Louisiana Voice

Of all the incumbents running in Louisiana’s Senate and five House elections, no less than $6.5 million in political action committee (PAC) money has been poured into the various campaigns.

Incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu led the pack with $2.6 million in PAC money with Rep. Steve Scalise, 1^st District, a distant second at $1.7 million), followed by Charles Boustany, 3^rd District ($984,000), Landrieu challenger Congressman Bill Cassidy, 6^th District ($724,550), Cedric Richmond, 2^nd District ($723,000), John Fleming, 4^th District ($258,000) and Vance McAllister, 5^th District ($123,000).

Others with PAC contributions include

• S. Senate candidate Rob Maness ($35,000);
• 5^th District congressional candidates Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayor ($6,000), Zach Dasher ($5,000) and Ralph Abraham and Harris Brown ($1,000 each);
• 6^th District congressional candidates Dan Claitor ($15,601), Paul Dietzel II ($15,325), Edwin Edwards ($8,700), Trey Thomas ($3,500), Cassie Felder ($2,500) and Lenar Whitney ($500).

In Congressional Districts 1, 2, 3, and 4, no candidates other than the incumbents already covered in previous stories reported any PAC contributions.

Among all incumbents, 5^th District Congressman Vance McAllister, facing re-election only a year after winning a special election to succeed retired Rodney Alexander, had the fewest PAC contributions.

Still, the $123,000 he received is ample evidence of how quickly an incumbent can attract PAC money—even an incumbent with a single year under his belt.

Here are some of McAllister’s PAC contributions:

ALTRIA GROUP PAC: $1,000

• Altria Group, Inc. (previously named Philip Morris Companies Inc.) The name change alternative offers the possibility of masking the negatives associated with the tobacco business,” thus enabling the company to improve its image and raise its profile without sacrificing tobacco profits,
• According to the Center for Public Integrity, Altria spent around $101 million on lobbying the U.S. government between 1998 and 2004, making it the second most active organization in the nation.
• Altria also funded The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition which lobbied against the scientific consensus on climate change.
• Daniel Smith, representing Altria, sits on the Private Enterprise Board of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

AT&T PAC: $2,500

• AT&T is the second-largest donor to United States political campaigns, and the top American corporate donor, having contributed more than US$47.7 million since 1990, 56% and 44% of which went to Republican and Democratic recipients, respectively. Also, during the period of 1998 to 2010, the company expended US$130 million on lobbying in the United States. A key political issue for AT&T has been the question of which businesses win the right to profit by providing broadband internet access in the United States.
• Bobby Jindal rejected an $80 million federal grant for the expansion of broadband internet service in rural Louisiana even as AT&T was contributing $250,000 to the Foundation run by Jindal’s wife Supriya after Gov. Jindal signed SB- 807 into law (Act 433) in 2008 over the objections of the Louisiana Municipal and the State Police Jury associations. The bill, the Consumer Choice for Television Act removed from local and parish governments their authority and responsibility to negotiate cable franchise agreements with companies that relied largely on locally-owned public infrastructure such as utility poles. The bill also allows AT&T to sell cable television service without the necessity of obtaining local franchises.
• Bill Leahy, representing AT&T, sits on the Private Enterprise Board of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

EVERY REPUBLICAN IS CRUCIAL PAC: $10,000

• Every Republican is Crucial (ERIC) has contributed nearly $9.2 million to Republican candidates, including $50,000 to fellow Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise.
• ERIC is the PAC of defeated Virginia House member Eric Cantor whose campaign was underwritten in turn by a gaggle of Wall Street bankers, including Goldman Sachs, Blackstone Group, and Citigroup.

CMR POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE: $3,500

• CMR is the political action committee launched by Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington) who is apparently as AWOL from her eastern Washington district as Gov. Bobby Jindal is from Louisiana. In challenging Jindal for racking up frequent flyer miles, she has visited North Carolina, Indiana, Las Vegas, Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire, Ohio, and California on behalf of Republican candidates.

EXXON MOBIL CORP. PAC: $5,000

• ExxonMobil has drawn criticism from scientists, science organizations and the environmental lobby for funding organizations critical of the Kyoto Protocol and seeking to undermine public opinion about the scientific conclusion that global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Mother Jones Magazine said the company channeled more than $8 million to 40 different organizations that have employed disinformation campaigns including “skeptical propaganda masquerading as journalism” to influence opinion of the public and of political leaders about global warming and that the company was a member of one of the first such groups, the Global Climate Coalition, founded in 1989. ExxonMobil’s support for these organizations has drawn criticism from the Royal Society, the academy of sciences of the United Kingdom. The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report in 2007 accusing ExxonMobil of spending $16 million, between 1998 and 2005, towards 43 advocacy organizations which dispute the impact of global warming. The report argued that ExxonMobil used disinformation tactics similar to those used by the tobacco industry in its denials of the link between lung cancer and smoking, saying that the company used “many of the same organizations and personnel to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue.” These charges are consistent with a purported 1998 internal ExxonMobil strategy memo, posted by the environmental group Environmental Defense, which said:

“Victory will be achieved when

• Average citizens [and the media] ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the conventional wisdom;
• Industry senior leadership understands uncertainties in climate science, making them stronger ambassadors to those who shape climate policy;
• In 2003, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced that J. Bryan Williams, a former senior executive of Mobil Oil Corp., had been sentenced to three years and ten months in prison on charges of evading income taxes on more than $7 million in unreported income, including a $2 million kickback he received in connection with Mobil’s oil business in Kazakhstan. Documents filed with the court said Williams’ unreported income included millions of dollars in kickbacks from governments, persons, and other entities with whom Williams conducted business while employed by Mobil. In addition to his sentence, Williams must pay a fine of $25,000 and more than $3.5 million in restitution to the IRS, in addition to penalties and interest.

• Those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear out of touch with reality.”

HONEYWELL INTERNATIONAL PAC: $1,000

• In December 2011, the non-partisan liberal organization Public Campaign criticized Honeywell International for spending $18.3 million on lobbying while paying no taxes during 2008–2010, instead getting $34 million in tax rebates, despite making a profit of $4.9 billion, laying off 968 workers since 2008, and increasing executive pay by 15% to $54.2 million in 2010 for its top 5 executives.
• Honeywell has been criticized in the past for its manufacture of deadly and maiming weapons. The Honeywell Project, for example, targeted Honeywell executives in an attempt to halt the production of cluster bombs.
• The EPA said that no corporation has been linked to a greater number of Superfund toxic waste sites than has Honeywell. Honeywell ranks 44th in a list of US corporations most responsible for air pollution, releasing more than 9.4 million pounds of toxins per year into the air. In 2001, Honeywell agreed to pay $150,000 in civil penalties and to perform $772,000 worth of reparations for environmental violations involving:
• failure to prevent or repair leaks of hazardous organic pollutants into the air
• failure to repair or report refrigeration equipment containing chlorofluorocarbons.
• inadequate reporting of benzene, ammonia, nitrogen oxide, dichlorodifluoromethane, sulfuric acid, sulfur dioxide and caprolactam emissions.
• In 2003, a federal judge in New Jersey ordered the company to perform an estimated $400 million environmental remediation of chromium waste, citing “a substantial risk of imminent damage to public health and safety and imminent and severe damage to the environment.” In the same year, Honeywell paid $3.6 million to avoid a federal trial regarding its responsibility for trichloroethylene contamination in Illinois. In 2004, the State of New York announced that it would require Honeywell to complete an estimated $448 million cleanup of more than 165,000 pounds of mercury and other toxic waste dumped into Onondaga Lake in Syracuse. In 2005, the state of New Jersey sued Honeywell, Occidental Petroleum and PPG to compel cleanup of more than 100 sites contaminated with chromium, a metal linked to lung cancer, ulcers and dermatitis. In 2008, the state of Arizona made a settlement with Honeywell to pay a $5 million fine and contribute $1 million to a local air-quality cleanup project, after allegations of breaking water-quality and hazardous-waste laws on hundreds of occasions between the years of 1974 and 2004.

PROSPERITY ACTION, INC. PAC: $5,000

• Founded by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), Prosperity Action leadership PAC has contributed $182,500 to incumbent congressional candidates and challengers seeking election in 2014. Ryan was Mitt Romney’s running mate in the 2012 presidential election.
• Among Ryan’s most consistent—and generous—supporters were David and Charles Koch of Koch Industries, the major benefactor of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

REYNOLDS AMERICAN PAC: $1,000

(It seems curious that a physician would accept campaign money from a tobacco company.)

• In 1994, then CEO James Johnston testified under oath before Congress, saying that he didn’t believe that nicotine is addictive.
• In 2002, the company was fined $15m for handing out free cigarettes at events attended by children, and was fined $20m for breaking the 1998 Master Agreement, which restricted targeting youth in its tobacco advertisements.
• In May 2006 former R.J. Reynolds vice-president of sales Stan Smith pleaded guilty to charges of defrauding the Canadian government of $1.2 billion through a cigarette smuggling operation. Smith confessed to overseeing the 1990s operation while employed by RJR. Canadian-brand cigarettes were smuggled out of and back into Canada, or smuggled from Puerto Rico, and sold on the black market to avoid taxes. The judge referred to it as biggest fraud case in Canadian history.

COMMITTEE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF CAPITALISM: $5,000

• Committee membership includes Bill Gates, four members of the Walton (Walmart) family, former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, a member of his lobbying firm, George W. Bush’s former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric which has managed to avoid paying any corporate income tax for the past half-dozen years despite record-breaking profits and extensive operations that have been outsourced to other countries which provide cheap labor.