up a distributor’s drugs. The orders instantly halted all commerce in controlled substances on the grounds that the drugs constituted an “imminent danger” to the community.

Under Rannazzisi in the mid-2000s, the DEA repeatedly warned the companies that they were shipping unusually large volumes of opioids to customers around the country. Despite the warnings, some companies continued the shipments.

The DEA soon began bringing enforcement actions against distributors. In 2007, the agency moved against McKesson, the nation’s largest drug distributor and the fifth-largest corporation in the nation, for failing to report hundreds of suspicious orders placed by Internet pharmacies. McKesson settled the case, paying a $13.2 million fine.

In 2008, Rannazzisi and Barber targeted Cardinal Health, another large drug distributor, for filling “blatantly suspicious” orders from online drugstores. Cardinal paid a $34 million fine.

The DEA would ultimately bring at least 17 cases against 13 drug distributors and one manufacturer. The government said it assessed nearly $425 million in fines over a decade. Those fines reflect only a small portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue the companies receive each year.

“It’s a cost of doing business,” Murphy said.

Along the way, Rannazzisi was making powerful enemies in the industry.

“They definitely didn’t like Joe Rannazzisi,” Murphy said. “Not at all. He wasn’t viewed as a person that they could work with. And maybe that was appropriate. He didn’t want to work with industry much.”

Rannazzisi was unmoved by their complaints.

“We’re worried about their feelings being hurt because we were doing our job?” he said. “We were making them comply. We were holding their feet to the fire.”

Murphy recalled a telling meeting with drug company representatives.

He said the president of one of the drug companies sat on the other side of the table, put his hands up and said, “ ‘You got us. What can we do to make this right?’ ” Murphy recalled.

Murphy said he had heard the same thing from drug dealers.

There was an important difference, Murphy noted.

“You know,” he said, “the heroin and cocaine traffickers didn’t have a class ring on their finger from a prestigious university.”

In 2011, Linden Barber left the DEA to join the Washington, D.C., office of the law firm Quarles & Brady. He started a practice representing drug companies. “If you have a DEA compliance issue or you’re facing a government investigation,” he said in a promotional video for the firm, “I’d be happy to hear from you.”

Barber’s move turned out to be a key moment in the struggle between drug companies and the government, but it was far from the only one. Dozens of top officials from the DEA and Justice Department have stepped through Washington’s revolving door to work for drug companies.

Two former U.S. deputy attorneys general have defended Cardinal, one of the “Big Three” companies, along with McKesson and AmerisourceBergen, that together control 85 percent of drug distribution in the United States. Jamie Gorelick, an attorney for WilmerHale, was deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton. Craig S. Morford, Cardinal’s chief legal and compliance officer, was acting deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush.

As Rannazzisi’s investigators increased their pressure, those lawyers began to contact their former colleagues in government.

In late 2011, Morford went over Rannazzisi’s head to then-DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart as the agency again investigated Cardinal, which had sent millions of doses of oxycodone to a small number of pharmacies in Florida, including two CVS stores in Sanford.

“Michele,” Morford wrote to Leonhart in October 2011, “we are committed to working with DEA to address the challenging problem of diversion and welcome the opportunity to meet with you and your team to address these issues in a non-adversarial way.” He signed the handwritten note “Craig.”

Gorelick said in an email that she wrote to then-Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole “to ask that my client be afforded due process.” Morford did not respond to requests for comment.

Around Thanksgiving, Rannazzisi said he received a call about the Cardinal-CVS case from James H. Dinan, then-chief of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces program at the Justice Department. Rannazzisi said Dinan told him, “We’re getting calls from attorneys, former Justice people, that are saying you guys are doing some enforcement action.”

Four months later, Rannazzisi received a late-night call from Dinan summoning him to appear at Justice headquarters early the next morning to explain his actions in the Cardinal-CVS case to Cole.

“Please call me in the morning,” Dinan wrote, according to Rannazzisi. “I want to make double sure nothing unreversible happens before [Cole] is briefed.”

Rannazzisi was stunned. He had brought hundreds of these cases and had never been called to brief Cole, the ­second-most-powerful law enforcement official in the country.

The meeting quickly “spiraled out of control,” Rannazzisi said. “It was adversarial to say the least.”

Rannazzisi believed the message was clear: Back off.

Cole, now a lawyer in private practice, said he was not trying to pressure Rannazzisi.

“Hearing what Cardinal had to say could inform DEA of facts they may not have known,” Cole said in a statement. “I did not tell Mr. Rannazzisi how to come out on the Cardinal matter and certainly did not discourage him from going after any company in violation of any statutes or regulations,” he said.

Either way, Rannazzisi was defiant when he returned to the office from the Justice Department and sat down with his staff.

“Now this is war,” he recalled telling them. “We’re going after these people, and we’re not going to stop. We’re just going to continue to move forward. And we don’t really give a damn any more what the department wants.’”

...Behind the scenes, a major shift was taking place at DEA headquarters.

An appeals court in Washington, D.C., had been reviewing a case that Rannazzisi's investigators brought against Walgreens, alleging that some of its pharmacies in Florida were selling more than a million pain pills a year. A typical pharmacy sold 74,000.

The DEA had used an immediate suspension order against Walgreens, arguing that the drug sales constituted an “imminent danger” to the community. The DEA moved to shutter a large Walgreens distribution center in Jupiter, Fla., that supplied nearly 1,000 pharmacies along the East Coast.

Walgreens fought back.

...Geldhof, the DEA program manager in Detroit, was investigating a midsize Ohio-based drug distributor. Between 2007 and 2012, Miami-Luken had shipped 20 million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone to pharmacies in West Virginia. About 11 million wound up in one county, Mingo, population 25,000.

Despite the rising death rate in West Virginia-- the highest in the nation-- Geldhof said his pleas in 2013 to halt Miami-Luken’s operations were ignored by the legal office at headquarters.

“First we got blown off by the company,” he said, “and then we got blown off by our own lawyers.”

Novak suspected another reason for the slowdown.

At times, he said, some of his colleagues appeared more concerned with pleasing the industry than working on behalf of the public. Some of the lawyers had simply given up fighting the industry and seemed to be preparing for a future working with the companies they were supposed to be regulating, he said.

“It was not just one person who left the office; everyone started to leave. That’s your payout. You do your time, and more and more people were auditioning for the industry. It stopped us from doing our jobs.”

The departures gave the industry an unfair advantage, Novak said.

“There was a fear,” he said. “It comes from seeing that some of the best and brightest former DEA attorneys are now on the other side and know all of the weak points. Their fingerprints are on memos and policy and emails.”

The major drug companies also brought their campaign to Capitol Hill. One of their key allies was Tom Marino, then a two-term Republican congressman from Williamsport, Pa.

Marino was a former county and federal prosecutor with deep hometown ties to a district that was reeling from the opioid epidemic.

On Feb. 18, 2014, Marino introduced the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, making an effort to define what constitutes “imminent danger.” The proposal raised the DEA’s standard for suspending drug shipments by requiring that the agency establish “a significant and present risk of death or serious bodily harm that is more likely than not to occur.”

It attracted 14 Republican co-sponsors, chief among them Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), also from a region in the grip of the epidemic.

[Blackburn, a sleazy character currently running for the Senate seat Bob Corker is giving up, took $162,685 in Pharma bribes last cycle and $712,385 since first being elected in 2002.]

The DEA mobilized to defeat Marino’s measure. One internal DEA memo obtained by The Post and “60 Minutes” noted that the bill essentially eliminates the agency’s power to file immediate suspension orders of drug shipments. The new law “is fixing a problem that doesn't need fixing,” a DEA official wrote.

On April 8, 2014, with the bill stalled, Marino confronted the nation’s top law enforcement officer, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Marino told Holder the DEA was treating the companies like “illicit narcotics cartels.”

“This mind-set-- it’s extremely dangerous to legitimate business,” Marino said.

He told Holder that he wanted the Justice Department to meet with industry executives. When Marino wrote to Holder three weeks later urging him to set up the meeting, the congressman added a handwritten note: “It would be great to work together on this. — Tom.”

Within the DEA and the Justice Department, Marino’s overtures to Holder set off alarms. On May 7, 2014, Matthew Strait, the DEA’s congressional liaison officer, detailed ways “to push back” on Marino’s bill, according to an email he wrote.

It was followed by a flurry of DEA memos. One said, “This bill is without basis in case law or Congressional findings.” Another said the bill “would constitute perhaps the greatest reduction in the Attorney General’s authority under the Controlled Substances Act since the Act’s passage in 1970.”

Later in May, Marino introduced a second version of his bill, with slightly altered language. Blackburn was again a co-sponsor, but this time two Democrats were on board: Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont and Rep. Judy Chu of California.

On June 4, Bill Tighe, Marino’s chief of staff, wrote to Peter Kadzik, Justice’s top congressional liaison officer, thanking him for setting up a meeting with the industry executives.

Tighe asked Kadzik to coordinate with the industry’s point person: Linden Barber.

“Linden Barber used to work for DEA,” Jill Wade Tyson, another Justice congressional liaison officer, responded in an email. “He wrote the Marino bill.”

...On July 29, the Marino bill passed the House and went to the Senate.

The Justice Department was so concerned that it took the unusual step of having Attorney General Holder publicly oppose the bill.

“A recently passed House bill would severely undermine a critical component of our efforts to prevent communities and families from falling prey to dangerous drugs,” Holder said in a July 31 news release.

The bill stalled in the Senate.

...With Rannazzisi under attack, the industry effort gained momentum. Marino introduced yet another version of his bill in the House on Jan. 22, 2015. He announced that the Energy and Commerce Committee would hold a hearing five days later.

One of the witnesses was Linden Barber.

Barber told the committee about the Walgreens case. He was still pressing the industry’s long-standing argument about the need for a clearer legal definition of the DEA’s imminent danger standard.

The case had not ended up setting a precedent that undermined the standard. Rather than take the case to trial, the company agreed to settle and pay what was then a record $80 million fine. Still, Barber argued the DEA faced legal jeopardy.

“Indeed, many of my colleagues believe that the [Walgreens] case would have resulted in a narrowing of DEA’s authority if the agency had not settled its dispute,” Barber said. “As a supporter of DEA’s mission, I urge this committee to take legislative action that clarifies the meaning of imminent danger.”

On April 21, 2015, the House took up Marino’s bill. On the floor of Congress, Marino said:

“This bill will bring much-needed clarity to critical provisions of the Controlled Substances Act. In doing so, we will ensure that the DEA’s authorities are not abused and threatened by future legal challenges; foster greater collaboration, communication and transparency between the DEA and the supply chain; create more opportunities to identify bad actors at the end of the supply chain; and, most importantly, be certain that prescriptions are accessible to patients in need.”

The House passed the bill by unanimous consent. Not one lawmaker opposed the measure.

That same day, Leonhart, who had supported Rannazzisi’s aggressive approach, announced that she was retiring as DEA administrator amid reports that some of her agents had attended sex parties funded by Colombian cocaine cartels.

For the industry and its supporters on Capitol Hill, the pieces were falling into place.

A month later, the Justice Department named a new DEA chief who said he wanted to mend the rift between the agency and the drug industry. Chuck Rosenberg was a former U.S. attorney in Virginia and Texas who had served as the chief of staff to then-FBI Director James B. Comey.

After Rosenberg came to the DEA, the agency began putting out a new message.

“Rosenberg wanted to paint a new face on the DEA for the Hill,” said Regina LaBelle, the chief of staff for the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy at the time. “He wanted to show them the softer side of the DEA, and he wanted to work with industry.”

In October 2015, one of the last remaining obstacles to the bill was removed. Rannazzisi was pushed aside at diversion control. With the inspector general’s investigation into his comments hanging over his head, Rannazzisi retired from the DEA after a 30-year career.

The investigation went nowhere. But, Rannazzisi said, “It destroyed me.”

By this time, Holder had left and Lynch was the attorney general. Her office informed Marino that the DEA had met with 300 industry representatives and Justice was committed to “working more closely” with the drug companies.

“We value these opportunities to communicate and work with our partners in the pharmaceutical industry,” Kadzik, Lynch’s congressional affairs chief, wrote to Marino.

At the same time, the DEA was in negotiations with Hatch's staff to amend the bill for the Senate’s consideration.

The newly proposed language required the DEA to show that a company’s conduct posed a “substantial likelihood of an immediate threat” of death, serious bodily harm or drug abuse before the agency could seek a suspension order.

...On March 17, 2016, the Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent. On April 12, the House approved the Senate version, also by unanimous consent.

...On April 19, Obama signed the bill. The White House issued a one-page news release announcing its enactment.

Marino also issued a release taking credit for the legislation.

“With this law, our drug enforcement agencies will have the necessary tools to address the issue of prescription drug abuse across the country. I applaud the hard work of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in Congress and President Obama for realizing the importance of this legislation.”

... John Mulrooney, the chief DEA administrative law judge, has been documenting the falling number of immediate suspension orders against doctors, pharmacies and drug companies. That number has dropped from 65 in fiscal year 2011 to six so far this fiscal year, according to the DEA. Not a single order has targeted a distributor or manufacturer since late 2015, according to Mulrooney’s reports, which were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Mulrooney said in his reports that the judges under him were handling so few cases at the DEA that they began hearing the cases of other federal agencies.

In his article planned for the winter issue of the Marquette Law Review, Mulrooney wrote: “If it had been the intent of Congress to completely eliminate the DEA’s ability to ever impose an immediate suspension on distributors or manufacturers, it would be difficult to conceive of a more effective vehicle for achieving that goal.”

Mulrooney’s article also criticized the law for allowing companies to submit corrective action plans before the DEA could sanction them.

He likened that provision to allowing bank robbers to “round up and return ink-stained money and agree not to rob any more banks.”

The DEA said in a statement last week that it is still pursuing reckless doctors and rogue businesses with a wide variety of tools.

“We will continue fighting the opioid crisis and continue to use all the tools at our disposal to combat this epidemic,” the statement said.

Since the DEA started to crack down on the opioid industry a decade ago, pharmaceutical companies and the law firms that represent them have hired at least 46 DEA officials-- 32 of them directly from the division. They include two officials who managed day-to-day operations; the deputy director of the division; the deputy chief of operations; and two chiefs of policy.

After nearly 30 years with the DEA, Matthew Murphy, Rannazzisi’s lieutenant, retired in 2011. He formed a drug industry consulting firm and went to work for the people he used to face across the table.

“I feel guilty,” Murphy said in a recent interview. “Because every day a lot of people die of an opioid-heroin overdose. Whether it’s a pill or heroin, people die every day because of it. And it shouldn’t be happening.”

One of the most recent departures was Jason Hadges, the senior DEA attorney overseeing pharmaceutical enforcement cases who, according to former agency supervisors and lawyers, had been demanding a higher standard of proof on cases. Hadges left the DEA in May to join the pharmaceutical and biotechnology regulatory division of Hogan Lovells, a high-powered D.C. law firm. He declined to comment, citing “client sensitivities.”

In January, Mike Gill, who had served as the chief of staff to DEA Administrator Chuck Rosenberg, left the agency to join one of the nation’s largest health-care law firms. He declined to discuss why the DEA dropped its opposition to the bill or his new job.

On Oct. 1, Rosenberg himself resigned from the DEA.

Last December, seven months after the bill became law, Marino's chief of staff took a job as a lobbyist with the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. Bill Tighe had served as Marino’s point man on the legislation. The association was a key backer of the bill. Tighe declined to comment.

In July, Inden Barber left Quarles & Brady to join Cardinal Health as the company’s chief regulatory attorney. After being the target of two DEA enforcement actions, Cardinal had become one of the biggest backers of the bill.

Marsha Blackburn, who co-sponsored the House version of the bill, received $120,000 in campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry. She did not respond to requests for an interview. She announced this month that she will run for the seat of Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who is not seeking reelection.

...Jim Geldhof, the DEA program manager in Detroit, retired from the agency at the end of 2015 after 43 years on the job. He said the companies were fully aware of their responsibilities under the law.

“When you’re selling half a million pills to some pharmacy and you’re telling me that you don’t know what the rules are for a suspicious order?” said Geldhof, who is now working as a consultant to lawyers suing the industry. “All we were looking for is a good-faith effort by these companies to do the right thing, and there was no good-faith effort. Greed always trumped compliance. It did every time. It was about money, and it’s as simple as that.”

Just before Geldhof left, his two-year quest to persuade the DEA to take action against Miami-Luken finally paid off. In November 2015, the DEA accused the company of multiple violations of the law for allegedly failing to report orders for tens of millions of pain pills from pharmacies, most of them in West Virginia. That case-- the most recent one to target a distributor-- is pending.

Of the millions of pills sent to Mingo County, many went to one pharmacy in Williamson, the county seat, population 2,924. In one month alone, Miami-Luken shipped 258,000 hydrocodone pills to the pharmacy, more than 10 times the typical amount for a West Virginia pharmacy.

The mayor of Williamson has since filed a lawsuit against Miami-Luken and other drug distributors, accusing them of flooding the city with pain pills and permitting them to saturate the black market.

“Like sharks circling their prey, multi-billion dollar companies descended upon Appalachia for the sole purpose of profiting off of the prescription drug-fueled feeding frenzy,” the lawsuit says.

Marino, now in his fourth term, continues to represent northeastern Pennsylvania and Lycoming County, population 116,000.

His nomination as drug czar, which would put him in charge of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, is pending.

Marino declined to be interviewed for this story, but last year he told The Post:

“We had a situation where it was just out of control because of [Rannazzisi],” Marino said. “His only mission was to get big fines. He didn’t want to [do] anything but put another notch in his belt.”

Since 2014, the year Marino first introduced his bill, 106 people have died of opioid overdoses in Lycoming County. Over six days this summer, 53 people in the county overdosed on opioids. Three of them died.

Marino's district went heavily for Trump, who beat Hillary 66.1% to 30.2%, her second worst performance in the state. The DCCC didn't bother to challenge Marino and he beat the local Democratic candidate Michael Molesevich 208,106 (70.3%) to 87,956 (29.7%). Marino raised $1,093,770 while Molesevich raised $71,898. Bernie beat Hillary in Lycoming County by 10 points in the primary and in the general, Trump pulverized her in Lycoming 71.7% to 24.4%. So far, the DCCC isn't looking at PA-10 and the two Democrats vying for the nomination, Judy Herschel and Mark McDade, have almost no resources between them. Today West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin demanded Trump pull Marino's nomination for his job as Drug Czar. He's virtually unconformable after this story. Will he be reelected? Will the DCCC have the balls to take him on? And what about Blackburn's Senate campaign? I haven't heard a peep. You?



UPDATE: Marino Is OUT

I bet someone's going to win a Pulitzer-- and not the mad Tweeter.

The "Augean Stables" — How Corruption Has Amended the Constitution

Hercules starting to clean a 1,000-cattle stable that hadn't been emptied in 30 years. Like the U.S. government, says Gary Hart. (Hercules quickly gives up on the shovel.)

by Gaius Publius

Not something you don't already know if you're a regular reader of these pages, but it's becoming more and more mainstream to deliver a radical* analysis of government in the U.S. That's why I found the following so interesting — the source is former U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate Gary Hart. And believe me, this is a radical analysis.

But first, two definitions. The Augean Stables is a reference to the Fifth Labor of Hercules, one of the Twelve (click to read the context). The task was to clean the king's stables, which housed 1,000 cattle and which hadn't been cleaned in 30 years, the life of the man who owned it. Cleaned of what? Surely you know:

The fifth Labour of Heracles (Hercules in Latin) was to clean the Augean (/ɔːˈdʒiːən/) stables. Eurystheus [the king assigning the tasks to Hercules] intended this assignment both as humiliating (rather than impressive, like the previous labours) and as impossible, since the livestock were divinely healthy (immortal) and therefore produced an enormous quantity of dung (ἡ ὄνθος). These stables had not been cleaned in over 30 years, and over 1,000 cattle lived there. However, Heracles succeeded by rerouting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus to wash out the filth.

The second definition — corruption. Most think of corruption as an outcome that's perverted for the sake of money. Hart, correctly, says, Not so:

From Plato and Aristotle forward, corruption was meant to describe actions and decisions that put a narrow, special, or personal interest ahead of the interest of the public or commonwealth. Corruption did not have to stoop to money under the table, vote buying, or even renting out the Lincoln bedroom. In the governing of a republic, corruption was self-interest placed above the interest of all—the public interest.

Corruption is "self-interest placed above the interest of all," or in some cases, one's legal or contractual obligation. Thus, for example, some college football referees and refereeing groups are obviously corrupt. When Conference A plays Conference B using Conference B's referees, and year after year the bad calls go Conference B's way, especially with the game on the line, the referees are corrupt.

Are they betraying their obligation for money? No, likely not. Are they betraying their obligation in order to satisfy animus against Conference A, or to make sure the "home teams" win? That's an obvious explanation, and by this definition (and mine), that's corrupt.

Or take another situation. By this definition, the Supreme Court since at least 2000 and likely before has acted corruptly, if the definition is "self-interest placed above the interest of all." No legal analysis of Bush v. Gore passes the "upholds the interest of all" test — the Republicans on the Court simply put a Republican (the home team candidate) in the White House because they could. Nor do the major decisions around money and corporate rights, like Citizens United or even Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 Burger Court decision that lifted restrictions on campaign contributions, and its follow-up, First National Bank of Boston vs. Bellotti, whose majority opinion was authored by Lewis Powell, of the infamous Powell memo.

By this definition — perverting an outcome to benefit a group in which one has a personal interest — the Supreme Court acted corruptly in the cases above. Likely corrupt in Buckley, Citizens United, and First National Bank of Boston. Certainly corrupt in Bush v. Gore, where Republican justices favored a Republican candidate for president over a Democratic one on no defensible grounds. They weren't metaphorically "corrupt," with the quotes. They were corrupt by definition.

Gary Hart on the Systemic Corruption of the U.S. Government

Hart's piece is an interesting Time magazine essay, and also a long section from his new book, The Republic of Conscience (I don't support Amazon, so no Amazon link). I don't want to quote a ton of it, since its main argument is likely familiar to you. But he makes a systemic point in a way that seems original; that is, he puts pieces together to make a bigger whole than most of us were aware of. For example, it's likely that the "army of lobbyists" we all hate aren't a perversion of government — they are government.

A few notable sections (all emphasis mine):

Gary Hart: America’s Founding Principles Are in Danger of Corruption

Welcome to the age of vanity politics and campaigns-for-hire. What would our founders make of this nightmare?

Four qualities have distinguished republican government from ancient Athens forward: the sovereignty of the people; a sense of the common good; government dedicated to the commonwealth; and resistance to corruption. Measured against the standards established for republics from ancient times, the American Republic is massively corrupt.

From Plato and Aristotle forward, corruption was meant to describe actions and decisions that put a narrow, special, or personal interest ahead of the interest of the public or commonwealth. Corruption did not have to stoop to money under the table, vote buying, or even renting out the Lincoln bedroom. In the governing of a republic, corruption was self-interest placed above the interest of all—the public interest.

By that standard, can anyone seriously doubt that our republic, our government, is corrupt? There have been Teapot Domes and financial scandals of one kind or another throughout our nation’s history. There has never been a time, however, when the government of the United States was so perversely and systematically dedicated to special interests, earmarks, side deals, log-rolling, vote-trading, and sweetheart deals of one kind or another.

What brought us to this? A sinister system combining staggering campaign costs, political contributions, political action committees, special interest payments for access, and, most of all, the rise of the lobbying class.

Worst of all, the army of lobbyists that started relatively small in the mid-twentieth century has now grown to big battalions of law firms and lobbying firms of the right, left, and an amalgam of both. And that gargantuan, if not reptilian, industry now takes on board former members of the House and the Senate and their personal and committee staffs. And they are all getting fabulously rich.

Gargantuan numbers of lobbyists with gargantuan amounts of money. There's a point where corruption of government on that scale systemically changes government itself.

The "Big Three" Lobbying Conglomerates Are a "Fourth Branch of Government"

For Hart, the movement of office-holders and their staffs between lobbying firms and government is not a "revolving door" to government; that revolving door is government. Hart makes his point by looking at the lobbying firm WPP, the largest of three giant lobbying conglomerates. WPP isn't just a lobbying firm, it's an international conglomerate of firms that wields enormous power and wealth.

Consider — WPP has been eating up lobbying firms the way Macy's, Inc. eats department stores or Darden eats restaurant chains. At some point, you simply own the business you're in, and the size of your operation changes the nature of the game itself.

Hart on how lobbying at this scale changes our government:

[T]he largest [lobbying "predator" (his term)] by far is WPP (originally called Wire and Plastic Products; is there a metaphor here?), which has its headquarters in London and more than 150,000 employees in 2,500 offices spread around 107 countries. It, together with one or two conglomerating competitors, represents a fourth branch of government, vacuuming up former senators and House members and their spouses and families, key committee staff, former senior administration officials of both parties and several administrations, and ambassadors, diplomats, and retired senior military officers.

WPP has swallowed giant public relations, advertising, and lobbying outfits such as Hill & Knowlton and BursonMarsteller, along with dozens of smaller members of the highly lucrative special interest and influence-manipulation world. Close behind WPP is the Orwellian-named Omnicom Group and another converger vaguely called the Interpublic Group of Companies. According to Mr. Edsall, WPP had billings last year of $72.3 billion, larger than the budgets of quite a number of countries.

With a budget so astronomical, think how much good WPP can do in the campaign finance arena, especially since the Citizens United decision. The possibilities are almost limitless. Why pay for a senator or congresswoman here or there when you can buy an entire committee? Think of the banks that can be bailed out, the range of elaborate weapons systems that can be sold to the government, the protection from congressional scrutiny that can be paid for, the economic policies that can be manipulated.

The lobbying business is no longer about votes up or down on particular measures that may emerge in Congress or policies made in the White House. It is about setting agendas, deciding what should and should not be brought up for hearings and legislation. We have gone way beyond mere vote buying now. The converging Influence World represents nothing less than an unofficial but enormously powerful fourth branch of government.

To whom is this branch of government accountable? Who sets the agenda for its rising army of influence marketers? How easy will it be to not only go from office to a lucrative lobbying job but, more important, from lucrative lobbying job to holding office?

When one lobbying firm has billings of nearly $75 billion, you can "buy committees," not just individual votes; and you can "set agendas" rather than just pass laws.

Now consider that "revolving door" again. Is that a door out of government and back into it, or is it a door into another branch of government, one where policy decisions also get made?

Does an International Lobbying Firm Serve One Nation's Interest or Many?

And a final question: If the lobbying firm is international, with international clients and governmental "targets," are its interests "American" in any way? If not, how compromised are those who take its money?

Where are its [WPP's] loyalties if it is manipulating and influencing governments around the world? Other than as a trough of money of gigantic proportions, how does it view the government of the United States?

Why would not WPP act to modify the laws of one country to serve the interests of clients in another? And I'll ask again, are those who take its money compromised by the international goals of these mega-firms?

"Purchasing" Candidates and Office-Holders — Even Former Senators Are Saying It

Just as "corruption" is not a metaphor when it comes to decisions like Bush v. Gore, "buying" and "sponsoring" candidates and office-holders — the way soap is bought and race cars are sponsored — is not a metaphor, at least according to Hart:

The advent of legalized corruption launched by the Supreme Court empowers the superrich to fund their own presidential and congressional campaigns as pet projects, to foster pet policies, and to represent pet political enclaves. You have a billion, or even several hundred million, then purchase a candidate from the endless reserve bench of minor politicians and make him or her a star, a mouthpiece for any cause or purpose however questionable, and that candidate will mouth your script in endless political debates and through as many television spots as you are willing to pay for. All legal now. ...

The five prevailing Supreme Court justices, holding that a legal entity called a corporation has First Amendment rights of free speech, might at least have required the bought-and-paid-for candidates to wear sponsor labels on their suits as stock-car drivers do. Though, for the time being, sponsored candidates will not be openly promoted by Exxon-Mobil or the Stardust Resort and Casino but by phony “committees for good government” smokescreens.

I think he's literally correct. In the old days, it didn't take much money to wholly own a back-bench Congress person from coal country, say, and one coal company, if big enough, could do it. But the major office-holders had to be funded by competing interests. Now you can tag several  presidential candidates, at least on the Republican side, with the single name of their "benefactor."

For example:

• Marco Rubio — Sponsored by Norman Braman & (he hopes) Sheldon Adelson
• Scott Walker — Sponsored by the Koch Brothers
• Ted Cruz — Sponsored by hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer
• Rick Santorum — Sponsored by Foster Friess
• Rand Paul — Sponsored by [this slot available]

And so on. Joe Biden's been called the "Senator from MBNA," and Chuck Schumer the "Senator from Wall Street." Seems right. In cases of such complete "sponsorship" I agree that wearing of badges should be required. Partial sponsorship could be handled like NASCAR jackets:

But this treats a serious problem too lightly. Remember, I said this was a radical analysis. In fact, by this practice we're actually amending the Constitution — not the one as written; the one as practiced.

The Other Way to Amend the Constitution

All constitutions and all systems of laws are amended in two ways, by formal agreement (legal process) and by informal agreement. In England, the second ways is in fact the primary way their "constitution" is amended.

In the U.S., if both parties enforce a law in the same way, even though that way deviates from the way the law is written, the law is amended until forced back to its original form in practice. Thus:

▪ We have, by bipartisan agreement, revoked the Fourth Amendment. Neither party enforces it, so it's gone. Do you think you'll see it enforced in your lifetime? It's possible. Is that likely, do you think, without another radical change?

▪ We have changed the "rule of law" to add a "circle of immunity" amendment. It started with Nixon — the circle of "who cannot be prosecuted" included one person, the president. That was granted him by Gerald Ford's pardon with no objection from Congress and confirmed by Obama's refusal to indict Bush II for violating laws against torture. (Can you see Obama being indicted by anyone for extrajudicial murder, assassination really, of Americans, some mere propagandists and some completely innocent?)

Under Reagan–Bush I that circle expanded to include their top cabinet officers, like Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger. Under Bush II–Obama it includes all money-center bankers and former senators (and outright crooks) like Jon Corzine.

▪ Regarding that parenthetical comment about Obama and his drone kills above, we've now amended the trial-by-jury section of the Sixth Amendment to allow executive assassination, death by executive fiat. It just awaits a Republican president to confirm it by following suit, but Congress has already approved.

And so on. Now we can add one more:

▪ The mega-lobbying firms, with their combined more-than-$100 billion annual budget, are a fourth branch of government. Policy is set in these firms and passed to Congress and the executive branch to "discuss." Once discussed and passed, those who passed these policies then return to the firms to set more policy — and receive what's often the biggest payoff of their lifetime.

Was TPP drafted first in these mega-firms before being negotiated between nations? There aren't many other ways to convene 600 lobbyists (pdf).

Cleaning the Augean Stables

Back to Hart's essay and where we started, with the Augean Stables. The way out of this mess, if Greek myth is any indicator, is not incremental. You can't shovel your way out. Remember, that's a 1,000-cattle stable, and in our case a literal army of lobbyists. With a mere shovel, we'd be buried to our necks before the fourth toss of filth out the window.

How did Hercules clean his stable? He diverted a river and ran the whole mess out to sea in one pass. There's a word for that equivalent in government life — radical change, and it comes in several forms.

I recommend the peaceful kind, like backing this guy for president. Click to support; you can adjust the split at the link.

* Did you know that "radical" means "going to the root or source"?

Radically yours,

GP