Boomtown is full of rats

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‘Boomtown’ Special Angers, Resonates with Americans

Fox News will re-air “Boomtown” on Sunday at 9 p.m. EST and 9 p.m. PST. “Boomtown” is a one-hour investigative special that assails Washington, D.C.’s permanent political class for “extracting” taxpayer dollars from Americans and growing the size of government to enrich themselves and their cronies without creating anything of use.

Fox News’ “Hannity” first aired the blockbuster special on Friday, and the show immediately resonated with viewers across the country. This is in part why Fox News is re-airing the one-hour special.

On the show, Peter Schweizer, the president of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI), Steve Bannon, Breitbart News’ Executive Chairman, and Fox News host Sean Hannity detailed how Washington, D.C. has become the nation’s wealthiest and most lavish region. Their investigation concluded and revealed those in Washington’s permanent political class and aristocracy only have incentives to grow the size and scope of government to further enrich themselves and their cronies.

Viewers expressed their outrage at the permanent political class on Twitter as they were watching the show. After the show, viewers sent heartfelt emails to GAI and Breitbart News. Many asked if the show would re-air and if they could purchase DVDs of “Boomtown.”

You don’t have to wait until tonight. Here it is.

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SHOCKER – ABC’s Brian Ross does some real reporting

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When I caught this story last night I was so shocked I almost swallowed my bubblicious. But I wasn’t surprised by the hypocrisy – I’ve known for a while that the Obama Democrats are thoroughly corrupt – I was shocked that somebody in the media reported it:

Red Carpet for Solyndra Figure at Democratic Convention

The Obama campaign rolled out the red carpet this week for a former top Energy Department official who was at the center of the ill-fated government loan to Solyndra, a California solar panel firm that wound up in bankruptcy.

Steven J. Spinner joined other top fundraisers for a VIP tour of the Democratic National Convention floor in Charlotte Monday evening, posing and waving for a photographer while standing behind the podium. When he saw ABC News cameras, however, he ran for the exit.

[...]

This week, Spinner has been attending a number of events organized for the campaign’s top donors — members of the National Finance Committee. He is sporting a badge that identifies him as a “Finance Guest.”

He appears also to be a top donor to the convention’s host committee, which accepts up to $100,000 from individuals to help offset the cost of the three-day Charlotte event. The host committee organized the podium tour that Spinner attended.

ABC News made repeated attempts to interview Spinner as the Solyndra saga unfolded, and he declined. When he was approached by ABC News on the convention floor Monday, he bolted for an exit.

A DNC employee blocked ABC News reporters from following Spinner as he broke into a run.

“You can’t follow people,” the aide said, as he held up his arms to keep the camera from filming Spinner as he left the venue.

Neither the Obama campaign nor the White House responded to requests for comment about Spinner.

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Spinner wasn’t the only big donor being given the high-roller treatment in Charlotte this week. There are special events that even the delegates aren’t invited to, like private concerts and parties.

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ZOMG!!!1!

Second Romney-Backed Solar Company Files For Bankruptcy

On Thursday, Mitt Romney campaigned at the headquarters of Solyndra — the first renewable energy company to receive a federal loan under the stimulus — and reiterated his debunked claims that its bankruptcy symbolized the corruption and cronyism of the Obama administration. But just one day later, a solar panel developer “that landed a state loan from Mitt Romney when he was Massachusetts governor” went belly up, the Boston Herald reports, creating an inconvenient storyline for the GOP presidential nominee.

The company, Konarka Technologies, “filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection and will cease operations, lay off its 85 workers and liquidate”:

“Konarka has been unable to obtain additional financing, and given its current financial condition, it is unable to continue operations,” CEO Howard Berke said in a statement. “This is a tragedy for Konarka’s shareholders and employees and for the development of alternative energy in the United States.”

The demise of Konarka could become a hot topic on the campaign trail because Romney personally doled out a $1.5 million renewable energy subsidy to the Lowell startup in 2003, shortly after taking office on Beacon Hill.

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They got $1.5 million NINE YEARS AGO and it’s Romney’s fault they went belly-up now?

So was the guy in charge of Konarka a crony of major Romney donor? Did Romney rush the loan through the approval process? Can anyone remember exactly who approved the loan? Were the taxpayers subordinated to other investors? Did Konarka repay any or all of the loan during the past NINE YEARS?

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20/20 CDS

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Matt Stoller has it:

Bill Clinton’s $80 Million Payday, or Why Politicians Don’t Care That Much About Reelection

“There was a kind of inflection point during the five-year period between 1997 and 2003 — the late Clinton and/or early Bush administration — when all the rules just went away. You went from a period, a regime, where people did have at least some concern about going to jail, to a point where everything is legal, and derivatives couldn’t be regulated at all and nobody went to jail for anything. And looking back I would say that this period definitely started under Clinton. You absolutely cannot blame this on George W. Bush.” – Charles Ferguson of Inside Job

“I never had any money until I got out of the White House, you know, but I’ve done reasonably well since then.” Bill Clinton

On December 21, 2000, as President, Bill Clinton signed a bill known as the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. This law ensured that derivatives could not be regulated, setting the stage for the financial crisis. Just two months later, on February 5, 2001, Clinton received $125,000 from Morgan Stanley, in the form of a payment for a speech Clinton gave for the company in New York City. A few weeks later, Credit Suisse also hired Clinton for a speech, at a $125,000 speaking fee, also in New York. It turns out, Bill Clinton could make a lot of money, for not very much work.

Today, Clinton is worth something on the order of $80 million (probably much more, but we don’t really know), and these speeches have become a lucrative and consistent revenue stream for his family. Clinton spends his time offering policy advice, writing books, stumping for political candidates, and running a global foundation. He’s now a vegan. He makes money from books. But the speaking fee money stream keeps coming in, year after year, in larger and larger amounts.

[...]

Over the course of the next ten years after his Presidency, Clinton brought in roughly $8-10 million a year in speaking fees. In 2004, Clinton got $250,000 from Citigroup and $150,000 from Deutsche Bank. Goldman paid him $300,000 for two speeches, one in Paris. As the bubble peaked, in 2006, Clinton got $150,000 paydays each from Citigroup (twice), Lehman Brothers, the Mortgage Bankers Association, and the National Association of Realtors. In 2007, it was Goldman again, twice, Lehman, Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch. He didn’t just reap speaking fee cash from the financial services sector – corporate titans like Oracle and outsourcing specialist Cisco paid up, as did many Israel-focused groups, Middle Eastern interests, and universities. Does this explain the finance-friendly, oil-friendly and Israel First-friendly policies pursued by the State Department under Hillary Clinton? Who knows? But if you could legally deliver millions in cash to the husband of a high-level political official, it wouldn’t hurt your policy goals.

Speaking fee money isn’t just money, it is easy money. In one appearance, for one hour, Clinton can make $125,000 to $500,000. At an hourly rate, that’s between $250 million to $1 billion annually. It isn’t the case that Clinton is a billionaire, but it is the case that Clinton can, whenever he wants, make money as quickly and as easily as a billionaire. He is awash in cash, and cash is useful. Cash finances his lifestyle. Cash helped backstop his wife’s Presidential campaign when it was on the ropes.

[...]

We don’t call it bribery, but that’s what it is. Bill Clinton made a lot of money when he signed the bill deregulating derivatives and repealed Glass-Steagall. The payout just came later, in the form of speaking fees from elite banks and their allies.

Ironically, Clinton has come to express regret about deregulating derivatives. He has not given the money back.

Some of you may remember Matt Stoller from his days at OpenLeft, a cesspool of Clinton Derangement Syndrome. Matt is living proof that CDS never dies. It is no coincidence that Clinton-hate is prevalent among the Obotians. These days the left hates Bill and Hillary more than the right does.

Stoller doesn’t mention a few things, like the peace and prosperity of the Nineties. He also skips over the fact that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed Glass-Steagall passed in 1999 with veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress.

Sarah Palin has done very well financially since she left the governorship of Alaska. She has sold two books, been on television and gets hefty speaking fees too. So what does Stoller think she is being bribed to do?

But let’s assume that Stoller is correct and politicians are receiving delayed bribes. What can we do about it? Should we pass a law placing a lifetime ban on employment, speaking fees, book deals and other financial gifts and compensation for all former politicians? What about their families?

As WMCB is fond of pointing out, the only way to limit government corruption is to limit the size and power of government. A watchdog media would be helpful, but these days they are feeding at the same trough as the people they are supposed to watch.

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The way to hell is paved with good intentions

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Via Hot Air:

Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced with Cafeteria “Nuggets”

A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.

The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.

The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.

When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.

[...]

When the girl came home with her lunch untouched, her mother wanted to know what she ate instead. Three chicken nuggets, the girl answered. Everything else on her cafeteria tray went to waste.

“She came home with her whole sandwich I had packed, because she chose to eat the nuggets on the lunch tray, because they put it in front of her,” her mother said. “You’re telling a 4-year-old. ‘oh. you’re lunch isn’t right,’ and she’s thinking there’s something wrong with her food.”

While the mother and grandmother thought the potato chips and lack of vegetable were what disqualified the lunch, a spokeswoman for the Division of Child Development said that should not have been a problem.

“With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that’s the dairy,” said Jani Kozlowski, the fiscal and statutory policy manager for the division. “It sounds like the lunch itself would’ve met all of the standard.” The lunch has to include a fruit or vegetable, but not both, she said.

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Wingnuttia has their collective knickers in a knot over this story. At first I thought that this was just some overzealous school employee misunderstanding policy. A lunch inspector for sack lunches? Seriously?

But this problem originates quite a bit higher on the food chain:

The state regulation reads:

“Sites must provide breakfast and/or snacks and lunch meeting USDA requirements during the regular school day. The partial/full cost of meals may be charged when families do not qualify for free/reduced price meals.

“When children bring their own food for meals and snacks to the center, if the food does not meet the specified nutritional requirements, the center must provide additional food necessary to meet those requirements.”

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It’s all the fault of those damn nanny-state Progressives, New Dealers and Great Society Liberals. Back around the beginning of the 20th Century them Progressives got laws passed in every state making education mandatory for childrens until they were at least fourteen.

At first kids were on their own as far as lunch. Most either walked home (five miles through the snow, uphill both ways) or brought their lunch to eat. Some just went hungry. The first school lunch program started in Milwaukee (a hotbed of progressivism) in 1899. The idea spread and in 1946 New Dealer Harry S.Truman signed the National School Lunch Act which provided free or low-cost lunches to school childrens.

Here’s the kicker:

The best government that money can buy

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Jim Messina, Obama campaign manager:

But this cycle, our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands.

Over the last few months, Super PACs affiliated with Republican presidential candidates have spent more than $40 million on television and radio, almost all of it for negative ads.

Last week, filings showed that the Super PAC affiliated with Mitt Romney’s campaign raised $30 million in 2011 from fewer than 200 contributors, most of them from the financial sector. Governor Romney personally helped raise money for this group, which is run by some of his closest allies.

Meanwhile, other Super PACs established for the sole purpose of defeating the President—along with “nonprofits” that also aren’t required to disclose the sources of their funding—have raised more than $50 million. In the aggregate, these groups are expected to spend half a billion dollars, above and beyond what the Republican nominee and party are expected to commit to try to defeat the President.

With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm.

Therefore, the campaign has decided to do what we can, consistent with the law, to support Priorities USA in its effort to counter the weight of the GOP Super PAC. We will do so only in the knowledge and with the expectation that all of its donations will be fully disclosed as required by law to the Federal Election Commission.

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Gee wow, didn’t see this one coming. Here’s an article from four years ago:

McCain attacks Obama for opting out of public financing

Sen. John McCain on Thursday accused Sen. Barack Obama of breaking a promise when the Democrat decided to forgo public financing in this fall’s campaign.

Obama told supporters in an e-mail message Thursday that he would not accept about $85 million in public funds when he becomes the Democratic presidential nominee.

In the e-mail, Obama said the public campaign financing system allowed “special interests [to] drown out the voices of the American people” and asked his supporters to “declare our independence from a broken system.”

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Poor Obama, he wants to do the right thing but his opponents won’t let him. This is the same Obama who wants to raise a billion dollars (that’s BILLION with a “B”) for his campaign even though he has no primary challenger.

Speaking of which, Obama heavily outspent Hillary in the 2008 primaries too, but I’m sure that was somehow that was her fault as well.

As for special interests, Obama donors have seen a nice return on investment since he took office, haven’t they?

This was the best part:

” . . . all of its donations will be fully disclosed as required by law to the Federal Election Commission.”

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That means they won’t disclose anything they don’t HAVE to, like the names of those small (under $200) online donors in 2008.

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UPDATE:

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Wall Street Occupies The White House

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Kevin D. Williamson:

Not far from Zuccotti Park, where Occupy Wall Street was fragrantly encamped, I noticed a young man wandering into a store to buy a pack of cigarettes on a bright Saturday morning, wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt, and a $237,000 Vacheron-Constantin watch. In a world of $600,000 cars (consult your local Maybach dealer) and $4,300-a-night whores (consult Eliot Spitzer), it’s no big deal to buy a president, which is precisely what Wall Street did in 2008 when, led by investment giant Goldman Sachs, it closed the deal on Barack Obama.

For a few measly millions, Wall Street not only bought itself a president, but got the start-up firm of B. H. Obama & Co. LLC to throw a cabinet into the deal, too — on remarkably generous terms. President Obama, for a guy prone to delivering prim and smug little homilies denouncing greed, greed, greed — the only of the seven deadly sins that truly offends Democrats (though Mrs. Obama has done some desultory work on gluttony) — is strangely comfortable among the Gordon Gekkos of this world. Shall we have a partial roll call? Beat the drum slowly and call out the names: With unemployment still topping 9 percent, the catastatic world economy teetering on the brink of another, even larger financial catastrophe, and trillion-dollar U.S. deficits as far as the green-shaded eye can see, let’s hear it for Obama’s first National Economic Council director, Lawrence Summers (of hedge-fund giant D. E. Shaw and venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz), who has had some nice paydays courtesy of Lehman Bros., JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup. Let’s hear it for Citigroup’s Michael Froman, deputy assistant to the president and deputy national-security adviser for international economic affairs, for Hartford Financial’s Neal Wolin, deputy Treasury secretary, for JPMorgan’s William Daley, Obama’s chief of staff, and for his predecessor, Rahm Emanuel of Wasserstein Perella. Let’s hear it for Fannie Mae’s Tom Donilon, national-security adviser. (No, seriously: One of the luminous interstellar geniuses who brought Fannie Mae to its current aphotic state of affairs, upside down to the tune of trillions of dollars, is running national security, and the former director of the White House Military Office, Louis Caldera, was on the board of IndyMac when it finally went toes up — sleep tight, America!) And, lest we forget, let’s have three big, sloppy cheers for economic-transition team leaders Robert Rubin (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup) and folksy tax enthusiast/ghoulish billionaire vulture Warren Buffett.

That’s a pretty fantastic lineup, from Wall Street’s point of view, but the real bonus turned out to be Treasury secretary Tim Geithner, who came up through the ranks as part of the bipartisan Robert Rubin–Hank Paulson–Citigroup–Goldman Sachs cabal. Geithner, a government-and-academe man from way back, never really worked on Wall Street, though he once was offered a gig as CEO of Citigroup, which apparently thought he did an outstanding job as chairman of the New York Fed, where one of his main tasks was regulating Citigroup — until it collapsed into the yawning suckhole of its own cavernous ineptitude, at which point Geithner’s main job became shoveling tens of billions of federal dollars into Citigroup, in an ingeniously structured investment that allowed the government to buy a 27 percent share in the bank, for which it paid more than the entire market value of the bank. If you can’t figure out why you’d pay 100-plus percent of a bank’s value for 27 percent of it, then you just don’t understand high finance or high politics.

But high finance is not the only corporate mystery to be unraveled here: President Obama’s repetitious denunciations of Big Oil have not stopped his man David Axelrod’s firm from setting up Astroturf campaigns on behalf of Exelon subsidiary ComEd, or stopped the president from appointing GE chief executive/tax-minimization engineer/offshoring guru/bailout baby Jeff Immelt to his risible White House jobs commission, or choosing former Kraft and Duke Energy board member Mary Schapiro to run the SEC.

When President Obama opined during his 2011 State of the Union speech that a corporate tax-rate cut might be just the thing for America after a year of record corporate profits, his left-wing base was shocked and dismayed. Heck, some conservatives were caught offguard, too. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed who was running the Obama administration: In large part, the same guys who plan to be running the next Republican administration.

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If you believe that Wall Street has too much control over our government then you must believe that Barack Obama is Public Enemy Number One. If you really meant the things you say you would focus on him, mic check his speeches, occupy the White House, support a primary challenger, hound Obama into retirement.

Of course that would alienate your financial supporters (the ones who kicked in $500 thousand for smoked salmon and grilled veal at the Zuccotti All-You-Can-Eat Buffet). It would also piss off all those pro-Obama government employee unions that swell your ranks whenever you feel like wankmarching through lower Manhattan. The corporate media wouldn’t have been so nice to you either.

But that’s okay, next Spring you can boost your self-esteem by harassing Mitt Romney and the Republicans. Then next Fall you can hold your nose and vote for Obama.

But don’t expect me to be cheering for your victory.

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OWS & Crony Capitalists – A love story

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Via small dead animals

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The Center Cannot Hold

We could use more hindsight these days. Three years after the fact, we learn that Henry Paulson manipulated hedge funds even before he was given the sole authority over Republican killer TARP. Around the same time, Barack Obama was running for president with even closer ties to Jeremiah Wright than even Sean Hannity lead us to believe in 2008.

This won’t sink Obama’s chances of winning in 2012, but it does exemplify his silly 2008 campaign. The problem with running under the guise of not being like the last president is that you probably have no actual skills to bring to the table. Like Carter before, when the voters learn that you’re a lousy president, you have no ideological consistency to develop your base.

I don’t think Obama is a Republican. I’m unconvinced that he is some kind of socialist. I can see everything he has done (or failed to do) as an attempt to pay back his donors and constituents, in that order. He got his money from Wall Street and his ground forces from government employee unions and the SEIU. He only started fighting for tax increases on the rich when Congress cut him off. Is he a Cloward-Piven type of radical who wants to destroy the American system of government? It doesn’t matter. a fully corrupt politicians will do the same thing as that kind of radical, overspend until the country collapses.

The debate over taxing the rich is over. The rich no longer have enough to cover the annual costs of the government. We must reduce spending regardless of what taxes are increased on higher incomes. Revenue increases are secondary to spending, much like the debate over what to do about illegal aliens is secondary to how to secure the borders. Obama created the Stimulus, the Stimulus created the Tea Party.

Now that Newt Gingrich is basking in the limelight, the fools at MSNBC’s Morning Joe are trying to get Jon Huntsman next in line when Gingrich falters. Joe Scarborough is using the scorched earth strategy, calling Newt and Romney liberals compared to Huntsman, even though Huntsman is the candidate who refuses to even call himself conservative. Maybe some Republicans and Democrats who oppose Obama think a right of center Republican is the best foil for Obama, but they’re wrong.

When Carter ran for president in 1976, he won on the fact that he wasn’t Richard Nixon or part of his administration. Plus, the GOP stupidly nominated Ford over Reagan because Reagan was too polarizing. Carter’s vision for American was of a screwed up place that needed a lot of work and his administration reflected it. Reagan may have had a radically conservative vision for America, but at least he had a vision. We all know how George Bush 41 felt about the “vision thing.”

Voters may not like Obama much, but Wall Street still plans to give him money and unions still plan to campaign for him (and give him money). The Republicans need people to turn out to counter that. They need a candidate with a vision to rally behind and a willingness to point out all the flaws of their opponent. Of course, that person is Sarah Palin so I’ll be waiting for her endorsement. Please don’t pick Mitt Romney.

While the whole world was watching something else . . .

Energy Secretary Steven Chu

While the peasants were revolting on Wall Street yesterday, things were going on in Washington:

Energy secretary refuses to apologize over Solyndra loan

Energy Secretary Steven Chu is a physicist, not a politician, but he was unflappable under attack from Republicans and refused to apologize for a $535-million loan guarantee given to now-bankrupt solar equipment maker Solyndra.

In his first appearance before Congress since the Solyndra controversy broke nearly three months ago, Chu firmly pushed back against allegations that political favoritism and bureaucratic incompetence led his agency to approve the Solyndra loan guarantee.

“Was there incompetence?” Chu said in response to Michigan Republican Fred Upton’s request for an apology. “Was there any influence of a political nature? So I would say no. It is extremely unfortunate what has happened to Solyndra.”

Chu is the highest-level Obama administration member so far to testify about his agency’s role in the decision to back the Fremont, Calif., manufacturer, which closed its doors at the end of August.

Upton, the committee’s chairman, had framed the hearing as an inquiry into Chu’s involvement. “What did Secretary Chu know about the situation at Solyndra, when did he know it and how did he act on this information, if at all?”

Chu said he knew few of the details about Solyndra until the company began to falter late last year and needed its loan guarantee restructured. Many of the decisions about the loan were made by career civil servants, emails have shown.

Chu, a Nobel prize winner and Washington outsider, parried often-repetitive questions over the nearly five hours of the hearing. During his testimony, he made clear that he had little hope of recovering most of the money backed by the Energy Department’s guarantee.

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That’s an improvement over “I don’t recall . . . I don’t recall . . . I don’t recall.” But not much of one.

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Mama Grizzly

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Sarah Palin:

How Congress Occupied Wall Street
Politicians who arrive in Washington as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires. Why?

Mark Twain famously wrote, “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” Peter Schweizer’s new book, “Throw Them All Out,” reveals this permanent political class in all its arrogant glory. (Full disclosure: Mr. Schweizer is employed by my political action committee as a foreign-policy adviser.)

Mr. Schweizer answers the questions so many of us have asked. I addressed this in a speech in Iowa last Labor Day weekend. How do politicians who arrive in Washington, D.C. as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires? How do they miraculously accumulate wealth at a rate faster than the rest of us? How do politicians’ stock portfolios outperform even the best hedge-fund managers’? I answered the question in that speech: Politicians derive power from the authority of their office and their access to our tax dollars, and they use that power to enrich and shield themselves.

The money-making opportunities for politicians are myriad, and Mr. Schweizer details the most lucrative methods: accepting sweetheart gifts of IPO stock from companies seeking to influence legislation, practicing insider trading with nonpublic government information, earmarking projects that benefit personal real estate holdings, and even subtly extorting campaign donations through the threat of legislation unfavorable to an industry. The list goes on and on, and it’s sickening.

Astonishingly, none of this is technically illegal, at least not for Congress. Members of Congress exempt themselves from the laws they apply to the rest of us. That includes laws that protect whistleblowers (nothing prevents members of Congress from retaliating against staffers who shine light on corruption) and Freedom of Information Act requests (it’s easier to get classified documents from the CIA than from a congressional office).

The corruption isn’t confined to one political party or just a few bad apples. It’s an endemic problem encompassing leadership on both sides of the aisle. It’s an entire system of public servants feathering their own nests.

None of this surprises me. I’ve been fighting this type of corruption and cronyism my entire political career. For years Alaskans suspected that our lawmakers and state administrators were in the pockets of the big oil companies to the detriment of ordinary Alaskans. We knew we were being taken for a ride, but it took FBI wiretaps to finally capture lawmakers in the act of selling their votes. In the wake of politicos being carted off to prison, my administration enacted reforms based on transparency and accountability to prevent this from happening again.

We were successful because we had the righteous indignation of Alaskan citizens on our side. Our good ol’ boy political class in Juneau was definitely not with us. Business was good for them, so why would they want to end “business as usual”?

The moment you threaten to strip politicians of their legal graft, they’ll moan that they can’t govern effectively without it. Perhaps they’ll gravitate toward reform, but often their idea of reform is to limit the right of “We the people” to exercise our freedom of speech in the political process.

I’ve learned from local, state and national political experience that the only solution to entrenched corruption is sudden and relentless reform. Sudden because our permanent political class is adept at changing the subject to divert the public’s attention—and we can no longer afford to be indifferent to this system of graft when our country is going bankrupt. Reform must be relentless because fighting corruption is like a game of whack-a-mole. You knock it down in one area only to see it pop up in another.

What are the solutions? We need reform that provides real transparency. Congress should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act like everyone else. We need more detailed financial disclosure reports, and members should submit reports much more often than once a year. All stock transactions above $5,000 should be disclosed within five days.

We need equality under the law. From now on, laws that apply to the private sector must apply to Congress, including whistleblower, conflict-of-interest and insider-trading laws. Trading on nonpublic government information should be illegal both for those who pass on the information and those who trade on it. (This should close the loophole of the blind trusts that aren’t really blind because they’re managed by family members or friends.)

No more sweetheart land deals with campaign contributors. No gifts of IPO shares. No trading of stocks related to committee assignments. No earmarks where the congressman receives a direct benefit. No accepting campaign contributions while Congress is in session. No lobbyists as family members, and no transitioning into a lobbying career after leaving office. No more revolving door, ever.

This call for real reform must transcend political parties. The grass-roots movements of the right and the left should embrace this. The tea party’s mission has always been opposition to waste and crony capitalism, and the Occupy protesters must realize that Washington politicians have been “Occupying Wall Street” long before anyone pitched a tent in Zuccotti Park.

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Rebuttal:

She has no problem hanging out with Glenn Beck like they’re BFFs.

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Okay then.

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Throw Them All Out

Required Reading for Voters

Via c4p, Newsweek/Daily Beast is featuring Peter Schweizer’s expose of rampant Congressional Insider Trading and Crony Capitalism. All perfectly legal (for them, they make the rules, after all) and all highly unethical.

In the Spring of 2010, a bespectacled, middle-aged policy wonk named Peter Schweizer fired up his laptop and began a months-long odyssey into a forbidding maze of public databases, hunting for the financial secrets of Washington’s most powerful politicians. Schweizer had been struck by the fact that members of Congress are free to buy and sell stocks in companies whose fate can be profoundly influenced, or even determined, by Washington policy, and he wondered, do these ultimate insiders act on what they know? Yes, Schweizer found, they certainly seem to. Schweizer’s research revealed that some of Congress’s most prominent members are in a position to routinely engage in what amounts to a legal form of insider trading, profiting from investment activity that, he says, “would send the rest of us to prison.”

For example:

While examining trades made around the time of the 2003 Medicare overhaul, Schweizer experienced what he calls his “Holy crap!” moment. The legislation, which created a new prescription-drug entitlement, promised to be a huge boon to the pharmaceutical industry—and to savvy investors in the Capitol. Among those with special insight on the issue was Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the health subcommittee of the Senate’s powerful Finance Committee. Kerry is one of the wealthiest members of the Senate and heavily invested in the stock market. As the final version of the drug program neared approval—one that didn’t include limits on the price of drugs—brokers for Kerry and his wife were busy trading in Big Pharma. Schweizer found that they completed 111 stock transactions of pharmaceutical companies in 2003, 103 of which were buys.
“They were all great picks,” Schweizer notes. The Kerrys’ capital gains on the transactions were at least $500,000, and as high as $2 million (such information is necessarily imprecise, as the disclosure rules allow members to report their gains in wide ranges). It was instructive to Schweizer that Kerry didn’t try to shape legislation to benefit his portfolio; the apparent key to success was the shaping of trades that anticipated the effect of government policy.

Daily Beast also has a gallery of mug shots highlighting 8 of our busiest Get Rich Congress members and, wait, there’s more! also  an article on Obama’s Lucky Friends who just happen to get government subsidies, the fact that they are bundlers having nothing to do with it.

Back to the original article, I am stunned to see a mainstream news actually say this out loud:

What Schweizer says he does hope is that others will take up his mission—requiring only time, online access, and a willingness to wade through public databases—and eventually crowd-source reform. A Throw Them All Out campaign is an interesting prospect—a movement that both Sarah Palin and Michael Moore could embrace. Schweizer’s motivation and his message could well be a credo that transcends partisan conflict.

We can’t just change the uniforms, we have to change the whole team. Throw them all out.

Oh what a tangled web we weave . . .

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Via Hot Air:

Emails tie Obama fundraiser to Solyndra push

Advisers to Obama fundraiser George Kaiser discussed Solyndra and other government contracts during their visits last year to the White House, according to emails released Wednesday by House Republicans.

The emails between Kaiser and two of his top business associates center in part around Solyndra’s failed bid to win a second loan guarantee from the Energy Department for $469 million.

In one exchange from Feb. 27, 2010, Ken Levit, executive director of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, said aides to Vice President Joe Biden responded enthusiastically when the topic of the California solar company came up during a meeting about stimulus funding.

“They had an orgasm in Biden’s office when we mentioned Solyndra,” Levit wrote to Steven Mitchell, a managing director at Kaiser’s venture capital firm, Argonaut Private Equity.

“That’s awesome! Get us a doe loan,” Mitchell replied.

Republicans pounced on that email exchange and several others, arguing they “directly contradict” earlier claims from Kaiser and the Obama administration that they did not talk about Solyndra during more than a dozen meetings with senior White House officials, including then chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett.

[...]

In a March 5, 2010, exchange, Kaiser and Mitchell discussed the push for a second loan guarantee and Solyndra CEO Chris Gronet’s “good call” with DOE loan guarantee chief Jonathan Silver.

“Apparently our application has been caught up with several other groups who were also wanting a second bite at the DOE loan guarantee apple,” Mitchell wrote to Kaiser.

But Silver “championed the cause that they should [get a second loan] and he has just this week apparently won that battle.”

“He would not say that we are the first one that will be considered but he all but did — he conceded that we are the only company to have actually closed and funded our loan and most of the other companies still have no revenues,” Mitchell added, noting that Energy Secretary Steven Chu “is apparently staying involved in Solyndra’s application and continues to talk up the company as a success story.”

“Sounds good,” Kaiser replied. “I assume that we would not move ahead with the offering until we have formal DOE approval or would you issue while you are under due diligence.”

“BTW, a couple of weeks ago when Ken and I were visiting with a group of Administration folks in DC who are in charge of the Stimulus process (White House, not DOE) and Solyndra came up, every one of them responded simultaneously about their thorough knowledge of the Solyndra story, suggesting it was one of their prime poster children.”

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There is an old joke about a congressman meeting with some lobbyists. The congressman says “Gentlemen, we can discuss money or we can discuss legislation. But if we discuss them at the same time we’ll all go to jail.“

BTW – The words “orgasm” and “Biden” in the same sentence made me puke in my mouth.

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