Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Alice Batchelder
The Code of Conduct for United States Judges unambiguously states that “[a] judge should not hold membership in any organization that practices invidious discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin.” Nevertheless, a sharply divided Judicial Council of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 10-8 to permit a federal bankruptcy judge to remain a member of a country club that has no women or African Americans as full-fledged members:
The Judicial Council, made up of circuit and district judges in the four-state 6th District, voted 10-8 last month to dismiss the complaint. The memorandum written by Chief Judge Alice Batchelder spends little time discussing the merits of the contention that the Belle Meade County Club discriminates, instead focusing on Paine’s unsuccessful campaign to diversify the club.
“The record clearly supports (the) finding that the judge complained of engaged in long and sincere efforts to integrate the club in question. In the majority’s view, those efforts preclude a finding that he has engaged in misconduct,” she wrote.
An opinion by Circuit Judge Eric Clay, one of four separate written dissents, calls the club’s discrimination blatant, the court’s investigation amateurish and the majority’s interpretation of the code strained. Cole pointed to a section of the conduct code that calls for a judge to resign from a club if it fails to end its discriminatory practices within two years.
Setting aside the obvious blight on the judiciary’s reputation for fairness caused by a judge’s membership in a segregated club, there is no way to square the majority’s decision with the plain language of the law. The Code of Conduct’s official commentary provides that a judge must resign “in all events within two years of the judge’s first learning of” a club’s discriminatory practices, but the bankruptcy judge in this case remained a member through fifteen years of unsuccessful efforts to diversify the club.
Moreover, Chief Judge Batchelder is hardly suited to issue pronouncements on judicial ethics in light of her own questionable relationship with her ethical obligations as a judge. Batchelder serves on the board of a notorious oil-industry funded “junkets for judges” organization that provides expense-paid trips to western resorts where the judges are instructed on how to decide cases by industry representatives, and she has repeatedly refused to resign from this board despite an opinion from the federal judiciary’s ethics committee saying that federal judges have an ethical duty not to serve on it.
Batchelder also refused to recuse from a case where the Ohio Republican Party sought to prevent as many as 200,000 registered voters from having their votes counted, even though her husband — the current GOP Speaker of the Ohio House — had an obvious interest in the case as a GOP candidate for reelection.
Disclosure: The author of this post clerked for one of the dissenting judges in this case from 2007-08.
As ThinkProgress has previously noted, necessary services and public investments in Main Street America are being gutted as some of the wealthiest Americans are getting away with paying less in taxes than they have in a generation.
Progressive activist and former Texas agricultural commissioner Jim Hightower notes one particularly egregious exammple of this unfair economic arrangement: the case of hedge fund billionaire John Paulson. Hightower writes that an American who earned $50,000 a year for 47 years would earn $2.4 million, which would be a healthy sum. Yet Paulson earns that much in an hour:
If your job paid $50,000 a year and you stayed at it for 47 years, your tally for a lifetime of work would be $2.4 million. Not bad — but hedge fund hustler John Paulson pulled down that much last year.
Most of us would consider an annual income of $2.4 million to be a windfall, but it didn’t take Paulson a full 12 months of work to pocket his windfall — or one month, a week, or even a day. That’s how much he made an hour. Yes, Paulson could’ve worked one single hour in 2010 and hauled off a paycheck equal to what a typical household gets for a lifetime of work.
Hightower goes on to note that not only does Paulson earn such wild compensation, but that he actually pays a lower effective income tax rate — 15 percent — than the average American, whose effective rate in 2007 was 20.4 percent.
The reason Paulson is able to pay so little in taxes compared to the average American is because of what’s known as the “hedge fund loophole.” People who work for hedge funds are allowed to classify income that they’ve gained from investing other people’s money as capital gains rather than normal income. These capital gains are then taxed at an ultra-low rate of 15 percent, rather than the normal rate that such income would be taxed at — 35 percent. MoveOn demonstrates this tax disparity with the following graph:
Economist Robert Reich estimates that closing the hedge fund loophole could raise as much as $20 billion a year in revenue. The Senate last year made a brief attempt to narrow the loophole, but its efforts were beaten back by the industry. (HT: @matthewstoller)
One of the ripple effects of the recent upsurge in anti-Islamic sentiment has been the attempt by various states to pass laws banning the consideration of Islamic Sharia law in U.S. courts. (For the sake of appearances, these bills have often avoided singling out Sharia specifically, leading to at least one particularly odd result when Arizona attempted to ban karma.) The notion that Sharia law is threatening to take over the U.S. judicial system has been gaining traction in conservative circles and amongst major conservative political figures, despite numerous debunkings of the conspiracy theory.
As of now, both Tennessee and Louisiana have tried to deal with the phantom Sharia threat by passing versions of the “American Law for American Courts” bill devised by the American Public Policy Alliance. At least a dozen other states are considering similar bills including South Carolina, which will play a significant role in the 2012 presidential primaries. South Carolina’s possible anti-Sharia legislation has already been debated in the state senate, and Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) may soon have to decide whether or not to sign it.
South Carolina recently hosted the first debate between GOP presidential hopefuls, and the local Tea Party groups held a pre-rally which ThinkProgress attended. We took the opportunity to ask attendees what affect Sharia law has had on their lives, with some interesting (and encouraging) results. Watch it:
Happily, it seems at least some of the voters the GOP will be relying upon are willing to pushback against this latest concocted threat, and recognize it as nothing more than a stunt to undermine civil liberties and score some political points by beating up on an unpopular minority.
In expounding upon the Constitution, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) rarely troubles with reading it. Her musings on the subject have earned her yet another Politifact “pants on fire” award and ensured the employment of fact-checkers everywhere. Now, the Minnesota Independent reports that one American — a high school sophomore — wants to take the Congresswoman head on. Fed up with the “injustice” that Bachmann’s “politically expedient” inaccuracies serve to “women everywhere,” New Jersey 10th grader Amy Myers is challenging Bachmann to a public debate — or a basic “fact test” — on the Constitution:
As a typical high school student, I have found quite a few of your statements regarding The Constitution of the United States, the quality of public school education and general U.S. civics matters to be factually incorrect, inaccurately applied or grossly distorted. The frequency and scope of these comments prompted me to write this letter. [...]
Rep. Bachmann, the frequent inability you have shown to accurately and factually present even the most basic information about the United States led me to submit the follow challenge, pitting my public education against your advanced legal education:
I, Amy Myers, do hereby challenge Representative Michele Bachmann to a Public Forum Debate and/or Fact Test on The Constitution of the United States, United States History and United States Civics.
Bachmann does have a law degree, but given the knowledge she’s displayed on the subject, the 10th grader stacks up pretty well.
In the past, Assemblywoman Jane Corwin (R-NY), the GOP nominee for the special election in New York’s 26th congressional district, called attention to her economic views by declaring that, “we need to create an environment conducive to job creation, that means lowering taxes and removing the shackles on upstate businesses.” But her colorful language about taxation strikes a stark contrast with her position on another type of bondage. She was one of only a handful of lawmakers to vote to preserve a practice that allows prison guards to literally shackle pregnant inmates while they give birth.
Last year, over the objections of Corwin and a few other legislators in the New York legislature, New York banned the practice of cuffing pregnant women as they give birth. The reforms followed a series of explosive articles detailing the inhumane conditions endured by women in prisons across the country. The New York Times detailed several instances where pregnant inmates in New York were bound with heavy chains and shackles even during emergency Caesarean section procedures:
In 2002, Jeanna M. Graves, early in a three-year term on a drug conviction and pregnant with twins while in Bedford Hills, needed an emergency Caesarean section. Ms. Graves said that in the hospital, she was cuffed to the gurney by the corrections officers. The doctors gave her an epidural anesthetic, which blocks sensation in the abdomen and around the pelvis.
“I was cuffed through the entire C-section,” Ms. Graves said.
Yesterday, FreedomWorks — a front group run by corporate lobbyists like James Burnley and Dick Armey — enthusiastically endorsed Corwin, telling Tea Party activists that she embodies a “freedom” agenda. It’s true, Corwin does support “freedom” for corporations to avoid taxes. But when it comes to basic human rights, she seemed to have no problem placing metal cuffs on pregnant women as they tried to give birth.
Last Saturday, the Florida GOP-led legislature finalized the state’s $69.7 billion budget — and business won big. In this case, the victor was the private prison industry as the GOP’s budget deal includes — at Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) suggestion — “one of the biggest prison privatization programs” in a state with “the third largest state prison system” in the U.S. Indeed, “no other state has sought to privatize so many lock-ups at any one time.”
This lucrative victory for the private prison industry is not surprising given how much they paid for it. As ThinkProgress reported last week, the prison industry — which includes the nation’s second largest private corrections company GEO Group — has doled out hundreds of thousands to Scott and the GOP in Florida since 2003. But not all Republicans are happy about the undue influence. State Rep. Paige Kreegel (R) and state Sen. Mike Fasano (R) both defied GOP leadership by voting against the bill because they viewed it as an abdication of government responsibility for public safety:
– Kreegel: “The real reason that people bad together and form governments is to protect good people from bad ones. That is it. That is the core mission of government,” he said Friday before the vote. “As a core mission that cannot be sub-letted or contracted out to a private entity. When we shirk our core mission, we lose our legitimacy to govern. For these reasons, I am voting against this bill.”
– Fasano: “It’s unprecedented in the United States,” said Fasano, who heads the Senate budget committee with oversight of prisons. “I’m a conservative Republican that believes in privatizing certain parts of government services but we should never privatize public safety.”
There’s good reason to bristle at the bad idea. By shifting $600 million to firms who will now run correctional facilities and probation services for nearly 20,000 prisoners in 18 counties, the private takeover will cut at least 1,700 jobs in the state prison system. What’s more, Fasano points out the private prisons’ promise to save $40 million annually are “unconvincing and undocumented.” Indeed, the history of private prisons across the country suggest they boast little in the way of cost-saving.
Their history instead shows a greater focus on their bottom line. “[T]hey just don’t have incentives to rehabilitate,” said ACLU National Prison Project’s David Shapiro. “The more crime there is, and the longer sentences are, the more business private prisons get.” GEO Group’s CEO, in fact, celebrated Scott’s deal as “one of the largest opportunities that we’ve ever seen in the history of our industry” and suggested it could add “several hundreds of millions” to GEO Group’s annual revenues.
Despite its dubious motivations and results, the prison industry’s influence is shaping many Republican budget plans across the country. Ohio, New Hampshire, Texas, and New Mexico are all considering outsourcing public safety to private prisons. Not only is Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) pushing to privatize prisons, he even hired a prison industry official to be his Director of Rehabilitation and Corrections. Given the history, one wonders if the fruit of these plans will bear profits for private prisons at the expense of the public?
On Tuesday, tech giant Microsoft announced to the world that it would be purchasing Internet communication service Skype in an all-cash, $8.5 billion acquisition deal.
One fact that has gone underreported about the deal is how Microsoft structured it to keep its taxes as low as possible. As the Wall Street Journal’s Ronald Barusch notes, Microsoft and Skype saved billions of dollars in taxes because Microsoft used its foreign profits to purchase Skype, which also happens to base its corporate headquarters in a major tax haven itself, Luxembourg.
Doing so allowed Microsoft to avoid paying taxes on its profits at the U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent. So how much does Microsoft pay on the profits it makes overseas in tax havens based in places like Ireland, Bermuda, and Singapore? To find the answer, we can turn to the University of Southern California’s Edward D. Kleinbard. In a paper titled “Stateless Income,” Kleinbard analyzed Microsoft’s overseas earnings. Kleinbard noted that in 2010, Microsoft has $29.5 billion in earnings overseas, and that the tax cost of these earnings if they were brought back to the U.S. would be $9.2 billion:
For example, Microsoft Corporation’s Financial Statements in its 2010 Annual Report indicated that the company has $29.5 billion in “permanently reinvested earnings” outside the United States (that is, after foreign-tax earnings of foreign subsidiaries that Microsoft does not currently intend to repatriate to the United States). Microsoft also noted that the tax cost of repatriating those earnings to the United States would be $9.2 billion.
The $9.2 billion would amount to paying a rate of 31 percent. The missing four percent would come from foreign tax credits — meaning, the taxes the company paid overseas. That means the effective corporate income tax rate for Microsoft for its overseas profits is a paltry 4 percent — almost 9 times lower than the U.S. corporate income tax rate. In its last quarterly statement, Microsoft noted that “$42 billion of its $50.2 billion in cash and short term investments was held by its foreign subsidiaries.”
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft is part of a coalition of companies advocating for a repatration tax holiday, which would allow them to bring money they have stashed offshore back to the U.S. at a dramatically lower tax rate.
But Microsoft isn’t the only company involved in the acquisition that has been getting a sweet deal with overseas profits. As stated before, Skype’s office is based in Luxembourg. The effective corporate income tax rate in Luxembourg? 0.4 percent (See “The Revenue Effects of Multinational Firm Income Shifting, Kimberly Clausing). MarketWatch’s Therese Poletti notes that Skype’s financial disclosures show “dizzying array of offshore entities and holding companies associated with its biggest investors.” The private equity firm Silver Lake, which owns 39 percent stake in Skype, is also a major tax dodger. “Two of the three Silver Lake Funds which own shares in Skype are based” in the Cayman Islands and George Town in the caribbean. eBay, which “retained a 30% stake in Skype, giving investors a return of about $1.4 billion,” uses eBay International AG unit for its Skype ownership. Despite being an American company, this unit is based in Bern, Switzerland.
While many in the financial world are unsure of the results of the recent acquisition, there is clearly one group that won’t be benefitting: U.S. taxpayers who will continue to watch supposedly “American” businesses exploit the tax code and set up tax havens to avoid paying taxes in our country.
Seth Hanlon, the Director of Fiscal Reform for the Center for American Project’s Doing What Works initiative, contributed to this post.
This week, Karl Rove’s 527 group American Crossroads released an ad in the upcoming New York 26th congressional district special election hitting Tea Party candidate Jack Davis for investing in dozens of companies that shipped U.S. jobs overseas.
However, a ThinkProgress investigation has found that American Crossroads’ preferred candidate, Republican nominee Jane Corwin, is also investing heavily in corporations that outsource U.S. jobs and has reaped massive dividends from these holdings.
The American Crossroads ad, which will likely run through Election Day on May 24th, knocks Davis for having “invested his millions in companies that ship jobs overseas.” Yet, an analysis of Corwin’s personal financial disclosure shows that the uber-wealthy New Yorker has invested millions in even more companies that outsource than Davis. Between 2001 and 2007, New York state saw 127,000 jobs shipped overseas.
In total, ThinkProgress found that Corwin received as much as $3.1 million in dividends and capital gains over the past two years from her direct investments in more than 35 companies that outsource American jobs. These profits include:
- Up to $65,000 in IBM, a corporation that has outsourced over 63,000 jobs
- As much as $145,000 in General Electric, which has outsourced more than 14,000 jobs
- Up to $60,000 in Intel, a corporation that has shipped more than 10,000 jobs overseas
It’s important to note that these dollar figures are just the profits Corwin has made off of her investments in companies that outsource American jobs. Her actual investments are likely orders of magnitude greater; NBC-2 News estimated her net worth at up to $158 million. In addition, this ThinkProgress analysis only includes Corwin’s direct investments in corporations that ship jobs overseas. Corwin also enjoys multi-million dollar holdings in mutual funds and ETFs, such as the Vanguard Mega Cap ETF and the DFA US Large Company fund, that invest heavily in corporations that outsource American jobs.
New York’s 26th congressional district has been a solidly Republican district, but that could change soon. Corwin has been harmed by her support for the Republican budget, which ends Medicare and extends tax breaks for the wealthy. Donald Trump and other political prognosticators agree that a voter backlash against the plan could sink her candidacy. Indeed, polling currently shows Corwin and Democratic nominee Kathy Hochul neck-and-neck, with Davis trailing slightly behind.
American Crossroads is hoping their ads will shift Davis voters to the Corwin camp. Yet, as they knock Davis for directly investing in corporations that ship U.S. jobs overseas, it’s hard to imagine NY-26 voters flocking to another candidate who is directly invested in corporations that ship U.S. jobs overseas.
ThinkProgress intern Jen Kalaidis contributed research to this report.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee killed an amendment by Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) that would have closed the so-called “terror gap” — preventing firearm sales to suspected terrorists. GOP members want to protect the right of people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list to purchase firearms, arguing that preventing sales would “steal the Second Amendment rights of those placed on the list by mistake.”
In testimony before a U.S. Senate committee, the head of Exxon Mobil said that, based on supply and demand, oil should actually be currently priced at between $60 to $70 a barrel. “When we look at it, it’s going to be somewhere in the $60 to $70 range if you said: ‘If I had access to the next marketable barrel, what would it cost,” said Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson.
The IRS is beginning to crack down on nonprofit advocacy groups that play a big role in American politics, the New York Times reports. Billionaires like David Koch and George Soros could owe millions in “gift taxes” if their political contributions exceeded tax limits. However, it’s unclear how much impact these IRS investigation will really have given the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United.
In a “surprise move” yesterday, President Obama asked Congress to allow Robert S. Mueller III to remain the FBI director for two more years. The FBI Director is currently term-limited to 10 years. Obama’s proposal — which was endorsed by “leading lawmakers of both parties” — would keep Mueller on past his current end date of Sept. 4 without going through a new confirmation process.
A new poll finds 48 percent of global investors rate Obama as “stronger than Bush on terrorism.” “The Obama administration improved the reputation of the U.S.A — i.e., the soft power of America — which will make it more difficult for terrorists to recruit new terrorists,” said one respondent, adding “That is probably, in the long term, the most efficient way to fight terrorism.”
The conservative National Review slammed potential president candidate Mitt Romney’s “Illogical, Terrible Health-Care Address” in a blog post yesterday, writing he “gave a more articulate defense of Obamacare than President Obama ever has.” The magazine followed up with an editorial today attacking the former governor, even though it had endorsed Romney in 2008.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) yesterday demanded “significant” changes to Medicare in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, but he will not insist on the Medicare overhaul proposed in the House GOP budget. Instead, McConnell said any deal must include benefit reductions and tighter Medicare eligibility requirements.
The South Carolina Senate yesterday passed a restrictive voter ID bill, drawing the condemnation of civil liberties and civil rights groups. “We hope that Gov. Haley will veto this bill and tell South Carolina lawmakers that we should be seeking ways to encourage more voters, not inventing excuses to deny voters the ability to cast their ballots,” said South Carolina ACLU Executive Director Victoria Middleton.
And finally: Somewhere in New Hampshire a child is crying because Donald Trump stole their vacation. “Trump chipped in $100 for raffle tickets for the Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce and ended up winning the contest’s grand prize: a trip to the Bahamas.” Trump actually donated the trip, but the “ironic twist” prompted one man to quip, “The guy probably owns an island in the Bahamas somewhere.”
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ThinkProgress filed this report from the first Republican presidential debate in Greenville, SC
Politicians in South Carolina, like many states, have decided to propose a ban on Sharia law. Defending his legislation, bill sponsor State Sen. Mike Fair (R-SC) has claimed that there “are some localities around the country that have imposed Sharia law in lieu of local laws.” University of South Carolina law professor Howard Stravitz, however, has argued that not only is Sharia law non-existent in state courts, but Fair’s bill is both ill-conceived and unconstitutional.
While traveling in South Carolina for the Fox News-sponsored Republican presidential debate last week, we caught up with former South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, a Republican fighting to reject health reform as unconstitutional, to ask him about the issue. As top prosecutor for the state, McMaster seemed confused by the Sharia ban, and explained to us that he has never “encountered” it being used in “American courts”:
FANG: Some critics have said there’s no actual threat of sharia law being imposed on Americans. The reason folks are proposing this ban on Sharia is just politics to demonize Muslims.
MCMASTER: I don’t know the details on it, but I know in American courts its American laws. In Chinese courts, its Chinese law. [...]
FANG: In your time as Attorney General, have you encountered Sharia law being imposed in any way here in South Carolina?
MCMASTER: I haven’t encountered anything except American law. [...] By American, the decisions of the Supreme Court, laws passed, statutes passed by Congress or by the state of South Carolina, the constitution of the state of South Carolina.
Watch it:
Many leading Republicans have staked out far right positions by demagoguing Muslims and claiming that the community is trying to impose Sharia on non-Muslim Americans. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) called Sharia an “existential threat to America,” and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain told ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes that he “will not” appoint a Muslim in his administration because of similar fears.
Bills like the one offered in South Carolina are popping up in states around the country. “The proliferation of fearmongering anti-Sharia laws over the past year demonstrates a rise in legislative action that threatens to entrench feelings of hostility and ill will towards Muslim Americans,” notes ThinkProgress’ Zaid Jilani.
The bottom line about Mitt Romney’s “new” health care plan is that it reads exactly like his health care plan from the 2008 campaign, which looks very similar to the GOP House alternative offered in the midst of the 2009 health care reform legislative battle and Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) 2008 campaign plan. In other words — a rehash of traditional GOP prescriptions that deregulate the insurance market without providing adequate coverage to the sickest Americans or significantly reducing health care costs. Here are five things you should know about Romney’s plan:
1. Romney says he would empower states with greater flexibility by block-granting the Medicaid program, the federal/state initiative that provides coverage to senior citizens and poor Americans. But as a recent Kaiser Family Foundation report has pointed out, converting the existing matching rate formula into a block grant would give states less money that they would have otherwise received and force local governments to cut eligibility to the program. Kaiser examined different scenarios for state responses to reduced federal Medicaid spending and estimated 31 to 44 million Americans could lose their health insurance coverage.
2. Romney would “reform the tax code to promote the individual ownership of health insurance” and “give individuals a choice between the current system and a tax deduction to buy insurance on their own.” He thinks this would create “the best of both worlds” by allowing certain individuals to leave their employer-sponsored health insurance plans and find coverage on the individual market. But this would only entice young healthy workers to buy cheaper but less substantive insurance in the individual insurance plan market place, increasing costs for sicker workers and forcing some to opt out entirely. Among those who would lose their health care are 56 million Americans with pre-existing chronic health conditions. The credits would also fail to cover the cost of comprehensive coverage.
3. Romney says that “individuals who are continuously covered for a specified period of time may not be denied access to insurance because of pre-existing conditions” — a good idea that’s made even better by the Affordable Care Act that he wants to repeal. He’s also advocating for allowing individuals “to purchase insurance across state lines, free from costly state benefit requirements.” This means that insurers would be able to circumvent consumer protections in certain states and sell bare-bone subprime policies to the healthiest (and most profitable) beneficiaries. Companies would have little incentive to do business in states that require coverage for such things as cancer screenings or have guaranteed issue protections and sell plans across the country that deny coverage altogether to high-cost cases. The Affordable Care Act includes a similar — but far better regulated — provision that allows states to form compacts in which they can establish their own regulations.
4. Romney wants to “reform medical liability” and have the federal government “provide innovation grants to states for reforms, such as alternative dispute resolution or health care courts.” The current health care law already includes similar demonstration projects, even if the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that malpractice reforms could at most save $54 billion over 10 years.
5. Finally, Romney proposes establishing Health Savings Accounts and eliminating “the minimum deductible requirement for HSAs.” This may help some healthy people but will do little to aid Americans with expensive chronic conditions who will quickly deplete their savings accounts.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and former Sen. John Ensign (R-NV)
Contained in the 67-page report, however, is troubling evidence of the central role that current Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) played in trying to keep Ensign’s mistress and her husband quiet — evidence that contradicts Coburn’s previous public statements on the matter.
In July 2009, Coburn said he was consulting with Ensign “as a physician and as an ordained deacon” and he considered it a “privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody.” Asked about the claim from Doug Hampton, the husband of Ensign’s mistress, that he “urged Ensign to pay the Hamptons millions of dollars,” Coburn said, “I categorically deny everything he said.”
Coburn was similarly blunt in a November 22, 2009 interview with George Stephanopoulos:
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., told me flatly that he did not offer to broker a million-dollar deal between his Senate colleague, John Ensign, R-Nev., and the family of Ensign’s mistress.
Doug Hampton, the husband of a staffer with whom Ensign had an affair, makes the explosive allegation in an interview with “Nightline’s” Cynthia McFadden that will air on Monday.
…When I asked Coburn on This Week if Hampton is telling the truth, he said, “There was no negotiation,” but acknowledged that he had worked to “bring two families to a closure of a very painful episode.”
Watch it:
Coburn eventually agreed to cooperate with the Ethics Committee; their findings on the level of his involvement are startling. According to the committees report, Coburn actively assisted in the discussions of a hush money package, negotiating a proposed package from $8 million down to $2.8 million. The ethics committee report, on pages 37 to 38, describes the negotiation between Mr. Albregts, an attorney for the husband of Ensign’s mistress, and Sen. Coburn:
Mr. Albregts tried to get a ballpark estimate from Senator Coburn as to the amount he would be comfortable with. Mr. Albregts proposed $8 million based on a document Doug Hampton prepared. According to Mr. Albregts, Senator Coburn said that the figure was absolutely ridiculous. Senator Coburn then stated that the Ensigns should buy the Hamptons home because it is so close to the Ensigns, and the Hamptons should receive an amount of money above and beyond that to start over, buy a new home, have some living money while they were looking for new employment, and possibly some seed money to send the children off to college. Senator Coburn stated that that’s what I’ve thought from day one would be fair, but said that $8 million was nowhere close to a reasonable figure. Senator Coburn told Mr. Albregts to figure out what those amounts would be, and call him back.
Mr. Albregts then spoke with Mr. Hampton, and asked him how much it would cost to get the house paid for, and how much he needed above that figure to get started somewhere new. Mr. Hampton then came back with some figures, and estimated $1.2 million for the home, and another $1.6 million to get started somewhere new. Mr. Albregts called Senator Coburn back for the final time with this revised figure on the same day in a five-minute call. Per Mr. Albregts, Senator Coburn responded by stating that okay, that’s what I had in mind and I think is fair and said he would take the figure to the Ensigns.
The Ensigns rejected the new offer. Previous reports referenced Coburn’s role as a go-between but did not reveal the extent of his inovlement in the negotations. The report notes that “Mr. Albregts testified that Senator Coburn took an active role in the negotiations between Mr. Hampton and Senator Ensign, and this role included proposing specific resolutions.” Coburn told the committee that he was “simply going to pass information” to Ensign.
One thing is certain: Tom Coburn has a lot of explaining to do.
Yesterday, the House passed the so-called “Putting the Gulf Back to Work Act,” which is intended to make it easier for the oil industry to drill in the Gulf of Mexico. Sadly, this bill also continues the GOP’s longstanding practice of rigging the court system to favor wealthy and influential interest groups. Tucked within the bill is a provision that consigns many lawsuits involving oil drilling into a federal court that is dominated by judges with close ties to the oil industry:
SEC. 202. EXCLUSIVE VENUE FOR CERTAIN CIVIL ACTIONS RELATING TO COVERED ENERGY PROJECTS IN THE GULF OF MEXICO.
Venue for any covered civil action shall not lie in any district court not within the 5th circuit unless there is no proper venue in any court within that circuit.
It should come as no surprise that the oil industries’ allies in Congress want to make sure that only Fifth Circuit judges get to hear the industry’s appeals. When it is not busy ordering high school cheerleaders to pay $45,000 because they sued the school district that required them to cheer for their alleged rapist, the Fifth Circuit’s judges have cozied up tightly with the oil industry.
Ten of the Fifth Circuit’s sixteen active judges have oil investments, including Chief Judge Edith Jones, who owns as much as $330,000 in oil interests. Two Fifth Circuit judges, Jerry Smith and Eugene Davis, even ruled in favor of the oil industry in a major drilling moratorium case despite the fact that they both attended expense-paid “junkets for judges” sponsored by an oil-industry funded organization. A third Fifth Circuit judge, Edith Clement, actually serves on the board of this organization, despite an opinion from the federal judiciary’s ethics committee saying that Clement violates her ethical obligations by remaining on this board.
The House GOP’s effort to shift the oil industry’s litigation into a court dominated by oil-friendly judges in only the right’s latest attempt to stack the deck in favor of corporate parties and against ordinary Americans:
It’s bad enough that corporate America thinks that they are above the law, but it is inexcusable that the GOP is fighting tooth and nail to give the wealthiest and most powerful interests all the legal immunity their hearts’ desire.
At a time when Texas is dealing with a record budget deficit by slashing essential services and possibly laying off 97,000 teachers, state lawmakers have committed taxpayers to funding Formula One auto racing at a steep price: $25 million a year for the next 10 years.
The motorsport franchise left the U.S. four years ago because of low attendance, but the effort to bring it back — and base it in Texas — has been spearheaded by B.J. “Red” McCombs, the co-founder of conservative media conglomerate Clear Channel Communications. Despite being consistently ranked as one of Forbes 400 richest Americans — with a net worth last estimated at $1.4 billion — McCombs has gotten state Comptroller Susan Combs to agree to build a racing track in Austin at taxpayer expense. Austin’s city government may also invest an additional $4 million a year in tax revenue to facilitate the plan.
Even some Republicans are questioning the wisdom of committing state resources to bring the event to Texas as the state struggles to close a $27 billion deficit:
“I don’t understand why 25 people in Austin could not put up $1 million each if they thought this was a good opportunity instead of the state making a $25 million commitment,” said Senator Dan Patrick, a Houston Republican. “The developers should find the money through private sources.”
Bloomberg points out that for $25 million a year, “the state could pay more than 500 teachers an average salary of $48,000.”
Corporate backers of the plan and their GOP allies insist that F-1 racing will pump money and jobs into the Texas economy. But sporting experts say the state is betting taxpayer money on an uncertain investment. Michael Cramer, a former president of the Texas Rangers and Dallas Stars, told Bloomberg, “With places struggling, spending that much money on an essentially one-off event is tough to do.”
F-1 races have tried and failed to gain traction in the U.S. in different cities since since the 1970s. Even Bernie Ecclestone, the CEO of the F-1 series admitted that, “No one wanted to hold it,” until the Austin promoters stepped in.
Richard Viktorin, an accountant with Audits in the Public Interest, says his Austin-based group opposes government support for the races because they are a gross misuse of state funds. “It’s off-balance-sheet financing for a rich man’s sport.”
Despite rhetoric about the imminent need to cut federal spending, the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee late last night approved a $700 billion military funding allocation for next year — the Pentagon’s largest budget ever — including a “lifeline” to the presumed-dead extra engine for F-35 fighter jet:
During a markup of the 2012 Pentagon authorization measure, House Armed Services Committee members approved one amendment that would allow Rolls and GE access to equipment so they could continue testing a second F-35 power plant. [...]
[T]he panel shot down an amendment introduced by [Rep. Jim] Cooper [R-TX] that would have siphoned $380.6 million from the F-35 fighter program. It also would have reduced the planned buy of the Marines’ version of the Lockheed Martin-made F-35 in 2012, from six to four.
The second engine for the F-35 is one of the most obvious and least painful places to cut federal spending, as the military has insisted for several years that it doesn’t want it. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has even urged President Obama to veto any defense authorization that includes funding for the project, saying, “Every dollar additional to the budget that we have to put into the F-35 is a dollar taken from something else that the troops may need.”
Finally, at the Pentagon’s urging, the full House voted to kill funding for the extra engine in February, but last night’s vote is the first step to resurrecting the project. While the new measure allocates no funds for the project, with the defense contractors working on the project offering to self-fund testing in the meantime, the clear assumption underlying their investment is that the project will be fully revived one day.
Last night’s vote was a big “helping hand to Rolls-Royce and GE,” the lead contractors on the project — and they’ve earned it. The companies dispatched a small army of lobbyists from 13 different firms to the Capitol and have donated heavily to key lawmakers. GE gave $223,000 to members of the Armed Services Committee in the 2010 election cycle alone, including $8,500 to Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA). Rolls-Royce’s PAC gave almost $10,000 to McKeon in the 2010 cycle. Other supposed fiscal hawks like House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) have also defended the redundant project.
Meanwhile, Republicans on the committee also approved spending an extra $100 million on missile defense, money which could have instead gone to National Guard and Reserve equipment needs.
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