Stimulus Not Just Saving Or Creating Jobs, It's Creating Whole New Congressional Districts

This ABC News story has already been blogged a couple of places on the web, but it is too unbelievable for TtP to not jump on the bandwagon as well:

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.

And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.

How is this happening? Well, let's just say the recipients aren't too careful about reporting on the money once they get it.

Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error.

"We report what the recipients submit to us," said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board.

Pound told ABC News the board receives declarations from the recipients - state governments, federal agencies and universities - of stimulus money about what program is being funded.

"Some recipients clearly don't know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes," Pound said.

Here's an alternate theory: They funding recipients just making shit up and the jobs numbers they are providing aren't any more reliable than the other information. Oh, and one final thing:

The recovery.gov Web site was established as part of the stimulus bill "to foster greater accountability and transparency" in the use of the money spent through the stimulus program. The site is a well-funded enterprise; the General Services Administration updated it earlier this year with an $18 million grant.

Hopefully He's More Careful When It's Other People's Money

Meet Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida. He's a member of the House Financial Services Committee, which is busy rewriting all of the rules covering banking, investing and such. So he's on top of those issues right? Hmm, maybe not according to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call:

Freshman Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) lost $3 million in a stock swindle between 2000 and 2005, a Florida television station reported this week.

According to Orlando’s Local 6, Grayson was an investor in a Ponzi scheme run by the company Derivium Capital. The scheme allowed Grayson and other investors to turn over stock to Derivium in exchange for cash loans and redeem the value later if the stock prices increased.

The station cited court filings indicating that Grayson transferred about $29 million in stock to the fund, taking out about $26 million in cash. A South Carolina court ruled earlier this year that Derivium shareholders were owed about $270 million in lost profits and that Grayson’s share of that would be about $34 million.

Read the rest of the story here.

Of course, when it comes to the federal government, only losing a few million is an accomplishment.

We Have Ways of Getting The Truth Out of You, Nancy Pelosi

The Speaker of the House claims she was never told about waterboarding. Well, the Washington Post has found the smoking gun:

Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.

In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered "EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah." EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against him.

Foxes In Charge of Henhouse, Pt MXXVIII

The Moonie Times had a good piece of muckraking yesterday about Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, the guy who wrote (at the behest of the Treasury Department) the loophole that allowed the AIG bonuses. Not only was Dodd a major recipient of AIG cash, but he rated special attention from AIG executives:

As Democrats prepared to take control of Congress after the 2006 elections, a top boss at the insurance giant American International Group Inc. told colleagues that Sen. Christopher J. Dodd was seeking re-election donations and he implored company executives and their spouses to give.

The message in the Nov. 17, 2006, e-mail from Joseph Cassano, AIG Financial Products chief executive, was unmistakable: Mr. Dodd was "next in line" to be chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which oversees the insurance industry, and he would "have the opportunity to set the committee's agenda on issues critical to the financial services industry.

***

AIG's employees have been big financial backers of Mr. Dodd. Over his career, Mr. Dodd has collected $238,418 from AIG employees and their spouses, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Mr. Cassano has donated $7,118 to Mr. Dodd's campaigns.

Mr. Cassano's November 2006 e-mail instructed his colleagues on how to make donations to the senator from Connecticut.

"As he considers running for president in 2008, Senator Dodd has asked us for our support with his reelection campaign and we have offered to be supportive," Mr. Cassano wrote.

The employees were told, "If you agree," to write checks for $2,100 from themselves and their spouses and to send them to Mr. Dodd's campaign within four days. They also were to ask the senior members of their management teams to do the same and send copies of their checks to the company.

The Dodd campaign collected $162,100 from AIG-FP employees and their spouses within six weeks of the e-mail, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics and the Federal Election Commission.

Each of the seven AIG-FP executives to whom the Cassano e-mail was sent made two $2,100 contributions to the Dodd campaign - one for the primary and another for the general election campaign. The records also show that five of their wives also contributed $4,200 each to the Dodd campaign. The executive vice presidents are Alan Frost, David Ackert, Douglas L. Poling, Jake DeSantis, Jon Liebergall, Robert Leary and William Kolbert.

Mr. Cassano, who resigned in February after AIG-FP posted losses of $11 billion, followed his own advice. He and his wife gave Mr. Dodd's campaign $4,200 each.

Political fundraising in the workplace is legal, but a request from a boss may be viewed as a requirement, campaign watchdogs said.

"Implicit in this [e-mail] is the presumption that, at best, noncompliance will not be looked up favorably ... at worst, it may have negative consequences on the employees," Ms. Krumholz said.

Read the whole infuriating thing here. The Times also has a copy of the e-mail in question.

What Do You Mean "If," Congressman?

The quote of the week, maybe the year, comes from Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, via Politico:

"If I'm corrupt, it's because I take care of my district," Mr. Murtha said. "My job as a member of Congress is to make sure that we take care of what we see is necessary. Not the bureaucrats who are unelected over there in whatever White House, whether it's Republican or Democrat. Those bureaucrats would like to control everything. Every president would like to have all the power and not have Congress change anything. But we're closest to the people."

Ain't no if about congressman. You are one sleazy, corrupt bastard and you always have been.

Suppose They Had A Political Uprising And Nobody Noticed?

Just Last week, the White House went into campaign mode to sell its proposed budget, enlisting the same network that is used during the election. The Washington Post breathlessly detailed the mobilization:

The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee opened a new chapter Saturday in their ambitious project to convert the energy from last year's campaign into a force for legislative reform on health care, climate change, education and taxes.

More than 1,200 groups from Maine to Hawaii spent the day gathering signatures in support of Obama's economic plan, the first step in building what the White House hopes will be a standing political army ready to do battle.

Seeking to create a grass-roots force on a scale never seen before, Obama called the volunteers into action in a video message reminiscent of the 2008 contest. In defense of his budget, under attack from many quarters, he asked his supporters to go "block by block and door by door."

The theory here being, apparently, we have a cult of personality in place, so let's use it to try to scare the rest of the country into backing this economic plan. So how's that mobilization going? According to McClatchy, not so well:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's army of canvassers fanned out across the nation over the weekend to drum up support for his $3.55 trillion budget, but they had no noticeable impact on members of Congress, who on Monday said they were largely unaware of the effort.

"News to me," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, a House Budget Committee member, of the canvassing. Later, his staff said that his office had heard from about 100 voters.
***
Blue Dogs [i.e., southern and rural moderate Democrats] were careful not to criticize Obama, but said they've felt little pressure from the canvassing.

Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill., once a coalition member but now vice-chair of the New Democrat Coalition, said she wasn't aware of the effort and has heard no response to it from her district.

It's nice to know that campaign tactics that work to get Democrats to the polls during primaries and election don't work nearly as well for budgets that spend us into total bankruptcy.

In Case You Weren't Pissed Off Enough About Congressional Spending

USA Today has the latest "Earmarks gone? Bwa-ha-ha-ha!" story. The twist this time? The earmarks -- all $7.7 billion of them -- include money being put in for people who aren't even in Congress anymore:

WASHINGTON — A $410 billion bill that would keep the government running through September directs $227 million to pet projects for former lawmakers, including an ex-congressman facing corruption charges, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

The short-term budget, which Congress failed to complete last year and is now headed to a Senate vote this week, includes seven projects worth $1.2 million for Rick Renzi, a former Republican congressman indicted in 2008 on charges stemming from a land deal in Arizona. It also includes $1 million in projects requested by former senator Larry Craig, R-Idaho, arrested in 2007 as part of a sex sting.

Obama And Accountability? Not So Much

Given the fact that members of Congress had only ten hours to read the 1,000+ pages of the economic stimulus bill before it was voted on, it is not surprising that they missed a few things. Byron York highlighted one in an eye-opening story that ran earlier today in the DC Examiner:

You’ve heard a lot about the astonishing spending in the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, signed into law this week by President Barack Obama. But you probably haven’t heard about a provision in the bill that threatens to politicize the way allegations of fraud and corruption are investigated — or not investigated — throughout the federal government.

The provision, which attracted virtually no attention in the debate over the 1,073-page stimulus bill, creates something called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board — the RAT Board, as it’s known by the few insiders who are aware of it. The board would oversee the in-house watchdogs, known as inspectors general, whose job is to independently investigate allegations of wrongdoing at various federal agencies, without fear of interference by political appointees or the White House.

In the name of accountability and transparency, Congress has given the RAT Board the authority to ask “that an inspector general conduct or refrain from conducting an audit or investigation.” If the inspector general doesn’t want to follow the wishes of the RAT Board, he’ll have to write a report explaining his decision to the board, as well as to the head of his agency (from whom he is supposedly independent) and to Congress. In the end, a determined inspector general can probably get his way, but only after jumping through bureaucratic hoops that will inevitably make him hesitate to go forward.

***
When I inquired with the office of a Democratic senator, one who is a big fan of inspectors general, I was told the RAT Board was “something the Obama administration wanted included in this bill.” When I asked the White House, staffers told me they’d look into it. So for now, at least, there’s been no claim of paternity.

The RAT Board has all sorts of other things wrong with it. For one thing, it’s redundant; there is already a board through which inspectors general police themselves, created last year in the Inspectors General Reform Act. For another thing, it could complicate criminal investigations stemming from inspector general probes. And then there’s the question of what it has to do with stimulating the economy.

But none of that matters now. It’s the law.

Hey, That's 6 Billion Jobs Lost Every Year!

"Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans lose their jobs. I don't think we can go fast enough to stop that."

-- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. This has already been all over the web but it is still worth noting that one of our top political leaders has less than a grade school education in math.

Republicans Fearful Of Obama's Package

The folks over at Politico are having a little too much fun, but can you blame them?:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the [stimulus] bill was on track for passage by February 16, while Republicans continued to voice their opposition.

“We expressed our concerns about some of the spending that’s being proposed in the House bill,” House Minority Leader John Boehner said after meeting with Obama.

“How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives?” Boehner asked. “How does that stimulate the economy?”

Boehner said congressional Republicans are also concerned about the size of the package.

#11 -- Why Can't Detroit Make Cars That Run On Fairy Dust?

From Car and Driver magazine, here's a good piece that will probably never be read by the administration as it works on an auto industry bailout: "10 lies pinhead legislators believe about the auto industry"

I Don't Know What Happened

... And I don't wanna know. From a Washington Post story about the 12 senators who did not vote Thursday on an attempt to break the Republican-led filibuster against the auto bailout bill:

The oddest absentees may have been Sens. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). The retiring Craig learned last week that the Minnesota Court of Appeals rejected his latest effort to revoke his guilty plea from an airport-restroom sex sting in June 2007, and Stevens lost his reelection bid after he was found guilty of seven felony counts of failing to disclose more than $250,000 in gifts.

The duo have become something of an ethically challenged odd couple, with Stevens being one of Craig's few defenders in fall 2007 as GOP leaders did everything to force his immediate retirement. And Craig never publicly criticized Stevens and even attended part of his trial to lend support.

At roughly 10 p.m. Thursday, Craig and Stevens walked out of the Republican conference's meeting in the LBJ Room, about 20 steps off the Senate floor. With overcoats on and scarves wrapped around their necks, they didn't go to the chamber. They jumped into an awaiting elevator, and off they went.

Less than 45 minutes later, when the roll was called, Craig and Stevens didn't show up.

This About Sums It Up

I mean really, screw the Democratic process and the free market. We have failing industries and union jobs to protect.

Car Bailout Bill Stuck In Gridlock; May Run Out of Gas

Earlier tonight the House passed the "temporary bridge loan" bill for domestic automobile industry. You know, the Detroit bailout bill. The vote, if you care, wasn't even close: 237-170.

But it is still far from being law. The Senate has to pass it as well, and that isn't looking too good:

"I don't think the votes are there on our side of the aisle," conceded Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), a major defender of the domestic automakers who has been working for weeks to broker a plan to help them survive the deepening recession. "Some effort needs to be made to respond the concerns of my colleagues," he said.

Do those colleagues oppose the deal because they hate the long-suffering assembly line worker and want to give our country away to the Japanese? Maybe. Or maybe they just think car makers are doomed no matter what because the $14 billion does nothing to reform their staggeringly generous labor contracts.

In any event, it ain't over. The Democrats will have a nearly filibuster-proof majority next year. So expect an even bigger bailout bill next year. Assuming the car companies haven't already gone bankrupt by then. Me, I'm getting a drink. Have a good night, folks

How Fannie n' Freddie Entertained Their Elected Overseers

The Associated Press put out a good, if infuriating, story explaining exactly how those entities managed to get the elected officials that were supposed to be overseeing them eating out of their hands instead:

WASHINGTON – From a hefty lobbying budget to the use of free baseball tickets, Freddie Mac fended off any meaningful regulation in the years before the housing mortgage giant crashed, records obtained by The Associated Press show.

When the Washington Nationals played their first-ever baseball game in the nation's capital in April 2005, two congressmen who oversaw Freddie Mac had choice seats — courtesy of the very company they were supposed to be keeping an eye on.

Efforts to tighten government regulation were gaining support on Capitol Hill, and Freddie Mac was fighting back.

According to internal Freddie Mac documents obtained by the AP, Reps. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., spent the evening in hard-to-obtain seats near the Nationals dugout with Freddie Mac executive Hollis McLoughlin and four of Freddie Mac's in-house lobbyists. The two congressmen were both members of the House Financial Services Committee.

Okay, so the congressmen could be bought, but at least they weren't cheap. Oh, no, wait. They were:

The ticket to attend the opening game of the Washington Nationals was valued at less than $50, which was the congressional gift limit at that time, Kanjorski said in a statement Monday.

The Nationals tickets were bargains for Freddie Mac, part of a well-orchestrated, multimillion-dollar campaign to preserve its largely regulatory-free environment, with particular pressure exerted on Republicans who controlled Congress at the time.

At least this corrpution didn't hurt the rest of us. Oh, no, wait. It did:

The tactics worked — for a time. Freddie Mac was able to operate with a relatively free hand until the housing bubble ultimately burst in 2007.

Now Freddie Mac and its sister company, Fannie Mae, are in financial collapse and under government control. Congress is investigating how it all happened. Lawmakers have planned a hearing Tuesday.

Oh, and guess who is one of the leading whores:

Internal Freddie Mac budget records show $11.7 million was paid to 52 outside lobbyists and consultants in 2006. Power brokers such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were recruited with six-figure contracts.

Gubmint Bailout Update: Detroit Wants Its Slice of the Pie

Charles Krauthammer talks some sense on the subject:

With almost 5 million workers supported by the auto industry, Democrats are pressing for a federal rescue. But the problems are obvious.

First, the arbitrariness. Where do you stop? Once you’ve gone beyond the financial sector, every struggling industry will make a claim on the federal treasury. What are the grounds for saying yes or no?

The criteria will inevitably be arbitrary and political. The money will flow preferentially to industries with lines to Capitol Hill and the White House. To the companies heavily concentrated in the districts of committee chairmen. To clout. Is this not precisely the kind of lobby-driven policymaking that Obama ran against?

Second is the sheer inefficiency. Saving Detroit means saving it from bankruptcy. As we have seen with the airlines, bankruptcy can allow operations to continue while helping shed fatally unsupportable obligations. For Detroit, this means release from ruinous wage deals with their astronomical benefits (the hourly cost of a Big Three worker: $73; of an American worker for Toyota: $48), massive pension obligations, and unworkable work rules such as “job banks,” a euphemism for paying vast numbers of employees not to work.

The point of the Democratic bailout is to protect the unions by preventing this kind of restructuring. Which will guarantee the continued failure of these companies, but now they will burn tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. It’s the ultimate in lemon socialism.

How To Arouse the Voters' Interest

Kudos to candidate Zane Starkewolf for coming up with a robo-call that you ordinary would have to pay $2.99 a minute to hear:

NAPA COUNTY (CBS13) ― A local congressional contest took a racy turn when an "enthusiastic" staffer recorded a robo-call that attracted an unusual amount of attention.

The robo-call went out on behalf of Republican challenger Zane Starkewolf starting Sunday, but was pulled by Monday. A female voice begins the message by saying "Mike Thompson has been a bad boy," in risqué tones.

Mike Thompson, Starkewolf's opponent, is the incumbent Democrat Congressmen representing the District 1 seat, which comprises the Sonoma, Napa and Yolo County regions.

***

"We all said no to the bail out," the voice message continues, "but Thompson backed Bush, just like he did with the Patriot Act."

"Uhh, vote Yes! for Zane," the message concludes.

Read the whole story here.

The Bridge To Nowhere But Oz, Bitch

Alaska's Republican Senator Ted Stevens, pork barreller extraordinaire and advocate of the Bridge to Nowhere, is going to jail. Boo-Yah!

Stevens, 84, was convicted of all the felony charges he faced of lying about free home renovations and other gifts from a wealthy oil contractor. Jurors began deliberating last week.

Visibly shaken after the verdicts were read — the jury foreman declaring "guilty" seven times — Stevens tried to intertwine his fingers but quickly put his hands down to his side after noticing they were trembling. As he left the courtroom, Stevens got a quick kiss on the cheek from his wife, Catherine, who testified on his behalf during the trial. He declined to talk to reporters waiting outside.

Despite my rather hopeful blog title, the AP story indicates that Stevens is "likely to receive much less prison time, if any" than the maximum 35 years in jail that he could get. Ah, but a man can dream, can't he?

The you gotta-be-fucking-me-part-of-the-story? His Senate career isn't necessarily over:

Despite being a convicted felon, he is not required to drop out of the race or resign from the Senate. If he wins re-election, he can continue to hold his seat because there is no rule barring felons from serving in Congress. The Senate could vote to expel him on a two-thirds vote.

"Put this down: That will never happen — ever, OK?" Stevens said in the weeks leading up to his trial. "I am not stepping down. I'm going to run through, and I'm going to win this election."

Most likely he'll just lose the reelection, but hey you never know. In any event, the real question is why didn't the numbskulls in the GOP leadership push Stevens into an early retirement? Why on earth did they let an 84 year-old geezer facing a serious criminal trial go ahead with another Senate bid? If anything exemplifies the corruption, stupidity and cowardice of the party, this is it. If the Democrats do crush them in the election, they'll have nobody to blame but themselves.

Our Ever-Vigilant Congress

How did we get into the mortgage mess in the first place? This Youtube clip, while obviously put together by some partisan Republican, is pretty damning. As the soundbytes from 2004 show, a major problem was the Democrats' refusal to ever admit that there was a problem with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congresswoman's Maxine Waters' comments are particularly stupid in retrospect:

"Through nearly a dozen hearings where we frankly were trying to fix something that wasn't broke. Mr. Chairman. We do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and in particular at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Franklin Raines."

This would be the same Franklin Raines who was found to be cooking the books and helping to create the subprime crisis. Hmmm, I wonder how all of this slipped past Congress's notice?

Some Lawmakers Taking Financial Hits Too

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The market storm that brought down Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., American International Group Inc. and other pillars of U.S. finance may have also blown holes in the portfolios of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator John Kerry and more than 50 other members of Congress.

Pelosi, in her most recent financial disclosure form, reported that her husband owned between $250,000 and $500,000 of stock in AIG, which ceded majority control to the U.S. government this week in exchange for $85 billion of loans.

Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, disclosed that his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, had more than $2 million of AIG stock at the end of 2007, when shares were worth $58.30. AIG has fallen 85 percent this week to close yesterday at $2.69. The lawmakers' aides didn't respond to calls seeking comment.

Altogether, 56 senators and representatives had stakes in AIG, Lehman, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns Cos. or IndyMac Bancorp Inc. -- some of the biggest casualties of the market bloodbath -- according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

More here, via Bloomberg. Hat Tip: The Drudge Report.

Yeah, it's kind of amusing until you realize that these people are going to have a hand in crafting any legislative response to the meltdown. So we can be sure now that they'll be looking to extract their pound of flesh from whomever becomes a convenient scapegoat for the meltdown.

Luckily $50 a Day Goes Far in a Socialist paradise

Congress is trying to up restrictions on travel to Cuba. You may have to wait to until next year to get your hands on the cigars and putas though:

WASHINGTON - Democrats controlling Congress are trying to loosen restrictions on allowing people of Cuban descent to visit their relatives on the island.

But efforts underway in Congress — including a measure adopted by a Senate panel on Thursday — appear unlikely to loosen the restrictions before President Bush leaves office in January.

Bush opposes efforts gaining steam in Congress to ease a longstanding embargo and recently-toughened travel restrictions on Cuba. His veto promises have carried the day despite majority support for loosening restrictions on travel to Cuba and trade with the authoritarian state.

The Senate panel would block enforcement of restrictions imposed in 2004 on family travel to Cuba. Prior to the 2004 policy change, Cuban-Americans could travel to Cuba once a year to visit relatives, spend up to $170 a day and visit for an unlimited duration.

Now, family visits are limited to once every three years for no more than 14 days. Spending is capped at $50 per day.

Read the whole story here.

Well, Death IS Better Than Representing Staten Island ...

The Staten Island GOP just cannot catch a break. First, their incumbent candidate, Vito Fossella, admitted that the woman who bailed him out of jail after a drunk driving arrest was the mistress who had had his bastard child.

Now, the guy local GOP party hacks picked to run for his seat, Francis H. Powers, has dropped dead:

Mr. Powers, who had never before run for public office, agreed to run after a series of elected officials declined to enter the race.

So I think we can put this one in the Dem column.

Senate Less Efficient Than That Wendy's Near Your Office Run By That Pimply Kid

The U.S. Senate is moving to privatize the cafeterias used by staffers and other Capitol Hill employees. Why, you ask? 'Cause they're tired of losing millions of dollars by running it themselves -- $18 million(!) since 1993:

The financial condition of the world's most exclusive dining hall and its affiliated Capitol Hill restaurants, cafeterias and coffee shops has become so dire that, without a $250,000 subsidy from taxpayers, the Senate won't make payroll next month.

The embarrassment of the Senate food service struggling like some neighborhood pizza joint has quietly sparked change previously unthinkable for Democrats. Last week, in a late-night voice vote, the Senate agreed to privatize the operation of its food service, a decision that would, for the first time, put it under the control of a contractor and all but guarantee lower wages and benefits for the outfit's new hires.

What went wrong? Well, it turns out that if you let the Congress run something, there's a very high probability that they'll fuck it up:

In a letter to colleagues, Feinstein said that the Government Accountability Office found that "financially breaking even has not been the objective of the current management due to an expectation that the restaurants will operate at a deficit annually."
***
The Senate Restaurants, as the food service network is known, has a range of offerings, from the ornate Senate Dining Room on the first floor of the Capitol, where senators and their guests are served by staffers wearing jackets and ties, to the huge cafeteria in the Dirksen Building and various coffee shops throughout the Senate complex.

All told, they bring in more than $10 million a year in food sales but have turned a profit in just seven of their 44 years in business, according to the GAO.

In a masterful bit of understatement, Feinstein blamed "noticeably subpar" food and service. Foot traffic bears that out. Come lunchtime, many Senate staffers trudge across the Capitol and down into the basement cafeteria on the House side. On Wednesdays, the lines can be 30 or 40 people long.

The irony of this situation is not lost on the lawmakers:

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), speaking for the group of senators who opposed privatizing the restaurants, said that "you cannot stand on the Senate floor and condemn the privatization of workers, and then turn around and privatize the workers here in the Senate and leave them out on their own."

Subsidy Crop Looking Mighty Green This Year

Think the Farm Bill that Congress recently passed is bad? Guess again. It is even worse:

A major new program in the recently enacted farm bill could increase taxpayer-financed payments to farmers by billions of dollars if high commodity prices decline to more typical levels, administration and congressional budget officials said yesterday.
***
The final details of the new program were approved at the end of four months of House-Senate negotiations over the legislation and received almost no attention during floor debate last week. The voluntary program guarantees farmers a subsidy if they suffer losses because of low prices or poor crops.

Since the amount of the subsidy for 2009 is tied to recent record prices, farmers could reap a windfall if prices drop suddenly.

"I don't think many people on the House side who voted for the farm bill realized there were $16 billion in potential higher costs in there," said Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Charles F. Conner. "The budget exposure is tremendous."

A blog item posted Monday by the agricultural magazine Pro Farmer described the new program, known as Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE), as "lucrative beyond expectations," and said it is a "no brainer" for farmers to sign up for it.

The Agriculture Department estimates that subsidy payments to corn farmers alone could reach $10 billion a year if prices -- which have been $5 to $6 a bushel -- were to drop to $3.25 a bushel, a level seen as recently as last year.

Read the whole story here.

The White House has said it would veto the bill, a meaningless gesture since it passed with bipartisan majorities large enough to override any veto.

In short, if food prices stop their current steep rise, we'll still pay the same. It'll just come out of our tax dollars.

Sen. Ted Stevens and his BFF

It is hard to tell what is more annoying about this AP story: the facts it reports or the irritating isn't-bipartisanship-wonderful attitude it presents them in.

Here's the story. Senator Daniel Inouye, 83, of Hawaii hosted a fundraiser Wednesday for the reelection bid of Senator Ted Stevens, 84, of Alaska. That's unusual because Inouye is a Democrat and Stevens is a Republican. The AP says:

It's fair to say Inouye would like his Democratic Party to control the Senate by a greater margin. But not at the expense of Stevens, his friend and ally in the increasingly rough-and-tumble Senate.

So Inouye held a fundraising lunch for his friend on Wednesday to help Stevens with what promises to be his most difficult campaign in almost four decades.
***
Stevens' campaign hoped the noontime lunch just a block from the Capitol would net $50,000 or so from the anticipated 60-70 guests, said campaign treasurer Tim McKeever in Alaska.

Anchorage Democratic Mayor Mark Begich is running to defeat Stevens, and the hard-fought race is essential to Democrats' goal of padding the chamber with enough Democrats to roll over GOP delaying tactics.

So why did Inouye do it? Was it just because he and Stevens are long-time buds? That's what the AP story suggests:

But to Senate old-timers like Inouye, 83, and Stevens, 84 — each of whom has served in the chamber since the 1960s — friendship comes before party. In the increasingly bitter world of Washington, the friendship of Inouye and Stevens stands out. They call each other "brother." Both served with honor in World War II.

Heartwarming, isn't it? But there is another reason Inouye hosted the fundraiser, a little fact mentioned towards the end of the story:

The two have traveled the world together are the top two senators on the panel controlling the Pentagon budget. For years, they've used the post to deliver federal money to their states. They are also the chairman and top Republican on the powerful Commerce Committee.

Well isn't that special? These two old farts bonded over years and years of traveling the world on the taxpayers' dime and shoveling yet more of those taxpayer dollars into their home states. Good times, good times.

Oh, and by the way, Stevens is the focus of a federal corruption probe. That's why his re-election bid will be so "difficult." There is a good chance the guy will go to federal prison soon.

Still, doesn't it just make you feel great to know that these senators look out for each other, regardless of party?

Ethics Panel Slaps Craig; He Likes It

The Senate Ethics Panel (yes, I was surprised to learn it existed too) today released a reprimand of Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho*. The official document was, no doubt, sent to Craig underneath the stall door of the public restroom in Union Station. From the AP:

In a letter to the Republican senator, the ethics panel said Craig's attempt to withdraw his guilty plea after his arrest at a Minneapolis airport was an effort to evade legal consequences of his own actions.

Craig's actions constitute "improper conduct which has reflected discreditably on the Senate," the letter said.

Given the fact the Congress' approval ratings are right there in the toilet with Craig, that arguably is the biggest accomplishment of his Senate career so far. Unless you count that time he met Freddie Mercury on vacation in Berlin and inspired him to write "We Are The Champions" but I digress.

*corrected

Dems' Trillion Dollar Tax Raise Bill Has Some Good Things and a lot of Bad

My main criticism of Nancy Pelosi's reign is that she appointed people like Rangel to key chairmanships. At 76 he is close to death's door that he is trying to push a trillion dollar tax increase before he dies.

The one good element of his plan would lower the US corporate tax rate, which is currently the second highest in the industrialized world, behind Japan.

On the bad side, Rangel proposes to increase the child credit for people who do not owe tax, which turns the IRS into a welfare program as it actually pays people money to filers who owe no income tax. To pay for this, Rangel would increase the marginal tax on earners of $150K or more to 40%. To put that in perspective, the average US family pays a 4% federal tax while the top 50% of earners already pay 97% of the burden.

If you live in expensive cities like New York, San Francisco or DC, you pay through the nose to support the rest of the country and still do not feel rich at $150K. That magic earnings number is also the point at which you cannot deduct student loan expenses or health expenses. You are certainly not rich.

If Rangel would propose a higher tax on those who make a million or more, I might be game. But $150K is way too low to start to penalize people who have already lost their ability to deduct major expenses.

Another Congressional Pet Peeve Hearing Disgrace

Congressmen often hold hearings based more on their personal pet peeves than what is within the bounds of Congress' legitimate purview. Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, for instance, is a big baseball fan (I see him at Nats games often, wearing a mitt like an eight year-old) so he used Congressional subpeona power in hearings to drag a bunch of baseball stars before the cameras to ask embarrassing questions and humiliate them. This type of hearing resembles more a kangaroo court than a Congressional inquiry and accomplishes nothing but intimidation.

Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois had his own Hip-Hop pet peeve hearing recently. It was another ridiculous incursion of authority into private enterprise and a total waste of taxpayer money.

Still, lawmakers like Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, say artists and record companies must do more to censor lyrics that promote a lifestyle of violence, drugs and misogyny.

I hate that kind of music too, so I don't listen to it. If you hate it, don't buy it, organize a boycott or march or awareness campaign against it. That is freedom; banning it is not.

In another sorry episode, John Kerry succeeded very well in using his Senate post and the spectre of Congressional hearings to ensure he could continue to get Red Sox games on Comcast in his Georgetown manse and not have to switch to a dish after MLB signed an exclusive "After Innings" contract with Directv. The rich Senator, alas, didn't want to switch to Directv, which is easy, fast and cheap to do, so he stretched his Congressional privilege way too far to rewrite the settled contract in his personal favor because a Senator who is worth $500MM should not have to switch to Directv.

The enforcement of contracts, along with property rights, are the two major underpinnings of the prosperous US economy and are enshrined in the Constitution. Sadly, Kerry, with all of that Congressional intimidation power, got his way:

When the exclusive deal was announced, Sen John Kerry (D-MA) asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the deal… he then pushed for Congressional hearings. During a hearing last week in the Nation’s Capital, he pushed baseball to resume talks with iN Demand—which is owned by affiliates of Time Warner, Comcast and Cox. The parties then went back to the table… and the deal was reached

Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right

Mount Obey is about to blow. And not in a good way...

House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) warned President Bush on Tuesday that he would bottle up a critical $190 billion war spending bill in his committee unless Bush agrees to a goal of ending combat operations in Iraq by January 2009 and other conditions.
[...]
Obey also announced his backing for a war surtax on income, ranging from 2 percent to 15 percent of every American’s tax bill, to raise about $150 billion a year to pay for the war.

“If you don’t like the cost, then shut down the war,” Obey said.

2% to 15%? Yikes. I know he's just blowing smoke by trying to raise the issue of the cost of the war, but a special tax to help finance the clusterfuck over there isn't something to joke about.

Via Roll Call. Sorry, subscription required.

Congress Ate My Steak

I was about to order the prime steak at my favorite local restaurant when I noticed the new price: $46. That is up from $36 the last time I ordered it a few months ago. The reason: beef prices are skyrocketing in tandem with corn prices, which are skyrocketing because of growing demand for ethanol. Corn prices increased 80% in 2006 alone and might double this year.

The Energy Bill of 2005, through a combination of subsidies, tariffs and mandates, caused the massive food inflation that is occurring. Congress didn't like $3/gallon gas so they created $3/gallon milk. Oh, and they also made steak a luxury food again.

You Craiging?

Thanks, Sen. Larry Craig. I've been thinking for a while about the need for a neat little word to describe someone who publicly engages in very homophobic behavior while secretly engaging in very homosexual behavior. A lot has been written on his toe-tapping misadventures already, so I'm enjoying all the new, uh, twists. Like this:

[Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force] did express some empathy with Craig in regard to the reaction of his GOP Senate colleagues. They have called for an ethics committee review of his case, which they did not do in response to revelations that Sen. David Vitter, R-La., was on the contact list of a Washington-area escort service.

"The double standard is shocking," Foreman said. "We'll throw the closet queer under the bus, but if you see a female prostitute, that's just fine."

A Ron Paul Disappointment

The libertarian hope for president, Ron Paul, likes his pork as much as every other member of Congress. A WSJ editorial today (subscription only) pointed out that Paul has requested approximately $400 million in earmarks this year.

They include such urgent national wartime priorities as an $8 million request for the marketing of wild American shrimp and $2.3 million to fund shrimp-fishing research.

When we called Mr. Paul's office for an explanation, his spokesperson offered up something that is worthy of pork legends Tom DeLay or Senator Robert C. Byrd: "Reducing earmarks does not reduce government spending, and it does not prohibit spending upon those things that are earmarked."

If you can make sense of that explanation, you are much smarter than I am. In any event, Paul's feeding at the trough of senseless government spending that serves more the elected official than it does the taxpayer, and the country, is very disappointing.

Congressman to World, "I'm a Hypocrite"

File this under "do as I say not as I do".

Nearly everyone on Capitol Hill these days just loves to beat up on earmarks. Unless, of course, the money is headed their way. In a stark example of this paradox, freshman Rep. Kevin O. McCarthy (R-Calif.) e-mailed constituents last week, touting the $200,000 he secured for nurses in Kern County, Calif., then bragged about voting against legislation to appropriate the money. McCarthy secured $200,000 for California State University, Bakersfield to help counter the shortage of trained nurses in his rapidly growing district. But he voted against the $607 billion health care spending bill that included the money because it was $10.6 billion more than President Bush had requested.

In particular, McCarthy complained that the bill included $2 million for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service in Harlem -- money the powerful House Ways and Means chairman secured for the institute bearing his name, which helps low-income and minority students launch careers in politics.

"Taxpayer dollars are not a congressman's personal spending account," McCarthy e-mailed.

More here.

The "Yellow Pages" Test

Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) has put forth simple criteria for determining whether or not Congress should pass new regulations or not.

The Laffer Curve, game theory and the classic supply-and-demand diagram are all well established in the economics lexicon.

Less well-known, but arguably more valuable to some House Republicans, is a new economics theory dubbed the “Yellow Pages test.” House Financial Services member Tom Feeney, R-Fla., says he uses the test to determine whether the federal government needs to regulate or be involved in a certain business.

If he can find at least two businesses listed in the Yellow Pages that offer a similar service, Feeney says, then the federal government should steer clear. Fellow conservative and Financial Services member Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, who actually coined the term “Yellow Pages test” at a hearing last week, agrees.

The government has no business messing around in the private market, Hensarling argued, suggesting that the test ought to be used often.

This advance in economic theory was offered during a committee debate over federal regulation of wind insurance coverage. If it can be applied to wind insurance brokers, one can easily see its extension to other facets of the business world.

As evidenced by the now notorious “D.C. Madam” case, local governments might want to reconsider, for example, whether to interfere with the escort business since there are plenty of those listed in the phone book — all providing, one presumes, a similar service.

Zing! I would also note that many of California's medical marijuana dispensaries are listed in the phone book, but that didn't stop Rep. Feeney or Rep. Hensarling from voting against an amendment last week that would have stopped the federal government from messing around in that private market.

Via Congressional Quarterly (sorry, subscription required).