Down here in Texas, Tom DeLay and his lawyer are grandstanding with the best of them as the judge in the campaign-finance case against the former House Republican leader was removed because of his donations to Democratic candidates and causes. DeLay's lawyers are also seeking to have the trial moved out of Austin, citing the media attention and noting that Austin, widely perceived as a liberal college town, is "one of the last enclaves of the Democratic Party in Texas."
Consider for a moment the irony of the man who deals in buying and selling favor and political access trying to stack the odds in his own favour yet again - because you know that he isn't going to be happy until he is being tried by a staunch Republican in a staunch Republican town. Preferably one where every Republican official for miles around is beholden to him foir past largesse. However in all fairness, I have to tell you, he expects this as his due because not just DeLay but almost every single one of the politicos on the Hill expect people to be bought and sold and kowtow to money. In their world, money buys everything - especially representation.
Cut to the New Standard and a story from the excellent Michelle Chen:
Tom DeLay's grinning mug shot has become the emblem of congressional scandal in recent weeks. But for all the official scrutiny heaped on the Texas congressman and former majority leader of the House of Representatives, watchdog groups say that the most incriminating evidence of political corruption is simply business as usual on Capitol Hill. Underneath the scandals, they warn, is a free-flow of corporate money that regularly erodes democracy while staying inside the bounds of the law.
..."It’s not just about Tom DeLay. It’s about the entire system," said David Donnelly, national campaigns director of the Public Campaign Action Fund, a campaign finance reform group. This latest scandal, he said, grows out of "the everyday trading of campaign donations for policy."
Critics view DeLay’s financial record as a case study in Washington’s "pay-to-play" system. Without rising to the level of criminality, DeLay’s influence-peddling schemes have earned him three official chastisements from the House ethics committee – a move that prompted the retaliatory replacement of several committee members with Delay’s political allies earlier this year.
Yet the "pay-forplay" system isn't solely the preserve of DeLay and his cronies.
Reform groups consider that the temptation of corporate money to be a bipartisan phenomenon. Overall in the 2004 election cycle, about 55 percent of contributions from business groups went to Republicans, while Democrats swept up the rest.
...Naomi Seligman, deputy director of the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, commented: "It’s all about loopholes, isn’t it?… And how these members [of Congress] and lobbyists can jump through them. And so far they’ve been pretty successful, because there’s no policing mechanism to say that you can’t do that."
Political paralysis has led reform groups to doubt whether legislators can be trusted to police themselves. Seligman cited a so-called "ethics truce" on Capitol Hill, or the reluctance of legislators on both sides of the aisle to air each other’s dirty laundry. For instance, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) has decried ethics violations among Republicans, but has recently drawn rebukes for her reluctance to investigate Democrats accused of accepting inappropriate favors from lobbyists.
Suspecting that "everyone’s covering their own backside," Seligman said, official statements railing against ethical misconduct are "all message and no substance."
That suspicion is borne out by findings from a Center for Public Integrity study on lobbying in DC which found that, increasingly, the revolving door between lobbying firms and the Hill is spinning fater and easier. One of the most wrrying delvelopments involves registered lobbyists who become the treasurers of political action committees (PACs) and then are in the unique position of signing off on campaign donations to politicians they are being paid by corporations to influence.
Lobbyists have served as treasurers for at least 800 political action committees and 68 campaign committees in the past six years, according the Center's study. In that time these committees have spent more than $525 million to influence the political process. In other words, these lobbyist-led committees spent more money than President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry raised in combined contributions during the 2004 presidential campaign.
...Meanwhile as these lobbyist-led PACs donate millions, their firms have raked in $3 billion from 10,610 companies and organizations between 1998 and 2004—constituting one quarter of all federal lobbying expenditures for that period. In addition, 557 companies that spent more than $3.5 billion lobbying employed PAC or campaign treasurers as in-house lobbyists.
Among the politicians benefitting from such obvious conflict of interest are Hillary Clinton, whos Senatorial election PAC had as treasurer a lobbyist who works for Equitas and Verizon; Rahm Emanuel (D- Ill) whos PAC treasurer has clients such as Sara Lee and United Airlines; Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens PAC where the treasurer includes among his clients including Seattle-based Arctic Storm Management Group - commercial fishers who have benefitted greatly from Steven's pressure to reduce environmental safeguards and many others.
Republican political consultant Mark Valente, for instance, owns his own lobbying firm and is the treasurer of 15 PACs, nearly all of which are leadership PACs, including those of House Republicans Joe Wilson, S.C.; Mike Ferguson, N.J.; and Mike Rogers, Mich.
No wonder David Donnelly, national campaigns director of the Public Campaign Action Fund, a campaign finance reform group, told the New Standard:
"People definitely want politicians who are acting unethically to get caught... But they often just want different politicians. They want people to be able to run for office without relying upon huge amounts of money from wealthy interests…. It’s a bigger issue about who are the kind of people we put into politics, and what do they have to do to gain public office."
Donnelly's group is pushing for "clean-money" laws, which mandate government subsidies for campaigns to replace privately raised funds. The rationale is that if the government alleviates the cost of political campaigning, a more diverse array of people would run for election and form more responsive political bodies not beholden to the agendas of donors.
Such a move will be faced with huge inertia and even active spoiling from those with a vested interest in the current system. However, for America to once again have a government "of the people, by the people" instead of by and for corporate interests it is a move that will have to be made. It would take a massive grassroots movement to accomplish.
At the end of the day, the one thing lobbyists can't do is vote often enough to deliver an election victory.
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