Cross posted from the
No Nussle Blog
Next update in the Jim Nussle fundraising disclosure process...well, at least those of us here at No Nussle Blog are trying to participate in fully disclosing Nussle's financial backers for him. We aren't alleging that Rep. Nussle has ever broken any campaign disclosure rules. Jim Nussle is fully open and honest about being a corporate shill. He doesn't hide it. Now, I think there are some donors that Nussle would want to run from. In the opening gubernatorial debate after the primary I would love to see the Democratic nominee ask:
"Back in 2001-2002 you received $3,700 in campaign contributions from Enron. Why did you accept this money in the first place, and what made you decide NOT to return the contribution?"
You see, Jim Nussle likes to take money from large companies that engage in deceptive accounting practices, much like Congress! You see,
Ask the President or any congressman: how much debt does the federal government owe? Nine will get you ten that they'll tell you that it's $3.5 trillion. If they had just a tad of sophistication or honesty, they might add intragovernmental debt that'd bring the "total debt" to slightly more than $6 trillion. Even that figure represents a level of creative accounting, deception and lies that make the actions of Enron and WorldCom seem like child's play.
Washington's deception about federal debt can be found in a report by Andrew J. Rettenmaier, a senior fellow at the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, titled "How Big Is The Government's Debt?" Mr. Rettenmaier says that as of 2001 the accumulated federal obligations to all people who've earned Social Security and Medicare benefits are $12.9 trillion for Social Security and $16.9 trillion for Medicare. Combined with the public and intragovernmental debt, the total federal debt burden is an unimaginable $35 trillion. That amounts to roughly $120,000 for every man, woman and child in America.
What you need to understand is that Nussle, as Budget Chairman in the House, has learned from the best. Enron used it's political action committee to contribute
huge sums in the 2000 election [Salon Magazine]:
Enron, its executives and its arm-twisted employees ended up forking over -- I'm sorry, "donating" -- $2.4 million to federal candidates in the 2000 election, 72 percent of it going to Republicans. The company was so intent on helping George W. Bush make it to the White House, one Democratic Enron employee complained about "the brazen use of the corporate machinery to ensure his election."
So, what did Congressman Nussle do with the money?
Some are sticking with the tried and true: deny and deposit. "We're not giving away the contributions," said a spokesperson for Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., the gung-ho leader of the House investigation into Enron and Arthur Andersen, who has raked in over $53,000 from the two companies since 1989. "If they thought this would buy them influence, they've blown their money." In other words, you can bribe me, but if it goes public, we don't know each other.
Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa is taking the same tack -- keeping the cash and acting blasé about it. "It was not given in the spirit of trying to persuade me one direction or another," said Nussle of the $3,700 he received from Enron, "and it will not be given back in that spirit." So in what spirit does Nussle think it was given to him?
Now, I'm not voting Fallon in the governor's race, but I do admire his spirit. We need to do something to decrease the undue influence of these large donors that use financial capital to purchase access in the halls of government. In particular, I think we definitely need to take some steps in Iowa to make sure that these sorts of donors don't have an impact on our state level politics. Step one? Making sure Jim Nussle isn't the next governor!