New York TIMES / March 22, 2012 Study Shows House Members Profit By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON — One accusation long directed at Congress is that lawmakers come to this capital city not just to serve the American people but also to enrich themselves and their families. For the House of Representatives, at least, there is now an encyclopedia of sorts that reinforces this suspicion. A nonprofit ethics group here spent the last nine months examining every member of the House — for campaign spending, budget earmarks, office accounts and lobbying by any relatives — and found that the families of more than half of all the House lawmakers have received payments or otherwise benefited financially from their affiliation with a lawmaker in the two previous election cycles. The 346-page report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, is an extraordinary compendium of creative accounting, self-interested budgeting and generous expense reimbursements. It highlights common practices that translate into tens of millions of dollars in payments to relatives or the lawmakers themselves. There are hundreds of examples to choose from, but here are just a few: Campaign accounts of Representative Ron Paul, a Republican of Texas who is running for the party’s presidential nomination, paid salaries or fees to his daughter, brother, grandson, daughter’s mother-in-law, granddaughter and grandson-in-law, totaling more than $300,000, according to the report. Mr. Paul did not dispute the findings, though Jesse Benton, a spokesman, said, “Any implication that there is anything inappropriate is wildly off base.” more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/us/politics/study-shows-how-house-members-and-families-reap-benefits.html [Meanwhile, according to Bill Maher, GOPsters criticized David Axelrod for referring to Romney's advertising "Mittzkrieg," seeing this play on words as exhibiting anti-Jewish bigotry. (Supposedly, the Nazi Blitzkrieg was more about killing Jews than about winning wars.) I wonder what they think of the fact that TIME Magazine's dubbing the Israeli army's strategy during the 1967 war "Blintzkrieg." ] -- Jim Devine / "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." -- Paul Dirac _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
