Now most of you may remember Old Yeller and think it’s a Disney movie, but it’s really a story about a Texas hound named Slick Rick. Well sir, this hound is really bad at debating because his history keeps getting in the way. So instead of going out and trying to debate, he manufactured a cover story that smells all the way from Dalhart to Brownsville, and all places in between. But this hound can sniff out a special interest dollar quicker than a bloodhound on a pork chop, and friends that’s a slick trick indeed.
Now there was once a man named PT Barnum, and he and Slick Rick certainly believe that a sucker is born every minute. Not satisfied with having misled Texans on property tax relief, fast track TXU coal plant construction, the Trans Texas Corridor, and the sale of State Parks' mineral rights and management, Slick Rick huckstered up other proposals. They were: the sale of the Texas lottery, and a mandatory HPV virus vaccine for 11 to 12 year old girls.
Merck brought us Vioxx; a medical mistake that was recalled under massive lawsuits and desperately needed another revenue source. Their record for public safety leaves much to be desired. Texans answered that they did not want their loved ones to be the guinea pigs courtesy of Merck and that was stopped too.*
The lottery sale was to be $14 billion to $20 billion lump sum payment of a proven billion dollar a year money maker and the deal was for a forty year exclusive revenue source or $14 billion for $40 billion guaranteed. This deal makes no accounting sense to anyone, but a quick change artist or someone who might pocket a handsome commission. But Texans got wind of these deals and Slick Rick sulked all the way to a ten thousand dollar a month tax payer funded home and the Governor’s Mansion mysteriously burned down.
We had this hound for ten years, so why would anyone want him for another four?
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vioxx
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
9/11:Since That Day by William Rivers Pitt
I moved into a new apartment last week, and I've since noticed that when there are low clouds in the sky, the airplanes out of Logan fly low over my new neighborhood as they depart for wherever. It is cloudy today and I can hear them overhead, roaring by every few minutes, hidden in the gray weather above.
I think about that day when I hear the engines. Of course I do. It was nine years ago, but still, for me, it is the sound of airplane engines that brings it all back, if only for a moment.
Everyone has a story about where they were on that day. One friend of mine, a cook, was buried in the kitchen for the breakfast rush and had no idea what was going on until the orders dried up. He walked out of the kitchen wondering what was going on to find everyone staring dumbstruck at the television. Another friend of mine was working at a brokerage house in San Francisco. He didn't have a television and liked to listen to music on headphones during his commute to work. He got to work and started calling various extensions at the New York home office in the World Trade Center, but nobody was picking up. It wasn't until his boss came in and told him what had happened that he realized he had been calling dead people.
I was a teacher, and it was the first day of school. I was the first person in the building to find out what was going on, and I ran around from teacher to teacher letting them know what had happened before hauling two televisions out of the library closet so we could all watch together. I was shattered, but the children were terrified, and so I had to hold myself together and reassure them, even as the sound of fighter jets started roaring overhead. One of my students heard the news and turned white, because her father was supposed to be at a meeting in the Trade Center that morning. He survived, many others did not. That night, I bought a bottle of brown liquor on the way home and drank it off in front of my own television as those images were seared into my memory forever.
When all is said and done, someone once said, there's nothing left to do or say. There are 300 million versions of this story in America, and billions more around the world. Everyone remembers where they were, and what they were doing, on that day. Give anyone you meet a chance, and they'll tell you all about it.
Nine years, four national elections, two wars and two presidents since that day, and where are we now as a nation? Broke, deranged and dangerous pretty much sums it up. We have Christian-Taliban pastors in Florida with filthy souls threatening to burn the Qu'ran, as if such an act had any meaning beyond a desire to make money, and a national news media apparatus all too happy to give them all the ink and air time he could ever wish for. We have seething crowds threatening arson and murder because a Muslim community center might get built next to a strip club on the site of a defunct coat store. We have national caricatures like Sarah Palin charging people more than $200 for the chance to meet with her on that day, as if she has any significance at all. We've got stabbings and beatings and firebombings, and this is nine years later.
We are a nation of euphemisms now. It's not spying on the American people, it is "national security." It's not holding someone in a hellhole without charges or trial, it is "indefinite detention." It's not kidnapping, it is "extraordinary rendition." It's not murder or assassination, it is "targeted killing." It's not torture, it is "enhanced interrogation." It's not wildly and patently illegal and immoral on its face, it is "war."
We are a lessened nation nine years later, and much of the damage has been done by our own hand. It is one thing for people to react with fear and rage after an outrageous act of violence. It is quite another for the leaders of those people to exploit that fear and rage for their own dark and greedy purposes, and nine years later, we are down in the ditch thanks to exactly that sort of behavior. Thousands of American soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tens of thousands more have been grievously maimed. Millions of civilians in those two countries have been slaughtered or shattered, but we may never know the true scope of the carnage, because "we don't do body counts."
It is not all darkness, however, because we also have this, from the second president to take up residence in the White House since that day:
President Obama concluded his press conference today with a statement on the importance of protecting the rights of American Muslims. "We don't differentiate between them and us," he said. "It's just us. And that is a principle that I think is going to be very important for us to sustain."
Obama was asked about the controversial Park51 Islamic center, and said: "I think I've been pretty clear on my position here. And that is: This country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal, that they have certain inalienable rights, and one of those inalienable rights is to practice their religion freely."
"What that means," he continued, "is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site."
"We've got millions of Muslim Americans, our fellow citizens in this country," Obama said. "They're going to school with our kids. They're our neighbors. They're our friends. They're our coworkers. And when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?"
That’s about exactly right, despite the sorry fact that it comes from the same president who has been helpless to refrain from perpetuating – or all too eager to perpetuate – the barbaric and anti-American practices that have become all too commonplace in the nine years since that day. In this, he must not be allowed to lead us, because the grooves of this manner of leadership are too deeply cut into the road for him to easily deviate. In this, we must lead him, and I suspect he will follow if given the chance.
Nine years later, one truth remains: America is an idea, a dream, a hope that has yet to be realized. Take away our people, our cities, our roads, our crops, our armies and navies and bombs and guns, take all of that away and there is still the idea, as vibrant and vital as it was when the Founders first put ink to parchment and changed the world. Everyone you know owns a heritage that began somewhere else; we are all different in so many ways, and all that binds us is the ink on that parchment and the ideas therein contained. We are all our brother’s and sister’s keeper, beholden to one another, all of us children of that idea.
Nine years ago, we were forced into an accounting of how dear that idea is to us, and were found wanting. Nine years later, we still are. The idea deserves better than what we have given to it. We can continue in this fashion, or we can summon within ourselves the will and wisdom to locate those better angels of our nature that are surely there, waiting for us.
Let us try, at least, to locate them, and make them sing. 365 days from now, we will be marking the passage of a decade since that day. What a proper moment to celebrate a new beginning, a renewed focus on how we can dedicate ourselves to the daily creation of that more perfect union we know is possible. What a chance to transform a day of sorrow and hatred into a day of somber recognition of our flaws, our faults, and the boundless possibilities of the idea that is, still, us.
http://www.truth-out.org/since-that-day63150
I think about that day when I hear the engines. Of course I do. It was nine years ago, but still, for me, it is the sound of airplane engines that brings it all back, if only for a moment.
Everyone has a story about where they were on that day. One friend of mine, a cook, was buried in the kitchen for the breakfast rush and had no idea what was going on until the orders dried up. He walked out of the kitchen wondering what was going on to find everyone staring dumbstruck at the television. Another friend of mine was working at a brokerage house in San Francisco. He didn't have a television and liked to listen to music on headphones during his commute to work. He got to work and started calling various extensions at the New York home office in the World Trade Center, but nobody was picking up. It wasn't until his boss came in and told him what had happened that he realized he had been calling dead people.
I was a teacher, and it was the first day of school. I was the first person in the building to find out what was going on, and I ran around from teacher to teacher letting them know what had happened before hauling two televisions out of the library closet so we could all watch together. I was shattered, but the children were terrified, and so I had to hold myself together and reassure them, even as the sound of fighter jets started roaring overhead. One of my students heard the news and turned white, because her father was supposed to be at a meeting in the Trade Center that morning. He survived, many others did not. That night, I bought a bottle of brown liquor on the way home and drank it off in front of my own television as those images were seared into my memory forever.
When all is said and done, someone once said, there's nothing left to do or say. There are 300 million versions of this story in America, and billions more around the world. Everyone remembers where they were, and what they were doing, on that day. Give anyone you meet a chance, and they'll tell you all about it.
Nine years, four national elections, two wars and two presidents since that day, and where are we now as a nation? Broke, deranged and dangerous pretty much sums it up. We have Christian-Taliban pastors in Florida with filthy souls threatening to burn the Qu'ran, as if such an act had any meaning beyond a desire to make money, and a national news media apparatus all too happy to give them all the ink and air time he could ever wish for. We have seething crowds threatening arson and murder because a Muslim community center might get built next to a strip club on the site of a defunct coat store. We have national caricatures like Sarah Palin charging people more than $200 for the chance to meet with her on that day, as if she has any significance at all. We've got stabbings and beatings and firebombings, and this is nine years later.
We are a nation of euphemisms now. It's not spying on the American people, it is "national security." It's not holding someone in a hellhole without charges or trial, it is "indefinite detention." It's not kidnapping, it is "extraordinary rendition." It's not murder or assassination, it is "targeted killing." It's not torture, it is "enhanced interrogation." It's not wildly and patently illegal and immoral on its face, it is "war."
We are a lessened nation nine years later, and much of the damage has been done by our own hand. It is one thing for people to react with fear and rage after an outrageous act of violence. It is quite another for the leaders of those people to exploit that fear and rage for their own dark and greedy purposes, and nine years later, we are down in the ditch thanks to exactly that sort of behavior. Thousands of American soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tens of thousands more have been grievously maimed. Millions of civilians in those two countries have been slaughtered or shattered, but we may never know the true scope of the carnage, because "we don't do body counts."
It is not all darkness, however, because we also have this, from the second president to take up residence in the White House since that day:
President Obama concluded his press conference today with a statement on the importance of protecting the rights of American Muslims. "We don't differentiate between them and us," he said. "It's just us. And that is a principle that I think is going to be very important for us to sustain."
Obama was asked about the controversial Park51 Islamic center, and said: "I think I've been pretty clear on my position here. And that is: This country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal, that they have certain inalienable rights, and one of those inalienable rights is to practice their religion freely."
"What that means," he continued, "is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site."
"We've got millions of Muslim Americans, our fellow citizens in this country," Obama said. "They're going to school with our kids. They're our neighbors. They're our friends. They're our coworkers. And when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?"
That’s about exactly right, despite the sorry fact that it comes from the same president who has been helpless to refrain from perpetuating – or all too eager to perpetuate – the barbaric and anti-American practices that have become all too commonplace in the nine years since that day. In this, he must not be allowed to lead us, because the grooves of this manner of leadership are too deeply cut into the road for him to easily deviate. In this, we must lead him, and I suspect he will follow if given the chance.
Nine years later, one truth remains: America is an idea, a dream, a hope that has yet to be realized. Take away our people, our cities, our roads, our crops, our armies and navies and bombs and guns, take all of that away and there is still the idea, as vibrant and vital as it was when the Founders first put ink to parchment and changed the world. Everyone you know owns a heritage that began somewhere else; we are all different in so many ways, and all that binds us is the ink on that parchment and the ideas therein contained. We are all our brother’s and sister’s keeper, beholden to one another, all of us children of that idea.
Nine years ago, we were forced into an accounting of how dear that idea is to us, and were found wanting. Nine years later, we still are. The idea deserves better than what we have given to it. We can continue in this fashion, or we can summon within ourselves the will and wisdom to locate those better angels of our nature that are surely there, waiting for us.
Let us try, at least, to locate them, and make them sing. 365 days from now, we will be marking the passage of a decade since that day. What a proper moment to celebrate a new beginning, a renewed focus on how we can dedicate ourselves to the daily creation of that more perfect union we know is possible. What a chance to transform a day of sorrow and hatred into a day of somber recognition of our flaws, our faults, and the boundless possibilities of the idea that is, still, us.
http://www.truth-out.org/since-that-day63150
G.O.P. Leader Is Tightly Bound to Lobbyists:John Boehner
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON — House Democrats were preparing late last year for the first floor vote on the financial regulatory overhaul when Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio and other Republican leaders summoned more than 100 industry lobbyists to Capitol Hill for a private strategy session.
The bill’s passage in the House already seemed inevitable. But Mr. Boehner and his deputies told the Wall Street lobbyists and trade association leaders that by teaming up, they could still perhaps block its final passage or at least water it down.
“We need you to get out there and speak up against this,” Mr. Boehner said that December afternoon, according to three people familiar with his remarks, while also warning against cutting side deals with Democrats.
That sort of alliance — they won a few skirmishes, though they lost the war on the regulatory bill — is business as usual for Mr. Boehner, the House minority leader and would-be speaker if Republicans win the House in November. He maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.
They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns over the years, provided him rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.
Some of the lobbyists readily acknowledge routinely seeking his office’s help — calling the congressman and his aides as often as several times a week — to advance their agenda in Washington. And in many cases, Mr. Boehner has helped them out.
As Democrats increasingly try to cast the Ohio congressman as the face of the Republican Party — President Obama mentioned his name eight times in a speech last week — and as Mr. Boehner becomes more visible, his ties to lobbyists, cultivated since he arrived here in 1991, are coming under attack.
The woman he hopes to replace, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, derided him on Friday as having met “countless times with special-interest lobbyists in an effort to stop tough legislation” that would regulate corporations and protect consumers. And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, through a spokeswoman, charged that he “epitomizes the smoked-filled, backroom, special-interest deal making that turns off voters about Washington.”
Mr. Boehner, who declined to be interviewed for this article, and his lobbyist allies ridicule such criticism as politically motivated by desperate Democrats. His actions, they say, simply reflect the pro-business, antiregulatory philosophy that he has espoused for more than three decades, dating back to when Mr. Boehner, the son of a tavern owner, ran a small plastics company in Ohio. And fielding requests from lobbyists is nothing unusual, he says.
“I get lobbied every day by somebody,” he said last month after a speech in Cleveland. “It could be by my wife. It could be the bellman. It goes on all day, everyday, everyplace.”
Mr. Boehner — a 60-year-old, perpetually tanned, sharply tailored, chain-smoking golfer — is not as fiery as Newt Gingrich or as unrelenting an arm-twister as Tom DeLay, two of his Republican predecessors in top House posts. It is his reputation as a “Chamber of Commerce” Republican and his fund-raising skills — he has raised $36 million for Republican causes during this election cycle, more than almost anyone else in his party — that explain, in part, his rise.
If elected as his party’s leader in the House, Mr. Boehner will certainly lean on his industry allies for help as he builds coalitions necessary to push legislation through Congress, his office acknowledges. His friends say there is nothing wrong with that.
“Does he have a lot of relationships in this city? Yes, absolutely,” said Mark Isakowitz, a friend whose Republican firm represents more than three dozen financial, telecommunications, energy and consumer products companies as diverse as Coca-Cola and Zurich Financial Services. “But I think all the good lawmakers do.”
Mr. Boehner won some of his first national headlines back in 1996 after he was caught handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to fellow Republicans on the House floor. Then the fourth-ranking House Republican, Mr. Boehner said he had broken no rules and was simply assisting his lobbyist friends, who were contributing to other Republicans’ campaigns.
His business-friendly reputation was enhanced through the weekly powwows he organized on Capitol Hill nicknamed the Thursday Group, a gathering of conservative leaders and business lobbyists whom he relied on to help push the party’s legislative agenda. The Thursday gathering was disbanded after a Republican power struggle that cost him his leadership position.
But he continued to routinely meet with business leaders, particularly in his role as chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee, and returned to power as House G.O.P. leader in 2006. Several of the onetime Thursday regulars, along with some newcomers, are among the close-knit group that routinely call on Mr. Boehner’s office for client matters, write checks to his campaign and socialize with him.
That tight circle includes Mr. Isakowitz; Bruce Gates, a lobbyist for the cigarette maker Altria; Nicholas E. Calio, a Citigroup lobbyist; and two former aides, Marc Lampkin and Sam Geduldig, both now financial services lobbyists.
The tobacco industry is particularly well represented, with both Mr. Gates and John Fish, a lobbyist for R. J. Reynolds, maker of Camel cigarettes, in the group. People affiliated with those companies have contributed at least $340,000 to Mr. Boehner’s political campaigns, with Mr. Gates being the top individual donor among the thousands during Mr. Boehner’s political career, according to a tally by the Center for Public Integrity.
While many lawmakers in each party have networks of donors, lobbyists and former aides who now represent corporate interests, Mr. Boehner’s ties seem especially deep. His clique even has a nickname on Capitol Hill, Boehner Land. The members of this inner circle said their association with Mr. Boehner translates into open access to him and his staff.
“He likes to bring similarly minded people together to try to advance legislation or oppose it,” said Drew Maloney, a lobbyist at Ogilvy Government Relations. “That is how you get things done.”
One lobbyist in the club — after lauding each staff member in Mr. Boehner’s office that he routinely calls to ask for help — ticked off the list of recent issues for which he had won the lawmaker’s backing: combating fee increases for the oil industry, fighting a proposed cap on debit card fees, protecting tax breaks for hedge fund executives and opposing a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
Still, with Mr. Boehner and his party in the minority, they often lost the fights.
But despite the recent string of defeats on the House floor, Mr. Boehner has benefited from his alliance with lobbyists.
From 2000 to 2007, Mr. Boehner flew at least 45 times, often with his wife, Debbie, on corporate jets provided by companies including R. J. Reynolds. (As required, Mr. Boehner reimbursed part of the costs.)
In addition, over the last decade, he has taken 41 other trips paid for by corporate sponsors or industry groups, often to popular golf spots. Those trips make him one of the top House beneficiaries of such travel, which has recently been curbed as a result of changes in ethics rules in Washington.
Mr. Boehner continues to travel to popular golf destinations on a corporate-subsidized tab, although now it is paid for through his political action committee, the Freedom Project. In the last 18 months, it has spent at least $67,000 at the Ritz Carlton Naples in Florida, at least $20,000 at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Va., and at least $29,000 at the Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio, federal records show, for fund-raising events.
In June, with the prospects for a Republican takeover of the House rising, Mr. Boehner moved to accelerate his fund-raising effort, starting what he called the Boehner for Speaker campaign. The idea was to use his high profile to draw large donations that would be mostly allocated to help elect other House Republicans.
He turned again to the same group of lobbyists, former aides and friends during a July meeting at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee.
“The wave is there, there is a rebellion in the country, and we have good candidates,” Mr. Boehner told his supporters, one of the lobbyists present at the meeting recalled. “But I don’t want to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because we have not raised enough money. They might be able to stop us with a wall of money.”
Mr. Calio of Citigroup was among the first to write a large check. So far, a party spokesman said, the campaign has raised nearly $2 million. Mr. Boehner has helped raise millions more in the last six weeks for Republican House candidates across the country and the party, appearing at more than 40 fund-raisers.
The Boehner for Speaker campaign offers donors who give the maximum amount special perks, like “meetings with Leader Boehner and much much more.”
But his lobbyist friends and former aides said these incentives did not mean too much, because they already had plenty of access to Mr. Boehner. They just now want to see him as the speaker of the House.
“He knows this is going to be a tough election,” said Samuel J. Baptista, a friend, golf partner and lobbyist whose clients include Goldman Sachs and Discover Financial. “But people who underestimate him really do so at their own peril.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/us/politics/12boehner.html?_r=1&exprod=myyahoo&pagewanted=print
WASHINGTON — House Democrats were preparing late last year for the first floor vote on the financial regulatory overhaul when Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio and other Republican leaders summoned more than 100 industry lobbyists to Capitol Hill for a private strategy session.
The bill’s passage in the House already seemed inevitable. But Mr. Boehner and his deputies told the Wall Street lobbyists and trade association leaders that by teaming up, they could still perhaps block its final passage or at least water it down.
“We need you to get out there and speak up against this,” Mr. Boehner said that December afternoon, according to three people familiar with his remarks, while also warning against cutting side deals with Democrats.
That sort of alliance — they won a few skirmishes, though they lost the war on the regulatory bill — is business as usual for Mr. Boehner, the House minority leader and would-be speaker if Republicans win the House in November. He maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.
They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns over the years, provided him rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.
Some of the lobbyists readily acknowledge routinely seeking his office’s help — calling the congressman and his aides as often as several times a week — to advance their agenda in Washington. And in many cases, Mr. Boehner has helped them out.
As Democrats increasingly try to cast the Ohio congressman as the face of the Republican Party — President Obama mentioned his name eight times in a speech last week — and as Mr. Boehner becomes more visible, his ties to lobbyists, cultivated since he arrived here in 1991, are coming under attack.
The woman he hopes to replace, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, derided him on Friday as having met “countless times with special-interest lobbyists in an effort to stop tough legislation” that would regulate corporations and protect consumers. And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, through a spokeswoman, charged that he “epitomizes the smoked-filled, backroom, special-interest deal making that turns off voters about Washington.”
Mr. Boehner, who declined to be interviewed for this article, and his lobbyist allies ridicule such criticism as politically motivated by desperate Democrats. His actions, they say, simply reflect the pro-business, antiregulatory philosophy that he has espoused for more than three decades, dating back to when Mr. Boehner, the son of a tavern owner, ran a small plastics company in Ohio. And fielding requests from lobbyists is nothing unusual, he says.
“I get lobbied every day by somebody,” he said last month after a speech in Cleveland. “It could be by my wife. It could be the bellman. It goes on all day, everyday, everyplace.”
Mr. Boehner — a 60-year-old, perpetually tanned, sharply tailored, chain-smoking golfer — is not as fiery as Newt Gingrich or as unrelenting an arm-twister as Tom DeLay, two of his Republican predecessors in top House posts. It is his reputation as a “Chamber of Commerce” Republican and his fund-raising skills — he has raised $36 million for Republican causes during this election cycle, more than almost anyone else in his party — that explain, in part, his rise.
If elected as his party’s leader in the House, Mr. Boehner will certainly lean on his industry allies for help as he builds coalitions necessary to push legislation through Congress, his office acknowledges. His friends say there is nothing wrong with that.
“Does he have a lot of relationships in this city? Yes, absolutely,” said Mark Isakowitz, a friend whose Republican firm represents more than three dozen financial, telecommunications, energy and consumer products companies as diverse as Coca-Cola and Zurich Financial Services. “But I think all the good lawmakers do.”
Mr. Boehner won some of his first national headlines back in 1996 after he was caught handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to fellow Republicans on the House floor. Then the fourth-ranking House Republican, Mr. Boehner said he had broken no rules and was simply assisting his lobbyist friends, who were contributing to other Republicans’ campaigns.
His business-friendly reputation was enhanced through the weekly powwows he organized on Capitol Hill nicknamed the Thursday Group, a gathering of conservative leaders and business lobbyists whom he relied on to help push the party’s legislative agenda. The Thursday gathering was disbanded after a Republican power struggle that cost him his leadership position.
But he continued to routinely meet with business leaders, particularly in his role as chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee, and returned to power as House G.O.P. leader in 2006. Several of the onetime Thursday regulars, along with some newcomers, are among the close-knit group that routinely call on Mr. Boehner’s office for client matters, write checks to his campaign and socialize with him.
That tight circle includes Mr. Isakowitz; Bruce Gates, a lobbyist for the cigarette maker Altria; Nicholas E. Calio, a Citigroup lobbyist; and two former aides, Marc Lampkin and Sam Geduldig, both now financial services lobbyists.
The tobacco industry is particularly well represented, with both Mr. Gates and John Fish, a lobbyist for R. J. Reynolds, maker of Camel cigarettes, in the group. People affiliated with those companies have contributed at least $340,000 to Mr. Boehner’s political campaigns, with Mr. Gates being the top individual donor among the thousands during Mr. Boehner’s political career, according to a tally by the Center for Public Integrity.
While many lawmakers in each party have networks of donors, lobbyists and former aides who now represent corporate interests, Mr. Boehner’s ties seem especially deep. His clique even has a nickname on Capitol Hill, Boehner Land. The members of this inner circle said their association with Mr. Boehner translates into open access to him and his staff.
“He likes to bring similarly minded people together to try to advance legislation or oppose it,” said Drew Maloney, a lobbyist at Ogilvy Government Relations. “That is how you get things done.”
One lobbyist in the club — after lauding each staff member in Mr. Boehner’s office that he routinely calls to ask for help — ticked off the list of recent issues for which he had won the lawmaker’s backing: combating fee increases for the oil industry, fighting a proposed cap on debit card fees, protecting tax breaks for hedge fund executives and opposing a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
Still, with Mr. Boehner and his party in the minority, they often lost the fights.
But despite the recent string of defeats on the House floor, Mr. Boehner has benefited from his alliance with lobbyists.
From 2000 to 2007, Mr. Boehner flew at least 45 times, often with his wife, Debbie, on corporate jets provided by companies including R. J. Reynolds. (As required, Mr. Boehner reimbursed part of the costs.)
In addition, over the last decade, he has taken 41 other trips paid for by corporate sponsors or industry groups, often to popular golf spots. Those trips make him one of the top House beneficiaries of such travel, which has recently been curbed as a result of changes in ethics rules in Washington.
Mr. Boehner continues to travel to popular golf destinations on a corporate-subsidized tab, although now it is paid for through his political action committee, the Freedom Project. In the last 18 months, it has spent at least $67,000 at the Ritz Carlton Naples in Florida, at least $20,000 at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Va., and at least $29,000 at the Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio, federal records show, for fund-raising events.
In June, with the prospects for a Republican takeover of the House rising, Mr. Boehner moved to accelerate his fund-raising effort, starting what he called the Boehner for Speaker campaign. The idea was to use his high profile to draw large donations that would be mostly allocated to help elect other House Republicans.
He turned again to the same group of lobbyists, former aides and friends during a July meeting at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee.
“The wave is there, there is a rebellion in the country, and we have good candidates,” Mr. Boehner told his supporters, one of the lobbyists present at the meeting recalled. “But I don’t want to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because we have not raised enough money. They might be able to stop us with a wall of money.”
Mr. Calio of Citigroup was among the first to write a large check. So far, a party spokesman said, the campaign has raised nearly $2 million. Mr. Boehner has helped raise millions more in the last six weeks for Republican House candidates across the country and the party, appearing at more than 40 fund-raisers.
The Boehner for Speaker campaign offers donors who give the maximum amount special perks, like “meetings with Leader Boehner and much much more.”
But his lobbyist friends and former aides said these incentives did not mean too much, because they already had plenty of access to Mr. Boehner. They just now want to see him as the speaker of the House.
“He knows this is going to be a tough election,” said Samuel J. Baptista, a friend, golf partner and lobbyist whose clients include Goldman Sachs and Discover Financial. “But people who underestimate him really do so at their own peril.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/us/politics/12boehner.html?_r=1&exprod=myyahoo&pagewanted=print
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Study shows majority of Texas companies given taxpayer money to create jobs failed to meet goals
By ERIN MULVANEY / Austin Bureau Dallas Morning News emulvaney@dallasnews.com
AUSTIN — Two-thirds of the companies given taxpayer money from the job creation fund that Gov. Rick Perry has touted as a key reason for Texas’ economic growth failed to meet their promises last year, a study released today finds.
In a study released Wednesday, the progressive watchdog group Texans for Public Justice compared Texas Enterprise Fund contracts to compliance reports that were filed in the governor’s office in 2009. Of the 50 companies that were given a combined $368 million to create or maintain 49,581 jobs by the end of last year, six were terminated, 13 failed to meet promises and 14 were amended to lower job targets or postpone deadlines.
The new study shows a jump from the group’s 2008 study of the fund that showed 42 percent of those companies it reviewed failing to meet their target.
As of June 17, enterprise fund companies were fined $2.8 million by the governor’s office for failing to meet goals. That amounted to 2 percent of the $116 million in state money they had received from the fund so far, the report states.
The Texas Enterprise fund was created in 2003 as a “deal-closing” fund to create new jobs in Texas. The governor, the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the House approve the projects, but the governor’s office can make amendments to the original deals.
The governor’s website says, “The fund has vastly expanded the state’s economic development tools, and as a result, Texas now has one of the best economic environments in the nation.”
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to the study, but the Texas Enterprise Fund website says that to date the fund has brought more than 52,000 new jobs to the state and generated more than $14.3 billion in capital investment. The report has evidence that about 31,000 jobs have been created under the fund, or 56 percent of the claim.
Andrew Wheat, spokesman for Texans for Public Justice, said that because the fund is a centerpiece of Perry’s gubernatorial campaign, there is an overwhelming desire to present it as successful.
“When the facts turned against the portrayal it didn’t change the need to portray it as a success,” Wheat said. “Because of the recession, we need jobs now and need them today.”
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/yahoolatestnews/stories/090810dntexTEF.d362e316.html
AUSTIN — Two-thirds of the companies given taxpayer money from the job creation fund that Gov. Rick Perry has touted as a key reason for Texas’ economic growth failed to meet their promises last year, a study released today finds.
In a study released Wednesday, the progressive watchdog group Texans for Public Justice compared Texas Enterprise Fund contracts to compliance reports that were filed in the governor’s office in 2009. Of the 50 companies that were given a combined $368 million to create or maintain 49,581 jobs by the end of last year, six were terminated, 13 failed to meet promises and 14 were amended to lower job targets or postpone deadlines.
The new study shows a jump from the group’s 2008 study of the fund that showed 42 percent of those companies it reviewed failing to meet their target.
As of June 17, enterprise fund companies were fined $2.8 million by the governor’s office for failing to meet goals. That amounted to 2 percent of the $116 million in state money they had received from the fund so far, the report states.
The Texas Enterprise fund was created in 2003 as a “deal-closing” fund to create new jobs in Texas. The governor, the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the House approve the projects, but the governor’s office can make amendments to the original deals.
The governor’s website says, “The fund has vastly expanded the state’s economic development tools, and as a result, Texas now has one of the best economic environments in the nation.”
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to the study, but the Texas Enterprise Fund website says that to date the fund has brought more than 52,000 new jobs to the state and generated more than $14.3 billion in capital investment. The report has evidence that about 31,000 jobs have been created under the fund, or 56 percent of the claim.
Andrew Wheat, spokesman for Texans for Public Justice, said that because the fund is a centerpiece of Perry’s gubernatorial campaign, there is an overwhelming desire to present it as successful.
“When the facts turned against the portrayal it didn’t change the need to portray it as a success,” Wheat said. “Because of the recession, we need jobs now and need them today.”
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/yahoolatestnews/stories/090810dntexTEF.d362e316.html
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