| Author |
Message |
    
themp
Supporter
Username: Themp
Post Number: 2993
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 10:12 am: | 
|
y R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 7, 2006; A04
A registered lobbyist opened a retirement account in the late 1990s for the wife of then-House Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and contributed thousands of dollars to it while also paying her a salary to work for him from her home in Texas, according to sources, documents and DeLay's attorney, Richard Cullen.
The account represents a small portion of the income that DeLay's family received from entities at least partly controlled by lobbyist Edwin A. Buckham. But the disclosure of its origin adds to what was previously known about the benefits DeLay's family received from its association with Buckham, and it brings the total over the past seven years to about half a million dollars.
Buckham was DeLay's chief of staff before he became a lobbyist at the end of 1998, shortly before the account was opened and the flow of funds began. He has come under scrutiny from federal investigators because his lobbying firm received hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue from clients of indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Buckham's financial ties to DeLay's family -- and the retirement account in particular -- have recently attracted the interest of FBI agents and others in the federal task force probing public corruption by lawmakers and lobbyists, according to a source who was questioned in the course of the government's investigation. |
Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 1423
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 10:13 am: |
|
a bribe is a bribe is a bribe.
|
musicme
Citizen
Username: Musicme
Post Number: 1697
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 11:01 am: |
|
The War with Omaha
I grew up just across the Missouri River from Omaha, and I still have an aunt living there and maybe some cousins, so I was sorry that New York is at war with Omaha now.
Like most wars, this one was started by the Bush administration. First their dough-faced inarticulate functionary from the Homeland Security Department cut our anti-terror funding by 40% because they don’t think we have any national monuments or icons or big banks here, and then the usually rational Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to cut our bioterror funds by 15%. And when we kicked up a fuss about it, Mayor Mike Fahey of Omaha said we should “stop whining.” Hahahahahahaha. I think Mayor Mike Fahey should come over here and say that.
Omaha got a 38.2% increase in funding because they have a major national icon, Offutt Air Force Base. Maybe nobody told Homeland Security that “air force base” means it’s a military installation and presumably can take care of itself. Offutt Air Force Base is where Bush and his goat book wound up after being flown back and forth on 9/11, so I guess somebody thought it was pretty safe back then. But now they need our Homeland Security money.
So now we have to hate Omaha and some other little dinky cities, all of which happen to be in districts where Republicans are facing hotly contested elections this fall.
I have not yet finished my FEMA online disaster management course so I don’t know, but it seems to me, having lived here through both attacks on the World Trade Center, that New York is kind of a major target. The National Guard soldiers with the big automatic rifles full of live ammunition standing around my train station every morning when I go to work sort of make me think, you know, that somebody, somewhere, might be gunning for us. But maybe not. Maybe the Evil Ones really have targeted Jacksonville, Florida, home of that major national landmark and icon, Alltel Stadium, where the Jacksonville Jaguars play whatever sport it is they do, and so that’s why they’re getting a 26% increase in Homeland Security funds.
And I have to admit I’m actually kind of relieved that the funding cuts apparently mean that the NYPD won’t be able to carry out their “Ring of Steel” Lower Manhattan Security Plan, installing hundreds of spy cameras and computerized license-plate readers all over downtown. The Ring of Steel was supposed to have been modeled on the same no-privacy-ever program that allowed London cops to identify pictures of last year’s London Underground bombers just a week or two after they blew everything up, long after their blown-up dead bodies had been recovered and their identities were already known. I don’t quite understand why a system like that would make me more, you know, secure, since it seems like it just lets the Authorities spy on you and doesn’t seem to actually prevent any Bad Thing. But, like I said, I haven’t finished my FEMA course yet.
And the other good thing about Homeland Security saying we don’t need that money any more is that it must mean we aren’t on Code Orange alert--where we’ve been NON-STOP for THE LAST FIVE DAMNED YEARS—anymore. Right? I’m sure Homeland Security will put New York on Code Green any day now, maybe even before I finish my FEMA course, maybe even today.
from WFMU's blog. |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 5687
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 11:08 am: |
|
Politics is all about perception, but for the heck of it, here's the rationale. NY still sucks up the most money, but you just can't spend too much money on New York.
June 7, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
New York, You're Still No. 1
By MICHAEL CHERTOFF
Washington
LAST week, the Department of Homeland Security announced $1.7 billion in new spending for state and local governments, including more than $700 million under our Urban Areas Security Initiative. Few readers may know it based on the news media reaction, but these 2006 grants continue a financing stream that places New York and Washington at the very top of the list in terms of money received.
The terrorists who struck us on Sept. 11, 2001, and their allies continue to view New York and Washington as among America's prime targets. Therefore we have put our money where the threat is. Since the creation of my department, the New York and Washington areas, along with Los Angeles, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area, have received 45 percent of overall financing from the urban areas initiative.
New York has received more than $528 million of this money, which is more than Los Angeles and Washington combined. The $124 million that New York will receive this year is 50 percent more than the next-highest area, Los Angeles, and represents almost a threefold increase over the $46 million the city received in 2004.
It is true that, in real dollar terms, New York is receiving less this year than in 2005, when it got more than $200 million. Why? In large part because Congress gave us about $600 million less for our grant programs, including approximately $125 million less for the urban areas initiative. Still, this year New York will receive just under 18 percent of the total funds in the urban areas initiative. This falls in line with the city's average over the last three years of receiving 19 percent of the program's funds.
There is a more fundamental point about these security grants. The Urban Areas Security Initiative awards are designed as capacity building investments. We are looking to pay for new equipment and projects that increase the nation's overall preparedness. They are not for routine and recurring operating expenses like salaries and overtime.
Therefore, while New York and Washington will continue to receive the majority of the money because of the heightened threat they face, future grants will also go to other, less populated areas that have not received much help in building even basic security capacities.
Besides, when we improve the overall level of security nationwide, it helps New York, too. The 2003 blackout clearly demonstrated that loss of critical infrastructure in parts of the country outside New York can have a direct impact on the safety of city residents.
Finally, I would like to clear up two other misunderstandings. First, contrary to news media reports, significant landmarks like the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge were included in our deliberation over where money would go. It is true that they were not classified as national monuments and icons. Why? To help New York's application.
We purposely placed these structures into other categories: the Empire State Building into the large office building category and the Brooklyn Bridge into the bridges category. We did so because those categories generate a higher complete risk grade for New York's financing proposal than icons like Mount Rushmore that, while important symbolically, would have fewer human and economic consequences in case of an attack.
Second, the Homeland Security Department has made every effort to rely on measurable facts and to take politics out of the process. State and local emergency management agencies — including those in New York — selected more than 100 local homeland security directors, fire chiefs, law enforcement officials and other experts to serve as peer reviewers of applicant-proposed solutions. When surveyed, 96 percent of the local and state agencies agreed that the panels that made the spending decisions included balanced representation, and 83 percent agreed that the peer review resulted in objective scores and results.
New York, Washington and a few other major urban centers face significant risks and rightly get most of the federal investment. But they are not the only cities at risk. Because the federal government cannot equally protect every single American at every moment in every place against every threat, we must manage the risk in the most effective way possible. And while we have significant resources, they are not unlimited. We have the obligation to ensure that those resources are invested wisely and fairly across the entire nation.
Michael Chertoff is the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
|
themp
Supporter
Username: Themp
Post Number: 2994
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 11:38 am: |
|
 |
|
Closed: New threads not accepted on this page