(crossposted at BlueGrassRoots)

What’s the deal with Mitch McConnell being so cozy with people under investigation for bribery of government officials?

First, it was Mitch taking in loads of money from BAE, a foreign company under investigation by a zillion countries, including our own Justice Department (Mitch coincidentally then tried to slip in millions of $ to BAE in an earmark). Now, Mitch has taken $1,000 from Bob Asher, who was convicted of bribing government officials to get contracts for his company.

One must wonder if there is some kind of coorelation here? Why are people under investigation for bribing public officials so eager to give money to Mitch McConnell?

Who knows?

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(crossposted at BlueGrassRoots)

Here’s my column in the current issue of Lexington’s W Weekly. I think it’s a nice welcome to the post-Ernie era for our pal Mitch. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?

When one is presented with the opportunity to provide healthcare to an additional 10 million children from low-income families, most people believe that our government should take advantage of it. In fact, almost 2/3 of both houses of Congress and 80% in opinion polls agree.

Others say, tough luck kiddo. Pull yourself up by your own bootie straps like a real American.

Senator Mitch McConnell would be one of those people.

Though outnumbered in both Congress and public opinion for the past 2 months, Mitch McConnell and George W. Bush have been able to derail the overwhelmingly popular and bipartisan legislation to expand healthcare for such children under the already successful SCHIP program. Despite many Republicans breaking ranks to support and pass the expansion of SCHIP, there were not enough votes to overturn Bush’s veto of the bill. Last week, McConnell again sided with the fringe minority in the Senate by voting against a new version of the bill, which he regards as “wasteful spending” and a stepping stone to “socialized medicine”.

But the Lexington Herald-Leader has recently discovered other avenues for our tax dollars that Mitch McConnell does not regard as “wasteful spending”.

One such avenue would be providing $25 million to a foreign military arms contractor called BAE. This was not $25 million that the Defense Department requested, mind you, but rather money that McConnell snuck into a defense appropriations bill as an earmark (pork, as they say).

And who is BAE? Well, they are a foreign company that is currently under investigation from several different countries, including our own Justice Department, for bribing public officials with hundreds of millions of dollars in order to secure contracts.

It should also be noted that BAE’s PACs and employees have given McConnell at least $53,000 in contributions since 2002. BAE’s subsidiary has also donated $500,000 to the new “McConnell Center” at the University of Louisville.

But I’m sure those two facts have nothing to do with one another.

So what other recipients of our tax dollars are not considered “wasteful spending”? How about clients of powerful Washington, D.C. lobbyist Hunter Bates? He was a top level staffer for McConnell from 1997-2003, and now heads his own lobbying firm, Bates Capital.

Bates represents “Voice for Humanity”, an organization formed to “spread the word of Christ throughout the world”. From 2003-2005, McConnell earmarked $8.3 million dollars to Voice for Humanity, so that they could send small mp3 players to people in Afghanistan. Recordings on these devices were supposed to teach the Afghanis how to have a democracy.

No, seriously.

McConnell has also earmarked $2.5 million to e-Cavern, $2.1 million to Boardpoint LLC and $17 million to Appriss Inc., all of whom paid large fees to hire Bates Capital.

During that time, Bates’ clients have given McConnell a total of over $120,000 in campaign contributions.

Again, maybe it’s just a coincidence.

Or maybe this is just the standard operating procedure for Mitch McConnell. Maybe those who play the game get rewarded, and those who don’t are left behind. You scratch my back, I’ll put $5 million in earmarks in your back pocket.

This kind of behavior, awarding constituents and donors back in your home district, is supposed to be avoided like kryptonite according to the mantra of “fiscal conservativism” within the Republican Party. Republicans like John McCain have long railed against these earmarks slipped into legislation, blaming it for building up massive debt in our federal budget. House Republican leader John Boehner also decries earmarks, saying of his supporters, “if they wanted someone who would raid the federal treasury on their behalf, they should vote for someone else”. Mitch McConnell apparently has no such qualms.

McConnell was a very strong critic of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Bill passed a few years ago that set strict limits on the amount of soft money that individuals could contribute to campaigns. He argued that this was a violation of Americans’ “freedom of speech”. Indeed, money is speech to McConnell. And if you aren’t giving him money, he doesn’t hear you.

McConnell’s war chest for his re-election campaign next year is almost at $10 million, already. And this war chest is full of money from the health insurance industry. So when you see Mitch McConnell fighting so hard with the rest of the fringe minority to block the expansion of SCHIP, just know who is in his ear, whispering sweet nothings. Rest assured, it is not the children of low-income families who cannot afford health insurance.

Perhaps the only way for these kids to get through to Mitch McConnell is to repeal the child labor laws that we’ve had the past century. Hire them as big shot lobbyists, and let them wheel and deal with Mitch on the only level that he understands and respects.

Until then, poor kids who fall through the cracks and don’t have health insurance only have one option when they’re sick. Suck it up, walk it off, and keep pulling up on those bootie straps.

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(crossposted at BlueGrassRoots)

As we see in the NYT editorial this morning, the fringe Republicans in the Senate, led by Mitch McConnell, are obstructing the bipartisan plan to expand health care to more low income children. All so their insurance industry donors can squeeze that very last penny out of the working class:

Cynicism and hypocrisy were on full display in the Senate last week when Republican leaders refused to wait for a possible compromise on a bill that would provide health coverage for millions of uninsured children. Instead, they forced a vote on a bill that they know President Bush will veto, with no chance of being overridden.

For weeks now, the president and his Congressional allies have charged that the Democrats are unwilling to negotiate a compromise on expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-chip, because they want to use Republican opposition as a campaign issue. But it is the Senate’s Republican leaders who are doing their best to block any compromise.

They clearly would prefer to have no bill enacted — and provide ammunition for the president’s campaign to depict Congress as a failure — than do anything meaningful to help children.

The bill up for consideration in the Senate had already passed the House with substantial bipartisan support — but not quite enough votes to overcome another veto. As a result, a few prominent senators from both parties had been meeting with House Republicans to work out a compromise that could attract enough moderate Republicans to overcome a veto. Those talks, according to a key participant, were making “really good progress.”

That is when Senate Republican leaders stepped in and, under the rules, refused to postpone a scheduled vote to allow more negotiations. The result was predictable. The Senate, which has always been enthusiastic about expanding S-chip, approved the House-passed bill by a thumping 64-to-30 vote. But the bill lacks enough Republican support in the House for an override.

The efforts to find a compromise are expected to continue, and we can only hope they ultimately bear fruit. Surely there are enough Republicans in the House who are more concerned with children’s health than with ideological posturing and gamesmanship.

But who is worthy of receiving your tax dollars? How about foreign arms contractors who are under investigation all over the world, including our own Justice Dept., for BRIBERY? How about the same contractor under investigation for BRIBERY that has given Mitch McConnell $16,500 in the last 5 years and gave $500,000 to the “McConnell Center”? Oh yes, they beat out those kids in a landslide.

From James Carroll at the C-J (and a late welcome to the party C-J, I must add! Better late than never on this story…)

WASHINGTON — Over the past decade, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has secured more than $336 million for the building and refurbishing of naval guns in Louisville.

The next installment of $25 million is waiting in the fiscal 2008 defense spending bill.

But two government reform groups want to put a hold on the money because the company that does the work, BAE Systems, is under federal investigation over bribery allegations.

Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group, and the National Legal and Policy Center, which promotes ethics in government, have sent a letter to Senate and House chairmen of the appropriations committees, as well as to the ranking Republicans on those panels. It says the federal funding for BAE and for ProLogic Inc., another company under investigation, is “troubling.”

“If they are being investigated, lawmakers shouldn’t be directing taxpayer dollars to these companies until they’re cleared — or not,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

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Two years ago United Defense — which was not implicated in any alleged wrongdoing — was bought by the British-based BAE and absorbed into that firm.

United Defense contributed $500,000 to the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center for Leadership, created by the senator.

In addition, political action committees associated with United Defense and BAE have given a total of $16,500 to McConnell campaigns since 2002, records show.

According to published reports, BAE has been under investigation by the Department of Justice, as well as European authorities, for its dealings with Saudi Arabia and members of that nation’s royal family as far back as 1985.

BAE has denied that it bribed Saudi royalty as part of an $86 billion arms deal.

“BAE Systems … is proud of our very strong records of ethics, compliance and performance in service to America’s armed forces,” company spokesman Greg Caires said in a statement. “We continue to cooperate with the ongoing Department of Justice investigation, and it would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this time.”

ProLogic is being investigated for allegedly using public money to develop commercial computer software, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company has denied any wrongdoing.

Taxpayers for Common Sense is a longtime critic of so-called earmarks, which are specific amounts of money inserted by lawmakers into congressional spending bills for hometown and home-state projects. The group contends the earmarks amount to special, no-bid contracts that receive little or no scrutiny and often are not requested by federal agencies. (A broader discussion of the issue is on Page A3.)

This is the first time that Taxpayers for Common Sense and the National Legal and Policy Center have requested suspension of earmarks because companies that could benefit were under investigation.

The idea, Ellis said, follows on what House Republicans did after some of their members came under investigation for alleged wrongdoing: The lawmakers were required to relinquish committee posts.

“The way we looked at it, this is now extending to contractors and companies” under the shadow of investigation, he said.

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(crossposted at BlueGrassRoots)

From John Cheves at the LHL, who’s been all over Mitchie.

Reform groups in Washington are demanding that Congress strip $25 million in earmarks that Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is pushing for a British defense contractor facing a criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and an audit by the U.S. Defense Department.

“Public confidence in Congress continues to wane, and wasteful spending and corruption continue to be primary causes of public concern,” the National Legal and Policy Center and Taxpayers for Common Sense wrote Wednesday to the Senate and House appropriations committees.

Unless Congress removes McConnell’s earmarks for BAE Systems, a major McConnell campaign donor, it sends “the message that the way to success in getting taxpayers’ money is to put your facilities in key congressional districts, give campaign donations to those congressmen, and hope the Congress rewards you despite an ongoing federal investigation,” the groups wrote.

The Herald-Leader first reported on the earmarks Saturday.

McConnell defended his earmarks in an e-mail to the Herald-Leader this week, saying the money helps BAE to keep jobs in Kentucky.

BAE is based in Great Britain but has worldwide operations, including a Louisville factory that makes naval guns and employs 322. McConnell has taken at least $53,000 in campaign donations from BAE’s political-action committees and employees since his 2002 re-election. United Defense Industries, which BAE purchased two years ago, pledged $500,000 to a political-science foundation the senator created, the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville.

In June, BAE confirmed that the Justice Department is investigating possible corruption in its Saudi Arabian deals. According to British news reports, BAE set up a slush fund with hundreds of millions of dollars in a Washington, D.C., bank to bribe Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan to win weapons contracts. Bandar, who heads the Saudi National Security Council, has denied the allegation.

Audit on contracts pending

Also, State Department records show that American diplomats have worried in recent years about BAE allegedly bribing officials in several other countries. The Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General in August opened an audit into Army contracts awarded to BAE, to determine whether the rules were followed. That audit, prompted by tips to the Pentagon about BAE, is pending.

BAE has declined to comment. After disclosing the Justice Department probe, it launched an internal ethics review, and its chief executive officer announced his retirement earlier than expected.

McConnell, the Senate minority leader, put $25 million for three BAE naval weapons projects in the 2008 defense appropriations bill, which is expected to go to a conference committee next week to iron out differences between the Senate and House versions.

McConnell’s office did not return repeated calls for comment.

*******************

But critics say McConnell is propping up a company that apparently can’t compete without him. While it sounds good for a senator to defend jobs, “we should be spending federal money where and as we need to, not to keep the lights on in someone’s district,” said David Williams, vice president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington watchdog group.

“I want to know when Sen. McConnell became the secretary of defense,” Williams said. “The Pentagon has to sit down every year, draw up its priorities and budget its money accordingly. Who is Mitch McConnell to insist that we fund these projects?”

Dropping of earmarks urged

Apart from the controversy over earmarks, the Justice Department investigation of BAE should prompt McConnell to suspend his assistance for the company, said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, one of the reform groups that urged the appropriations committees to drop the earmarks.

Boehm’s group and Taxpayers for Common Sense, which joined it in signing the protest letter, are non-partisan, non-profit watchdogs that monitor federal spending for signs of waste, fraud and abuse. Boehm is a former Republican congressional aide.

Boehm said news of McConnell’s BAE earmarks have “created quite a buzz around Capitol Hill,” including a front-page story in yesterday’s Roll Call, a newspaper, which covers Congress. The appropriations panels have not responded to his letter yet — their attention this week is on other spending bills — but he said he’s hopeful common sense will prevail.

“This is really a questionable use of federal funds,” Boehm said. “I’d love to see a poll asking, ‘Do you want your tax money going to a company currently under … investigation?’ I bet you’d see a lot of people saying ‘No.’”

Much like Frostgate, this is one scandal that is not going away.

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Just the facts, ma’am.

Just an additional reminder, arms contrator BAE is currently under investigation by the Justice Dept. FOR BRIBING PUBLIC OFFICIALS.

Still no comment from Don Stewart or Mitch McConnell. Based on their behavior in Frostgate, one might jump to conclusions….

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