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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (451814)	1/28/2009 3:44:29 PM
From: one_less	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574680

"This kind of corruption will not stop until Congress changes the system ..." ============== Murtha's Pay-to Play Re-election Campaign By Ed Davis Posted on Tue Jan 27, 2009 at 12:39:16 PM EST Rep. John Murtha (D-PA)America went to the polls in record numbers last year to elect a new President and a Congress who, they hoped, would take on the special interests in Washington. But in western Pennsylvania, Rep. Jack Murtha was ignoring the call for change and winning re-election the old-fashioned way: Pay-to-Play. A new Roll Call report says: Facing a surprisingly tough re-election challenge in the closing days of his 2008 campaign, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) called on a well-established network of his earmarking beneficiaries to bail him out. And the defense industry contractors, several of whom had pulled down millions of dollars in Murtha earmarks in the 2009 defense spending bill, responded by flooding his coffers with what amounted to rescue cash. There's more after the jump, all of it bolstering the case for reform on Capitol Hill. This kind of corruption will not stop until Congress changes the system of funding campaigns, ending the reliance on special interest donors -- and beginning a new reliance on small donations and public funds. The Roll Call article went on: The Defense appropriations cardinal's more than $1 million haul in the last two weeks of the campaign included about $40,000 from employees of nine contractors that together received $60.6 million in targeted projects from Murtha last year, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records and House Appropriations Committee documents. Four of those companies are clients of the PMA Group Inc., a lobbying firm founded by a former top Murtha aide that has emerged in recent years as a leading source of the lawmaker's campaign funds. Altogether, PMA employees and their clients contributed more than $110,000 in the final two weeks of the campaign. And while many of those outfits have operations in Murtha's western Pennsylvania district, nine out of every 10 of their checks dropped in from outside the state. PMA is not the only player in Murtha's scheme - along with many other stories, there was this in the Washington Post: A big-game ranch in western Pennsylvania, where longtime Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) threw a lavish $100,000 fundraiser last year, is now at the center of a federal investigation. Last week, federal agents raided a Kuchera Industries facility in Murtha's district along with the homes of the electronic firm's founders, Bill and Ronald Kuchera. Authorities declined to release details of the investigation. commonblog.com