Thursday, August 25, 2011
Oversight re-hires Bardella, cites multi-millionaire CEO on small businesses
~ Back in March, Kurt Bardella was a rising star working communications for Darrell Issa. Then he was fired for a breach of trust after secretly sharing information with a reporter. Now he has a new job --
as a staffer for the Oversight Committee. But, as Media Matters notes, there are still
major inconsistencies about who knew what, with explicitly conflicting stories. At the time, Issa said that Bardella's superiors were unaware of what he was doing, and fired him after finding out. This time, Bardella's superiors are obviously aware of what he's done, and they're the same superiors. Apparently the breach of trust that was fireable in March is no longer a problem.
~ A little-noted provision of Darrell issa's plan to dramatically scale back the post office is the elimination of discounted rates for non-profits. Non-profits say it would
dramatically reduce their ability to fundraise with direct mail.
~ Back in 2007, Darrell Issa suggested pretty clearly that if then-Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman were to investigate Blackwater, it would be a threat to Waxman's personal safety. But at the same time, he clearly declared that, as members of the Oversight Committee, "we're supposed to allow the administration to do its investigation...
we're not investigators." Which is why it's odd now that Issa is resisting a
request from the Justice Department for records to do with the Fast and Furious investigation. Given Issa's own record of demanding full and unquestioned sharing of documents -- even if they undermine ongoing court cases -- it's even more hypocritical.
~ All year, Issa has been trumping the American Job Creators website as a mechanism for small business owners to provide feedback, positive or negative, about government policies. Currently featured at that site and on the homepage of the Oversight Committee is a video from the CEO of CKE Restaurants -- which had more than
$5.5 billion in revenue in 2007 and employs more than 157,000 people. That's a surprisingly liberal definition of "small business," even from a guy who thinks that
$250,000 a year is middle class.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Issa cites analysis of FCIC Commissioner after nixing bias hearing
Darrell Issa's waded back in to the still-simmering debate over health care reform, again attacking last year's landmark health reforms that he's tried to repeal. But his argument comes from an analysis on the extreme edge of a wide range of public estimates, provided by a professional partisan who's involved in one of Issa's own investigations.
For one,
his math is off, or at least incomplete, relying on an estimate at the extreme fringe of a wide range of different projections:
Issa argues, via former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, that employers will drop coverage because the cost of providing insurance is more than the penalty for not offering it and that workers will simply gravitate toward more affordable government-subsidized plans. But this argument
doesn’t account for the increased compensation employers would have to provide to their employees if they stopped offering insurance or that employees “who have a coverage offer from their employer are
not eligible for premium tax credits unless the coverage offered is seriously deficient.”
Meanwhile, who is Issa relying on when he bases so much of his argument on Holtz-Eakin? Just a few years ago he was directing the CBO, but he imagines it capable of misfiring on its analysis by $1 trillion. After that, he was the senior economic adviser to John McCain on the presidential campaign trail, and then was among the Republicans on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that Issa has been
investigating for months.
If you remember earlier this summer, Issa cancelled a hearing on FCIC at the last minute because it turned out that the facts "
didn't fit the narrative" that he was hoping for. The facts that caused the cancellation were a laundry list of conflicts of interest, ethics violations and inaccurate congressional testimony. One of those Republicans was
Holtz-Eakin:
The commission first convened in September 2009, with Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and the top economic advisor to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, among the Republican commissioners. In February 2010, The New York Times reported that Holtz-Eakin was leading the American Action Network, "an organization to develop and market conservative ideas." Holtz-Eakin is president of American Action Forum, the group's 501(c)(3) arm.
American Action Forum's board of directors includes Robert K. Steel, who after spending decades at Goldman Sachs was president and CEO of Wachovia at the time the bank, on the brink of collapse during the financial crisis, was sold to Wells Fargo...AAF's board also includes Wendy Grubbs, a Managing Director at Citi Global Government Affairs. Meanwhile, American Action Network's board includes former Sen. Mel Martinez, who is now an executive at JPMorgan Chase.
Other board members were also reportedly sending information to GOP allies outside of FCIC during the investigation in order to help them coordinate political strategy aimed at undermining the Commission and new financial regulations. Certainly in line with several of Issa's attempts to undermine ongoing investigations at the
Justice Department and the
National Labor Relations Board.
Not only that, Issa's FCIC hearing is still supposedly pending -- postponed, not cancelled -- meaning that Issa is promoting the financial analysis of a Commission member that he's supposed to be in the process of investigating. Most people would likely cast a wary eye towards someone who couldn't stop playing politics to serve his country on an investigation into the financial crisis. But instead, Darrell Issa is trumpeting Holtz-Eakin's analysis to make a questionable political point.
Issa's willingness to overlook this litany of conflicts fits surprisingly well though with the congressman's own string of ethical problems and conflicts of interest. Issa
hired a former Goldman Sachs executive who changed his name and went to work on Capitol Hill pushing the agenda of Goldman and and other major financial firms. Issa himself was buying up
hundreds of thousands in Goldman Sachs bonds while trying to head off an SEC investigation into Goldman Sachs. Issa has since subpoenaed the SEC over supposed conflicts of interest, and now a new report suggests that Issa's questionable behavior in the recent sale of Issa's namesake company
could warrant an SEC investigation itself:
First the company froze out investors with small holdings, cashing them out at a very low price. Within days, it began confidential talks seeking to find a buyer. It took a few months, but the net result was that the company was acquired for more than five times the price the small investors were forced to accept.
The root problem there is that, bucking long-standing Congressional tradition, Issa has declined to put his huge financial empire in a blind trust. Instead, Issa still maintains a hands-on approach, managing his
hundreds of millions of dollars himself, practically insisting on a wide range of conflicts And we've seen the consequences.
Over and over, Issa's hearings have been stocked with witnesses that were also
old personal friends, major campaign contributors, or
representatives from industries and companies that have supported Issa in the past. And before he offered this week's questionable criticism of health care reform, he had received more
campaign cash from Big Pharma than from any other industry. And the Finance and Insurance sector has delivered hundreds of thousands over the years as well.
It all mixes together to create a sordid picture: Darrell Issa cashes the checks from major pharmaceutical, health insurance, and financial corporations. He hires their disgraced executives to protect their interests on Capitol Hill. He tries to profit personally while working to protect those same interests. He cancels hearings to cover up conflicts of interest, ethics violations, and inaccurate Congressional testimony by their allies. Instead, he accuses and investigates others for conflicts of interest while repeatedly opening himself up to investigation.
It doesn't paint a flattering picture of who Darrell Issa works for, but in the meantime it doesn't bode well for the people he's supposed to actually be working for -- his constituents. Repealing Obama's health care reforms, which is Issa's stated goal, would deny health coverage to as many as
331,000 of Issa's constituents with pre-existing conditions. Nearly 100,000 would lose coverage entirely, and tens of thousands of his seniors would lose preventive benefits. Meanwhile, his
preferred Ryan plan to privatize Medicare and Medicaid would double down on the disaster. Reduced coverage for more than 12,000 disabled seniors and 70,000 children just in his own district while dramatically increasing the out-of-pocket cost of health care.
And the best argument Darrell Issa has comes from a professional partisan who's at the center of an ongoing investigation by Issa himself.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Washington Post condemns Darrell Issa’s “overreach on oversight”
There are plenty of folks who have been wary of the NLRB investigation into Boeing, including the Washington Post editorial board. They've expressed concern in the past that the case could end up going too far by focusing too much on the specific labor questions involved.
But even with that concern, Darrell Issa has gone way too far for them. In an editorial yesterday, The Post editorial board
called out Darrell Issa for overreach and risking the integrity of the ongoing case:
But Mr. Issa and his committee have gone beyond questioning the NLRB’s policy to threatening to interfere with a legitimate — even if misguided — legal proceeding. This month, the panel issued a subpoena demanding a slew of documents involving the NLRB action against Boeing. The committee wants to know how the NLRB’s Office of General Counsel decided to target Boeing and whether it did so in cahoots with the White House or a union. The agency has resisted turning over certain documents it says could jeopardize its ability to pursue its case. Lafe Solomon, the NLRB’s acting general counsel, testified before the committee this summer; the board has also turned over more than 1,500 pages related to the Boeing matter.
As the Post goes on to remind us, many of the documents that Issa's fishing expedition is seeking have also been unsuccessfully sought by Boeing. Issa's wide-ranging subpoena would make those same records public, serving as an end run around the legal decision that Boeing should not have access to those records while the case is ongoing. Not only would Issa's subpoena overrule the court, it would undermine the integrity of the procedings while aiding a specific party in the case. As the Post says, that's "overreach on oversight."
But this is specifically Issa's plan -- to undermine and ultimately
close the courthouse doors to workers. The courts are the last place where politics might not be able to dictate results, so Issa and his allies are taking any opportunity to preempt the power of courts to function independently. As the Post concludes:
If Mr. Issa’s goal is to scrutinize the NLRB — and not just to sabotage the Boeing litigation — a reasonable delay in obtaining Boeing-specific documents should not hurt.
We'll know what his goal is once we see what Darrell Issa does.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Issa hires Goldman VP to protect Wall Street on Capitol Hill
Darrell Issa has focused much of his reaction to this week's
New York Times investigation by taking photos and shooting videos analyzing the view from his office window. A
new report today from Lee Fang at ThinkProgress reveals that Issa hired a former Goldman Sachs VP, complete with name change, to run interference on the Hill for Wall Street. Which likely underscores just why Issa is so desperate to avoid any substance:
ThinkProgress has found that a Goldman Sachs vice president changed his name, then quietly went to work for Issa to coordinate his effort to thwart regulations that affect Goldman Sachs’ bottom line.
Haller, as he is now known, went by the name Peter Simonyi until three years ago. Simonyi adopted his mother’s maiden name Haller in 2008 just as he was leaving Goldman Sachs as a vice president of the bank’s commodity compliance group. In a few short years, Haller went from being in charge of dealing with regulators for Goldman Sachs to working for Congress in a position where he made official demands from regulators overseeing his old firm.
In a response that's both oddly typical and well out of left field, the staffer issued a statement explaining that he changed his name to
honor his Transylvanian heritage. As with the Issa Enterprise response to the New York Times story earlier this week, the statement focuses entirely on the most superficial aspect of the new revelations, completely ignoring the part that's actually problematic.
Issa's response to the Times article hasn't managed to refute that the earmarks he secured have
increased the value of his private holdings -- a practice he described as "tantamount to a bribe." And he can't actually refute the
timeline -- he requested the earmarks and got them included in the proposed budget, he purchased the property while the budget was negotiated, the earmarks were signed into law after he bought the properties. He can't substantively refute that he was
stocking up on Goldman Sachs bonds while he tried to run interference for on Capitol Hill, and he can't even feign ignorance -- he's chosen to
buck traditional practice and remain hands-on with his huge financial empire.
In this case, Issa Enterprises is perfectly welcome to argue over how to honor a staffer's Transylvanian heritage, but Issa hired a Vice President from Goldman Sachs under a new name to go to work in Congress protecting Goldman Sachs and similar financial institutions.
It’s not the first time Haller has worked the revolving door to help out Goldman Sachs. According to a report by the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, Haller — then known as Peter Simonyi — left the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2005 to work for Goldman Sachs, then quickly began lobbying his colleagues at the SEC on behalf of his new firm. At one point, Haller was compelled to issue a letter to the SEC claiming he did not violate ethics rules.
It's hardly news that Issa has a staff riddled with conflicts of interest. It was first cataloged back in
February and last month even greater
conflicts were uncovered, with an Issa staffer continuing financial ties with the lobbyist group he left shortly before joining Issa's team.
And he turned his party over to rich corporate backers from the very beginning, asking lobbyists and industry groups to
dictate the committee's agenda for him. In other words -- corporations were asked to decide for Issa how to police themselves. And he's now found in the midst of a ham-handed attempt to allow huge Wall Street firms to essentially police themselves through his office.
Issa isn't leaving much room for benefit of the doubt. Putting corporations in charge of regulating themselves. Trying to exempt them from the law. Providing his committee for industry press conferences. Not to mention personally getting richer from his work in Congress. Hardly the resume of someone who claims to "work for CA-49."
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Why should Darrell Issa care about personal credibility?
The New York Times rundown this week of a number of Darrell Issa's ethically questionable dealings from which he appears to have profited has some legs. Today, it prompted an editorial from the Sacramento Bee, lamenting that Issa has chosen to build himself an "
empire...ripe for conflicts:"
But the larger substance of the article has not been challenged. That is – Issa continues to run his expansive business empire while also serving as a member of Congress. Other congressmen with similar wealth have put their holdings into blind trusts to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Issa has not. That raises obvious questions of conflict. It's impossible to know when Issa's official actions are intended to benefit the American people, his constituents or his own narrow self-interest.
All we do know is that his legislative priorities have
profited him personally in the past, and he has avoided the normal steps to minimize the appearance of conflict. It could be arrogance, it could be indifference, it could even be actual graft, but he's decided that he either cannot or will not address these concerns. And if he doesn't care about his own credibility, what does it tell us about his legislative perspective? That he doesn't put much stock in the importance of personal credibility.
Besides, as the Bee reminds us:
In addition, given the extent of his involvement in his private business, his ability to devote sufficient attention or energy to his congressional duties is called into question.
After all, serving in Congress is supposed to be a full-time job.
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posted by Lucas O’Connor at 7:00 am