Candidates, Money and Lobbyists
CRAIG HOLMAN, cholman@citizen.org
Holman is government ethics lobbyist for Public Citizen, which has launched a web page http://www.WhiteHouseForSale.org that keeps track of money to candidates.
He said today: “Even after John McCain ushered in the landmark McCain-Feingold law banning soft money, and Barack Obama brought us the sweeping lobbying and ethics reform law restricting influence-peddling by lobbyists, the White House is still for sale — and McCain and Obama are helping the auctioneers.
“Hillary Clinton started this year’s money race by opting out of the public financing system in the primary election and embracing the role of lobbyists as key campaign fundraisers. Obama refused to let lobbyists play such a critical role in his campaign, but he has managed to pull in record-breaking amounts of money from both small and large donors, amassing some $230 million to date. His fundraising prowess may well make him the first presidential candidate in history to opt out of the public funding system in the general election as well. McCain recruited some 70 lobbyists to be his major fundraisers and scores more to be his policy advisors. Even McCain’s new ‘ethics policy’ allows these lobbyists to continue serving his campaign in a voluntary capacity.
“Meanwhile, both McCain and Obama have announced new ‘joint fundraising committees’ in which they will help the national parties reap even more of the largesse to spend on their behalf, collecting
$70,000 or more per donor at each fundraising event.
“The nation’s biggest ‘reformers’ are going to oversee the nation’s largest auction of the White House — probably to the tune of $1 billion by November.”
From: Institute for Public Accuracy
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Charlie Black Worked for the “Good” Dictators
Source: Wall Street Journal (sub req’d), May 19, 2008
Charlie Black, the chief campaign adviser for Republican Party Presidential aspirant John McCain, has dismissed calls that he should resign due to his many years of lobbying work for BKSH & Associates, calling the calls “complete inside-the-beltway nonsense.” MoveOn recently launched an advertisement demanding McCain fire Black. “John McCain’s chief adviser, lobbyist Charlie Black, worked for some of the world’s worst dictators — mass murderers, terrorists, and tyrants. Call McCain and tell him to fire Charlie Black,” the group’s website states. Black defended working for dictators — including Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire — insisting that he never worked for foreign clients “without first talking to the State Department and the White House and clearing with them that the work would be in the interest of U.S. foreign policy.”
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HOW THE GOVERNMENT IS PASSING SECRET LAWS
By Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet
The government is undermining our rights by making laws in secret. Surprise, surprise.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/85807/
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JCX-37-08 (May 12, 2008) A Reconsideration Of Tax Expenditure Analysis:
“Tax expenditure analysis no longer provides policymakers with credible insights into the equity, efficiency, and ease of administration issues raised by a new proposal or by present law, because the premise of the analysis (the validity of the “normal” tax base) is not universally accepted. Driven off track by seemingly endless debates about what should and should not be included in the “normal” tax base, tax expenditure analysis today does not advance either of the two goals that inspired its original proponents: clarifying the aggregate size and application of government expenditures, and improving the Internal Revenue Code. The JCT Staff therefore has begun a project to rethink how best to articulate the principles of tax expenditure analysis, in order to improve the doctrine’s utility to policymakers, reemphasize its neutrality, and address the concerns raised by many commentators.
http://www.house.gov/jct/x-37-08.pdf
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New Report: Oil Companies’ Record Profits Going to Execs and Stock Buybacks, Leaving Energy Alternatives Behind
“As oil prices reached a new all-time high today of $130 a barrel for light sweet crude, and executives from the top 5 oil companies come to Congress for a second time this year, a new report details decisions by the big five oil companies to use record-breaking corporate profits to boost executive compensation and prop up their stock price with rich stock buy-backs instead of investing in renewable technologies to end America’s addition to oil…The report, produced by the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, found that even as American consumers suffer declines in real income and purchasing power, executive pay and shareholder dividends in the oil industry have far outpaced investment in new oil discoveries or alternative energy. The committee looked at executive pay and stock purchases at ExxonMobil, British Petroleum, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron, which combined made $123 billion last year.”
Big Oil: Where Have All the Profits Gone? Staff Report. May 21, 2008
http://globalwarming.house.gov/tools/2q08materials/files/0045.pdf
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WALL STREET’S RACKET HAS GONE TOO FAR, AND WE’RE GOING TO PAY THE HEAVY PRICE
By James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com
There’s a great wish for American finance to return to business-as-usual happy days of high profits, but there’s just too much debt to swallow.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/86087/
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Limbaugh on Dem primary: If “feminazis” had remembered to oppose “affirmative action for black guys … they wouldn’t face the situation they face today”
On the May 21 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh asserted that “one of the objectives of the feminazis over the last 20, 25 years has been to dominate the public education system so as to remove the competitive nature of boys. You know, there’s a crisis of young man-boy education in the schools. And they did this on purpose, to eliminate male competition in the work force. This is part of feminazi grand plan.” Limbaugh then said, “They forgot affirmative action for black guys. And because of that, every bit of their plan has gone up in smoke now, because they — if — they had to come out in favor of affirmative action for black guys, and that’s — see, this is one of the things that really irritates the women. And there are women all over this country fit to be tied — trust me on this. … [L]iberals eventually are going to be devoured by their own policies. And it has happened here. Because [Sen.] Barack Obama is an affirmative action candidate.” He concluded, “So, it’s just — they just forgot that one thing: affirmative action for black guys. And if they had remembered to oppose that, then they wouldn’t face the situation they face today.”
Read More
http://mediamatters.org/items/200805210009?lid=313615&rid=8461094
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George W Bush Authorized 911 Attacks, Says Government Insider
20 May 2008
Stanley Hilton was a senior advisor to Sen. Bob Dole (R) and has personally known Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for decades. The following is from his latest visit to Alex Jones’ radio show. “This (9/11) was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder.” –Stanley Hilton – Alex Jones interview of Stanley Hilton, attorney for 911 taxpayers’ lawsuit.
At:
http://tinyurl.com/3oww6n (www.daily.pk)
From: CLG News
AZ Senator Karen Johnson Op Ed On 911
Karen S. Johnson
East Valley Tribune
The Arizona Republic
May 4, 2008
A recent letter to the editor asked for evidence of my claims regarding the tragedy of 9/11. Below I present some points that are presently known. I won’t be able to convince anyone who doesn’t want to be convinced, but for those who are willing to deal with factual evidence, consider the following:
• 37 different people reported explosions in the basement of the World Trade Center Towers before the first plane hit, and seismic equipment recorded both the explosions and the impacts. In addition, people were injured by the explosions in the basement, providing well-documented evidence. Yet this evidence is ignored.
•The media and government have promoted the “pancake theory” as the cause of the collapse of the Twin Towers — that is, fire weakened the steel support beams, causing the upper floors to collapse. Then the weight of the collapsing floors above caused the floors below to collapse. This theory is not consistent with scientific principles or the facts. Frank Legge, who has a doctorate in chemistry, and Tony Szamboti, a mechanical engineer, reported in December in the Journal of 9/11 Studies: “It appears therefore that the official concept of a free-fall collapse of the upper portion through the initiation story, due to heat effects from fire, is a fantasy. If the temperature did become high enough for collapse to occur” — and everyone agrees that it did not — “it could not have happened in the observed manner. In particular it could not have been sudden and thus could not have produced the velocity, and hence the momentum and kinetic energy, upon which the official story depends for the second stage of collapse.”
• The theory that the buildings collapsed due to controlled-demolition explosives, however, is consistent with scientific principles and the facts. The “demolition” theory, in fact, is the only one which scientists have been able to corroborate. That is, “… all observations are in accord with the use of explosives in a time sequence.” (Legge and Szamboti, December, Journal of 9/11 Studies.)
• Peer-reviewed reports indicate that the masses of dust particles created by the disaster contained tiny pieces of metal that had been exposed to both extreme temperatures (higher than could have been produced by a burning office or burning airplane fuel) and extreme pressure (such as an explosion) that would fragment material into minute particles. Official reports ignore this.
• In December, physicist Steven Jones announced the discovery of thermite chips in World Trade Center dust samples. The chemical composition of these chips are an exact match to known thermite samples used in controlled demolitions — further corroboration that explosive devices were involved.
• Steel support beams recovered from the site of the World Trade Center exhibit cut edges that are characteristic of thermite used to slice steel support beams in building demolitions but are not characteristic of steel beams that have been burned in a fire.
When the 9/11 Commission Report was finally released, it was woefully inadequate. It never even addressed the collapse of Building 7, for example. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh has stated that there are inaccuracies in the report and unanswered questions. Even the two chairmen of the 9/11 Commission — Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton — have accused the CIA of “obstructing” the commission, and one commissioner, U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, resigned, stating that the commission was “compromised.”
…
Complete article at:
The Arizona Republic May 4, 2008
Regarding “Drinking the 9/11 Kool-Aid” (Editorial, April 24):
May. 3, 2008
After three government investigations and more than six years, we still don’t have answers on 9/11.
Why, for example, did Building 7 collapse? It wasn’t hit by a plane, as the towers were. The 9/11 Commission Report completely ignores Building 7. The Federal Emergency Management Agency report discounts fire as a cause and concludes that the reasons for the collapse of Building 7 are unknown and require further research. But when FEMA issued this report, it already cleared the site and disposed of the dust and steel (evidence from a crime scene), thus possibly committing a felony and complicating any “further research.”
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency, which evaluated the collapse of the towers, has yet to issue its report on Building 7. “We’ve had trouble getting a handle on Building 7,” said the acting director of their Building and Fire Research Lab.
Yet a number of private-sector engineers, architects, and demolition experts have not had that problem. They think Building 7 came down by controlled demolition. The building collapsed suddenly, straight down, at nearly free-fall speed. People heard the explosions, and saw the squibs and the characteristic billowing clouds of pulverized concrete so unique to demolitions. There is no reason to think that Building 7 came down for any other reason than explosive demolition.
And speaking of pulverized concrete, fire does not pulverize concrete. Even the collapse of one floor upon another wouldn’t pulverize concrete the way the Twin Towers disintegrated.
Think back to that day: Those towers didn’t just fall down. If they had, we would have had huge chunks of concrete breaking apart and falling into a massive pile of rubble. The buildings likely would have toppled erratically sideways and left a much larger pile of debris.
But that’s not what we witnessed. The towers didn’t collapse – they disintegrated.
We watched them explode into dust, not knowing exactly what we were seeing. Very little intact concrete was found in the rubble. The sheer energy required to pulverize that much concrete into dust can only come from an explosive process.
Reputable scientists, engineers, architects and firemen with no political angle dispute the 9/11 Commission report and say that the evidence indicates the Twin Towers and Building 7 came down due to controlled-demolition explosions. Tests corroborate the presence of thermite, an explosive used in building demolitions, at the site of the Twin Towers and Building 7.
…
Complete article at:
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=2186
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And now for the important news ….
By Argus Hamilton
Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia endorsed Senator Barack Obama Monday. The ninety-year-old senator has apologized for his long-ago membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Right after the endorsement the Ku Klux Klan apologized for ever letting him in.
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com
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three thousand words
Phil Hands: … what florida voters worry about
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoons/HandsP/2008/HandsP20080522_low.jpg
Jimmy Margulies: 5 a.m. time to feed the chickens …
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoons/MarguJ/2008/MarguJ20080521_low.jpg
Matt Bors: ignorance is bliss, huh?
