Blog

When you give money to your spouse, aren’t you giving money to
yourself?

Regular readers will know that I hate corruption, especially by
elected officials and unions. The press seems to love the stories
about the elected officials, but rarely focuses on the unions. The

LA Times breaks the mold:

Advocates for low-wage caregivers called on authorities Monday
to investigate the spending practices of a Los Angeles union and a
related charity that have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to
firms owned by the wife and mother-in-law of the labor
organization’s leader. …

It gets tastier:

In addition, the union last year spent nearly $300,000 on a Four
Seasons Resorts golf tournament, a Beverly Hills cigar club,
restaurants such as Morton’s and a consulting contract with the
William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent shop, records show.

The union paid a combined $219,000 in 2006 and 2007 to a
video firm whose principals include a former employee of the
local, according to Labor Department filings and
interviews. And a now-defunct minor league basketball team
that Freeman’s brother-in-law coached received $16,000 for what the
union described as public relations.

The local paid about $106,000 to a firm called the
Filming, for which no incorporation record, business license,
address or telephone listing could be found.

And:

The Times reported Saturday that the payments to the company
owned by Freeman’s wife, Pilar Planells, were among the local’s
largest single expenses last year, at about $178,000. Planells has
said she did not personally profit.

With all that money, no wonder they could afford
such a swank destination wedding.

For more, try the
LAT story from the weekend too.

So someone pleads guilty to tring to bribe Mississippi Democratic Senate candidate and former Governor Ronnie Musgrove. The Clarion-Ledger has the details:

Georgia businessman pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy to corruptly influence a public official in connection with Mississippi’s costly and failed beef plant venture — a decision that could spill over into a U.S. Senate race.

Who? Ronnie Musgrove, with $45k to his campaign account:

Robert Moultrie, chairman and chief executive of The Facility Group of Smyrna, Ga., admitted he gave $45,000 in contributions to the re-election campaign of then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, who is now running for the Senate.

And:

Moultrie has agreed to cooperate with authorities. He first gave Musgrove $20,000 through a PAC Moultrie formed in July 2003. In September 2003, “Musgrove contacted Moultrie for another campaign contribution of $25,000,” according to court documents.

Currently, no one is alleging that Musgrove did anything wrong. Currently.

Change Musgrove can believe in. It’s in his pocket

So someone pleads guilty to tring to bribe Mississippi
Democratic Senate candidate and former Governor Ronnie Musgrove.

The Clarion-Ledger has the details:

Georgia businessman pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy
to corruptly influence a public official in connection
with Mississippi’s costly and failed beef plant venture — a
decision that could spill over into a U.S. Senate race.

Who? Ronnie Musgrove, with $45k to his campaign account:

Robert Moultrie, chairman and chief executive of The
Facility Group of Smyrna, Ga., admitted he gave $45,000 in
contributions to the re-election campaign of then-Gov. Ronnie
Musgrove, who is now running for the Senate.

And:

Moultrie has agreed to cooperate with authorities. He first gave
Musgrove $20,000 through a PAC Moultrie formed in July 2003. In
September 2003, “Musgrove contacted Moultrie for another campaign
contribution of $25,000,” according to court documents.

Currently, no one is alleging that Musgrove did anything wrong.
Currently.

What did Hillary have in her grasp?

Jen Rubin passes on a great little tibit from the document dump
from the Atlantic. You want to read this
one which contains Mark Penn’s analysis just prior to the Iowa
Caucus.

On page 8, in the scenario that Hillary Clinton comes in second
behind Barack Obama, Penn recommends:

If it is a two-way race with
Obama, on Friday we do a media interviews (sic) and basically say
that he is unvetted, discuss his ever-changing positions.
Release the tapes. Create immediate pressure that
deprives him of oxygen

What tapes? If it is the Wright tapes, why did it take so long?
If it is something else…, what tapes?

Crossposted from
The Next Right

Jen Rubin passes on a great little tibit from Jake Tapper on the document dump from the Atlantic. You want to read this one which contains Mark Penn’s analysis just prior to the Iowa Caucus.

On page 8, in the scenario that Hillary Clinton comes in second behind Barack Obama, Penn recommends:

If it is a two-way race with Obama, on Friday we do a media interviews (sic) and basically say that he is unvetted, discuss his ever-changing positions. Release the tapes. Create immediate pressure that deprives him of oxygen

What tapes? If it is the Wright tapes, why did it take so long? If it is something else…, what tapes?

What did Hillary have in her grasp?

Jen Rubin passes on a great little tibit from the document dump
from the Atlantic. You want to read this
one which contains Mark Penn’s analysis just prior to the Iowa
Caucus.

On page 8, in the scenario that Hillary Clinton comes in second
behind Barack Obama, Penn recommends:

If it is a two-way race with
Obama, on Friday we do a media interviews (sic) and basically say
that he is unvetted, discuss his ever-changing positions.
Release the tapes. Create immediate pressure that
deprives him of oxygen

What tapes? If it is the Wright tapes, why did it take so long?
If it is something else…, what tapes?

Crossposted from
The Next Right

I have been a little skeptical of the whole #dontGo thing. Perhaps inappropriately so. I saw three thinigs today that might be changing my mind about the effect. At the very least, it is changing Democratic minds and raising GOP coin. I can’t ask for better than that.

Grist and Open Left’s Matt Stoller both object to this language from a letter from Al Gore’s We Can Solve It campaign:

Last week, the U.S. Congress left Washington without addressing the energy crisis. They didn’t deal with gas prices. They didn’t move on solutions to climate change. What’s worse, their inability to renew the clean energy tax credits means that government incentive programs to support the solar and wind industries will expire at the end of this year. Jobs will be lost as a result of their inaction.

Grist and Matt are right. When the greenies use that framing, we win.

Second, a Democratic candidate in upstate New York running against Rep. Randy Kuhl (R-NY) demands that Nancy Pelosi bring back Congress:

A top Democratic House candidate is calling for Congress to convene a special session to address the lingering energy problems that went unaddressed when the chamber adjourned earlier this month.

Gulf War veteran Eric Massa, who is making his second attempt at taking down Rep. Randy Kuhl (R-N.Y.), stressed that he disagrees with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on the issue. Pelosi has resisted calls — which have come almost exclusively from Republicans — for a special session.

And third, the RNC got in the game with an email this morning. This is both educating activists and raising coin. As Morton Blackwell noted last Friday, Republican activists see the GOP fighting for something. That’s good.

I have been struggling for the last couple of days with the question of whether #dontGo is important. I am genuinely undecided. Here is some thinking on the positives, but also why it is not nearly enough and we need to keep our eye on the ball.

#DontGo is really important because Republican activists are feeling energized. There is something to fight for. This is new. People are chatting. But that doesn’t make a movement.

#DontGo also changes the focus to Congress. The Democrats’ strategy right now is to focus everything on Bush and the Presidential race. If Congress and its single-to-low-teens is the focus, even for a little, that helps Republican Congressional candidates.

But these are defensive actions. Republican candidates are coming to town and getting local press for fighting for something. That’s great, but it is defense.

Where is the offense?

The only robocalls I know of are going into Colorado because Mark Udall skipped a vote. I asked Tom Cole about more … and he ducked. I have not seen stories of people crashing townhalls demanding House Democrats do something.

Where are the existing groups? The American Family Association has a 3.3m email list and has emailed on this issue. Have they sent something out about charging townhalls? No. What about Newt Gingrich, American Solutions, and their 1.5m? No.

In general, it is not clear what exactly #dontGo would do to put points on the scoreboard. There are three options.

First, Congress could pass a bipartisan energy bill in September. There are now bills in bvoth the House and the Senate that would suffice, although the House bill is substantially better. We need Nancy Pelosi’s buy-in to bring stuff to the floor. And to do that, we need to pressure Democrats. And no one is doing that.

Second, Congress could just let the OCS and shale ban expire. This is the premise of the "Energy Freedom Day" proposals. Some argue that this is better than a bipartisan bill. Here, we need either 40 votes in the Senate against a Continuing Resolution or a majority in the House willing to block legislation that contains an extended OCS ban.

Third, we can polarize the environment on this issue.

What I don’t understand is how #dontGo is directly on the path to any of these. We need to actually win something. This is improtant. And I see more motion than movement.

Lou Barletta is up over crooked, machine Democrat Paul Kanjorski in a new internal poll that they released.

Paul Kanjorski (D-inc): 41 (42)
Lou Barletta (R): 45 (47)

Normally, we wouldn’t discuss internal polls, but it is all we have, and, as the left-leaning Swing State Project notes, it is all that we have:

although the numbers are probably best served with a grain of salt, it’s sort of telling that we haven’t seen rival numbers from Kanjorski or the DCCC. In fact, Kanjorski’s response to the poll doesn’t exactly inspire confidence:

A Kanjorski campaign spokesman declined to comment on the poll.

That’s the exact same response that Kanjorski’s camp gave in June. Weak, sir.

We are going to win this one. As I previously noted, the Dems are runnign scared. So give Lou Barletta some money.

With Barack Obama, you have to be careful with the facts. You
see, he and his factually impaired friends at the DNC, insist that
John McCain is the candidate of Big Oil. But perhaps the finger
ought to be pointed another way…

First, of all, John McCain makes the point most clearly. It is
Barack Obama who voted for George Bush’s energy bill and the
disgusting Farm Bill, not John McCain, who voted against both.
Today, McCain said:

Now, I want to take a minute here on this issue, because I think
Senator Obama is a little confused. Yesterday he accused me
of having President Bush’s policies on energy. That’s odd, because
he voted for the President’s energy bill and I voted against it. I
voted against it because it had 2.8 billion dollars in corporate
welfare to oil companies that are already making record
profits. Senator Obama voted for that bill and its big oil
giveaways. I know he hasn’t been in the Senate that long, but even
in the real world voting for something means you support it, and
voting against something means you oppose it.

Jake Tapper noticed this today and wrote
a story entitled “Exxon [Hearts] Obama”.

That right-wing organization, the
Center for Responsive Politics, gives the details:

CRP was surprised to notice that it’s actually Obama who has
received more from the pockets of employees at several of Big Oil’s
biggest and most recognizable companies. Tallying contributions by
employees in the industry and their families, we found that Exxon,
Chevron and BP have all contributed more money to Obama than to
McCain.

Through June, Exxon employees have given Obama $42,100 to
McCain’s $35,166. Chevron favors Obama $35,157 to $28,500, and
Obama edges out McCain with BP $16,046 vs. $11,500.

Not only oil companies that seem to prefer Obama. I was trading
emails with a friend who is now lobbying for the ethanol industry.
What did he say?

Right now I’m lobbying for ethanol, and the industry is
generally supporting Obama.

So remind me why Barack Obama is talking about John McCain being
in the pockets of “Big Oil” and the energy lobby when he voted for
their corporate welfare, he is getting their money, and the corrupt
ethanol industry is working for him?