With no warning or fanfare, today's scheduled Oversight subcommittee hearing on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee was cancelled earlier this week. But a picture is beginning to emerge as to what went wrong for Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa and why the plug was pulled.
Peter Kadzick, an attorney for FCIC Chairman Phil Angelides, told TPM that Angelides arrived in D.C. on Sunday night for the Wednesday morning hearing but was told by an Issa staffer on Monday evening that "they had found some documents at the last minute that didn't fit the narrative."
And a devastating new report (pdf) from committee Democrats found that those documents didn't just not "fit the narrative," but outright refuted them. Ranking committee Democrat Elijah "Cummings's report, which is based on 400,000 internal Commission emails, memos and other documents, finds that Chairman Issa's allegations are largely unsubstantiated.
In contrast, the documents suggest that Republican Commissioners geared their efforts on the Commission toward helping House Republicans in their campaign to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act, rather than determining the facts that led to the economic crisis. The report also raises a host of new ethical questions about Republican Commissioners and staff, including evidence that they leaked confidential information to outside parties on multiple occasions."
If the hearing had been cancelled on Monday, it didn't slow Issa down Tuesday. Issa was on Twitter yesterday enthusiasticallypushing attacks on the FCIC's findings, specifically from Republican FCIC member Peter Wallison. But the report from committee Democrats highlights a number of credibility problems for Wallison and other FCIC Republicans who dissented from its findings and have fueled Issa's pursuit. As Media Matters breaks down:
Wallison repeatedly sent emails to his GOP colleagues on the committee urging that their dissents not "undermine the ability of the new House GOP to modify or repeal Dodd-Frank."
Despite claims to the contrary that Wallison made in congressional testimony, the FCIC extensively reviewed his position that the economic crisis was caused by government housing policies, with all eight other commissioners rejecting that view.
Wallison was criticized by the FCIC's general counsel after leaking confidential commission documents to a colleague at the American Enterprise Institute in violation of the commission's ethics policy.
Republican vice chairman Bill Thomas and his staff provided an economic and political consultant who works at Thomas' law firm -- which represents major banks -- with a wide array of internal documents, in violation of the commission's ethics policy.
Darrell Issa is back in hot water for using his powerful Congressional perch to help his personal investments. A new report out today from Think Progress finds that Issa was busy last year buying up Goldman Sachs High Yield Bonds worth up to $50,000 a pop while pressing strongly to thwart an SEC investigation into potential wrongdoing at Goldman Sachs:
Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) raised hell last year to stop the federal government from investigating Goldman Sachs regarding allegations that the company defrauded investors. In April 2010, shortly after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a civil suit against Goldman Sachs, Issa sent a letter to SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro demanding to know if there was "any sort of prearrangement, coordination, direction from, or advance notice" between the SEC and the Obama administration or congressional Democrats over the timing of the lawsuit.
Issa's investigation of the SEC's investigation into Goldman Sachs stoletheheadlines and reinforced Goldman Sachs' claim that they had done nothing wrong. Explaining his defense of Goldman Sachs, Issa said he was representing the views of ordinary Americans who are worried about the "growth of government and the growth of government wanting to become more complex, with more agencies and more control over our lives."
This sheds additional light on Iss's engagement in financial issues since taking over the Oversight Committee earlier this year, specifically reinforcing his strong resistance to any investigation or hearing that might reflect poorly on private financial institutions.
Issa has continued to bring heat on the SEC since taking over the Oversight Committee, targeting the Commission with one of the first subpoenas issued. The focus of his concern? Potential conflict of interest at the SEC arising from personal investments related to ongoing investigations. Of course.
While much of America enjoyed an extended holiday, it wasn't a seamless weekend for everyone in the region. San Diego CityBeat notes that at the San Onofre Nuclear Station, 70 gallons of sulfuric acid were spilled -- the fifth spill in just over two years. As CityBeat notes, there was a hydrazine spill in February 2011 ("Hydrazine is highly toxic and dangerously unstable"), and two much worse spills of sulfuric acid -- two spills in the same July 2010 day, and another spill in April of 2009.
The spill comes one month to the day after hundreds of locals attended a public meeting to voice concerns about safety at San Onofre, where an on-site safety inspector from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the crowd that despite limited progress recently, "San Onofre is the leader still in safety concerns reported to the NRC."
There seems to be a bit of confusion at Oversight Headquarters as to what Friday's field hearing in Bakersfield is going to be about. Last Friday, the hearing was "Pathways To Energy Independence: Hydraulic Fracturing And Other New Technologies." By Monday, it had changed to "Can New And Safe Oil Extraction Technologies Help Address Gas Prices?" And yesterday, it was back to "Pathways To Energy Independence: Hydraulic Fracturing And Other New Technologies." The renewed focus comes with word that the witness lineup for Issa's hearing will be Bakersfield's Republican state assemblymember and four representatives from oil and gas companies, including major Republican donors and representatives from Big Oil front groups.
Back in December, Darrell Issa sent his now-infamous letter to corporate lobbyists and industry groups asking them to recommend hearings for the Oversight Committee. Among the recipients were Big Oil groups with benign names representing a wide range of notorious organizations. For example, the Independent Petroleum Association of America. In its response, the IPAA focused on rolling back EPA regulations and streamlining the permitting process for both offshore and onshore drilling. Who is the IPAA?
Seems that Darrell Issa's been getting restless holding hearings on Presidential libraries and Freedom of Information Act requests, ducking accusations that he's used almost a million taxpayer dollars to subsidize his personal investment portfolio, and demanding that the Obama Administration's unprecedented efforts to improve government transparency be slashed to pay for more tax cuts for billionaires.
So he's decided to thrust himself into the national spotlight this morning. He'll be bringing controversial Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to DC to testify before the Oversight Committee today about what Issa absurdly describes as "over-compensation of public employees." While "over-compensation" is in the eye of the beholder, reality tells us that public employee costs have fallen and compensation has tracked with the growth rate of the economy. What Issa's stunt does suggest is that after a career of trying to undermine unions and workers at every opportunity, the richest person in the House of Representatives is rapidly devolving from a legitimate watchdog into simply a rich corporatist backed by the Koch Brothers, defense contractors and telecom companies who now has subpoena power to do their dirty work in DC.
While Issa is giving Scott Walker a national soapbox for his anti-worker crusade, he'll be continuing a long history of anti-union activity just down the hall. Last week Issa held unprecedented hearings on the labor negotiations at the Postal Service that's poised to save $3.8 billion, investigating the internal machinations of a labor union in the same style as Joseph McCarthy's union-busting escapades in the 1950s.
And specifically on Scott Walker's pet project of breaking public sector unions, Issa has been echoing the cry all year. In January he published a long editorial blasting public employees for earning a middle-class wage, hitting all the now-familiar Walker high points. He led with a dubious, Glenn Beck-style history lesson, and then went on to launch co-sponsorship of a bill that would hit the pensions of public employees across the country that were unlucky enough to rely on the stock market before it collapsed late in George Bush's term. Now facing gigantic funding shortfalls because of the funding collapse at the hands of the Wall Street investment barons that Issa is desperately trying to protect, Issa's proposed bill would essentially lock in the shortfalls faced by public employees by cutting off access to loans or other federal assistance that might help bridge the gap.
This is hardly out of the blue. In 2009, Issa was out early blasting the Employee Free Choice Act that would have made it easier for workers to organize for basic rights, and in the same vein, made the rounds blasting SEIU for a wide range of reasons. It ran the gamut from single-handedly destroying the California budget, secretly controlling the Obama Administration, having the "California And US Governments By The You Know What," and openly admitting that the public sector is the last front on blocking unions:
As the richest person in the House of Representatives, Darrell Issa has a vast personal empire that includes a wide range of real estate holdings. His dealings around those real estate investments have raised legal and ethical questions in the past, and more recently Roll Call has questioned the line that divides his personal and political interests. This morning, ThinkProgress reports on a far more troubling conflict:
ThinkProgress has discovered more troubling evidence that Issa may have blended his work as a lawmaker with his own business empire. After founding a successful car alarm company, Issa invested his fortune in a sprawling network of real estate companies with holdings throughout his district. One of Issa's most valuable properties, a medical office building at 2067 West Vista Way in Vista, California, is called the Vista Medical Center, and was purchased in 2008 for $16.6 million. Described as "a long-term investment," the property was bought by a company called Viper LLC, a business entity operated by Issa's family that Issa has up to a $25 million dollar stake in.
Around the same time, Issa made the Vista Medical Center purchase, the congressman began requesting millions of dollars worth of earmarks to widen and improve the highway adjacent to the building. In 2008, he requested $2 million to expand West Vista Way, the road in front of his “long-term investment,” but only received $245,000 from the government. The next year, Issa made another earmark request for improving the West Vista Way highway next to his building. He earmarked another $570,000, bringing his total to $815,000, to add parking lots, widen the road, add bus stops, improve the sewer system, and other utility work.
Issa has said that an "earmark is tantamount to a bribe." While Issa has handed out earmarks to his campaign donors in the past, in this case, he appears to be helping himself.
Issa has spent months indignantly insisting that he needn't answer for any of his own transparency or ethical shortcomings, even after more than 18,000 signatures were delivered to his office demanding that he disclose his meetings with lobbyists. We made that demand so the public would know who Darrell Issa is really working for in Congress. Today we have at least part of the answer -- himself.
(I proudly manage the IssaWatch project for the Courage Campaign, where this is cross-posted. It's also on Twitter and Facebook)
I manage the IssaWatch project for the Courage Campaign. Rick Jacobs visited Chairman Issa's office earlier this week to deliver a message from Courage members. He recounts his experience below.
With a petition containing over 18,000 signatures from Courage Campaign members --including thousands from residents of California's 49th Congressional District -- I stopped by Mr. Issa's DC office on Wednesday to personally deliver our request that the Chairman address the growing disconnect between his record and rhetoric on the issue of transparency. Specifically, to publicly post his schedule online.
We'd written through official channels to request an appointment; we still have not heard back.
As you'll see in the attached short video shot by our friends at Media Matters, I met Chairman Issa's Deputy Chief of Staff, Veronica Wong, and asked her if Mr. Issa plans to respond to our request. She would not say. The saddest part of this whole thing is that Mr. Issa is the Co-Founder of the Transparency Caucus. But as you will see in the video, his Deputy Chief of Staff had no idea where he was. I guess Mr. Transparency has something to hide from everyone.
Thanks for stepping up to sign that letter. It's a big deal to walk into Mr. Issa's office and show how many people are watching. That's our job: Holding him accountable and even over time, setting an agenda that serves the people, not just Mr. Issa and his 150 hand-picked special interests.
I proudly manage the IssaWatch.com project for the Courage Campaign.
As Sunshine Week -- an annual, national push to make government more open and transparent -- begins, we at Courage Campaign are calling for Darrell Issa to back up his rhetoric with action. After resisting calls for his own disclosure while criticizing the Obama Administration for similar, we're calling on Rep. Issa to disclose all the meetings he has with lobbyists. While this sort of hypocrisy is nothing new from Issa, the double-standard is particularly audacious. Rick Jacobs recently sent this message to Courage members explaining the effort.
I'm proud to work with the Courage Campaign on the IssaWatch project where this was first posted.
As mentioned briefly on Monday, the Oversight Committee is gearing up for a Thursday morning hearing entitled "Waste And Abuse: The Refuse Of The Federal Spending Binge." Over-capitalization and histrionics aside, the witness list marks Issa's best attempt to date to assemble the '27 Yankees of Obama administration critics to address the Oversight Committee.
It probably shouldn't come as a surprise given Issa's known ties to the broad network of Koch Brothers influence, but a number of the Koch's heaviest hitters are represented here. Meanwhile, there's no sign of anyone who might offer a perspective that doesn't fit with Issa's pre-established narrative of opposition to the Recovery Act.
The list of witnesses Issa's assembled below the fold.
For weeks with the IssaWatch project, I've been working with the Courage Campaign to chronicle Darrell Issa's solicitation of conservative think tanks, industry groups and corporations for guidance on his committee's oversight agenda. We think it's time that Darrell Issa also hear from the constituents, Californians, and Americans who are relying on him for non-partisan, unbiased oversight in DC -- not just those who demand access because they're rich and powerful.
I'm proud to work with the Courage Campaign on the IssaWatch project where this was first posted.
Darrell Issa continues this week to apply a wildly different standard of disclosure to himself as compared to the Obama Administration. Issa's request for a wide-ranging document release from the Department of Homeland Security concerned alleged politicizing of FOIA requests didn't devlier what he was looking for, so he's now refocusing and expanding the request. As the Hill reports, Issa is
asking for copies of e-mails between key White House officials. He is also seeking a series of interviews with top-level staff at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as part of his probe into the Obama administration's transparency.
Last week, Issa requested that 180 agencies send him records showing how fast they respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. He also asked the agencies to explain why some FOIA requests are delayed more than others.
Using the issue as cover, Issa recently called for in-depth tracking of all people and organizations that submit Freedom of Information Act requests. Ostensibly intended by Issa as a way to avoid politicizing the process, it would provide a shocking amount of tracking information to the federal government, and is part of a broader trend by Issa to chill dissent and citizen oversight.
This weekend, Rancho Mirage will play host to what's often called the "Billionaire's Caucus," a regular top secret meeting hosted by the Koch Brothers, at which the wealthiest of the wealthy -- together with right wing media personalities, lawmakers, and even judges -- gather to plot their national political agenda. The meeting has taken on even greater importance in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2009 Citizens United decision, which effectively opened the door to unlimited corporate influence on U.S. elections.
We're all still reeling from the tragic events in Arizona over the weekend. In reaction, Cleve Jones sent the below message to Courage Campaign members condemning this violence and the dangerous rhetoric in our political discourse today.
With a new Congress comes new faces, or in this case familiar faces in new places. Rep. Darrell Issa from CA-49 officially took over the House Oversight Committee this week, and his to-do list is a mile long. I'm proudly working on the Courage Campaign project IssaExposed.com to set the record straight about Issa's record of extreme partisanism and shady dealings, plus hold him accountable during his tenure.
On Wednesday, Courage introduced Darrell Issa to our members with the email below the fold. Issa is gearing up for an unprecedented volume of investigations and hearings into every corner of the Obama Administration- just hoping something will stick. It's crucial, especially from here in California, that we do whatever we can to keep him in check.
I hope you'll check out this new project and help us spread the word about our work and the true Darrell Issa!
Taking into account some suggestions and comments, I made some changes to my previous attempt at redistricting California. I conceded an additional 2 seats to the GOP, which concomitantly makes a number of other seats more strongly Democratic. The additional 2 safe GOP seats are CA-4 and CA-48. Here's what version 2 looks like, overall:
I decided to try my hand at redistricting California's Congressional districts for 2010-2012, using Dave's Redistricting App. After playing around with it a bit, here's what the map I came up with looks like overall:
Here's the 2008 Obama/McCain vote in California, on the precinct level:
Two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed Paid Parental Leave for Federal Employees. Women's Policy Inc. explains that "the bill would allow federal employees to be paid for four of the twelve weeks of parental leave to which they are entitled under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) (P.L. 103-3). The legislation also would permit federal employees to use up to eight weeks of accrued sick leave for parental leave."
It seems like a pretty good piece of legislation, and even if you have some reservations about the particular legislation, the principle of supporting new parents is certainly tough to argue with. Unless of course you're Rep. Darrell Issa, in which case you're completely insane and terrified of the coming scourge of out-of-control foster parenting:
"[L]et's look at this from a practical standpoint. You are running a federal department. You have somebody who you need, and every single year, as often happens, they take on a new foster child that they keep for three to five years and they have, let's say, three foster children. That means that individual will be gone on paid leave over and above their vacation, over and above their 13 days of sick leave a year, they are going to be gone four weeks every year, conceivably for a full 20 years.
A relatively brief perusal of foster care statistics reveals that only 46% of foster care placement is to a non-relative foster family home in the first place. It's hard to believe that those nearly 237,000 foster children, when distributed throughout the entire national network of foster families drawn from 300 million Americans, is a terrible danger to the 7 million non-contractor federal employees from the same year as the foster care statistics.
But apparently our federal bureaucracy is overrun by lurking foster parents poised to strike now that they can spend their entire federal careers taking in foster children in order to get out of work. I'm the son of federal bureaucrats of varying level and description, and I find it hard to believe that going into work is so awful that you'd plot some nefarious foster parent plan for your entire adult life expressly to game the government.
I don't particularly think that the House of Representatives should be making resolutions like honoring the life of Tim Russert when there is so much business to be done. But if they're going to do it, the least that members can do is exhibit the bare minimum level of decorum. In other words, not do what Darrell Issa did today.
ISSA: We are going to miss Tim Russert when it comes to the people on both sides of the issue of why we have $5 oil - $5 gasoline and $135 oil. I think Tim Russert would have been just the right guy to hold people accountable, who would talk about the 68 million acres that are, quote, inactive, while in fact 41 million are under current lease and use and are producing millions of barrels of oil and natural gas a day. [...]
So, Madam Speaker, I am going to miss Tim Russert because this debate is too important not to have a fact-oriented, unbiased moderator who could in fact bring to bear the truth that we need to have.
You stay classy, guy who uses a journalist's death to pimp for oil exploration.
UPDATE: (Bob) Congratulations Darrell Issa, you won today's Worst Person in the World award by Keith Olbermann. It's like a free Maserati, only it wasn't stolen.
So he's decided to thrust himself into the national spotlight this morning. He'll be bringing controversial Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to DC to testify before the Oversight Committee today about what Issa 
