EDITORIALS / OPINION

Go straight to your favorite columnist

- Andrew Fois

War for the Street

- Allan C. Brownfeld

Lobbyists: An Increasingly Influential 4th Branch of Government

- Alan Caruba

The Race is Now About “Race”

When Will the Council Represent Us?

By the georgetowner

MAY 2008

By most legislative and accountability standards, the District of Columbia Council has a shaky record representing D.C. citizens. Many are reluctant to admit this political reality. Far more experience the clear proof of poor representation of the public interest on a daily basis. Yes, this is the nation’s capital.

Whether it is public school mismanagement, rookie school chancellor planning, or the spillover of expanded youth crime, bad times expose the façade of good times in the District. MPD police officers have now become scapegoats with the responsibility of cleaning up the school violence and truancy mess fertilized by D.C. officials.

Having elected these publicly paid employees of District taxpayers, we have settled for lack luster checks and balances on mayoral overreach and incompetence from Adrian Fenty. Nearly two years since his election, the smiling door-knocking mayoral candidate became an autocrat with no comprehension or respect for genuine transparency. True democracy for public school parents became the doormat Mayor Fenty wipes his jogging shoes on.

If Mr. Fenty isn’t put in check and balanced by our councilmembers, then Home Rule is nothing more than a cruel joke where citizens are the punch line. Our dwindling tax dollars are funneled through a shell game budget process resulting in broken DCPS deadlines, thinning resources, projected budget shortfalls and demoralized teachers.

Parents and children are trapped in the chaos of corruption and mismanagement. We wait for our elected representatives to do the right thing.

Who knows, perhaps the councilmembers  will soon break their usual pattern of mayoral appeasement and remember they were elected to fully represent our interests. If they have forgotten, then we have to help them remember in November. Election Day 2008 happens locally too.

Lobbyists: An Increasingly Influential 4th Branch of Government

By Allan C. Brownfeld

MAY 2008

It has been said that journalists and the media constitute an unelected and influential fourth branch of government. While there is some truth to this statement, another unelected group of men and women is increasingly playing the role of an important and little understood government adjunct. That group is lobbyists.

Abramoff Scandal Some of this phenomenon attracted public attention when prominent lobbyist Jack Abramoff was indicted. Abramoff’s behavior is symptomatic of the intensified buying and selling of influence over legislation and federal policy that has become endemic in Washington.

In 2004, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs held hearings on Abramoff’s relations with a half-dozen Indian tribes who had hired him.

Writing in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Andrew Ferguson notes that, “Indian tribes have become big clients on K Street... In l988, Congress authorized, and then established regulations over, casino gambling on Indian reservations. The result, from a lobbyist’s perspective, couldn’t have been happier. Gambling has two main effects. It made some tribes rich – Indian casinos bring in as much as $30 million a month – and it permanently entangled those gambling tribes with a Washington bureaucracy that seemed, to an outsider anyway, at once all-powerful and impossible to understand.” Ferguson states that gambling tribe may spend $20,000 a month or more to retain the services of a Washington lobbying firm.

While first-tier lobbying firms in Washington might bill a total of $20 million in fees a year, the Senate committee reported that Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon split as much as $82 million in fees from six tribes over three years. Abramoff also instructed the tribes to make donations to certain Members of Congress and political causes with which he was allied. Despite the fact that it is illegal for a lobbyist to pay for congressional travel, Abramoff charged expenses to his credit card for Rep. Tom Delay’s (R-TX) golfing trip to St. Andrews in Scotland in 2000.

Access for Sale: A front-page story in THE HILL, a Capitol Hill newspaper, reports that, “Senate Democrats are offering lobbyists new access to Senate Democratic leaders and lawmakers in exchange for personal contributions of $25,000, the maximum amount allowed to national fundraising committees ... Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 2l, a government watchdog group, said, ‘It’s an appearance and reality problem in the sense that it explicitly provides people who provide large sums of money with access to lawmakers with the power to affect their interests.’”

Lobbyists are deeply involved with political parties, so the dilemma we face is systemic rather than partisan. The number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled since 2000 to over 34,000, while the amount the lobbyists charge their new clients has increased by as much as l00 percent. Lobbying firms cannot hire people fast enough. Starting salaries have risen to about $300,000 a year for the best-connected aides eager to “move downtown” from Capitol Hill or the White House.

Of particular concern is the manner in which former Members of Congress are earning large salaries by attempting to influence their former colleagues for a variety of special interest groups. Two decades ago, most top lawmakers who retired actually went home, dissuaded from staying by the stigma of being lobbyists. Today, however, sky-high lobbying salaries and the tendency of lawmakers to move their families to the Washington area have made lobbying a frequent, even acceptable, career path. According to a study by Public Citizen, lobbying -- once considered a distasteful vocation -- now lures half of all lawmakers to return to the private sector when they leave Congress.

THE WASHINGTON POST reports that, “Lured by the expectation of huge incomes for minimal work, 272 former members of Congress have registered to lobby since l995.”  Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-LA), the former chairman of the House committee that regulates drug makers, became president and chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Shortly before leaving Congress, in the 2002 election cycle Tauzin received $9l,500 from drug companies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

ROLL CALL, a newspaper that covers the U.S. Congress, reported on April 23 that, “Less than four months after he left office, former Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) has already scored a major payday downtown.  The firm he founded with former Sen. John Breaux (D-LA) earned at least $945,000 during its first quarter in business, according to House filings.”

“Access equals power in Washington, and few people have greater access than a former member of Congress,” said Frank Clemente, director of Congress Watch. “We believe the public has the right to know how frequently their elected representatives change their allegiances and become lobbyists.”

Even professional lobbyists are resentful of the movement of former legislators into their domain.  Former Members of Congress have many advantages that average lobbyists do not. In the Capitol, former lawmakers can move around with fewer security restrictions than anyone other than active senators and representatives. They can walk into the Members-only gym, the cloakrooms, the private hearing rooms, and the floor of the chambers -- access that less favored lobbyists do not have.

Indeed, Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) has proposed paring back the many privileges in the Capitol that former lawmakers enjoy. 

Some lobbying groups that focus on advocacy are now building on-the-side “federal marketing” practices that pitch their clients’ products to federal contracting officers. The war in Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have provided vast new areas for such lobbying groups to enter. In the case of Iraq, states Senator John McCain (R-AZ), “It’s like a huge pot of honey that’s attracting a lot of flies.” One alliance of lobbyists, New Bride Strategies, is busy seeking distribution rights for major U.S. companies producing everything from grain to auto parts to shampoo.

If there are clear ethical standards in Washington, it is difficult to discover what they are.    It is high time that lobbyists in Washington be examined more carefully, particularly the role played by former Members of Congress in influencing their former colleagues. The same is true of retired staff members of Congress and White House, retired military officers, and civilian Pentagon officials.

The better we understand the real dynamics at work on Capitol Hill, the better that we, as citizens, can bring our will to bear on what should be a democratic process. 

This Conservative Curmudgeon column by Allan C. Brownfeld is copyrighted (c) 2008 by the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, www.fgfBooks.com. All rights reserved.

The Race is Now About “Race”

By Alan Caruba

MAY 2008

It doesn’t matter how many times Sen. Barack Obama or any politician in America says that the national race for the presidency is not about race. It will be about race.

This nation has a long history of elections in which the issue of race was at the core of who would win or lose, dating back to the beginning of the Republican Party when Abraham Lincoln ran on a platform of not expanding slavery into new states. He did not run to abolish slavery although it was clearly abhorrent to him. As we know, a Civil War ensued during which slavery was the core moral issue, surrounded by many economic ones and, for the South, dominated by that of state’s rights.

In my lifetime, Gov. George Wallace, running for the presidency was severely injured in an attempted assassination. Earlier, Sen. Strom Thurmond had broken with the Democrat Party to run independently as a Dixiecrat. After President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, he correctly predicted the South would become a Republican domain.

So let’s not kid ourselves here. With the likelihood that Sen. Obama will be the Democrat nominee for the presidency, the election is going to split, as it has often throughout the primaries, along White, Black, and Hispanic lines. To date, Sen. Obama has garnered easily 90% of the Black vote as might be expected and nearly 50% of the Hispanic vote. 

It is likely that the 40% of the White vote from within the Democrat Party is attributable to a large turnout of younger voters who did not experience the turmoil of the 1960s civil rights movement and who are entranced by Sen. Obama’s rhetorical skills. 

There is no doubt that he is a powerful speaker, but as others have pointed out before me, he speaks in platitudes and vague thoughts about “change” and the “future.” His political record is that of a far-Left liberal and his personal associations with men like Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former Weatherman Bill Ayers cannot and will not be lightly dismissed in a national election.

In a national election, a significant portion of White Democrats are going to desert Sen. Obama, crossing over to a safer candidate, the center-right Sen. John McCain. It may be a close election as has been the pattern of the past, but as President Bush proved in his first election, a win is a win. 

The withdrawal of troops from Iraq has already begun. Some will and must remain to protect Iraq against an unpredictable Iran. The economy will be a major issue, but it continues to demonstrate how resilient it is and any improvement will favor Sen. McCain. 

In the end, the election will be won and lost on the issue of race. Saying it doesn’t change that immutable American reality.

War for the Street

By Andrew Fois

MAY 2008

There is a war raging in Washington, D.C. and it is not the one between Clinton and Obama, Democrats and Republicans or Congress and the President. Its outcome, however, will have more to say about the nature of life in this city than any of those. At this very moment battles are being fought all over the city in the ‘War for the Streets,” the much more urgent war between walkers and drivers.

Anyone who has driven a car or crossed the street in the city in the last couple of years has experienced the first skirmishes of the War for the Streets. Seemingly overnight, little stop signs started popping up warning drivers that the law required them to stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk. In places like upper Connecticut Avenue there’s even a supply of neon orange flags available for pedestrians to wave as they step out into the middle of traffic and then replace for use by the next brave soul. So empowered, people have been stepping into oncoming traffic with a sense of entitlement that drivers are required by law to see them and stop for them.

There are lots of different kinds of crosswalks in the city: in the middle of streets, at intersections and in traffic circles; with traffic signals or stop signs or without them. They are each marked in different ways: some have big, bold stripes, others lesser stripes and many no stripes at all. Does the pedestrian have right of way at all of these – even intersections where the light is green for the driver and the crosswalk is sans stripes? Is the requirement to yield to walkers applicable when there are no mini stop signs and warnings displayed?

Anyone of a certain age remembers the public service advertisement encouraging pedestrians to cross the street in the crosswalk, at the corners, and with the light.  The jingle remains with me to this day. “Don’t cross the street in the middle, in the middle, in the middle, in the middle, in the middle of the block. Keep your eyes to look up. Keep your ears to hear. Walk up to the corner where the coast is clear.” Remember? Generations of drivers expect pedestrians to, for the most part, heed the ditty’s advice.   Of course, drivers always have to be vigilant for the occasional jaywalker.  But now, apparently they need to anticipate pedestrians plunging into the middle of the street at heretofore unexpected times and places.

It takes a braver person than I to step into the street, neon banners notwithstanding, and expect vehicles traveling at 35mph to see me and stop. It increases the dangers of the road in unintended ways. The car closest to the walker may see the walker and stop, often requiring the driver to be looking at the opposite side of the road than the one on which she is driving. But the cars in the next lane and behind may have the pedestrian blocked out and either drive on or rear-end the first car. Then it all happens again in the other direction. The indecision and uncertainty threatens us all. This area is already subject to enough accidental deaths of pedestrians crossing the street without having to deal with these additional complexities.

Why do all of us need to have to process this changing of the traditional laws of the driving universe? Don’t we have enough to worry about and watch out for? Aren’t there enough intersections at which we all can safely cross? Can’t jaywalkers wait until there are no cars coming before crossing? Shouldn’t we be encouraging people, for health reasons, to walk the extra steps that crossing at the intersection may require?

No one, of course, would intentionally strike a walker whether he is in the crosswalk or not. In that sense, the driver must always yield to the walker. What this is really about, however, is a turf battle: who has the power to decide whether traffic or walkers control the asphalt. I have seen other walkers literally cheer when a flag waving soul succeeds in bringing four lanes of traffic to a screeching halt. The government’s chosen victor in this first battle of the War for the Streets is the pedestrian, a decision that has made the streets less predictable and more dangerous for all of us.