This past week, most of my blog posts here at AIP have focused on a couple topics: accountability and transparency. We can't even hope to wrest control of Washington from the grubby hands of career politicians unless we can see what it is they're doing, then hold them responsible for the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse.
Democrats took power in 2006 largely on the strength of their promises to "drain the swamp", "clean house" and to run "the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history". Thus far, we've not seen very much in the way of house-cleaning or swamp-draining. In fact, the swamp has gotten bigger and the house a lot messier under Democratic leadership despite a shiny new Office of Congressional Ethics. Accountability and transparency have been sacrificed on the altar of "we won". I thought it would be interesting to look at a few news stories from just this year to see how bad it's gotten.
We know a bit about Senators Chris Dodd (D-Conn) and Kent Conrad (D-ND) and their membership in the exclusive "Friends of Angelo" club. "Angelo" is Countrywide Mortgage former CEO Angelo Mozilo, who has been charged with insider trading and fraud. His special "friends" enjoyed preferential treatment, including sweetheart loans even while Countrywide was helping create the mortgage crisis. The Wall Street Journal notes that Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has asked the Democratic chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to subpoena loan records from the "Friends of Angelo" program to see how many other government officials were taking special loans from Mozilo but so far he's gotten a lot of silence in return (via Instapundit).
Norm Dicks (D-WA), neck-deep in another scandal I'll mention in a moment, has been quite the busy man. His committee recently tripled the amount of taxpayer money going to a clean-up operation of Puget Sound that's run by his son. Indeed, funding for that program has steadily risen since 2007, the year that Dicks' son was put in charge, from $15 million then to $50 million now.
Now, that may sound like a lot of money, but it's chump change compared to the cash that's been spread around in earmarks by Dicks and several others including John Murtha (D-PA) to a company called PMA. PMA is under investigation by the FBI for various criminal offenses and Republicans, led by Arizona's Jeff Flake, have been calling for a House investigation into the earmark/donation relationships. So far, they've been rebuffed twice. But this scandal might break open yet. Nancy Pelosi has been getting heat from inside her own party to investigate. Thus far, she's resisted their pleas.
She's not the only one sitting on an investigation. John Conyers (D-MI), Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has said he won't be investigating ACORN, as he promised to do. He claims that he was told not to do the investigation by "the powers that be", though he won't say who those "powers" are. I wouldn't dare speculate about who called Conyers off his investigation, but it would have to be someone with considerable influence. He is one of the most powerful and senior Democratic members of the House and not given to taking orders from just anyone. Conyers wife, by the way, is under investigation for bribery in Detroit and may end up taking a plea deal.
I'm not quite sure that Speaker Pelosi knows what "most ethical" actually means anymore. From what I can see, the Speaker also has a much different definition of accountabilty and transparency as well.