Category: Congress

OK, The Caroline Kennedy Senate Bid Has Jumped the Shark

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Fundamentally, there is a difference between a celebrity running for office, and a celebrity being appointed to office.

It’s even more extreme when said celebrity has little in the way of personal accomplishments, and is being considered simply because of who her father was, and the fact that she is a FOB (friend of Barack).

But now, Caroline Kennedy is refusing to make financial disclosures unless she is offered the appointment:

If she were applying to be, say, an undersecretary of education in Barack Obama’s new administration, Caroline Kennedy would have to fill out a 63-item confidential questionnaire disclosing potentially embarrassing text messages and diary entries, the immigration status of her household staff, even copies of every résumé she used in the last 10 years.

If she were running for election to the Senate, Ms. Kennedy would have to file a 10-part, publicly available report disclosing her financial assets, credit card debts, mortgages, book deals and the sources of any payments greater than $5,000 in the last three years.

But Ms. Kennedy, who has asked Gov. David A. Paterson to appoint her to succeed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton — and who helped oversee the vetting process for Mr. Obama’s possible running mates — is declining to provide a variety of basic data, including companies she has a stake in and whether she has ever been charged with a crime.

Ms. Kennedy declined on Monday to reply to those and other questions posed by The New York Times about any potential ethical, legal and financial entanglements. Through a spokesman, she said she would not disclose that kind of information unless and until she becomes a senator.

“If Governor Paterson were to choose Caroline, she would, of course, comply with all disclosure requirements,” said the spokesman, Stefan Friedman.

Caroline Kennedy has led an intensely private life by the standard of a Kennedy, and has generally eschewed the limelight, and I’m beginning to wonder if she’s trying to throw the appointment derby, and that she is in only because the family is pressuring her to do so.

If that’s the case, it would better to be honest with her family. If that is not the case, this is insanely reckless and stupid.

If she is not willing to make these disclosures prior to a selection, particularly given Governor Patterson’s concerns that have popped up among his own staff regarding proper vetting, then she is not ready for any public office.

But what she is doing now is just nuts.

Election Update

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Well, at the time that I am typing this, Franken lead over Coleman is in excess of 250.

So, when the votes go against you, what do you do, you go to court, claiming that the votes were counted twice, only the Coleman campaign has a twist: what they are claiming would not only throw out some votes, but would reset the counter on the precincts in question, all of which are Franken precincts, my guess, back to election night tallies.

In the meantime, another of Coleman’s moves, reinstating some challenges that he had previously withdrawn, has netted Franken 3 votes…..Karma, neh?

Inouye Next on Cunningham Scandal Hit Parade?

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Interestingly enough, what should be one of the safest seats in the Senate may be at risk because of the perception of scandal.

In a situation that has macabre reflections on Ted Stevens, it appears that defense contractor Mitchell Wade has been cooperating extensively with authorities, and he has reportedly named 5 members of Congress, including Daniel Inouye, though it is unclear whether we are talking proximity, ethics issues, or actual violations of the law.

As Hawaii now has a rather popular governor, should this progress much further, the reelection of the senior Senator from Hawaii may not be a sure thing.

Election Update

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OK, the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled, and it’s confusing.

The Hill says that the court has ruled with the Coleman campaign, and The New York Times says that the ruling favors the Franken campaign.

Both the stories have the same basic synopsis of the ruling (quoting the Times here):

The court ruled that the Coleman and Franken camps, working with the Minnesota secretary of state and the Canvassing Board, must agree on a standard to decide which absentee ballots should be counted. It was unclear precisely how the inevitable disputes between the campaigns would be resolved.

So, if this means that all 3 (4?) parties for each vote, it sounds like a firm “no count,” but if it means that all of them need to establish a standard to which they agree, then I am unclear how that goes, except that, perhaps it ends up before the court again, because I do not expect the Coleman camp to reasonable.

In either case, the process is supposed to be hammered out by December 31 at 4:00pm CDT, which means that the votes would probably be tabulated on January 2….I think.

A more complete, if less definitive description of what is a confusing ruling is available at the Minnesota Independent.

The sticking point to me is whether they have to agree on process or each ballot. The latter leads to the campaigns attempting to game the votes by objecting to votes in areas unfavorable to them.

The court did have strong words for either campaign being unreasonable, but I do not know to what degree this will mean anything.

In fact, there is a part of me that thinks that the Minnesota Supreme Court kicked the can down the road with its decision, and they expect to deal with challenges in January.

In any case, in terms of the actual vote counting, Franken’s challenges having been supported at about twice the rate of Coleman’s challenges, and the counting of his challenges just started, and the current count from the Strib has Coleman up by 5, but Franken winning by 89 based on the challenge percentages, and that is without any of the absentee votes in question being counted.

Why the Hit Jobs on Darcy Burner

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One of the questions in the last election cycle was, “Why was the Seattle Times so aggressively hostile to Darcy Burner?” In her close loss to Dave Reichert.

They went so far as to misstate her degree in order to claim that she had lied about her education.

Well, now we know why they hated her, and sent their reporters out with orders to lie.

It appears that Ms. Burner ran the Committee for a Two Newspaper town, which prevented the Seattle Times from using its joint operating agreement with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to shut the publication down, and eventually forced the Times to make $24 millions in payments to keep the JOA going.

Losing the possibility of a monopoly in Seattle advertizing was probably even more expensive to the Times than was the payment, and so when she won the Democratic Primary for congress, it was payback time.

I know, it’s an almost 2 month old analysis that I’m linking to, but I just noticed it…My bad.

Election Update

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In Virginia, bigot US Representative Virgil Goode has conceded after a recount failed to turn around his 745 vote deficit.

In Minnesota, we have the Franken campaign suing Olmsted County some absentee ballots that were accepted, but then accidentally placed in the wrong pile, and so were not counted.

I would have thought that this one would not require the filing of a lawsuit, but I’m naive, I guess.

In any case, it was Norm’s big day in court, and while there were no rulings, it does appear that the Minnesota Supreme Court was unamused with the Coleman campaign.

Part of it hay have had to do with Coleman’s lawyer using the “F-Word” in court….No, not that f-word….I mean that he used the word Florida.

Roger Magnuson wasted no time in bringing up Florida. In fact, the attorney’s first utterance before the Minnesota Supreme Court this afternoon referenced the legal debacle of 2000. Representing Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign, Magnuson argued that the state canvassing board’s actions of December 12, when it recommended that all 87 counties count wrongly rejected absentee ballots, were an “an invitation to go to Florida.”

But before Magnuson could begin to back up this assertion, he was interrupted by a clearly irritated Justice Paul Anderson. “This is not Florida,” he stated. “I’m just not terribly receptive to you telling us this is Florida.”

So it went throughout the one-hour hearing before the Supreme Court today, with the justices repeatedly interrupting and questioning attorneys for both campaigns. The justices seemed more interested in Andersen v. Rolvaag, the 1962 Minnesota Supreme Court case that helped decide the state’s deadlocked gubernatorial race, than Bush v. Gore.

(emphasis mine)

Minnesota Corruption Update

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The Star Tribune notes that Norm and Laurie Coleman, her boss, Jim Hays, and Coleman Supporter Nasser Kazemini have all high-powered retained lawyers on a matter currently being investigated by the FBI, in which allegations have been made that Kazemini funneled money to Norm Coleman via Laurie Coleman, using Jim Hays insurance company as a conduit.

The interesting paragraph in the article, and I did not catch it, the good folks at TPMMuckraker did is this:

Norm Coleman has hired Doug Kelley, Laurie Coleman is represented by Earl Gray, Hays is aligned with Doug Peterson and Kazeminy has secured the services of Joe Friedberg.

Norm and Laurie have separate lawyers. While this does not mean that they will roll on each other…yet…but it does mean that this is serious, and that they are taking this very seriously.

Heh.

Election Update

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Well, the Star Tribune had a “reader analysis” of images of some of the challenged ballots, and they ran the numbers from that, and concluded that Franken would win.

So, Coleman’s lawsuit against counting ballots continues, and the Minnesota Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments tomorrow but they did not grant an injunction, which indicates that they did not see anything earthshaking in the filings.

In the mean time, TPMElectionCentral has been live blogging the canvassing board, and we have notice that the Coleman campaign is reissuing challenges to ballots that it had previously withdrawn, and that Franken’s challenges, which were reviewed first (it’s going to be a multi-day process at least) seem to be generally be well received by the board, i.e. not considered bogus, and he’s picked up about 43 votes, which is ahead of where Franken’s team was predicting the numbers, and they predicted a 4 vote win.

Again, this is going to be tight in either case.

Jesse Jackson, Jr. May Have Already Been Talking to Fitsgerald

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If this is true, I think I know why he sounded so pissed at that press conference.

He still won’t be Senator, but if he dropped a dime on Blagojevich months ago, he’s pretty much in the clear on this:

ABC7 has learned that since late last summer, the congressman has worked with federal prosecutors, informing on an alleged Blagojevich administration scheme two and half years earlier.

……

And sources tell ABC7 that Jackson has been in regular contact with the feds and has told the government that in 2003 Blagojevich denied the congressman’s wife Sandi an appointment as Illinois lottery director because Jackson would not donate $25,000 to the governor’s campaign fund.

I’m not sure who the sources are, because generally Fitzgerald runs a pretty tight ship, but if this story is accurate the distinguished gentleman from Illinois has been very ill served by all of this.

NY Senate Seat

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Well, it appears that Governor Paterson is close to a decision, though he won’t announce until after Hillary is approved as Secretary of State and resigns, and that Caroline Kennedy is now actively seeking the Senate seat.

This would be a disaster, and perhaps the only way the Republicans have a chance of picking of the seat in 2010.

Caroline Kennedy is an intensely private person (or at least as intensely private as you can be if you are a child of JFK), and she is a lousy campaigner, as was shown on those few occasions that she the stump for Obama.

She may not be as bad at campaigning as her cousin Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who gave Republicans the Governor’s mansion for the first time since Spiro Agnew in Maryland, but it’s close.

There is also the entire dynastic issue, which is troubling.

While there are other likely candidates for this seat (Andrew Cuomo) who have clearly got a leg up on the political ladder because of their parentage, Kennedy has never before even taken the ladder out, and it is simply in conflict with what should be American values to hand her a position like this.

Automaker Updates

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Well, it looks like George W. Bush is throwing a hissy fit, and dragging his feet on an auto bailout. My guess is that he wants to show that he still has relevance….Even though he doesn’t.

In any case, Toyota just signaled its displeasure with the Senate filibuster by delaying the completion and opening of a new plant in Mississippi indefinitely, which is a pretty clear indicator about how the transplant automakers feel about having their supply chain cut too.

I imagine that they are getting some frantic calls from state officials, and I imaging that potential supply chain issues if GM goes under have come up.

In the mean time, it appears that GMAC swap holders have agreed to changes that may allow it to become a bank holding company, which means that they can sign up for one of the 11 new Federal Reserve sh$#pile for cash programs its offering banks.

Because Republicans Know that Counting the Votes is Communist

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So the Coleman campaign has filed suit to stop it

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign today asked the Minnesota Supreme Court to issue an emergency order banning county election officials from opening any rejected absentee ballots. The court has scheduled a hearing on the issue for Wednesday. The Franken campaign accuses the Coleman side of trying to keep wrongly rejected ballots from being included in the recount.

As an aside here, in addition to hitting on right and wrong, the Franken campaign should be saying flat out that Coleman knows that a real count would show him losing, because it’s both the truth and good PR.

GOP: ‘Action Alert – Auto Bailout’ – The News Hole – msnbc.com

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I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

Well, it looks like the good folks at MSNBC’s Countdown, have come across a memo to Republican senators detailing strategies on the auto maker bailout.

We are all stunned and saddened that it seems to show that that the the use of the filibuster in the Senate was a crass political anti-union ploy.

Needless to say, I am disappointed. I could never imagine the Republicans using the Senate and the filibuster as nothing more than a vehicle* for crass political posturing:

From:
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 9:12 AM
To:
Subject: Action Alert — Auto Bailout

Today at noon, Senators Ensign, Shelby, Coburn and DeMint will hold a press conference in the Senate Radio/TV Gallery. They would appreciate our support through messaging and attending the press conference, if possible. The message they want us to deliver is:

1. This is the democrats first opportunity to payoff organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.

2. This rush to judgment is the same thing that happened with the TARP. Members did not have an opportunity to read or digest the legislation and therefore could not understand the consequences of it. We should not rush to pass this because Detroit says the sky is falling.

The sooner you can have press releases and documents like this in the hands of members and the press, the better. Please contact me if you need additional information. Again, the hardest thing for the democrats to do is get 60 votes. If we can hold the Republicans, we can beat this.

(emphasis mine)

So all this Sturm and Drang is just a way to take cheap shots at labor….Hoocoodanode?

*Pun not intended

Quote of the Day..

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Well, it appears that David Vitter has been doing celebratory dances about his role in killing the auto bailout, and some people beg to differ:

“I don’t know what Sen. Vitter has against GM or the United Auto Workers or the entire domestic auto industry; whatever it is, whatever he thinks we’ve done, it’s time for him to forgive us, just like Sen. Vitter has asked the citizens of Louisiana to forgive him, ” said Johnson [Morgan Johnson, president of the UAW local for GM in Shreveport], president of Local 2166. Otherwise, Johnson said of Vitter, it would appear, “He’d rather pay a prostitute than pay auto workers.”