Honor Among Thieves
Jan 9th, 2006 at 7:15 am by Susie
Let’s read between the lines, shall we?
With Republicans reeling from a lobbying scandal that shredded support for Mr. DeLay, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert announced Sunday that Representative David Dreier, Republican of California and chairman of the Rules Committee, would explore changes in lobbying laws.
“Recent developments have made clear the need for the House to take a closer look at the rules regarding members’ interactions with lobbyists,” Mr. Dreier said in a statement.
Mr. Boehner and others expressed reservations about the need for more regulations, saying what was required was better enforcement of existing rules. But Mr. Blunt, in his first public appeal to colleagues, backed the idea of lobbying changes and said recent months had been made more difficult by criminal cases growing out of a federal inquiry and other suspect behavior.
Most people don’t realize (and the ones who do are rather reluctant to admit it publicly), but there are virtually no ethical restrictions on the honorable members. None worth mentioning, anyway.
I found this out years ago when I was working on a story and discovered our local congressman 1) was only “on leave” from his job with a major insurance carrier; 2) was pushing hard for legislation that would have the government pick up most of the insurers’ cost for any major earthquake; 3) his “former” employer was the only person writing California earthquake insurance at the time; 4) was not on the payroll, but still accruing pension benefits from the insurer.
And all of this was perfectly legal, according to the House ethics committee staffer to whom I spoke. I spoke to another one: same story. That’s when I found out there were, practically speaking, no real rules at all.
Nice, huh?
I long suspected this and I am certain that our Congressman (3rd OH) is still on the payroll/retirement program for Modern Technologies MTC a large (and getting larger) defense contractor in the Dayton Area.
MTC was originally an East Asian Indian 8a (minority) firm that grew (manipulated the system) to become a Dow listed company. The congressman was the former Mayor of Dayton and Corporate Council for MTC.
No entity understands this relationship and the Cox Corporate Paper (Dayton Daily News) stands to benefit from the largesse. However, the people of Dayton will eventually lose as technology and american dollars are sent to India, while our Congressman acts like he is working for the people from this community.
It does not matter what community you are in the Corporations and the stupid local politicians are convinced that this type of Congressman is the way to get Federal Largesse; however, the blind allegiance to the DC directives will eventually kill Dayton Ohio.
Thanks for the insight. I could never get a straight answer on the ability of this type of “leave of absence”.
In addition to this type of retirement security the Congressman’s wife owns a marketing firm that gets contracts for services from the various companies owned by MTC. Since these transactions are shielded from public scrutiny; one has to wonder how much profit is fixed in these deals?
“better enforcement of existing rules.”
Ah, the NRA defense.