Corruption

by hilzoy

Via TPM, yet another dubiously employed Congressional spouse:

"Acting as her husband's campaign consultant, Julie Doolittle charged his campaign and his Superior California Political Action Committee a 15 percent commission on any contribution she helped bring in.

As a member of two key committees in the House – Appropriations and Administration – Doolittle is well-positioned to help contractors gain funding through congressional earmarks. Between 2002 and 2005, Wilkes and his associates and lobbyists gave Doolittle's campaign and political action committee $118,000, more than they gave any other politician, including Cunningham.

Calculations based on federal and state campaign records suggest that Doolittle's wife received at least $14,400 of that money in commissions. Meanwhile, Doolittle helped Wilkes get at least $37 million in government contracts. (...)

Julie Doolittle launched Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions in March 2001, two months after her husband was named to the Appropriations Committee.

The business, which is based at the couple's home in Oakton, Va., has no phone listing or Web site. The firm has no known employees other than Julie Doolittle. The congressman's office would not specify what previous fundraising experience she had.

Within months of its opening, the firm was receiving commissions from her husband's campaign. Within the next two years, it was planning fundraising events for Abramoff and handling bookkeeping for the Korean lobbying group in Buckham's office suite, where DeLay's wife, Christine, also was working.

Federal and state campaign records show that Julie Doolittle has received nearly $180,000 in commissions from her husband's political fundraising since late 2001."

So, to summarize: Julie Doolittle has no known fundraising experience. Her business, which was started right after her husband landed a seat on the appropriations committee, has no office, phone listing, or other employees. Whenever someone gives money to her husband's campaigns, however, if she claims a commission, 15% of that donation gets transferred from the campaign's accounts to Julie Doolittle and her husband, for their own personal use. See how easy?

Moreover, John Doolittle's seat is very safe, and his fundraising is going fine. Here are the FEC reports for his district in 2004 and 2002. In 2004, he raised $937,914. He had two challengers, an independent who seems to have raised no money, and run on a $50,000 loan, and a Democrat who raised the princely sum of $2,300, and still managed to have $237.00 left at the end of the campaign. Not exactly what you'd call a hotly contested seat, or one where a fundraiser would be needed.

Here's an example of the sort of 'work' Ms. Doolittle got paid for. (Brent Wilkes, aka "Co-Conspirator No. 1", who figures in the story that follows, is one of the contractors who bribed Duke Cunningham. More background on him here.)

"In November 2003, Wilkes held a fundraising dinner for Doolittle at ADCS' headquarters in Poway that was catered by Wilkes' wife, Regina, who ran a catering company based in the corporate cafeteria. The 15 guests on Wilkes' invitation were all ADCS employees or partners on projects Wilkes was trying to get funded, together with their spouses.

Over the next four months, members of the group gave a total of $50,000 to Doolittle's political action committee.

Federal and state election records show that Julie Doolittle claimed commissions on most of those contributions, even though there is no evidence that she planned the fundraising dinner or encouraged the contributors to donate to her husband.

No expenses related to the dinner are reflected on John Doolittle's financial records.

Robinson, his chief of staff, refused to answer questions about that particular dinner. But in a prepared statement, he said Julie Doolittle had helped “initiate, plan and perform other administrative duties” for two dinners in the San Diego area, for which she claimed her standard fundraising commission."

And here are all the clients the San Diego Union-Tribune was able to find:

"A search by The San Diego Union-Tribune yielded only three other clients of Julie Doolittle's firm:

One was Greenberg Traurig, the lobbying firm that employed Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy, mail fraud and tax-evasion charges. The second was Abramoff's Washington restaurant, Signatures. The third was the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, founded by Ed Buckham, one-time chief of staff for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

The Korean group, which lobbied for improved U.S.-Korean relations, was based at the headquarters of Buckham's Alexander Strategy Group, which dissolved in January because of negative publicity over its ties to Abramoff. Wilkes also was an Alexander Strategy client."

So: Jack Abramoff's lobbying firm, Abramoff's restaurant, a group founded and run by Wilkes' lobbyist, and of course her dear husband.

One last point. The people who bribed Duke Cunningham, Wilkes included, were defense contractors. They were paying bribes in order to get defense contracts, presumably contracts they would not have gotten in open competition. At a time when we have not managed to find enough body armor for our troops, or adequately armored vehicles for them to ride in, and when we are auditing everyone with PTSD and asking them to justify every cent of the money they get after having risked their lives for their country, these clowns thought it was appropriate to take bribes in order to induce the Defense Department to give money to contractors who would not have gotten contracts if they had had to play by the rules.

It's shameful to bribe any government official in order to get contracts for substandard work. But it's doubly shameful when your bribes take money away from things like body armor, and deliver substandard defense work at a time when our troops' lives are on the line. After all, substandard defense work doesn't just mean that (for instance) a highway will need repairs a bit sooner than it might have otherwise; it means that some kid who is only trying to do his or her duty might get killed or maimed. It was once thought that people who did this should be tarred and feathered, or strung up and hanged. I myself don't believe in either of these punishments, for anyone. But I understand the sentiment.*

If you live in California's 4th CD (east of Sacramento), do your best to get this guy out of office. We deserve better.

* Update on 'understanding the sentiment': first, understanding the sentiment was meant to be distinct from thinking one should act on it. I am not (I hope this is obvious) advocating stringing anyone up and hanging them. What I am saying is: this sort of thing makes me really, really angry.

Our troops are out there in Iraq; and while I don't agree with the policy that got them there, I imagine a lot of them are just trying to do their duty. I also think that we, as civilians, have a sort of compact with them: in return for their willingness to lay their lives on the line, we should not send them into harm's way without a very good reason, and if we do ask them to go into battle, we should do everything in our power to ensure that they have the equipment and armor they need to get back safely. That, it seems to me, is just basic decency.

It seems clear to me that we have not lived up to either part of our implicit bargain. And while I don't want to debate the Iraq war again here, I think that the part about our having an obligation to do what we need to to make sure that they have e.g. enough armor should be uncontroversial, as should the fact that we have not done so. And because we haven't, there are men and women in army hospitals today who are trying to reconcile themselves to a life in a wheelchair, or to having only one arm; not to mention parents, siblings, spouses and children who are in mourning.

In this context, people who try to siphon off DoD funds for needless or substandard programs, and those who allow themselves to be bought by them, bear a special responsibility. (The programs they got into the budget were not requested by the military.) Ask yourself if you can imagine Duke Cunningham, or Rep. Doolittle if he is guilty, visiting one of the soldiers in Walter Reed and explaining why he decided to expend even one iota of energy getting contracts for Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade when he could have been advocating for the armor that might have protected that soldier. Try to figure out how, exactly, that conversation might go. What made me angry was that I was thinking about that as I wrote this.

Comments

[Gary Farber]

I read it via Mememorandum, myself. Dunno if you saw this piece which has been up since Friday night. Ditto this.

The whole system is inherently corrupt, and has been pretty much forever. But I also continue to point to the fact that our Congressional system, thanks to current rules, and to gerrymandering, has less turnover than the Soviet Congress of Deputies ever did (I forget the precise current rate, but it's something like a 96-7% re-election rate last I looked), and moreover we now have a lot of hereditary seats.

That life blithely goes on as if this wasn't a completely corrupt and pretty much inoperable (in terms of "serving the people") system is... well, words fail me. And that's even before we get to the vast problems of Republican abuse (what can you say when Republican committee chairmen call the Capitol police to have their opponents arrested in the middle of meetings for objecting to procedures?, just to point to one little example) we've seen in the last decade.

There's a reason I keep this quote from Gibbon on my sidebar: "Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."

[Gary Farber]

Oh, and I also pointed to this little bit of typical Boehnerism yesterday. Yeah, he's going to do a fine job of un-corrupting the system. You betcha.

And who is going to play the role of trying to get the Republican Presidential nomination with one goal allegedly going to be to fix the corruption? Newt Gingrich. Hey, if a trick works once, why not twice? So he figures, anyway. Though I can't wait until he speaks more, again, about family values.

[bob mcmanus]

The Party is in power. We have seen McCain change to suit one aspect; the people in your post are more corruptees than corruptors. Not that they are victims, but that there is a entry fee for real participation. I repeat: it is so far gone that individuals are no longer corrupting the Party but being corrupted by it. Bush and Rove and Frist and DeLay are no longer in power;the Party is in power. The base pushes upward with ever-increasing expectations.

Democratic corruption lies in acquiescence, acceptance, and passivity in exchange for maintaining or survival. They must surrender and betray their constituencies to keep their jobs. The base pulls downward with disappointed expectations.

[Gary Farber]

Probably want to read this further on Mitchell J. Wade and MZM's work for the Pentagon.

A review of the rise and fall of Wade and his company, based on interviews and MZM and government documents, shows that bribing Cunningham was only one part of Wade's formula for success. His firm, which had no prime federal contracts in fiscal 2002, collected more than $170 million over the next three years, thanks not just to Cunningham, but also to Wade's ability to take practices common among government contractors and push them to the limit.

Great place to work if you liked having a title:

He freely distributed title and rank, appointing more than 100 vice presidents, executive vice presidents and "senior executive vice presidents" in a company of about 400 people.

Can we call be senior executive vice presidents of ObWi?

Wade pleaded guilty to four felony counts for his role in bribing Cunningham, by the way. Think he's the only one out there who has found this past to successful entrepreneurship?

[Mo MacArbie]

Doolittle's district is just upstream of mine (many of our local political pissing matches threaten to fill the rivers to flood stage), so I'll be watching this race very closely. I'm somewhat disheartened with the battle over HR1606 though. It seems that threatening incumbents is a good way to see the full flowering of bipartisanship.

[liberaljaponicus]

Think he's the only one out there who has found this past to successful entrepreneurship?

Just a few bad apples, I tell you. The vast majority are patriotic Americans. Just ask them...

[LaPopessa]

Today's Washington Post has a very good in depth piece on DeLay's former aide Edwin Buckham, and some interesting money trails. It can be found at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032501166.html?nav=hcmodule

[WebMan]

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