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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Crimson Ghost who wrote (22761)	7/19/2003 11:20:10 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Campaign Donations Sway Lawmakers' Vote Sat Jul 19, 5:07 PM ET Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo! By JONATHAN D. SALANT, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - You don't need a scorecard to figure out how lawmakers vote on major issues. You just need to tabulate their campaign donations. The Associated Press looked at six measures in the House — medical malpractice, class action lawsuits, overhauling bankruptcy laws, the energy bill, gun manufacturer lawsuits and overtime pay — and compared lawmakers' votes with the financial backing they received from interest groups supporting or opposing the legislation. The House passed five of the six bills and defeated an amendment that would have stopped the Bush administration from rewriting the rules for overtime pay. In the vast majority of cases, the biggest recipients of interest group money voted the way their donors wanted, according to the AP's computer-assisted analysis of campaign finance data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Groups that outspent opponents got the bills they wanted in five of the six cases examined by the AP. For example, House members voting to ban lawsuits against gun manufacturers and distributors averaged more than $173 from supporters of gun owners' rights for every $1 those groups gave to bill opponents. Overall, gun rights groups gave $1.2 million to House members during the 2002 elections while supporters of gun control gave $27,250. "We have a very loyal and very generous membership that recognizes the significance of electing officials who respect their Second Amendment freedoms," said Chris W. Cox, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association. Candice Nelson, an associate professor of political science at American University and director of the school's Campaign Management Institute, said interest groups see campaign donations as investments. "You want to make sure to get like-minded people elected," she said. Lawmakers reject a connection between votes and money. "There was never a discussion of, `If you do this, I'll do that,'" said Rep. John Linder (news, bio, voting record), R-Ga., who has raised millions of dollars for House Republicans. "People will write checks because they think we're working hard to do our best." The AP analysis also found: _Supporters of doctor-backed legislation limiting noneconomic damages for patients injured by medical malpractice averaged $1.41 in campaign contributions from physicians and other health professionals for every $1 given to lawmakers against the measure. Opponents of the bill received $1.85 from lawyers, who objected to curbs on awards, for every $1 given to those who voted yes. Lawyers gave $21.3 million to House members during the 2002 campaign while health professionals gave $16.7 million. _House members who sided with trial lawyers and voted against shifting class action lawsuits from state courts to more restrictive federal courts averaged of $1.63 from attorneys for every $1 given to legislation supporters. Businesses contributed $276.7 million to House members, compared with $21.3 million for lawyers. _Backers of legislation making it harder for consumers to erase their debts in bankruptcy court received, on average, $2.13 from the credit card and finance industries for every $1 given to bill opponents. Those industries gave $2 million; consumer groups gave $1,298. _Lawmakers voting for an energy bill that would open to drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska averaged $4.64 from the oil and gas industry for every $1 given to those who voted no. Opponents averaged $12.99 from environmental groups for every $1 contributed to bill supporters. The oil industry gave $5.8 million; environmentalists, $751,079. _House members who voted to overturn Bush administration efforts to rewrite rules governing overtime, which unions said would take the premium pay away from as many as 8 million workers, received $10.40 from labor for every $1 given to lawmakers who opposed the motion. Unions gave $33.7 million in 2002 to business' $276.7 million. "People make these political contributions for a reason," said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. "They're making them to get some benefit, and the benefit is often the legislation." Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), a top Democratic fund-raiser, disputed the idea that donors try to buy support. "Never did I ever feel like I had to support or oppose any particular legislation based upon a contribution," Kennedy said. Some lawmakers differed with the interest groups' positions despite receiving sizable campaign contributions. For instance, Rep. Sherrod Brown (news, bio, voting record), D-Ohio, voted against the malpractice bill even after getting $224,352 from health care professionals, and Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Mich., backed the class action legislation despite receiving $145,075 from lawyers. Still, only two of the 140 House members who opposed the gun liability bill — Reps. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., and Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. — received any pro-gun contributions. With doctors retiring early or dropping specialties because of rising malpractice insurance premiums, the American Medical Association made sure candidates were aware of that issue. The association's political action committee gave $2.5 million to federal candidates for the 2002 elections. Only four PACs gave more, including that of the trial lawyers. "What the PAC tries to do is make sure that candidates are in office who will protect patients' interests and keep physicians in the practice of medicine," said AMA President Donald Palmisano, a New Orleans surgeon. "That's why we made medical liability reform our No. 1 priority." ___

To: Crimson Ghost who wrote (22761)	7/20/2003 2:28:40 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 89467

"Wolfowitz of Arabia" The man the left loves to hate. Getting to Know the Iraqis By Jim Hoagland Sunday, July 20, 2003; Washington Post AL TURABAH, Iraq -- Lionized by conservatives and denounced by liberals as the architect of the second Gulf War, Paul Wolfowitz sits cross-legged in the blowing dust of a hall made of reeds and perspires visibly as a tribal sheik pleads for support. Wolfowitz's blue blazer and red tie add to his discomfort; but the U.S. deputy defense secretary insists on showing respect to a people he has almost certainly helped save from extinction. Watching him in the fiery 115-degree heat and the blinding glare of a parched wasteland that stretches far beyond the horizon, you know that there is nowhere else in the world Wolfowitz would rather be. We have flown by helicopter 100 miles northeast of Basrah and descended into a man-made inferno on the eastern edge of what once were Iraq's lush and productive marsh lands. Today, that territory is a salinated desert, the product of Saddam Hussein's wrath against the half-million people known as Marsh Arabs. For more than a decade, the Iraqi tyrant drained and diverted water from their lands. His genocidal campaign here was even more devastating than his serial wars on the Kurds in northern Iraq. An estimated 300,000 Marsh Arabs perished. Forcibly resettled in what is as close to Hell as I ever want to experience, the survivors here have re-created a traditional gathering hall that Wolfowitz is visiting. On this five-day fact-finding trip that began in Baghdad Thursday, Wolfowitz has made a point of putting Hussein's victims rather than himself in the spotlight. Also on his schedule is a visit to a mass grave in the Shiite heartland and a stop in Kurdistan. At each station, he talks repeatedly -- his critics might say obsessively -- about the Baathist regime's crimes against humanity. Isn't he concerned, I ask later, that he seems to be dwelling on the past when Iraq needs to secure its future? Is he seeking to justify a regime change he pursued relentlessly for two decades by raking up deeds that are monstrous but overtaken by the vast new problems of liberated Iraq? For once, Wolfowitz does not pause to reflect judiciously before responding to a question. Trained as a professor of international relations, he has become passionate about the need for and possibilities of change in Iraq and the Arab world at large. That passion today drives much of the Bush administration's policy in the greater Middle East. "It is important to offer firsthand testimony about things I have only read in books until now," the 59-year-old defense intellectual says. "That part of history I am observing -- the destruction, the fear and trembling that the old regime induced in its subjects -- is still alive in the minds of many Iraqis. We have to be aware that things could go backwards here if we do not put to rest that part of their history." Wolfowitz continues: "I plead guilty to optimism -- but not excessive optimism -- that these are remarkable people who can achieve a change in their lives that will also mean much for the whole region, even if there is more unease than I would have hoped to see at this stage." This grueling trip has confirmed rather than shaken the long-distance vision of Iraq that Wolfowitz began to develop in 1979 when, as a junior policy analyst at the Pentagon, he identified Iraq as a regional challenge for the United States. This was, he recalls, "when others pooh-poohed" the idea. "You can be elated that these people are free but still remember how much they suffered and how much of that suffering was unnecessarily prolonged," Wolfowitz says, referring indirectly to the premature ending of the Gulf war in 1991 by the first Bush administration. "At least there was still a Marsh Arab civilization capable of being preserved. They would not have lasted another 12 years." Critics who cast him as the leader of a neo-conservative, pro-Israeli cabal that has seized control of the administration's Middle East policy deride him as Wolfowitz of Arabia. But such critics ignore Wolfowitz's deep intellectual interest in Arab society and his firm belief that it can reform itself, especially if given encouragement from outside. In his spare time, Wolfowitz reads Arab writers such as Egypt's Alifa Rifaat, whose collection of short stories, "Distant View of a Minaret," graphically portrays the frustration of women in purdah and other restrictions they face. "It is important for Iraqis to show what Arabs can do when they live in freedom," he says to the local leaders gathered here. He has arranged to meet them in the company of Britain's Baroness Emma Nicholson, the redoubtable human rights campaigner who has championed the Marsh Arabs in the European Parliament. "What we are seeing," Wolfowitz tells me later, "eliminates any moral doubt about whether this was a war against Iraq, or a war for Iraq. This was a war for Iraq." washingtonpost.com.