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Archive for the ‘Senate’ Category

Nine of 11 Senators who contribute to Cassidy through Leadership PACS have interesting political baggage

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Congress, Elections, House, Senate, PACs, Politicians, Senate on August 18, 2014| 19 Comments »

Because The Hayride political blog that tilts slightly to the right of Attila the Hun appears to be fixated on Edwin Edwards and those who contribute to his congressional campaign, we thought it only fair to offer the identities of a few contributors to the U.S. senatorial campaign of Congressman Bill Cassidy, the man Edwards is trying to succeed.

Cassidy, meanwhile, is attempting to unseat incumbent U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu.

Unlike The Hayride, we opted not to concentrate on individual contributors (though we are reserving that as an option) but rather to peel the cover back on contributions of political action committees, or PACs.

The reason for this is simple: Small donors make good press but big donors get you reelected and PACs tend to be far more generous than individual donors.

There are three types of PACs:

  • Connected PACs are established by businesses, labor unions, trade groups or health organizations. They receive and raise money from a “restricted class,” usually sharing a common interest. Of the 4,600 connected PACs, 1,598 are registered corporate PACs, 995 are trade organizations and 272 are related to labor unions.
  • Non-connected PACs consist of groups with an ideological mission, single-issue groups and members of Congress and other political leaders. These organizations may accept funds from any individual, connected PAC, or organization.
  • Leadership PACs are set up by elected officials and political parties and may make independent expenditures, provided the expenditure is not coordinated with the other candidate. Unlike the other types, spending by leadership PACs is not limited. A leadership PAC may not use funds to support the official’s own campaign but can fund travel, administrative expenses, consultants, polling and other non-campaign expenses.

Cassidy has received $77,500 from 11 of those leadership PACs, including $5,000 from U.S. Sen. David Vitter’s Louisiana Reform PAC. Vitter, who apparently was able to find some spare change that was not be used for social contacts in Washington or New Orleans, is a candidate for governor in 2015.

Of the 11, only two, Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee have exhibited any willingness to work with Democrats on legislation, records show.

He also receive about half a million dollars from a cluster of connected PACs, mostly medical professional groups, according to campaign finance records.

In all, Cassidy has received more than $4.7 million through Aug. 2, about 40 percent of which came from PACs, records show.

Other contributions from leadership PACs include:

  • $5,000 from the 21st Century Majority Fund of U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia). Besides voting in favor of the war on Iraq as a member of the U.S. House, he even gave a speech on the House floor in which he said he had personally considered the facts and felt it essential that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction be destroyed. A 1990 supporter of abortion rights, he soon swerved to the right, becoming a pro-life candidate a decade later.
  • $10,000 from the Alamo PAC of U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), one of “Big Oil’s 10 favorite members of Congress,” according to MSN Money. Cornyn has received more money from the oil and gas industry than all but six other members of Congress. Cornyn once compared the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear arguments for sustaining Terri Schiavo’s life with the murders of two judges, a statement that received widespread condemnation and for which he later apologized.
  • $5,000 from the Bluegrass Committee of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). McConnell, among other things, voted against a bill that would help women earn equal pay for performing the same job as men, opposed a Senate bill that would have limited the practice of corporate inversion by U.S. corporations seeking to limit U.S. tax liability, attempted twice to get federal grants for Alltech, whose president made subsequent campaign contributions to McConnell, to build a plant in Kentucky for producing ethanol from algae, corncobs and switchgrass, only to criticize President Obama in 2012 for twice mentioning biofuel production from algae, and requested earmarks for defense contractor BAE Systems while the company was under investigation for alleged bribery of foreign officials.
  • $5,000 from U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby’s Defend America PAC. Shelby (R-Alabama), who in 2000, took a hard line on leaks of classified information, in 2002, revealed classified information related to the 9-11 attacks to Fox News.
  • $5,000 from the Freedom Fund PAC of U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho). Crapo, who claimed to be a Mormon who abstained from using alcohol, pled guilty to DWI in 2013, was fined $250 and received a one-year suspension of his driver’s license. That same year, he voted against passage of a bill that would have expanded background checks for all gun buyers.
  • $2,500 from Lindsey Graham’s Fund for America’s Future. The South Carolina Republican described himself in 1998 as a veteran of Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm when in reality, he never left South Carolina. He did, however, serve in Iraq for a few weeks in 2007 and during the Senate’s August recess in 2009. In 2010, he alleged that “half the children born in hospitals on our borders are the children of illegal immigrants.” A Pew Foundation study, however, gave that number as only 8 percent. In 2009, he supported a climate change bill, calling for a green economy. A year later, he flipped, saying, “The science about global warming has changed. I think they’ve oversold this stuff.” He added that he would vote against the climate bill that he had originally sponsored.
  • $10,000 from the Heartland Values PAC of U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota). A name to watch, Thune was considered as John McCain’s running mate in 2008 but lost out to Sarah Palin (ouch!). He was also considered a possible candidate for president in 2012 (because he “looked presidential”) but opted out. He also was considered to be on the short list for Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012 but lost out again, to Paul Ryan.
  • $10,000 from Next Century Fund PAC of U.S. Sen. Richard Burr (R-North Carolina). Burr voted against the financial reform bill of 2010 which regulates credit default swaps and other derivatives, saying, “I fear we’re headed down a path that will be too over burdensome, too duplicative, it will raise the cost of credit….The balance that we’ve got to have is more focus on the products that we didn’t regulate….more so than government playing a bigger role with a stronger hand.” During the financial crisis of 2008, he told his wife he wasn’t coming home for that weekend and instructed her to withdraw as much as the ATM would allow. “And I want you to go tomorrow, and I want you to go Sunday (and do the same thing).” He said he was convinced “that if you put a plastic card in an ATM machine (sic) the last thing you were going to get was cash.” Apparently he now keeps his money in his PAC.
  • $5,000 from Responsibility and Freedom Work, the leadership PAC of U.S. Sen. Roger S. Wicker (R-Mississippi). Wicker appears to be one of the few in Congress willing—and able—to work across the aisle with Democrats. He served as a member of the Helsinki Commission monitoring human rights and helped to pass a bill imposing tough penalties on Russians accused of violating human rights and he also supported the Bipartisan Sportsmen’s Act of 2014 aimed at improving the public’s ability to enjoy the outdoors. In July of 2013, a letter addressed to Wicker tested positive for the poison ricin.
  • $10,000 from Tenn PAC operated by U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee). Considered one of the most bipartisan members of Congress, Alexander received a letter a year ago from 20 Tennessee tea-party groups calling on him to retire in 2014 because “our great nation can no longer afford compromise and bipartisanship, two traits for which you have become famous.” Among his bipartisan votes were two to confirm Harold Koh as legal adviser to the State Department and for President Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor.

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Report on Edmonson Amendment recommends increased benefits not be paid; was bill ‘hijacked’ by author Morrell?

Posted in Attorney General, Boards, Corruption, Ethics, Finances, Governor's Office, House, Lawsuits, Legislators, Legislature, Retirement, Senate, State Police on August 14, 2014| 7 Comments »

Thanks to the resourcefulness of C.B. Forgotston, LouisianaVoice has obtained a copy of the seven-page report on the Edmonson Amendment and it appears that State Police Superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson and trooper Louis Boquet of Houma are legally prohibited from taking advantage of a special amendment adopted on their behalf by the Louisiana Legislature.

Meanwhile, LouisianaVoice received an unconfirmed report concerning the origination of the amendment that if true, adds a new twist to the curious series of events leading up to passage of the amendment in the last hours of the recent legislative session.

The report, authored by Louisiana State Police Retirement System (LSPRS) board attorney Denise Akers and Florida attorney Robert Klausner, specifically says that Edmonson and Boquet are barred from accepting the retirement windfall because the amendment granting them the special exemption from the state’s Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) is unconstitutional on no fewer than three levels.

Klausner and Akers also expressed concern that the source of funding for the increased benefits would have been the Employee Experience Account “which is reserved as the source of future cost of living benefits (for state police retirees and their widows and children) and payments toward the unfunded accrued liability.”

Edmonson, under the amendment would have seen his retirement income increase by $55,000 a year. The amount of what Boque’s retirement increase would have been is unknown.

The report, however, stopped short of recommending that the board file legal action to have Senate Bill 294, signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal as Act 859, declared unconstitutional.

Instead, it recommended that the LSPRS “simply decline to pay any benefit under Act 859” and that the matter “would only need to be litigated if someone benefitting from the act (Edmonson or Boque) filed to enforce it.” The reported added that both men “have indicated they do not desire to enforce it. Thus, LSPRS may incur no litigation cost in this matter.”

The report said that should either man attempt to collect the increase retirement benefits by challenging the board’s refusal to pay the benefits, “it would fall to the attorney general to defend the law, rather than expending (LSPRS) resources to pursue a costly declaratory relief action.”

The report noted that the Louisiana Supreme Court, in a decision handed down only last year, “made it clear that a pension law adopted in violation of constitutional requirements is void and of no effect.” That was the ruling that struck down Jindal’s controversial state pension reform legislation.

“It is our view that pursuit of a declaratory relief or other legal action seeking to declare Act 859 invalid is unnecessary,” the report said. “By determining that it will not enforce the act, the board acts consistent with its fiduciary duty.”

The board still must vote to accept the recommendations of Klausner and Akers and with Jindal and Edmonson controlling the majority of the 11 seats on the LSPRS board, such a vote remains uncertain.

The board is scheduled to take up the matter at its next meeting, set for Sept. 4 but likely to be moved up now that the report is public.

The report also noted that the amendment was not proposed in either the House or the Senate, but added during conference committee.

SB 294 was authored by State Sen. Jean-Paul Morrell and dealt only with administrative procedures in cases in which law enforcement officers came under investigation. State Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia) inserted the amendment during conference committee discussion of the bill but recent reports have surfaced that place Morrell, who also was one of the three senators—along with three representatives—who served on the conference committee, squarely at the center of the controversy as well.

Morrell authored the bill at the request of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) but was said to have subsequently told the FOP lobbyist that he would have to “hijack” the bill to conference committee in order to accommodate state police and Edmonson.

FOP President Darrell Basco, a Pineville police officer, said he had no personal knowledge of such events and lobbyist Joe Mapes did not return a phone call from LouisianaVoice.

Jindal, meanwhile, has remained strangely silent on the issue of his signing the bill with no apparent vetting by his legal counsel.

The Klausner report said the act was unconstitutional on three specific counts:

  • The amendment “does not meet the constitutionally required ‘one object’ requirement” which says, “The legislature shall enact no law except by a bill introduced during that session…Every bill…shall be confined tone object. Every bill shall contain a brief title indicative of its object. Action on any matter intended to have the effect of law shall be taken only in open, public meeting.” Conference committee proceedings occur in closed sessions.
  • The amendment “does not meet the germaneness requirement” of the Louisiana Constitution, which says, “No bill shall be amended in either house to make a change not germane to the bill as introduced.”
  • “No notice was provided as required by the constitution for retirement related bills and the bill itself never indicated that proper notice was given, all in violation of the Louisiana Constitution,” which says, “No proposal to effect any change in existing laws or constitutional provisions relating to any retirement system for public employees shall be introduced in the legislature unless notice of intention to introduce the proposal has been published, without cost to the state, in the official state journal on two separate days. The last day of publication shall be 60 days before introduction of the bill. The notice shall state the substance of the contemplated law or proposal, and the bill shall contain a recital that the notice has been given.”

Here is the full Klausner report:

Klausner Report on SB 294

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State Treasurer Kennedy gets LouisianaVoice treatment; board denies request for Edmonson Amendment report

Posted in Boards, Civil Service, Corruption, Ethics, Finances, Governor's Office, House, Lawsuits, Legislators, Legislature, Politicians, Public Records, Retirement, Senate, State Police on August 13, 2014| 14 Comments »

It’s the story that won’t die, no matter how the Runaway Governor (apologies to Julia Roberts) would like it to.

While Gov. Bobby Jindal may go running off to Iowa or New Hampshire or Washington, D.C., or wherever his latest odyssey takes him in his futile attempt at resuscitation of his moribund presidential aspirations while ducking his responsibilities at home, folks like political curmudgeon C.B. Forgotston and State Treasurer John Kennedy just won’t go away.

Instead, Kennedy is staying home and demanding answers to the nagging problem of the Edmonson Amendment that Jindal so obligingly signed into law as Act 859, giving State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson that $55,000 bump in retirement income.

Act 859, which began as a bland, nondescript bill by Sen. Jean-Paul Morrell (D-New Orleans) that addressed procedures in cases where law enforcement officers are under investigation, quietly turned into a retirement bonanza for Edmonson.

That happened when State Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia) inserted language into a Conference Committee amendment to the bill that allows Edmonson and one other state trooper in Houma to revoke their decisions of several years ago to enter into the Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) which gave them higher take home pay but froze their retirements at their pay level at the time of their decision.

In Edmonson’s case, his payment was frozen at 100 percent of his $79,000 a year captain’s pay but Act 859 allows him a do-over and to act as though all that never happened so that he can retire at 100 percent of his $134,000 per year colonel’s pay instead.

Other state troopers, teachers and civil service employees who made similar decisions, meanwhile, are stuck with their decisions because….well, sorry, but this is special for Col. Mike Edmonson Esq. Swank. Riff raff need not apply.

The Louisiana State Police Retirement System (LSPRS) board is scheduled to receive a special report by Florida attorney Robert Klausner, an acknowledged authority on public retirement plans, and local attorney Denise Akers at its Sept. 4 meeting but Kennedy isn’t waiting that long.

As State Treasurer, Kennedy holds a seat on the LSPRS board and he has repeatedly voiced his concern over the amendment which he says could put enormous strain on LSPRS if other retired state police officers file suit to obtain similar consideration as Edmonson.

He has claimed the board has a fiduciary responsibility to file suit to overturn the new law that Jindal so hastily signed.

A group of retired state troopers also has signaled its willingness to enter into litigation to get the law overturned.

Both Kennedy and the retired troopers contend the law is unconstitutional because it was not properly advertised in advance of its passage.

“Talking points” originating in State Police headquarters by Capt. Jason Starnes and sent to Edmonson, his Chief of Staff Charles Dupuy, and—for whatever reason—Louisiana Gaming Control Board Chairman Ronnie Jones, said the bill was properly advertised but because the bill in its original form in no way addressed retirement issues, that claim appears rather weak, especially given the fact that state police should be more skilled in producing hard evidence to back their cases.

The additional fact that the amendment never made its appearance until the last day of the session even though it had been discussed weeks before adds to the cloud of suspicion and wholesale chicanery enveloping Jindal, Riser, Edmonson, and Dupuy.

And Kennedy, who already has fired off two previous letters to LSPRS Executive Director Irwin Felps demanding a full investigation of the rogue amendment, now has written a third.

That letter, dated today (Aug. 13), while much shorter than the others, loses no time in getting right to the point: Kennedy is demanding under the state’s public records statutes (La. R.S. 44:31, et seq.) that Felps provide him a copy of the report generated by Klausner and/or Akers.

“Please immediately email the document(s) requested to me,” he wrote. “If you cannot or will not email them, please immediately inform me, and I will send a representative to your office to pick them up right away.”

Here is the link to his letter: Treasurer Kennedy Public Records Request to Irwin Felps August 13 2014

His letter sets the stage for a probable showdown between Kennedy and the rest of the board given the fact that Felps has previously denied Kennedy’s informal request for the report.

Felps said following Kennedy’s initial request, he was advised by legal counsel (most probably Akers) to release the report to the board members but not to the general public. He added that he expected Kennedy will have the report Thursday morning.

“I don’t know why the big cloak and dagger that they won’t share with the board,” Kennedy told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/08/john_kennedy_demands_state_pol.html#incart_river

“I’m a board member and I’m entitled to it. They can’t tell me I can’t see it,” Kennedy said. “This is a very important issue and it’s not just limited to state police. We have thousands of employees in the retirement system (who) didn’t get this treatment.

“I just want to see a report that I asked for and the board asked for. It is a public document.”

Kennedy should know better. LouisianaVoice has already received its comeuppance from the House and Senate, both of which have refused to comply with our request for copies of emails and text messages between the six Conference Committee members who approved the amendment and Jindal, Edmonson or any of their staff members.

Even though such discussions would have fallen under the narrowest of definitions of public business, we were told the public has no business peeking over legislators’ shoulders to see what they’re doing and to please just butt out.

LSPRS board Chairman Frank Besson, president of the Louisiana State Troopers Association, told the Times-Picayune in a statement (prepared as talking points by Starnes, perhaps?) that he felt it would be “inappropriate and premature” for the board to take a position on Act 859 until it heard the attorneys’ report.

Uh, Trooper Besson, would that be more or less “inappropriate” than passing a secretive bill in the final hours of the session to benefit one person (well, two, since one other trooper fell within the strictly limited parameters of the bill’s language) while no one was looking?

Just as a reminder, it’s going to be difficult to get the board off dead center on this issue considering the board’s 11-person membership is comprised of four active troopers, Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols and one of Jindal’s legislative puppets, State Sen. Elbert Guillory (R/D/R-Opelousas), chairman of the Senate Retirement Committee (you can almost see Jindal’s lips move when he talks).

Just in case you lost count, that’s six members that Jindal and Edmonson control—and that’s a majority.

Folks, it’s looking more and more like that group of retired state troopers is going to have to make good on that threat to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the act.

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