Posted on 07/17/2002 5:31:36 PM PDT by NC Conservative
All day and all night, we hear that we need new and stronger accounting standards. If the media were consistent, they'd be screaming for the head of the senator who led the fight to relax our accounting standards in the mid-90s. But that senator, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, is a liberal Democrat, so he gets a pass in the mainstream press. He won't get such a pass here, however. Not when we're engaged in a relentless pursuit of the truth.
Dodd authored the legislation liberalizing all these accounting rules. He had Republican co-sponsors, but he was the impetus, and he slurped up all the campaign contributions from the very same accounting companies that are being investigated now. I've have linked to an 11-page report on Dodd below. Is it any wonder we haven't heard him publicly creaming all these accounting and investment companies?
In 1995, Dodd took the restraints off the accounting sector, even though he had to override a Clinton veto to do so! The result? The accounting scandals that exist on Wall Street today. Accountants also won the elimination of joint and severe liability, which holds any single defendant in a lawsuit liable for all the damages. During the S&L scandal, many accounting firms got hit hard when they were the only solvent parties left to sue after the S&Ls went bankrupt. This report goes on and on.
If I can find this, the mainstream press can find this. But if they have found it, they're going to bury it. You're not going to see Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw or Dan Blather or anybody talk about Dodd. I would urge those of you in the mainstream press, such as Dana Millbank at the Washington Post and Adam Nagourney of the New York Times, to go PublicCampaign.org and take a look at the facts.
At least there may be enough here to begin looking into whether or not Democrats in the Senate had anything to do with legislation leading to accounting scandals currently under investigation on Wall Street. At least challenge Jon Corzine, senator of New Jersey, on that company's outrageous stock practices as we did in Corzine Ran Stock Chophouse. I doubt that anyone will do it, but if they were real journalists out for the truth, they would. In fact, they would have beat me to it. As usual, we are on the cutting edge.
The insurance companies are in Connecticut and the accountants are heavily based in Connecticut. FASB is in Connecticut. Both Senator Lieberman and Senator Dodd have historically been very protective of accountants and very protective of executives, even though they talk a good liberal Democratic line. If you look at the votes and you look at the actions, it's not there. ...
Haven't heard a peep.
Linda Daschle, the stock option mess, his interview with Kudlow, this about Dodd, the hypocrisy of the Washington Post.... he's been right on target.
Thanks for the ping!
Did you see this?(Deborah Orin, New York Post)More...
Daschle refuses to release his own tax returns, which would "just let everybody see" what his wife makes as a big-business lobbyist.
Daschle spokeswoman Ranit Smelzer defended his refusal, saying: "Most Americans guard very closely this information [tax returns], and members of Congress should not be forced to release it."
Daschle's Senate financial-disclosure forms keep it secret, too - they just list Linda Daschle's lobbying income from some of America's biggest firms as "over $1,000." Make that a lot over $1,000.
Daschle and his wife insist she avoids conflicts of interest because she doesn't lobby the Senate - though she does lobby next door in the House, where lawmakers certainly know her hubby.
Among her clients: American Airlines, the American Trucking Assn., American Concrete and Pavement Association, Boeing, Loral Space and Communications, Northwest Airlines, L-3 Communications, Intelli-check, Schering-Plough, United Technologies Corp. and more than a dozen more.
Take Loral, which paid a $14 million fine last January to settle charges of illegally sending sensitive missile technology to China.
In 2001 alone - the latest data - Loral paid $460,000 to Linda Daschle's firm for lobbying by her and four colleagues.
The conflict-of-interest question gets even more delicate when it comes to L-3 because it involves potential risks to airline passenger safety. L-3 hired Linda Daschle and her firm when airlines balked at buying L-3 bomb-detecting devices to screen airline baggage because they were inferior to a competitor, The Washington Post reported last fall.
But after Linda Daschle got on the case, Congress inserted an "unusually explicit directive" ordering the FAA ( news - web sites) to buy one device from L-3 for every rival model from InVision.
"The connections apparently paid off . . . but [last October] the Transportation Department's inspector general agreed with industry critics that L-3's machines were not performing," the newspaper reported.
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