Posted on 12/07/2003 7:49:43 AM PST by Libloather
Mrs. Daschle's Tawdry Boeing Deal Goes Bust
December 2, 2003
"Linda Daschle, Linda Daschle, Lin-da Da-schle..." That's the name of the high powered lobbyist that's been conspicuously absent from every single news story written on the scandal over the Pentagon renting Boeing aircraft to be used as refueling tankers when it would save taxpayers billions to simply buy them outright. Boeing CEO Phil Condit has resigned over this deal.
Linda Daschle, wife of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, is a highly paid (just how highly we don't know since she and her husband refuse to release their income tax records) lobbyist for this company and for this deal. The EIB Network was one of the earliest whistleblowers on the tanker scandal, and remains the only news outlet to remind everyone that Linda Daschle plays a key role in ramming it through Congress. By law, Mrs. Daschle is barred from lobbying the Senate, folks. Do we not have a right to at least ask if she broke any laws in lobbying using her husband's influence to win this $18 billion contract?
Boeing has fired two officials for ethical violations including their CEO, folks. After screaming about Enron for two years are the Democrats going to hold their own house to less of a standard than an eeeevil corporation? How can we not have heard the name of the lobbyist that put the deal together mentioned in the mainstream press? How can Congress - which investigates allegations of wrongdoing without any evidence whatsoever, but merely based on the "seriousness of the charge" - not at least ask a few questions?
WASHINGTON — Tom Daschle's rise to the helm of the Senate spotlights an awkward fact of life for Washington's power couples: When professional lives intertwine, ethical conflicts can follow.
The South Dakota Democrat's wife, Linda, is a lobbyist who mostly represents airlines, aircraft makers and other aviation-related interests — all of which have a steady stream of issues before the Senate. As majority leader, Tom Daschle has the power to set the Senate's agenda.
Linda Daschle says she will deal with that potential pitfall the way she has since she resumed her lobbying career in 1997: by never lobbying her husband or any member or committee of the Senate. "With dual careers in public policy, you need to be careful and take steps to avoid any appearance problem," she says. "I feel very comfortable with my activities."
Ethics groups say Daschle's new job makes it even more important that he and his wife keep their business separate. "They have to make sure she's not given any special favor because of who she's married to, and that he not get involved in anything she is directly lobbying," says Larry Noble, director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which researches links between political money and public policy. "This is a problem for a lot of couples now in Washington."
For example, when Dick Cheney became vice president, it called attention to the many business connections of his wife, Lynne, who serves on two corporate boards. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the new chairman of the agriculture committee, is married to lobbyist Ruth Harkin.
For such two-career couples, the most common issue raised by ethics watchdogs is the appearance that relatives of powerful policymakers are snagging lucrative clients because of who they know, rather than what they know. In some cases, the arrangement can look like an indirect payoff to the public official.
In Linda Daschle's case, that possibility seems remote because most of her lobbying is in a field where she has long-standing expertise and contacts. For five years — from 1993 to 1997 — she was deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. She served for the last few months as the agency's acting administrator. She was a top manager at the Civil Aeronautics Board from 1980 to 1984 and worked for aviation trade groups during a 20-year Washington career.
Her client list includes airlines American and Northwest, aircraft maker Boeing, and aviation technology companies L-3 Communications, Loral and United Technologies. She also represents airport executives, airports in Cleveland and Englewood, Colo., and a trade association for concrete paving contractors. Those clients paid Daschle's law and lobbying firm, Baker, Donelson, Bearman & Caldwell, about $1.1 million in the year ending last June, the most recent records available.
One client that attracted attention because it was outside Daschle's normal area of expertise was Schering-Plough, the pharmaceutical giant that sought unsuccessfully last year to extend the patent life of its allergy drug, Claritin. Several ethics groups said the lucrative lobbying arrangement smacked of buying special access.
But Marc Miller, a Washington attorney who has studied the potential conflicts that arise for congressional spouses, says it appears that Tom and Linda Daschle's arrangements more than meet normal ethics guidelines.
Miller says disclosure of lobbying relationships is a key to avoiding conflicts. "If in the next reporting period, she starts to show a whole bunch of brand-new clients in areas other than aviation, that would be a red flag," he says.
Linda Daschle, 46, was born in Oklahoma and educated at Kansas State University. She became a weather observer for the FAA while in college. She won the Miss Kansas competition in 1976 before going to Washington to launch her career. She and the senator were married in 1984, the year after he and his first wife, Laurie, were divorced.
Linda Daschle's clients
These are the companies and groups represented by Linda Daschle, a lobbyist and wife of new Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.:
• American Airlines.
• American Association of Airport Executives.
• American Concrete Pavement Association.
• American Trucking Associations.
• Boeing.
• Centennial Airport, Englewood, Colo.
• Hopkins International Airport, Cleveland.
• L-3 Communications, makers of cockpit technology.
• Loral Space and Communications.
• Northwest Airlines.
• Schering-Plough, a pharmaceutical company.
• United Technologies, a defense contractor.
Source: Secretary of the Senate
Loral is the company that illegally sold to the ChiCom military our missle tracking technology. In return the DNC got many millions in illegal campaign contributions from the Chinese military.
Its is obvious, at least to me, that the Daschles have been involved in treason.
I have a tendency to agree with you.
Linda Daschle says "With dual careers in public policy, you need to be careful and take steps to avoid any appearance problem," she says. "I feel very comfortable with my activities."
Mrs. Daschle seems more interested in "appearances" than anything else.
Is Tommie the Commie a crook? Is his wife, the bag lady, a crook. I don't know for sure but, they are democrats. What do you think?
These two treason for dollars lowlife women (along with their despicable husbands) are a national security horror.
The sky's the limit on the Dems now mountain-sized manure pile;
. . .and they remain committed to prove just that.
Don't think he had a choice; this was not done for a 'friend'in need.
Does that include benefiting from earnings she makes from lobbying? Didn't they just buy a big, expensive house in the D.C. area; a house that they would never have been able to afford on just Tommy Boy's earnings?
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