Sometimes the key to good politics (and good policy) is simply to say out loud what your opponents are saying amongst themselves. And that's just the case with these new health care proposals the president is set to unveil in his state of the union.
I'll leave it to the good folks over at our new health care blog to get down into all the details. But the core premise of the policies the president is about to lay out is that Americans are over-insured when it comes to health insurance. Over-insured. Got too much insurance.
These aren't my words. These are the words used by the conservative policy-wonks who came up with the president's proposals. Just hop over to Google and start googling the phrase 'over insured' along with 'health' and 'conservative'. This what they think; and what the president thinks. It's why he's behind these ideas.
So the president thinks the problem is that people have too much health insurance. People are over-insured.
I don't think that's how most Americans see the problem, do you? I'm confident that they don't. Really confident.
But let's let them decide.
The president wants to make health care his political issue this year. No Democrat should open their mouth this year on this topic without first saying this: The president thinks the problem is that Americans have too much health insurance; we don't.
Health care policy is an immensely complicated issue. And that complexity can sometimes be a cover for politicians pushing policies that would screw most families. In this case, however, the president and his supporters have done everyone the favor is simplifying what they're up to and what they want to do.
The president thinks you're over-insured. He thinks you have too much health insurance.
Add water and stir ...
--Josh Marshall
T-Shirt (and mug!) in the balance?
TPM Reader MM looked to be our first contest winner on the White House Abramoff Records front.
On Friday, he called up the district office of Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ), who's now running to be the new House Majority Leader, and MM asked whether Rep. Shadegg believed President Bush should release the records of all the staff meeting and White House events he attended from 2001 to 2004.
To his surprise and gratification, MM was told that Rep. Shadegg did believe the president should release the White House Abramoff records. Fit in with his stand on openness and transparency from the House leadership race.
Needless to say, MM's win seemed assured. But when I called Shadegg's district office to confirm, things broke down. I was told that I should call the congressman's DC office and speak to the press secretary. When I did that I got ... well, I got the tell-tale voicemail.
So the contest continues; but MM seems to have the inside track.
--Josh Marshall
Oops. New study by non-partisan research firm says no dice to claims Jack Abramoff was steering tribal money to Dems like he was to Republicans. In fact, the study suggests opposite.
Some nuggets ...
The analysis shows that when Abramoff took on his tribal clients, the majority of them dramatically ratcheted up donations to Republicans. Meanwhile, donations to Democrats from the same clients either dropped, remained largely static or, in two cases, rose by a far smaller percentage than the ones to Republicans did. This pattern suggests that whatever money went to Democrats, rather than having been steered by Abramoff, may have largely been money the tribes would have given anyway.
and this ...
The analysis shows:
in total, the donations of Abramoff’s tribal clients to Democrats dropped by nine percent after they hired him, while their donations to Republicans more than doubled, increasing by 135 percent after they signed him up;five out of seven of Abramoff’s tribal clients vastly favored Republican candidates over Democratic ones;
four of the seven began giving substantially more to Republicans than Democrats after he took them on;
Abramoff’s clients gave well over twice as much to Republicans than Democrats, while tribes not affiliated with Abramoff gave well over twice as much to Democrats than the GOP -- exactly the reverse pattern.
The truth is that only idiots and liars (actually, I guess the liars 'say' but don't 'believe') think the Abramoff operation was really bipartisan in any meaningful sense. But here's at least some more data points to add to the mix.
--Josh Marshall
As long as we're on the topic, 76% of Americans believe that the president should cough up the White House Abramoff Records.
If your Republican member of Congress is in that 76%, the T-shirt and mug are yours! Actually, even if they're not in that 76%, they could be yours. Any straight answer will do!
--Josh Marshall
Okay, time to sweeten the pot.
One brand new TPMmuckraker.com T-shirt for the first TPM Reader who gets an actual answer from their Republican member of Congress on whether they think President Bush should release the White House Abramoff Records.
Actually, scratch that, a TPMmuckraker.com T-Shirts and a mug. We're pulling out all the stops.
It doesn't matter what the answer is. They can think he should release them or that he shouldn't. We don't care. We're just looking for some clear answer.
The T-shirt, the mug and ineffable glory await the winner.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Tim Johnson (R-IL), another congressman whom one of our readers can't get a straight answer from about the White House Abramoff Records.
Have you tried to get an answer from your member of Congress yet? Let us know what you hear.
--Josh Marshall
Noel L. Hillman is the Chief of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Division. Both on paper and in reality he's been the one heading up the Abramoff investigation for the last two years.
He's stepping down next week because President Bush just nominated him for a federal judgeship.
So we have the obvious question. Is he being escorted aside to put a damper on the investigation?
You can draw your inferences as well as I can. But there is one bit of hard information that gives me real cause for concern.
Go back to that New Hampshire phone-jamming case we're always talking about. Until the middle of 2004, the Justice Department seemed to be doing everything it could to drag its heels on the case. There were even some fairly tangible and specific signs of political interference in the case.
Then the case was reassigned to the Public Integrity Division, under Hillman, and things changed on a dime. The prosecution become much more serious and aggressive.
Once an investigation is this far-flung, with so many career prosecutors and FBI agents involved, it's not easy to shut it down. But warning it away from the big players is by no means impossible. And I'd be much more confident in the integrity of the investigation with Hillman still at the helm than without him.
So is there reason for concern? I'd say, yes.
--Josh Marshall
This is a message about TPMCafe, not TPM. But since there's so much overlap between the readerships of the two sites I wanted to post this message here too.
TPMCafe is almost eight months old. And this weekend we're going to relaunch the site with a new design and new tools and features many of you have been asking for for months (like those much-prized threaded commments, et al.). We're excited about the new set up and we think you'll like it too.
However, there are a few things that will happen during the switch-over and I want to cover them briefly with you now.
- If you're a registered user of the site, your username will remain the same. All the posts and comments you've done will remain intact. But you will need to get a new password. Without going into all the nitty-gritty technical details, there was simply no good way of getting around this. But we've made it very easy to do. You'll be getting an email late this evening with more details. But basically when you come to the site the first time there will be an explanation and a link to click which basically says "Send me my new password." It's all very straightforward. Should take you like 30 seconds, tops. But I just want to let you know that'll be coming.
- If all goes according to schedule we'll do the switch-over overnight Saturday. So the new site should be there when you log on Sunday. But the site will be offline for several hours after midnight on Saturday night.
- The precise details of how you post and stuff like that will be straightforward. But it will be a little different. So we'll have a new FAQ prominently displayed on the front page that will walk you through anything that's not clear.
If you have comments or questions, please put them in the comments below. And we'll try to answer them in subsequent House Brew posts.
Click here to get to the comments section for this post at TPMCafe.
--Josh Marshall
Ridgeway and Roston at the Village Voice follow up on the Abramoff-Bush photo scrub.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, TPM Readers have talked to a bunch of Republican members of Congress and so far not one is willing to respond to the question of whether President Bush should agree to release the White House Abramoff Records. No comment. We'll send you a letter. The House doesn't have any say over that. Etc. etc. etc. Seems like fertile ground.
--Josh Marshall
Late Update: Rep. Beauprez (R-CO) seems to be a letter writer (see 'letter writer' definition) on the president and the White House Abramoff Records.
--Josh Marshall
Is the California GOP congressional delegation a veritable sinkhole of corruption? That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
What does your member of Congress think? Should the president release records of the meetings he and his staff held with Jack Abramoff? Or not?
We want to put together a list of where members stand and you can help us. Ring up your member of Congress and just ask. Do they think he should or shouldn't. Then let us know what you hear.
It's a simple question: Should President Bush release the White House Abramoff Records or not.
Where's Chris Chocola stand? Heather Wilson? Melissa Hart?
Let us know what you hear.
--Josh Marshall
Sometimes the symbols of reality obscure reality. Whether there are one or five or a hundred pictures of President Bush and Jack Abramoff is really beside the point. What is the point is this line from President Bush from yesterday's press conference: "You know, I, frankly, don't even remember having my picture taken with the guy. I don't know him."
Even discounting for the inherent squishiness of the language, that's just a lie.
Doesn't know him? Please. Like most successful politicians President Bush has a knack for remembering names and faces. On top of that, well ... let's set aside the fact that Abramoff was apparently a frequent attendee at White House staff planning meetings, seeded the administration with a bunch of his former employees, and so forth.
Let's just focus on a few key facts.
For the first three years of Bush's presidency Abramoff was arguably the most wired Republican lobbyist in Washington.
Bush doesn't know him?
Abramoff was a long time associate of one of the president's top political advisors, Grover Norquist and his chief political guru Karl Rove.
Bush never made his acquaintance?
Every Republican power player in Washington knew Jack Abramoff. Many of them knew him very, very well. But President Bush never knew him? Their paths never crossed?
That is simply ridiculous.
What's more, everyone asking the questions knows it's ridiculous. The problem is that absent a 2+2=5 type statement they fon't feel comfortable calling the president out as a liar.
Pictures in themselves don't mean much. There are pictures of the president with people he knew far less well than Jack Abramoff, people he really never knew at all. But when those pictures of Abramoff and the president slip into public view, the lie will simply become unsustainable. They know that.
And that's why the White House is turning the city upside down doing everything in its power to insure they never see the light of day.
--Josh Marshall
Scrub-a-Dub-Dub!
TPM Reader FL started poking around the Reflections Photography website this afternoon and even managed to find one of the key gaps.
I justed heard back from him and he told us that just over the last hour or more whole sections of the company's archives have been pulled down off the web. Sure enough, when we checked, big chunks of the site had already bit the dust. The Ralph Reed party we mentioned earlier still seems to be holding on. But the folks at Reflections already seem to have pulled a whole event from which one of Bush/Abramoff photographs had earlier been erased.
So the digital shredding party seems to be underway. Check the site before the whole things cycles down the memory hole.
--Josh Marshall
Here's another little detail about Reflections Photography and those scrubbed Bush/Abramoff photographs.
We only know about one Bush/Abramoff photograph at the Reflections photo library. That is, until this morning.
When I was speaking with Reflections President Joanne Amos, our conversation started with my pressing her about the disappearance of the single photograph. After she admitted the archive had been scrubbed, the conversation shifted gear. And from that point I continued to ask why this had happened, who had instructed her to do it, and so forth.
But as we got into that second part of the conversation I noticed that Amos spoke repeatedly not of removing a photograph but of removing photographs -- i.e., in the plural. So it seems like more than one picture of Bush and Abramoff swirled down the memory hole.
--Josh Marshall
Radio Open Source is discussing the Hamas victory on their show this evening. They've gotten the conversation started early on their site.
--Josh Marshall
Here's a quick update on the scrubbing of the Bush/Abramoff photos from the Reflections Photography photo archive. David Donnelly points out that the owner of Reflections, Joanne Amos, is a maxed out Bush-Cheney '04 contributor.
Also, many of you have suggested that the photographs may be cached at Google or The Wayback Machine. We've checked; it's not. We have the photo ID, the original URL and screen cap, etc.. We suspect it was never picked up by those services because of the way the Reflections dynamic database is set up. But if it was ever there, it's not there now.
--Josh Marshall
In his press conference today, President Bush suggested that the existence of photographs of himself and Jack Abramoff are no big deal and generally pooh-poohed the press's focus on the story. But our reporting suggests that the White House is actively involved in covering up and possibly destroying photographic evidence of the two men together.
Earlier this month, we were alerted to the existence of a series Abramoff photos at the website of Reflections Photography, a studio that does photo shoots for many Republican political events and sells copies to the individuals who attended the events and other members of the public through an online photo database. Reflections was an official photographer for Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign events and for the 2005 inauguration.
One of those photos was of Abramoff and Ralph Reed at a party for the launch of Reed's Century Strategies DC office in 2003. We contacted Reflections Photography and purchased the rights to publish that photograph and did so on January 11th.
Things weren't so simple with the late 2003 photograph of Jack Abramoff and President Bush.
When we went to the page for the photograph of President Bush and Abramoff, the page in question had disappeared from the site. Indeed, in the sequence of photographs from the event in question, each had a unique identification number in perfect consecutive order. All were there on the site, in sequence, with the exception of the one that was apparently that of President Bush and Abramoff.
I called back Reflections Photography and spoke to the woman who had earlier sold us the licensing rights to the other image. I told her there was another photograph we wanted to purchase the rights to publish but that it appeared no longer to be on their website.
She told me that sometimes pictures going back as far as 2003 had not been transferred over to the online catalog.
I told her that as far as we knew the photograph had been available on the site until quite recently. Then I asked if the photograph in question were available in their offline archives and whether I could purchase it that way.
She said that it was and that the CD in question was available for purchase.
I asked her if it would be possible for her to pull the CD. Then I could describe the photograph with the identification number in question to her to verify that it was the same picture.
The woman, who was helpful and friendly throughout, said she could and asked me to wait a few minutes while she retrieved the CD in question.
After a few minutes, she returned and proceeded to pull up the photo in question on the CD. Then, to her audible surprise, she told me the "photo was deleted" from the CD.
That, as you'd imagine, caught my attention. So I asked what that meant. The woman from Reflections told me that that this sometimes happened when the White House wanted to prevent the public from accessing certain photographs of the president.
When I asked her when this had happened she told she didn't know and wouldn't be at liberty to tell me even if she did.
This was back on January 11th. From what we could tell, the photograph had been removed from the site roughly a week earlier.
Now, we contacted Abramoff's spokesman Andrew Blum. And he declined to comment. We contacted the White House press office but they wouldn't return our calls. Since we can't get the photo in question directly from Reflections or get any of the relevant parties to speak with us, there was really no way for us to proceed.
But early this afternoon, I decided to take one more go at Reflections. I talked to company president Joanne Amos. We went back and forth over various questions about whether photographs at the site were available to the public and why some had been removed. When she, at length, asked me who it was in the picture with the president. I told her we believed it was Jack Abramoff.
Amos very straightforwardly told me that the photographs had been removed and that they had been removed because they showed Abramoff and the president in the same picture. The photos were, she told me, "not relevant."
When I asked her who had instructed her to remove the photos, she told me she was the president of the company. She did it. It was "her business decision" to remove the photographs. She told me she had done so within the last month.
So, here we have it that the president of Reflections admits that she removed photos of Abramoff and the president from their online database. If what her employee told me on the 11th is accurate the photos were also deleted from the CDs they keep on file in their own archives. So the scrub seems to have been pretty thorough.
Did the White House send out the word to deep-six those Bush-Abramoff pics?
Scott McClellan won't answer our questions. But this mystery would not be difficult to solve by a press outlet with sufficient juice to get a question answered by Scott McClellan. Has the White House or anyone working at the White House's behest instructed Reflections Photography to destroy or remove from its archives photographs of President Bush and Jack Abramoff?
Simple question. I doubt it has a simple answer.
--Josh Marshall
Oh, this is good stuff. Sen. Santorum categorically denies any ties to so-called 'K Street Project'. "I had absolutely nothing to do -- never met, never talked, never coordinated, never did anything -- with Grover Norquist and the -- quote -- K Street Project," Santorum said yesterday.
Last November he told the same paper: "The K Street project is purely to make sure we have qualified applicants for positions that are in town. From my perspective, it's a good government thing."
This sort of poorly executed ex post bamboozelement just never ends well.
--Josh Marshall
Could Sen. Linc Chafee's vote on Alito -- for or against -- sink his reelection chances next year? Interesting speculation on this question from Chris Cillizza over at his Post blog.
--Josh Marshall
How the movie Jack Abramoff made while he was 'out of politics' was funded by the apartheid-era South African military. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Recently I posted about the RICO suit that the DCCC filed against Tom DeLay and his Money Machine back in 2000.
As I noted, though the suit was met by a general tone of bemused derision at the time, the suit addressed many of the key fact patterns and bad acts that are now going to send a lot of these guys (probably, though not certainly, including DeLay himself) to jail. So what ever happened to the suit? Bob Bauer, who the lead counsel for the DCCC who actually filed the thing, addresses that question in a new post.
--Josh Marshall
Wow. I had just about reconciled myself to the idea that there might be a silver lining to a strong second place showing for Hamas in yesterday's Palestinian legislative elections -- a showing sufficiently strong that it would force Hamas' inclusion as a junior partner in the next government, which seemed the likely result when I went to bed last night.
Don't get me wrong: of course, it's a disaster on like ten different levels.
But political participation can force a hard form of accountability. If there is a major constituency for Hamas in the territories -- which certainly there is -- perhaps to have them in the government, on the line for dealing with nuts and bolts problems of administration, on the line for delivering a better life for the Palestinians as opposed to just peddling the heroin of violence, has some advantages over having them on the outside as a paramilitary force with a de facto veto over whatever the Fatah-based government chooses to do.
Yes, yes, there's a lot of grasping for straws here. But as long as the structures of democratic government remain secure and intact -- a big 'if' -- participation in government tends to force a measure of pragmatism and accomodation.
Yet, as you've probably already seen, the news this morning is that Hamas has apparently scored a clear victory in yesterday's elections.
Where does that leave things? I'll be waiting eagerly to hear and read from others who follow the inner dynamics of these matters more closely and understand them better than I do. But it is hard for me to see how this doesn't increase the sense and likelihood of the sort of unilateralism that Sharon pushed for the last two years but then seemed on the point of abandoning.
Like a crazy love affair, it's bigger than the both of them -- not the 'peace process' but the reality of a two state solution. This just changes the path, though the path can get awfully crooked.
--Josh Marshall
Hmmm. Can't say that's an angle that would have occurred to me. This off New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams' column today ...
Jack Abramoff's partner Mike Scanlon admitted to digging up former Congressman Robert Livingston's private life. Set to become speaker, Livingston then got sidelined for Tom DeLay's man Denis Hastert. Prosecutors now checking if Abramoff and Scanlon took Livingston down at DeLay's behest.
For now I'll stick with 'hmmm'. But I'm eager to hear more.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, let the Bush Medicare Drug Bill Debacle blogging begin. We've got a new team of five Medicare Drug Bill bloggers ready to go over at TPMCafe's new Drug Bill Debacle Blog. And the first two posts are up -- one from Kate Steadman and the second from Ezra Klein, who'll be leading up our effort. Go check it out, comment, tell us what you think.
Soon we'll be adding a special comments email address where you can send in your stories, experiences with the program, etc.
--Josh Marshall
Paul flagged this today in the Daily Muck. But in case you're not reading the best daily run-down of corruption news on the web (yeah, if we don't say so ourselves), check out Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) new counter-attack ad on the Abramoff business.
Just go to his campaign website: it starts rolling the second you land on the page.
Burns' best line from the spot: you can't trust the attack ads showing Burns' multitudinous connections to Jack Abramoff because they're paid for by people who got money from Abramoff's clients. Abramoff, Burns reminds us, is "the guy who ripped off his Indian clients for millions and lied to anybody and everybody."
(Above, Burns zaps Democratic attack ad with TV remote control gizmo.)
Burns: So, you can't believe the ads that document my connections to Jack Abramoff because they're funded by people who got money from Abramoff's clients. And Abramoff's a lying rat bastard. So I'm in the clear.
--Josh Marshall
Heads up: Today at 1 PM WaPo online is going to hold a virtual panel discussion with a group of prominent bloggers about 'Ethics & Interactivity', i.e., just what happened with the whole ombudsman Howell thing.
Bring soap in case you need to wash your mouth out.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Don Young (R-AK) may have an Abramoff problem and Sen. Burns (R-MT) may just kick your butt if you mention his. That and more news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Here's something that caught my attention.
Mitch Wade, then-owner of MZM, Inc., was one of the key bribers in the Duke Cunningham scandal. Some time ago, a source close to the case, informed me that Wade began cooperating with investigators at an early point in the investigation.
Now, aside from the various criminal activity, what stood out about Wade was how focused his political giving was. The great majority of MZM and Wade money went to three politicians -- Duke Cunningham (R-CA), Katherine Harris (R-FL) and Virgil Goode (R-VA).
The reasons for lathering up Duke speak for themselves. With Harris and Goode, Wade was angling for federal contracts for work located in their districts.
Point being, Wade didn't spread the money around too widely. It was all focused and directly tied to specific business concerns.
That why I was surprised to see that he had given rather generously to DC At-Large Councilmember David Catania. In 2002, Wade gave Catania's reelection campaign two checks for $1000 each. His wife, Christianne, gave another check for $1000. MZM PAC chipped in another $1000. And there was one more $1000 check in 2002. That was from the Eagle Group, MZM's 527 committee (See Roll Call, July 13, 2005). In its history, Eagle Group contributed to only two candidates -- Duke Cunningham ($5000) and David Catania ($1000).
Now, as you'll remember, Mitch Wade set up all sorts of business and charitable entities of uncertain legitimacy. Yet another was the Sure Foundation. It was run from the MZM offices. Wade's wife was the President; Mitch was the Treasurer. Duke's wife and daughter were on the advisory board. So, sort of all in the family, you might say.
Then I noticed this article from April 17th, 2005 in the Washington Post, not long before the Duke story broke. It's about how Catania helped put Effi Barry (former wife of DC Councilmember and ex-mayor Marion Barry) together with Mitch Wade for a $10,000 a month job working for the Sure Foundation.
We pick up the story in the Post ...
Effi Barry was about to pack her bags to move to South Carolina for a college teaching position last fall, when D.C. Council member David A. Catania called."He asked me: 'What are you doing? We don't want you to leave the city. I know an organization. . . . Why don't you give them a call?' " Barry said, recounting the conversation.
That encounter between Catania (I-At Large) and the former wife of council member and ex-mayor Marion Barry led to a consulting contract that persuaded her to remain in the District.
Catania said he had immediately thought of Effi Barry when a friend, Mitchell J. Wade, mentioned that his nonprofit wanted to make inroads in the District's poverty-stricken communities. Catania told Wade, a board member of the Sure Foundation, of Effi Barry's ties to the city and knowledge of communities east of the Anacostia River where some of the poorest children reside.
Did Catania reach out to help Effi Barry curry favor with newly elected council member Barry?
Catania said there was no underlying motive. In fact, he said, he already has "a very cordial relationship" with Marion Barry (D-Ward 8).
Council member Barry said Catania casually mentioned that he had helped Effi Barry with a job, after the fact.
"He didn't ask me to do anything," Barry said. "I don't do stuff like that. It would take more than helping my former wife out to get me to build an alliance. . . . I'm not for sale."
The consulting work was a good match, period, Catania said. Effi Barry, Wade and officials from the foundation agree.
"Some jobs are manufactured, and this one was not," Catania said. "I knew Sure was looking and Effi was looking, too. I just helped them make a nice fit."
Catania, Marion Barry, Mitch Wade? Your guess is as good as mine. And I haven't a clue. Needless to say, nothing I've been able to find demonstrates any unethical, let along illegal, behavior on Catania's part. But Catania does seem to have had some clear association with Wade. And given Wade's now-demonstrated track record of slammericious activities and a slammericious future, I'm curious what the association was.
--Josh Marshall
Good catch by Thinkprogress. Isikoff says it's Abramoff who's shopping those photos of himself with President Bush. Makes sense.
--Josh Marshall
We've put together a team of bloggers for our Medicare Drug Bill Debacle blog at TPMCafe. And tonight we're up with our first post. More's to come tomorrow. We'll be introducing the contributors and possibly adding a few more.
--Josh Marshall
With the very word 'lobbyist' now quickly becoming a tainted title and with so many lobbyists now claiming that they are not, in fact, lobbyists, I'm starting to wonder whether we might be on the course to full-scale rebranding.
Along those lines a few possibilities have occurred to me ...
Government relations consultants
Influence consultants
Influence peddlers
Public/Private Sector Mediators
Legislation Brokerage (that would be for the shop, not the individual lobbyist)
Legislation stylist
More ideas? Suggest them here.
--Josh Marshall
Is Alabama the Cayman Islands of the political money-laundering racket? Tom DeLay sure seemed to think so. Seems the Hammer set up a special Alabama division of ARMPAC which bagged $750,000 of contributions from out of state and then shipped all but $11,000 back out.
All perfectly legal, it seems. At least, legal in terms of not bringing in or dishing out any of the money in the state. But an interesting rock to turn over. And Tommy Stevenson of the Tuscaloosa News turns over a few of them here.
Remember the Arabian Horse outfit Brownie worked at before he went on to bigger and better things running FEMA? They must have still been thanking their lucky stars for Brownie's services because they chipped in $15,000 just before the 2002 election when DeLay was burning through cash trying to flip the Texas state legislature.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Doolittle won't back down from his principled stand in favor of corrupt lobbying. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
I see there are a lot of people around the web taking shots at Hillary Clinton, or more specifically at her probable presidential candidacy in 2008.
Though I wrote five years ago that I find the whole idea of a Hillary presidential bid wildly improbable, I say the following as an admirer and supporter of Sen. Clinton. (She's my senator now, after all.)
But here's a reason for not supporting her candidacy that I don't hear often enough: political dynasticism.
Inherited presidencies are not unprecedented in American history (viz. the Adamses). But father and son presidencies like the Bushes -- so close in time and political consanguinity -- are unprecedented. (John Q. Adams was elected twenty-four years after his father and he had arguably become a member of the opposing party.) Add to that the expectation that yet another Bush son -- Jeb -- will run for the presidency at some point over the next decade.
I don't just think that's a bad thing because it's a political family whose politics I find egregious. I think it's just a bad thing for the republic, period. Nor is it only the Bushes or only the presidency.
I think I've seen some relatively systematic data showing a growth in the number of members of congress who are political legacies. Again, not unprecedented by any means, but a tendency that is growing and one I don't think is healthy in the aggregate.
George H. W. Bush left office to be followed by two terms of Bill Clinton. He in turn was followed by two terms of Bush's son. If those two terms of the son are followed by the election of Clinton's wife, I don't see where that's a good thing for this country. It ceases to be a fluke and grows into a pattern. It's dynasticism.
--Josh Marshall
A question someone might want to ask Scott McClellan.
A company called Reflections Photography handles photography and photo sales for many Republican political events.
They did the event photography for Bush-Cheney 2004 fundraisers, for instance.
Here's their online catalogue. You can view and purchase thousands of photos of Bush campaign and other GOP events.
Just by way of example, here are the photos from a recent Steele for Senate fundraiser in Baltimore attended by President Bush.
Now, Time recently reported that: "Bracing for the worst, Administration officials obtained from the Secret Service a list of all the times Abramoff entered the White House complex, and they scrambled to determine the reason for each visit. Bush aides are also trying to identify all the photos that may exist of the two men together."
Did the White House, earlier this month, order Reflections to remove a photograph of a smiling President Bush and Jack Abramoff from its archive?
Photo-plumbers?
--Josh Marshall
Ralph Reed: "What I don’t appreciate — and what I’m confident the voters will reject — is the attempt by some of the media and others to engage in guilt by association. To associate me with the misdeeds of others is unfair, it’s wrong and it will be rejected at the ballot box."
What about guilt by cash payment?
--Josh Marshall
Read Kevin Drum (here and here) on what we found out yesterday about the NSA wiretap story. Matt Yglesias has some additional thoughts along similar lines.
The key point is that we know that this wasn't some novel technology but garden-variety wiretapping. And with that being the case, it's just not clear why the administration didn't get Congress to revise the FISA law to make these searches legal.
To me the whole thing remains a mystery. One school of thought would suggest that there must have been something shady going on, otherwise they would have just gotten the law changed and avoided any legal questions. As Kevin says, it's not like it would have been that hard to get such an expansion through Congress in 2002 or 2003 or even today for that matter.
There's another possible explanation, though -- one that squares with my sense of this group in the White House. And that is that they have an ideological affinity -- perhaps even a compulsion -- for presidential assertions of extra-constitutional authority. Just on principle.
That is their mindset. It informs countless actions over the last five years. Still, it's not enough. Kevin's right. Something doesn't fit. There must be something else.
--Josh Marshall
Are you a college student or recent grad in the New York metropolitan area or someone else interested in larning more about blogs, journalism and new media? TPM Media is hiring interns for the Winter/Spring 2006 semester. Click here to find out more.
--Josh Marshall
Oops. Looks like we've got a latter-day DeLay Rule bamboozler on our hands.
Mike at the Florida News blog has been trying to get an answer from Rep. Tom Feeney's office on how the congressman voted on the DeLay Rule back in November 2004. That, you'll remember, was the attempt to change the GOP conference rules to allow Rep. Tom DeLay to remain as Majority Leader while under indictment.
He finally got his answer. Feeney's press secretary's told him there actually never was a vote on the DeLay Rule.
No vote -- notwithsanding the fact that there was a voice vote, various representative announced that they'd voted either for or against it, and that there was a month or so of rambunctious debate about the vote.
All that said, Feeney says there was no vote.
Now, when I looked back at our DeLay Rule coverage from back in November 2004, I saw that Feeney is not only a latter-day bamboozler. He was an at-the-time bamboozler too. According to this November 18th 2004 post, Feeney has been fibbing to his constituents about his position on the DeLay Rule for more than a year.
You'd think he'd be more proud of being a loyal DeLay soldier.
--Josh Marshall
Department of Ouch, extra ouch edition: Ralph Reed pays 'supporters' to show up at political event at church.
--Josh Marshall
As is now being widely reported, the policy centerpiece of the president's state of the union address next week will be so-called HSAs, Health Savings Accounts. You can find out more about what a ridiculous idea they are here in a post from Ezra Klein, who will be leading up our soon-to-debut Medicare Drug Bill Fiasco blog.
But, policy particulars aside, isn't the president moving into a bit of a policy headwind on this one?
What's the slogan? "Bush Health Savings Accounts! Because the Bush Medicare Drug Bill is Working Out So Well!"
Think about it.
--Josh Marshall
Former Rep. Pete McCloskey announces primary challenge to Rep. Pombo (R-CA).
--Josh Marshall
Just a quick update: we're planning on getting our Medicare Prescription Drug fiasco blog up and running tomorrow over at TPMCafe. Stay tuned.
--Josh Marshall
Another good point on the Howell/Abramoff-gave-money-to-Dems mumbojumbo. This time from Mark Schmitt.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, just to be clear, the following quotes are such obvious malarkey that I don't think they have any direct application or relevance to today's unfolding scandal. But for sheer humor and bizarreness value, I think they're worth passing along.
This passage is from a March 2003 article in The Hill in which Jack Abramoff describes how the Bush administration is so relentlessly clean that it's made the lobbyist's job far harder than it was under Clinton ...
“I’m the only lobbyist who took a 90 percent pay cut to join the lobbying field,” a smiling Abramoff said in his downtown office this month. But he doesn’t expect sympathy — with the Republicans now in control of the White House, House and Senate, and his friend Tom DeLay (R-Texas) controlling the House agenda, Abramoff does not have to look far to find clients interested in his services.But, he stresses, being a leader in Republican fundraising and strategy doesn’t guarantee success for his clients.
“I think it’s a very different administration … compared to the Clinton days,” Abramoff said of George W. Bush’s White House. “They’re going to go out of the way to make sure that they are not courting special favors to lobbyists and to special interests. They’ll only agree to things on strict merits.
“From a good government point of view, that’s very refreshing. From a lobbying point of view, it’s obviously more of a challenge.”
Because of that, he says, many lobbyists are turning more and more to members of Congress rather than executive agencies. “What people have done is probably tried to utilize the congressional legislative route on many more things than they would have otherwise done,” Abramoff added. “In the past, I think you could have gone to the Clinton administration and gotten an administrative or executive fix on something that now people have to go to [Capitol] Hill and try to seek redress there.”
But even in the Capitol, where Republicans have controlled the House for more than eight years, Abramoff has noticed changes in the style and operations of the GOP leaders.
“[Speaker Denny] Hastert [R-Ill.] is very confident, very organized and even-tempered. It’s a stable environment there,” he said. “I think it was a little less so with [former Speaker Newt] Gingrich [R-Ga.]. The DeLay operation also has ripened into a very mature ground operation.”
Gotta love 'em.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Bob Ney, dirty before he even came to Washington. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
Actually, I can't resist adding this clip from Paul Kiel's Daily Muck this morning.
Back when Ney was a [Ohio] state senator, for instance, he regularly supplemented his income with checks from lobbyists (amazingly, a legal practice at the time). Two of his former aides there became lobbyists and then went to jail - one of them for bribing another former Ney aide.
It just gets better and better.
--Josh Marshall
"Jack is directly involved in the Republican party and conservative movement leadership structures and is one of the leading fund raisers for the party and its congressional candidates."
From Jack Abramoff's bio on the Greenberg-Traurig website, circa 2003.
--Josh Marshall
Read this article: it explains how the free flow of information on the Internet could be squelched out by the end of the decade. This is serious. Take a few minutes and give this a read. Then think about how to make your voice heard.
--Josh Marshall
I haven't watched every new development in the firestorm over Post ombudsman Deborah Howell and her remarks about whether Jack Abramoff gave political money to Democrats. But just to recap: She made some sloppy and inaccurate remarks, which dovetailed, accidentally or not, with Republican spin. Then, instead of just correcting herself, she hedged, claimed it was a distinction without a difference and then tried to hide behind claims that it was simply a matter of poor phrasing.
It's hard to be surprised, given the first episode with Howell last month.
But the whole blow-up has created this subdiscussion about whether honorable press types like Howell and others are being mauled and knocked around and generally abused by cyber-ruffians who have been on her case over the last few days.
This stuff isn't always pretty. But, really, thank God those folks are on her tail because shoddy reporting isn't pretty either.
So much of the imbalance and shallowness of press coverage today stems from a simple fact: reporters know they'll catch hell from the right if they say or write anything that can even remotely be construed as representing 'liberal bias'. (Often even that's not required.) Indeed, when you actually watch -- from the inside -- how mainstream newsrooms work, it is really not too much to say that they operate on two guiding principles: reporting the facts and avoiding impressions of 'liberal bias'.
On the left or center-left, until very recently, there's simply never been an organized chorus of people ready to take the Howells of the press biz to task and mau-mau them when they get a key fact wrong. Without that, the world of political news was like an NBA game where one side played the refs hard and had roaring seats of fans while the other never made a peep. With that sort of structural imbalance, shoddy scorekeeping and cowed, and eventually compliant, refs are inevitable.
This is evening the balance, creating a better press.
--Josh Marshall
