Fold/Spindle/Mutilate 2.1

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, September 30, 2005; A19

The indictment of Tom DeLay challenges a system of power. It is a blow against a national political machine that blurs the lines between parties, interest groups and the relentless pursuit of political money.

Defenders of politicians under attack typically say, no matter what the abuse is: “But everybody does it.” That excuse does not work here. DeLay, who was forced to step down as House majority leader, was a pioneer in something entirely new: a fully integrated political apparatus that linked Republican Party committees, lobbyists, fundraisers, corporations, ideological organizations and the process of governing itself.

There was a candid shamelessness, even genius, about how the operation worked. Traditional limits on what was permitted in politics were dismissed as the obsessions of squishes and goo-goos, a term coined long ago to deride advocates of good government.

Because DeLay’s defenders want to gloss over the facts, it’s important to understand the specifics of the indictment brought by Ronnie Earle, the Democratic district attorney in Travis County. The charges offer a fine summary of how the new machine politics works.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

Nancy Cauthen

Dr. Nancy Cauthen is deputy director of the National Center for Children in Poverty, the nation’s leading public policy center dedicated to promoting the health, economic security, and well-being of America’s most vulnerable children and families. NCCP is a non-partisan, public interest organization that creates knowledge to find solutions at the state and national levels. For more information, visit: www.nccp.org.

In the wake of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina—and the contribution of various governments to the catastrophe—we suddenly have national leaders talking about poverty.  Not surprisingly, they’re simply talking past one another.

For starters, they can’t agree on the nature and depth of poverty in the United States.  Using the federal government’s official poverty measure—which is about $16,000 annually for a family of three and $19,000 for a family of four—17 percent of the nation’s children are living in poor families.  That’s 12 million children, and the number is increasing. 

Perhaps most stunning is that 7 percent of children—5 million—live in families with incomes of less than half the poverty level.  That’s a paltry sum—less than $8,000 for a family of three and $9,600 for a family of four. 

These are the official statistics.  But just about everyone agrees that the feds’ current measure is woefully out of date.  We measure poverty by a standard set more than 40 years ago. Data collected in the 1950s indicated that families spent about one-third of their income on food. Poverty is still measured by multiplying the cost of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “economy food plan” by three.

Our national poverty figures obscure dramatic variation by place and race.  In New Hampshire, 7 percent of children are poor, whereas in Arkansas, the figure is 25 percent.  About 10 percent of white children live in poverty, while roughly 30 percent of African-American and Latino children do.  Before Katrina, 38 percent of children in New Orleans were poor.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) — Representative Tom DeLay, the
highest-ranking U.S. House leader ever to face criminal charges,
called his indictment yesterday “one of the weakest, most
baseless'' in American history. Even if he's right, bigger legal
battles may lie ahead.

The larger legal challenge for DeLay may center on a task
force led by the U.S. Justice Department that's investigating
Jack Abramoff, the indicted lobbyist who boasted of his
relationship with DeLay.

Even as DeLay faces the charge in Texas state court in
connection with corporate donations that allegedly were used to
help fund the Republican takeover of the state legislature in
2002, “he is inevitably also going to be under investigation by
federal prosecutors'' in the Abramoff matter, said Melanie Sloan,
executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a
Washington watchdog group that has criticized DeLay.

Delay, 58, who stepped down temporarily as House majority
leader after being indicted, once called Abramoff “one of my
closest and dearest friends.'' He has traveled to the
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an Abramoff client,
on trips organized by Abramoff's law firm and has blocked efforts
to apply U.S. minimum wage and labor laws to the commonwealth.

He also sided with another Abramoff client, Tyco
International Inc., in opposing efforts to stop federal contracts
from going to the Bermuda-based company and other firms that have
incorporated overseas to cut their tax bills while maintaining
their business in the U.S.

Taking a Toll

Former Representative Robert Walker of Pennsylvania, now
chairman of the Washington-based lobbying firm of Wexler & Walker
Public Policy Associates, said the allegations against DeLay are
taking a toll.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

by Barry Moody

LONDON – The conduct of U.S. troops in Iraq, including increasing detention and accidental shootings of journalists, is preventing full coverage of the war reaching the American public, Reuters said on Wednesday.

In a letter to Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Reuters said U.S. forces were limiting the ability of independent journalists to operate. The letter from Reuters Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger called on Warner to raise widespread media concerns about the conduct of U.S. troops with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is due to testify to the committee on Thursday.

Schlesinger referred to “a long parade of disturbing incidents whereby professional journalists have been killed, wrongfully detained, and/or illegally abused by U.S. forces in Iraq.”

He urged Warner to demand that Rumsfeld resolve these issues “in a way that best balances the legitimate security interests of the U.S. forces in Iraq and the equally legitimate rights of journalists in conflict zones under international law”.

At least 66 journalists and media workers, most of them Iraqis, have been killed in the Iraq conflict since March 2003.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

It isn’t just Tom DeLay. The vast corrupt money machine that funded the Republican Revolution is exploding before our eyes.

By Michael Scherer

At its height, the first great political machine of the 21st century worked like this: In Congress, Texas Rep. Tom DeLay controlled the votes like a modern-day Boss Tweed. He called himself “the Hammer.” His domain included a vast network of former aides and foot soldiers he installed in key positions at law firms and trade groups, a network that came to be called the “K Street Project.” He gathered tithes in the form of campaign cash, hard and soft, and spread it out among the loyal. He legislated for favored donors. He punished those who disobeyed, and bought off those who could be paid.

Conservative activists, who had grown up in the heady days of Reagan’s America, patrolled the badlands of American politics for new opportunities. None did it better than Jack Abramoff, a former president of the College Republicans, who had a taste for expensive suits. Abramoff opened a restaurant, Signatures, where the powerful came to be seen and, in many cases, treated to free meals from a menu that included $74 steaks. He pulled in tens of millions of dollars from Indian tribes and the Northern Marianas Islands to help fund other operations — skyboxes at the MCI Center where DeLay could hold his fundraisers and all-expense trips to Scotland where DeLay and friends could play golf.

Others were drawn into the web as well. Abramoff kicked down money to his old college buddy Grover Norquist, an anti-tax crusader whose role was to keep the right-wing ideologues in line. He hired Ralph Reed, a former advisor to the Christian Coalition, who helped keep the religious right on good terms with the Republican leadership. He hired Michael Scanlon, a former aide to DeLay, as his assistant. He leaned on former lobbying colleagues, like David Safavian, who was working in the Bush administration and could do favors for his clients. Susan Ralston, Abramoff’s former gatekeeper and executive assistant, went to work for Karl Rove in the White House.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

By Richard McGregor

China is gearing up for a massive investment in a homegrown fuel source to cut its growing reliance on imports – plants to turn coal into gas and oil.

High oil and gas prices have made the coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology increasingly attractive to China, which has abundant reserves of the traditional “black gold”, but relatively diminishing reserves of other fuels.

China’s central planners have on their desks proposals for at least $24bn (

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

America’s Energy Solution Is Right Under Us…Literally

David Sirota

Whenever there is an energy crisis and high gas prices, we get the same tired old prescriptions that haven’t done anything to address the problem. We get calls to suspend gas taxes – with no explanation of how we’re supposed to maintain roads without gas tax revenue. We get calls for more tax breaks to the oil/gas profiteers who are making record profits.

We get demands to loosen environmental restrictions on drilling, as if there is simply an infinte supply of drillable domestic petroleum (there isn’t). What we never get, however, is serious investment in new, well-known technologies that could start weaning America off foreign oil.

Case in point is the Bush administration’s unwillingness to show some leadership on coal-to-oil technology. Right now, America has billions of tons of coal that could be quickly and cleanly converted into fuel – fuel that burns far more cleanly than any used today. The process used to convert the coal, called Fischer-Tropsch, has been around since the 1920s, and has been used by countries who (for various political/economic reasons) can’t import oil.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

Over the course of the summer, Howard Dean worked hard to get voters to associate the Republican Party with a “culture of corruption” in Washington. The message didn’t get much traction then — in part because Democrats in Congress didn’t push it out of fear that it would come back to bite them, and in part because voters had bigger concerns about George W. Bush and the party he leads.

The message is getting through today.

Just after news of Tom DeLay’s indictment broke this afternoon, White House press secretary Scott McClellan appeared for his daily press briefing, where a reporter asked him on live television if a “stench of corruption” now swirls around the president and his party. McClellan dismissed the question as relying on a “broad characterization” but acknowledged that there are “instances” and “individual situations” where “the legal process” will need to proceed.

That’s certainly fair to say.

From Texas to Florida to Ohio, from K Street to Congress to the inner circles of the Bush administration itself, the Republican Party is suddenly — or maybe not so — looking like the party of scandal. You can’t keep up without a scorecard. Here’s ours.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

By ROBIN TONER

Mr. Delay’s Troubles in the House and His Home State

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 – This is not what the Republicans envisioned 11 months ago, when they were returned to office as a powerful one-party government with a big agenda and – it seemed – little to fear from the opposition.

The indictment of Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader, on Wednesday was the latest in a series of scandals and setbacks that have buffeted Republican leaders in Congress and the Bush administration, and transformed what might have been a victory lap into a hard political scramble. Republicans are still managing to score some victories – notably, Judge John G. Roberts Jr.’s expected confirmation as chief justice of the United States on Thursday – but their governing majority is showing signs of strain.

In the House, Mr. DeLay’s indictment removes, even if temporarily, a powerful leader who managed to eke out, again and again, narrow majorities on some difficult votes. In the Senate, Republican ranks have been roiled this week by an investigation of Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, who is under scrutiny for his stock dealings from a blind trust.

Moreover, the string of ethical issues so close together – including the indictment and continuing investigation of the Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was close to Mr. DeLay, and the arrest of David H. Safavian, a former White House budget official who was charged with lying to investigators and obstructing a federal inquiry involving Mr. Abramoff – is a source of anxiety in Republican circles.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

Comments(0) |  Print This Post