Sort of Off Topic: How the heck can we expect things to get better when the country is being run by crooks in it for their own pocket books. Read about Loral and L-3 and how the American public gets raped again and again while congress takes care of their own. ARRGH!
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July 11, 2002 -- THERE'S a distinct whiff of hypocrisy
about the Democratic bid - with Senate Majority Leader
Tom Daschle heading the charge - to paint Bush & Co. as
too "cozy" with big business to really crack down on crooked
CEOs.
It smells of hypocrisy because Daschle is pretty cozy with
big business himself, since it's a major source of his family
income. His wife, Linda, is one of Washington's premier
lobbyists.
But you can fuhgeddaboutit if you want to know how much
money the Daschles rake in from her lobbying as a co-chair
of the "public policy group" at the law/lobbying firm Baker,
Donelson, Bearman & Caldwell.
Tom Daschle is demanding President Bush release every
possible document about a 1990 stock sale to "just let
everybody see what is there."
But unlike lots of senators - not to mention presidents like
Bush - Daschle refuses to release his own tax returns, which
would "just let everybody see" what his wife makes as a
big-business lobbyist.
Daschle spokeswoman Ranit Smelzer defended his refusal,
saying: "Most Americans guard very closely this information
[tax returns], and members of Congress should not be forced
to release it."
Daschle's Senate financial-disclosure forms keep it secret,
too - they just list Linda Daschle's lobbying income from
some of America's biggest firms as "over $1,000." Make that
a lot over $1,000.
Daschle and his wife insist she avoids conflicts of interest
because she doesn't lobby the Senate - though she does
lobby next door in the House, where lawmakers certainly
know her hubby.
Among her clients: American Airlines, the American
Trucking Assn., American Concrete and Pavement
Association, Boeing, Loral Space and Communications,
Northwest Airlines, L-3 Communications, Intelli-check,
Schering-Plough, United Technologies Corp. and more than
a dozen more.
Take Loral, which paid a $14 million fine last January to
settle charges of illegally sending sensitive missile technology
to China.
In 2001 alone - the latest data - Loral paid $460,000 to Linda
Daschle's firm for lobbying by her and four colleagues.
The conflict-of-interest question gets even more delicate
when it comes to L-3 because it involves potential risks to
airline passenger safety.
L-3 hired Linda Daschle and her firm when airlines balked at
buying L-3 bomb-detecting devices to screen airline baggage
because they were inferior to a competitor, The Washington
Post reported last fall.
But after Linda Daschle got on the case, Congress inserted
an "unusually explicit directive" ordering the FAA to buy one
device from L-3 for every rival model from InVision.
"The connections apparently paid off . . . but [last October]
the Transportation Department's inspector general agreed
with industry critics that L-3's machines were not
performing," the newspaper reported. |
