Does it seem like there's a new Republican scandal in the news every single week? Well, that may be because there is.
That seems like an awful lot of corruption, scandal, hypocrisy, impropriety, and jail-worthy crime, huh? A lot of corruption. One might say an entire Culture of Corruption.
It's been quite a wild week in the 42nd Congressional District. Ever since Ron Shepston announced that he's running against Dirty Gary Miller, there have been quite some interesting developments that have occurred in the race to replace Dirty Gary. We've had the bloggers talk about going offline. We've had the California Democratic Party go online to announce its new website targeting Dirty Gary. We've heard rumors that a former Republican politician might reemerge to challenge Dirty Gary in the primary. Oh yes, and what did Ron say about John Kerry?
Follow me after the flip for all the latest dirt on Dirty Gary...
Copley News Service has gotten hold of Duke Cunningham's (R-Tucson Federal Correctional Institution) jailhouse FBI interview (pdf) and let's just say that Brent Wilkes is gonna have a rough go of things as a result of this:
“Cunningham said that there was never a sale,” said the FBI report. “Cunningham stated that he and Wilkes created the cover story of a boat sale to explain, if anyone ever found out and asked, his receipt of $100,000 from Wilkes.” Cunningham told investigators that Wilkes fully understood that there would be “no actual change in ownership” of the yacht. The two men agreed to divide the $100,000 into two checks because both “felt that the smaller checks might be less noticeable.”
The documents show that Cunningham had first asked Wilkes for $550,000.
“Wilkes said no to the $550,000 but then countered with an offer of $100,000 if Cunningham would ensure that the support and earmarks would continue to happen. Cunningham promised Wilkes that he would 'fight like hell' for Wilkes/ADCS.”
The best way to answer this question is to answer two other questions. Why should we allow such a corrupt individual to stay in office? And what has Gary Miller done for his constituents that has earned him the privilege of earning our votes for reelection? Once we figure out these answers, we can answer those other questions.
You may be surprised by these answers, so follow me after the flip for more...
Not even the holiday can stop the inexorable march of revelations in the GOP culture of corruption:
The Jurupa Community Services District violated state law when it sold 4 acres of public land to Rep. Ken Calvert and his investment partners without first offering it to other public agencies -- including the local park district that wanted it, the Riverside County grand jury concluded in a report released Tuesday.
The grand jury recommends that the water and sewer agency turn over the $1.2 million it pocketed from the sale, minus costs, to the Jurupa Area Recreation and Park District.
The grand jury was mainly concerned with the actions of the water and sewer agency and not Rep. Calvert. But Calvert was a willing participant in what a grand jury has now called a crime, and whether or not he will be legally culpable is a bit besides the point. The only associates to Republicans in this day and age are criminals. And the only way those criminals are vindicated is through Presidential clemency.
Rep. John T. Doolittle, who’s been caught up in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, has requested a substantial earmark for a college represented by one of his former aides, who, coincidentally, has just been contacted by the FBI.
Pete Evich, a lobbyist and Doolittle’s legislative director until 2002, has been representing Sierra College, which could end up receiving $300,000 if the congressman’s request is approved.
My favorite part of this is that it comes right at the time when Pete Evich is being sought by federal investigators for questioning about Doolittle's role in the Abramoff scandal. It doesn't take a genius to see that as a potential payoff; Evich gets his $300,000 for the college, and he suddenly has a memory lapse when speaking with the FBI.
Brown said that with most U.S. debt now owned by OPEC nations and military rivals like China , "every wastefully spent dollar by our Congress represents a national security risk."
"Addressing this growing threat starts with full public disclosure of all earmark requests," Brown said.
Personally, I believe earmarks are occasionally valuable and overblown in their purported role as the most wasteful portion of the budget (I'd direct your attention to the useless WWII-era weapons systems we're still building), but the fact that the only Doolittle earmarks we DO know about are going to friends is pretty telling.
California GOP Rep. John Doolittle's former legislative director said Wednesday he was recently contacted by federal investigators in their probe of Doolittle's ties to jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Pete Evich, Doolittle's legislative director from 1998 to 2002 and now a lobbyist, told The Associated Press that he plans to talk to the Justice Department.
The news comes two days after an attorney for another ex-Doolittle aide, former chief of staff David Lopez, said he'd given documents to federal prosecutors under subpoena.
To paraphrase Jim Morrison, "This is the end. Doolittle, friend, the end."
All the more reason why you should give to Charlie Brown this week before the end of Q2. It's looking more like Brown could face a tough special election, and it's a far easier (and more satisfying) proposition for him to take out Doolittle before the DoJ does.
Then, join us at our Q2 blograisers tonight and tell us how much you gave!
Just to reiterate what juls reported in the Calitics quickie, John Doolittle's tenure as a US Congressman is rapidly coming to an end. What we have seen throughout most of these corruption cases is that when they come for the Chief of Staff, the representative is soon to follow. This was the case with Bob Ney, and now Doolittle's former CoS is cooperating with the Feds.
David Lopez, former chief of staff for Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), has provided “several hundred pages” of documents to federal prosecutors “investigating Doolittle and his wife in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal.”
Lopez’s name has previously surfaced in connection with Abramoff. He took a trip to Puerto Rico in 2001 paid for by Abramoff’s firm, although House rules prohibited trips paid for by registered lobbyists; Lopez said he’d consulted with the Ethics Committee and intended to abide by the rules.
Lopez is a small fish, and if he's flipping on Doolittle it's pretty much over for him. Kevin Ring, another former staffer, is already caught up in the investigation. I would imagine that it only takes one guy like this to provide the smoking gun evidence needed. A telling sign is that there are wildfires happening in Doolittle's district right now, the kind of event where Congressmen are almost always out in front showing leadership, and yet Doolittle has done little except sending out a tiny press release. He has a prime opportunity, but needs to keep a low profile right now.
This is an opportune time to mention that the Democratic candidate in Doolittle's district needs your help and some of your cash at the end of the quarter. Retired Lt. Col. of the Air Force Charlie Brown is a great candidate and an even better person. I'm proud to say he's even blogged on my computer! Give at the Calitics Act Blue page, and if you're around SF or LA, join us at our Q2 bar events (Charlie Brown himself will be at the San Francisco event, I hear, and down in SoCal we've got queen of the blogosphere Digby joining us).
"When your seat is so safe that you're not concerned about perception, you become too wedded to Washington and you lose touch with your constituency, and you lose touch with your real purpose."
Want to guess who said that? Believe it or not, that was Karen Hanretty, a Republican strategist and former California Republican Party spokeswoman. And she was talking to the AP (via The Guardian [UK]) about the lovely Republican Congresscritters like John Doolittle and Gary Miller who
have been caught up in some naughty behavior lately. So what's happening? Are even Republicans starting to desert these crooked cons?
A double-shot of Doolittle dirty deeds on the Center for American Progress' blog.
First, they note a visit by Doolittle to a local elementary school, where he shows that he knows less about global warming that your average junior high school student.
Is the government doing anything to stop global warming?
Answer: Well, there’s a lot of talk about global warming. But the fact of the matter its uncertain as to what the facts really are about global warming.
Committees have been formed to discuss the subject.
I think its way overblown in the terms of the impact mankind actually has. Ninety-eight percent of Antarctica is getting colder, not warmer and Iceland has some of the thickest ice in decades. The earth is a pretty big place and a resilient place.
Did John Doolittle just fail "Are You Smarter Than A 7th-Grader?" I think so.
The second item concerns a vote by the full house on whether to refer "Dollar Bill" Jefferson (D-LA) to the House Ethics Committee, to start a process of possibly expelling the corrupt member. Of the only 26 members of the House who voted against the resolution, one was John Doolittle. Even Gary Miller and Jerry Lewis managed to vote to refer Jefferson to the Ethics Committee. Think Doolittle's wondering about if the shoe will ever be on the other foot?
Rep. John Doolittle announced Monday that his longtime chief of staff, Richard Robinson, is leaving and will be succeeded by Sacramento political consultant Ron Rogers.
Robinson told the congressman after the November elections last year that he would be resigning his post. Robinson served not only as chief of staff but as the congressman's campaign spokesman and political adviser since 2005, when he was named to head the office.
So Robinson told Doolittle he'd be leaving "after the November elections," but it wasn't announced until late May? There are two plausible explanations for this: either Robinson is getting away with the fact that 7 months after the elections is also "after the elections," or it took 7 months to find someone to actually take the job. Which, in growing likelihood, will be a short-term assignment.
OK, so perhaps people in Southern California are finally starting to notice the immense corruption of members of Congress like Gary Miller, Ken Calvert, and Dana Rohrabacher. However, these everyday citizens and typical voters wonder how all this corruption applies to their typical everyday lives.
You can the conservative out of the Republican Party but...:
FBI agents carrying out a criminal investigation searched the City Hall office of San Francisco Supervisor Ed Jew on Friday and several other properties tied to the rookie lawmaker.
Federal authorities familiar with the probe refused to discuss what the FBI was looking for, but Jew told The Chronicle that agents questioned him about $40,000 in cash he had accepted from a group of businessmen who had sought his help with city permit problems.
With the FBI apparently having multiple pages listing the serial numbers of specific $100 bills, Jew replied something about, "an unorthodox way of paying."
[Jew] is a former local Republican Party vice chairman but changed his party affiliation to Democrat before running for office in 2006.
This is pretty hilarious. Ken Calvert got an earmark inserted last year that would put a transit center within walking distance of seven properties that he owned. This would obviously boost the value of those properties. But the House Ethics Committee said he did nothing wrong because:
"any benefit to Calvert would be shared by other similarly situated landowners."
So because other people would get as rich as him, it's not unethical for him to write his own laws that get him rich.
Brilliant.
OK, so let's just say that I'm a property-rich lawmaker who wants to push the boundaries and play the earmark game for all its worth. What would it take for me to get into trouble? Just how self-serving of a project would actually garner the House ethics committee's disapproval?
"You'd have to be remodeling your kitchen," Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense told me.
Meanwhile, in the continuing Calvert/Red State saga... over...
Earlier today I wrote that Ken Calvert got John Doolittle's "token corrupt Californian" seat on the House Appropriations Committee. What I didn't know is that this has raised the ire... of the right?
I care a lot about the House of Representatives, I care a lot about our members and once someone is ethically challenged and gets in trouble it effects all of us. … I appreciate the high ethical standards that [Boehner] has set … but I believe the bar was lowered today when our conference chose to vote Ken Calvert onto the Appropriations Committee.
That was Ray LaHood of Illinois, going after one of his colleagues in the media. And it doesn't stop there. RedState has declared war on Calvert. Minority Leader John Boehner is getting a lot of heat from organized phone campaigns.
Wow. Do they not know that half their delegation is just as corrupt? (Incidentally, Calvert's going to be moving up in my next House target list. Do we have a candidate?)
You may remember that John Doolittle stepped down from his seat on the House Appropriations Committee because of the ongoing scandal into his ties with convicted felon Jack Abramoff.
The GOP leadership, sensing that there's an almost unlimited well of corrupt California Republicans who can replace Doolittle, decided to call up one from the minors.
Yesterday, the House Republican Steering Committee voted to seat Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) on the Appropriations Committee, "filling the vacancy left by embattled Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA)," who is under investigation by the FBI for his longstanding ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Named one of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's "20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress," Calvert has a history of abusing his power just as much as Doolittle.
This is part of the Law of Conservation of Conservative Californians - corrupt GOP Congressmen from this state can neither be created or destroyed, always remaining in equilibrium. Until we retire them.
We don't do enough on this site to defend our own Speaker Pelosi from ridiculous media hit jobs. Sure, blogswarm put this one in the Quick Hits, but it deserves wider attention because it falls into a predictable pattern. The nutjobs in the House Republican Caucus put out some kind of non-factual press release, a still-unsuspecting-after-all-these-years news organization dutifully types it up, Drudge and the right-wing noise machine links to it, and by the time the charges are completely discredited, the media schoolchildren and Republican outrage-bots have moved on to the next thing. The entire idea is to "get it out there," to plant a seed of malfeasance in the mind of the voter despite the complete disregard for the facts. This has happened at least four times that I can think of, in just the first four months-plus of the Pelosi Speakership. And I'm sick of it.
John Doolittle's corruption sure is getting lots of play in the press. First, in district with the three part cover story in the Sacramento News and Review (1, 2, 3 -- complete with Doolittlepoly PDF) and Doolittle's meltdown in the Auburn Journal.
Which is bad news for Doolittle, because in 2006 the inside-the-beltway crowd didn't realize this was a race. Sure, Karl Rove could smell the fear and sent Bush out and the NRCC spent a pretty penny, yet the pundits and DCCC didn't catch on until too late. But both the pundits and the DCCC are all over CA-04 now.
Speaking of the DCCC, check out their great new video and view their timeline of the scandal:
I've always thought that the DCCC had a very good Web video team, they seem to be quick and direct. They've put up a new website called "Doolittle Facts" with information about our favorite corrupt Congressman, and they've just released this video.
It's good to see the D-Trip piling on. You, of course, can support a return to honesty and integrity to CA-04 by joining us at a blograiser for Charlie Brown and Jerry McNerney this Friday.
