Archive for the ‘Nancy Pelosi’ Category
We certainly are glad we are NOT in Washington D.C. – the stench must be horrible!
Pelosi paid husband with PAC funds
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed nearly $100,000 from her political action committee to her husband’s real estate and investment firm over the past decade, a practice of paying a spouse with political donations that she supported banning last year.
Financial Leasing Services Inc. (FLS), owned by Paul F. Pelosi, has received $99,000 in rent, utilities and accounting fees from the speaker’s “PAC to the Future” over the PAC’s nine-year history.
The payments have quadrupled since Mr. Pelosi took over as treasurer of his wife’s committee in 2007, Federal Election Commission records show. FLS is on track to take in $48,000 in payments this year alone – eight times as much as it received annually from 2000 to 2005, when the committee was run by another treasurer.
Lawmakers’ frequent use of campaign donations to pay relatives emerged as an issue in the 2006 election campaigns, when the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal gave Democrats fodder to criticize Republicans such as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas and Rep. John T. Doolittle of California for putting their wives on their campaign and PAC payrolls for fundraising work.
Last year, Mrs. Pelosi supported a bill that would have banned members of Congress from putting spouses on their campaign staffs. The bill – which passed the House in a voice vote but did not get out of a Senate committee – banned not only direct payments by congressional campaign committees and PACs to spouses for services including consulting and fundraising, but also “indirect compensation,” such as payments to companies that employ spouses.
“Democrats are committed to reforming the way Washington does business,” Mrs. Pelosi said in a press release at the time. “Congressman [Adam] Schiff’s bill will help us accomplish that goal by increasing transparency in election campaigns and preventing the misuse of funds.”
Last week, Mrs. Pelosi’s office said the payments to her husband’s firm were perfectly legal, insisting she is compensating her husband at fair market value for the work his firm has performed for the PAC. But ethical watchdogs said the arrangement sends the wrong message.
“It’s problematic,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonprofit ethics and watchdog group. “From what I understand, Mr. Pelosi doesn’t need the money, but this isn’t the issue. … As speaker of the House, it sends the wrong message. She shouldn’t be putting family members on the payroll.”
A senior adviser to Mrs. Pelosi described the payments to FLS as “business expenses.”
“She’s followed all the appropriate rules and regulations in terms of records and paperwork,” said Brendan Daly, Mrs. Pelosi’s spokesman. “When [former treasurer] Leo McCarthy became ill, she thought that it was best that that firm did the accounting and she’s paid fair market value in San Francisco.”
Between 1999 and 2006, FLS collected $500 per month to cover rent, utilities and equipment for the leadership PAC, according to the FEC records. The PAC’s address is listed as a personal mailbox in San Francisco, across the street from FLS’s Montgomery Street office building, but the rent payments went to an office space.
In early 2007, the PAC’s treasurer, Leo T. McCarthy, former Democratic speaker of the state assembly and lieutenant governor in California, died. Mr. Pelosi took over as treasurer and his company’s PAC payouts rose.
At that point, FLS started charging the PAC $24,000 per year for accounting work. In January 2008, the PAC’s rent – paid to FLS – also quadrupled from $500 to $2,000 per month.
Katie Falkenberg/The Washington Times PARTNERSHIP: Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul F. Pelosi, was by her side at a Democratic event in 2006.
Mr. McCarthy, the previous treasurer, had done the work as a volunteer, according to FEC documents and Jennifer Crider, a senior adviser to Mrs. Pelosi and spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. She said FLS’ accounting fees are in line with costs for other PACs.
The jump in rent was an adjustment to reflect San Francisco’s pricey real estate market, Miss Crider said. The rent was adjusted to $1,250 per month, with $750 in back rent to reflect that the rent should have been increased in mid-2007. This was the first increase since the PAC was established in mid-1999, records show.
Over the first six months of 2008, FLS was the largest vendor for Mrs. Pelosi’s PAC. Brian Wolff, a political consultant, is the second-largest vendor, bringing in $22,500 this year.
FLS’ payments represent 11 percent of the $213,900 the PAC raised over the first half of this year, according to the FEC documents.
PACs, which are designed to help politicians contribute to other candidates and build influence with colleagues, operate under lighter restrictions than traditional campaign committees.
Meredith McGehee, policy director at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said putting family members on a PAC payroll is bound to raise questions and, in some cases, allow for abuse.
“The reality is that under the current system, PACs are rife with self-dealing transactions,” she said. “The laws and regulations could and should be strengthened.
“There is a point now that you’re starting to talk about real money,” she said of Mrs. Pelosi’s PAC. “This is not just a mom-and-pop operation and any self-dealing transaction by a member of Congress is going to get scrutiny, particularly with large amounts of money and prominent members.”
It is illegal for members of Congress to hire family members to work on their official staff, but hiring relatives to work on a campaign or PAC is legal.
To be sure, many political action committees employ or work with family businesses. Last year, CREW found that 19 members of Congress used campaign committees or PACs to purchase services from a family member between 2002 and 2006.
Mrs. Pelosi’s PACs have been in trouble before. In 2004, one of her political action committees, Team Majority, was fined $21,000 by the FEC for accepting donations over federal limits. It was one of two PACs she operated at the same time. The Team Majority PAC was closed shortly after the fine was levied.
Ask your Representative and Senators how Basel II is impacting the bail-out – and why we haven’t heard anything about it on the “news.”
Basel II is the second of the Basel Accords, which are recommendations on banking laws and regulations issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. The purpose of Basel II, which was initially published in June 2004, is to create an international standard that banking regulators can use when creating regulations about how much capital banks need to put aside to guard against the types of financial and operational risks banks face. Advocates of Basel II believe that such an international standard can help protect the international financial system from the types of problems that might arise should a major bank or a series of banks collapse. In practice, Basel II attempts to accomplish this by setting up rigorous risk and capital management requirements designed to ensure that a bank holds capital reserves appropriate to the risk the bank exposes itself to through its lending and investment practices. Generally speaking, these rules mean that the greater risk to which the bank is exposed, the greater the amount of capital the bank needs to hold to safeguard its solvency and overall economic stability.
Do YOU have time to read the Bill that will change the financial landscape? Here it is.
***UPDATE – Apparently when he said “we”, he meant, “we, the Congress” are under a form of in-house martial rule, through Monday. Here is the ruling – To report the martial law rule waiving a requirement of Clause 6(a) of Rule XIII with respect to consideration of any resolution reported from the Rules Committee, through the legislative day of September 29, 2008. It does not apply to any specific measure, but rather grants blanket authority. Committee on Rules.
These are being shown on MTV – be aware, they are disturbing!
You won’t @#$#&$%-ing believe this!
“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
From Forbes
CONTACT YOUR SENATOR AND CONGRESS-PERSON NOW! THEY ARE NOT SAVING THE MARKETS – THEY ARE COVERING THEIR CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES AND YOU WILL PAY FOR IT! TELL THEM NOT TO VOTE FOR THE BAIL-OUT.
AND BY THE WAY – WHY CAN THEY FIND $700,000,000,000 TO BAIL OUT CROOKS, BUT CAN’T “FIX” NEW ORLEANS?!
Nancy Pelosi Calls Bush a “Total Failure”
(CNN) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called President Bush “a total failure” on Thursday, among the California Democrat’s harshest assessments to date of the president.
“God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States — a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject,” Pelosi told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview.
The comments came two days after the president sharply criticized Congress over what he described as relative inaction over the course of the legislative term. At the White House on Wednesday, Bush noted that there were only 26 legislative days left in the fiscal year and said Congress would need to pass a spending bill every other day to “get their fundamental job done.”
“This is not a record to be proud of, and I think the American people deserve better,” Bush said.
In the interview, Pelosi said the president was in no position to criticize Congress and brushed aside the criticisms as “something to talk about because he has no ideas.”
“For him to be challenging Congress when we are trying to sweep up after his mess over and over and over again — at the end of the day, Congress will have passed its responsibility to pass legislation,” she said.
But Pelosi’s comments come as a new Gallup poll registers the lowest level of congressional approval among Americans in the polling organization’s 30-year history of conducting that survey.
That poll showed that its approval rating had reached an anemic 14 percent, while more than 70 percent of those polled said they disapproved of the job Congress is doing.
The House speaker said she doesn’t consider those numbers a negative referendum on the Democrats in charge, saying she thinks they stem largely from Congress’ failure to end the war in Iraq.
“Everything I see says this is about ending the war — ‘I disapprove of Congress’ performance in terms of ending the war,’ ” she said. “In the House, we, of course, have over and over, five or six times, sent to the Senate legislation for a time certain to reduce our deployment in Iraq and bring our troops home safely, honorably and soon. We haven’t been able to get it past the Senate or the president of the United States.
“So, on the basis of that, count me among the 70-some percent,” she continued. “But that is one measure. The other measure that I’m more interested in is the one that talks about what is their view of Democrats. And the generic, who do you prefer to run the country on all of these issues? We’re in double digits in any poll that you can take.”
Freedom Rider: Nancy Pelosi, Public Enemy Number One
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
From Black Agenda Report
“If they were poor and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they would be arrested for loitering, but because they have ‘Impeach Bush’ across their chest, it’s the First Amendment.” – Nancy Pelosi
The Democratic Speaker of the House would like to arrest activists for loitering. Her Quisling like behavior has led protesters to her front door in San Francisco, but she has only herself to blame for the inconveniences she and her rich neighbors now suffer. The great unwashed masses have a right to assemble at her home, her office, or anywhere else they choose in order to exercise what is left of their right to speak freely. Her own words show her level of contempt for the democratic process.
It is clear that Nancy Pelosi’s reign as Speaker has been an absolute disaster for the Democratic party and for the entire nation. Her eagerness to cooperate with the Bush regime is matched only by her incompetence in leading Congress. Under her watch, Congress gave Alberto Gonzales, on his way to riding out of town on a rail, a significant victory by expanding FISA regulations to allow warrantless surveillance of American citizens.
The story of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act debacle has been blamed on Bush. It is true that he once again lied about a terror threat, but it is not true that Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats were innocently stampeded. The Democrats had every intention of caving from the very beginning. Pelosi and the rest of the leadership promised the ACLU and other civil liberties groups that they wouldn’t pass a bill without first investigating the extent of White House law breaking and without consulting them first. They did no such thing. As an ACLU lobbyist put it, “They turned around and screwed us over – and the Constitution – all at once.”
Disappointment in the Democrats, pleas to “grow a spine” miss the point entirely. Pelosi and her clique have no interest in Democracy. They go through the flimsiest pretense of opposing Bush when they have no interest in doing so. Her goal is to preserve the status quo, not to overturn it.
Nancy Pelosi now has stated publicly what she thinks of us, the citizens of this country. We are an irritant to be tolerated, not people with rights that must be respected. Pelosi is an omen, a warning that acceptance of Democrat party actions is the first step on the road to political hell. It is a lesson that must be learned now, before President Hillary Clinton takes office.
The fix is definitely in for Clinton to win the Democratic party nomination. The Democratic candidates’ fundraising prowess versus Republicans is a sign that the big money political donors of both parties are all betting on the Democratic horse.
Clinton’s ascension to the throne now reserved for family dynasties should not be accepted as an absolute victory. The “middle of the road” after Bush is still right wing. Triangulation this time around means more war, New Orleans destroyed and deserted, and more dirty dealings in Congress.
Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of what passes for Congressional leadership have perfected their criminal enterprise. Every act of treachery is followed by lame excuses for inaction. The truly spineless ones, progressives wallowing in denial, foolishly whine, asking each other what is wrong when the answer stares them in the face. The Democratic party is complicit in killing democracy.
Activists must keep protesting at her house and working for her defeat in the 2008 congressional elections. They must also cease cooperating with her. The farce must end before it is too late. Pelosi, like Bush, has no loyalty to her constitutionally based responsibilities. She must no longer be treated as though she is a friend when she has proven herself to be an enemy.
Civil liberties groups and antiwar groups must stop meeting with Pelosi or her staff. They must finally realize that they can only play a role in movement politics. It is said that insanity is defined as repeating the same action over and over yet expecting a different result. Progressives have waged many righteous battles in the last seven years, but they are about to go down in history as insane actors in a badly written play.
Activists must begin making demands. They must demand impeachment, they must demand that New Orleans be rebuilt, they must demand no further funding for occupation in Iraq or for a new war in Iran. Pelosi and her co-conspirators must be called out as the back stabbers that they are. Only then will democracy have any chance of being restored.
Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com. Ms. Kimberley’ maintains an edifying and frequently updated blog at freedomrider.blogspot.com. More of her work is also available at her Black Agenda Report archive page.
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