Senator Daschle slams SEC chair for industry ties while wife continues lobbying!

Turn over your TAX RETURNS Dasshole!!!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BETWEEN THE BALANCE SHEETS Daschle throwing stones from glass house? Senator slams SEC chair for industry ties while wife continues lobbying

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: July 15, 2002 1:00 a.m. Eastern

Editor's note: In collaboration with the hard-hitting Washington, D.C., newsweekly Human Events, WorldNetDaily brings you this special report every Monday. Readers can subscribe to Human Events through WND's online store.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2002 Human Events Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., appeared on national television last week throwing stones at Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt.

What most of the media failed to notice is that Daschle was throwing the stones from a big glass house – within which his own wife serves as a lobbyist for major government contractors.

Appearing July 7 on CBS's "Face the Nation," Daschle said that Bush-appointed SEC Chairman Pitt – a lawyer who once represented Arthur Andersen and other accounting firms – had been "too cozy" with the accounting industry to do his job effectively.

"I think [Pitt] has been a huge disappointment," said Daschle, who had supported Pitt's nomination. "He's had too-cozy relationships. He met with the accountants on many occasions before issuing regulation. He has been the one who has said we want a kinder and gentler SEC, just the opposite of what we should have had."

Daschle stopped just short of demanding Pitt's resignation, but strongly implied that he should be replaced. "I have to say at this point," said Daschle, "that we could do a lot better than Harvey Pitt in that position today."

Daschle also alleged that Bush administration officials in general had a "cozy, permissive relationship" with industry.

"We've even seen that in relationships that some of the members of the administration have had with their own corporate roles and the responsibilities they had in the corporate sector," Daschle said. "That permissive[ness] and lack of real sensitivity to this concern for integrity is something that I think we've got to be concerned about."

In a written response to questions posed by Human Events, however, Daschle did not answer a question about his own ties to major aviation interests and government contractors for whom his wife – Linda Hall Daschle – lobbies, and from whom he thereby benefits financially.

In previous interviews, Daschle has defended this arrangement. In May, he told Human Events he saw no conflict of interest in scheduling and taking Senate votes that bring revenue to his wife's clients.

"My wife doesn't lobby in the Senate at all," he said. "She has limited her activities to the House, and I think that's appropriate."

Daschle also defended his involvement in one particular Senate vote last month – to reauthorize the federal Export-Import Bank – from which Mrs. Daschle's client Boeing stood to gain millions of dollars in federal loans and loan guarantees for its overseas business.

In the July 11 New York Post, columnist Deborah Orrin pointed out the apparent incongruity of Daschle's remarks. "It smells of hypocrisy," Orrin wrote, "because Daschle is pretty cozy with big business himself, since it's a major source of his family income." The same morning, Rep. J. D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., raised the issue on Don Imus's radio show.

Daschle's criticism of Pitt is also unusual because Mrs. Daschle had a similar career trajectory to Pitt's, going from industry representative to industry regulator. After years of lobbying for aviation interests, Mrs. Daschle became deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in 1993. Later, she served as acting administrator of the agency.

After leaving office, Mrs. Daschle went back to lobbying for airlines she had regulated. She was also hired to lobby for the Loral Corp., which had been awarded a $955 million FAA contract while she served as deputy administrator. Recently, she lobbied on behalf of numerous aviation interests during congressional consideration of the anti-terrorism bills enacted in the wake of Sept. 11.

In his written reply to the questions posed last week by Human Events, Daschle attempted to differentiate between Pitt's career and his wife's. Noting that he had supported Pitt's nomination, Daschle said that "recent scandals in the accounting industry call into question whether someone who called for the SEC to be a 'kinder and gentler place for accountants' is the most appropriate person to oversee that very industry." Daschle's statement seemed to subtly backtrack from his remarks on "Face the Nation," citing Pitt's laissez-faire attitude rather than his close ties to the industry as the reason for his supposed ineptitude.

Although generous with his criticism of Pitt, Daschle refused to comment on "Face the Nation" when asked about another senator's possible conflict of interest. Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, – whose wife, Wendy, sat on the board of directors of Enron as the company collapsed and its executives gave themselves millions in cash bonuses – is nonetheless actively involved in the debate over preventing and punishing corporate fraud. In fact, Democrats accuse him of blocking what they say are needed reforms in corporate oversight.

When asked about Gramm's situation on "Face the Nation," Daschle simply replied, "That's up to Sen. Gramm to analyze and come to some conclusion about."

Human Events asked Daschle whether his wife's lobbying activities for government contractors compromise him so that he cannot criticize possible conflict of interest among his Senate colleagues. Daschle did not answer the question, instead stating simply that he would not comment on Gramm's situation.

SEC Chairman Pitt has come under fire after recent revelations of alleged corruption in the accounting industry, which his agency regulates. His detractors, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., complain that Pitt, an attorney who used to represent major accounting firms, has not been sufficiently tough on industry violators.

President Bush defended his nominee, however, pointing out that much of the alleged corruption now being revealed occurred during the Clinton administration – well before Pitt's appointment.

Let us not forget that Daschle's wife is Deputy Administrator of the FAA, that organization that has so successfully protected the flying public.

-----------------------------------

Tom Daschle's Hillary Problem

If the Senate Majority Leader runs for president what will voters think of his lobbyist wife?

By Stephanie Mencimer

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When most people get engaged, they spend a few months talking to caterers, DJs, florists and the like in preparation for the big day. But when Linda Hall got engaged, she had to add another consultation to the prenuptial arrangements: a government ethics lawyer. Hall was about to marry Tom Daschle, who was then a young member of the House of Representatives running for re-election and who wanted his campaign to pay for Hall to accompany him on a South Dakota campaign trip. Normally, such a request wouldn't have been necessary, but Hall, a regional director for the now-defunct Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), was barred as a federal employee from campaign activities by the Hatch Act. With a few caveats, the CAB ethics lawyers signed off on her trip, Daschle won the election, and the pair was married in 1984.

Linda Hall Daschle's prenuptial ethics consultation would be the first of many she has sought over her 17 years as the working wife of a man who is now the most powerful Democrat in Washington. And the ethical questions woven into their marriage have gotten more complex as both Daschles have grown in power and stature in Washington---he as a senator and she as a high-powered lobbyist.

Tom Daschle has demonstrated tremendous leadership skills since taking over as majority leader last spring, in a body where Democrats have a one-vote majority. Immensely popular, his stellar performance has Washington buzzing that Daschle will be a presidential contender in 2004. Daschle's successful maneuvering to block key parts of President Bush's domestic agenda also has Republicans on the attack, challenging Daschle on his home turf in South Dakota with negative advertising. If Daschle does seek higher office, or even if the business of Congress becomes more contentious, those attacks will inescapably become more personal. He may find himself answering some pointed questions about his wife's career and its relationship to his. It won't be pretty.

The landmines in Linda Daschle's professional portfolio will make Hillary Clinton's pork futures and law-firm billings look like mousetraps. For instance, among Linda Daschle's clients is American Airlines, which has had six fatal crashes since 1994 (not even including the World Trade Center flights). The airline has incurred thousands of dollars in federal fines for a host of safety violations, and its employees have been caught in embarrassing drug smuggling stings. Even as its planes have crashed, American has lobbied for years to water down safety and security regulations that might have helped foil the World Trade Center attacks. Yet thanks in part to lobbying efforts by Daschle---and support from her husband---American Airlines got a free pass in the recent airline bailout bill, escaping most legal liability for the hijackings and getting $583 million in cash grants---taxpayer money it will never have to repay.

Mrs. Daschle insists that she has consulted with congressional ethics staff and is in violation of no rules by lobbying on behalf of American and other clients. She voluntarily recuses herself from any business with the Senate, which she strictly does not lobby. And she can point to her record as a former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) deputy administrator when she says that her clients hire her for her aviation expertise---a field in which she was working long before she married the senator.

But it's not congressional ethics investigators who are most likely to frown on Daschle's lobbying vita. It's the American people, especially the voters of South Dakota. After all, as the wife of the governor of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton sought to minimize any appearance of conflict of interest by refusing a cut of her law firm's earnings from state business. But that didn't save her---or her husband---from eventually getting raked over the coals under allegations that Hillary's career might have benefited from her husband's office. And her biggest offense, it turned out, was representing a failing savings and loan seeking a reprieve from a securities commissioner appointed by her husband---a reprieve it didn't get.

So far, while the press has reported on Linda Daschle's lobbying efforts, it hasn't elevated it to anything like a bona fide scandal. Nor has the GOP, despite its recent attacks on her husband. But that could change. It doesn't take Lee Atwater to see how Mrs. Daschle's professional life might play out in a nasty re-election or presidential campaign: "Sen. Daschle's wife: Lobbyist for Nation's Most Dangerous Airline," or "Majority leader's wife lobbied to make airlines less safe." Already the emails are circulating. Just after a USA Today story on the FAA's failure to address the problem of violent passengers on airlines, one proclaimed: "Linda Daschle's FAA failed to heed pre 9-11 warnings." The chat rooms of the popular conservative rant site, Free Republic, are filled with complaints about Linda Daschle's business dealings, a sign that conservatives are paying attention.

But Daschle seems genuinely shocked to hear that her career could become a political liability for her husband. "What is it about Linda Daschle's actions that have any bearing on Tom Daschle's public service? I just don't see the connection," she says. "I think a congressional spouse is entitled to a career, self-fulfillment. I love what I do. I love aviation. I love aviation policy. I don't see myself walking away from a career that I've invested nearly 25 years in." Instead, she hopes that, as more and more congressional spouses take up lobbying careers, eventually the media will stop asking these pesky conflict-of-interest questions.

But reporters are no more likely to stop asking questions about Linda Daschle's airline lobbying than they were going to ignore Billy Carter when he signed on as a lobbyist for Libya. David Schaffer, counsel to the House aviation subcommittee and a long-time acquaintance of Linda Daschle's, suggests that she may suffer from a common blind spot among Washington denizens. "People on the Hill don't really see lobbyists as evil," he explains. "But the public doesn't see it that way."

Not In Kansas Anymore

Yes, it's true: Before Mrs. Daschle was Mrs. Daschle, she was Miss Kansas, 1976. "It was a tremendous opportunity for me at a very young age," she says, cupping a mug of coffee in her distinctly unmanicured hands. "In a small way, it helped prepare me for being married to a very public figure."

Petite and blond, with perfect, straight white teeth, Daschle is still strikingly beautiful at 46. But she has a vise-like handshake you wouldn't expect from a beauty queen that suggests the steely interior necessary to survive in Washington power circles. Her office is filled with mementos reflecting her dual status as congressional wife and long-time aviation industry member: On the floor are models of airplanes, while in one corner stands a Lakota Sioux ghost dancer costume from South Dakota. Photos show her hunting pheasants with George McGovern and dressed in full flight gear with a team of Marine pilots. And in case her clients forget who she's married to, behind her desk is a giant framed print of the U.S. Senate insigne.

Born in Oklahoma and raised in Kansas, Daschle got into aviation early, working as a weather watcher at an FAA flight service station while in college. She spent two years at a community college, then went to Kansas State University, where she studied mass communication but never graduated. ("I loved my senior year," she says by way of explanation.) After college, she wanted to be an air traffic controller, but ended up going to work for a small regional airline---until she had eight paychecks bounce, her first introduction to the fragile economics of the aviation industry.

After a stint as marketing director for another regional airline, in 1980 Daschle went to work for the Civil Aeronautics Board, the government entity charged with regulating the airline industry. There, she served as the director of the office of congressional, community and consumer affairs. She met Tom Daschle on a work trip to South Dakota. At the time, Tom Daschle was a freshman congressman, married to the woman who in 1978 had helped him ring 40,000 doorbells and go on to unseat an incumbent by 14 votes. By 1984, Tom had divorced his first wife, with whom he had three children, and married Linda, who was prohibited by law from ringing any doorbells.

Soon after they were married, Linda went to work for the Air Transport Association, the airline industry's main trade group. The first thing she did after marrying Tom was to consult the House ethics committee about how to manage potential conflicts. Lawyers advised her to fully disclose her activities and not to lobby her spouse, his office or committees. So that's what she's done. She takes all media calls, responding to every last question about her possible conflicts. And she's never considered a career change. "I never ever thought I'd have to give up anything to be married to Tom Daschle. I was here, I already had this career and I had no plans of backing out of it," she explains. "That's not to say that I didn't need to think about the appearance and work to avoid conflicts of interest."

Friends and colleagues say Daschle is very sensitive to the media scrutiny---and has no sense of humor about it---going so far as to get up and leave meetings where the business discussed might involve the Senate. "I have tried in every possible way to make it very clear that I do not lobby my husband and I do not lobby the Senate. I don't want people to knock on my door here wanting my help thinking they're getting Tom Daschle as part of the deal," she says. "My clients are people I've known for years and we have cultivated our own relationships that are very independent of Tom Daschle."

Behavioral Issues

Until the 1970s, when feminists began to crack open the old boys' clubs, most congressional wives had a pretty pat role: travel with the campaign, make the husband look like a nice guy, and take care of the kids. As Ellen Proxmire, wife of Sen. William Proxmire, explained in this magazine 20 years ago, playing wife to a politician can be brutal. In the early years of her husband's campaign, she used to "sit home Saturday nights and cry." In 1958, her husband left for a convention shortly after their day-old son died. Two days later, Ellen, too, went back on the campaign trail.

Carolyn Condit's recent travails illustrate the other pitfalls of the traditional political marriage. Its enormous power imbalance has undoubtedly contributed to many of the "behavioral issues" displayed by many congressmen over the years. Think of the first Mrs. Dole, who nursed her war-wounded husband, even attending college classes to take notes for him when he could not write, only to get dumped after 23 years of marriage in an "emergency divorce." Or the first Mrs. Gingrich, whose husband served her divorce papers at the hospital while she was being treated for cancer.

Today, there are a lot more Linda Daschles than Carolyn Condits in the congressional wives' club, and women are certainly better for it. (Can anyone imagine the current Mrs. Dole getting dumped in an emergency divorce?!) But as congressional wives have moved out of traditional roles, inevitably their careers have gotten entangled with Washington's influence-peddling business. In the early days of the feminist movement, working congressional wives usually stuck to teaching or real estate. But it wasn't long before some savvy ones saw the possibilities in their connections---as did many of their husband's political suitors. Ellen Proxmire, for one, got sick of crying and, with a dozen or so other congressional wives, created Washington Whirl-Around, a tour and convention service. Whirl-Around did booming business, signing up clients---lobbyists mostly---who had business on the Hill, and holding receptions in Senate hearing rooms, courtesy of Sen. William Proxmire, who signed off on the room rentals.

Congressional wives didn't have to look too hard for business opportunities, though. Washington's special interests usually came to them. Back in 1979, Marion Javits caused a ruckus when she began doing PR work for Iran Air at the same time that her husband, New York Republican Jacob Javits, was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The PR contract turned out to be a cover; Javits was actually doing work for the Shah himself. More recently, shortly after her husband became speaker of the House, (and before she, too, got dumped for a power wife) the second Mrs. Gingrich was hired as vice president for business development by an Israeli firm which had lobbied her husband to support an Israeli free-trade zone. Marianne Gingrich's previous job had been selling cosmetics from her home.

You don't hear much about these spousal contretemps anymore, but not because they've disappeared. Rather, such symbiotic relationships have simply become institutionalized. No longer peddling cosmetics, many congressional wives are now full-fledged members of D.C.'s access business---and often were so long before becoming congressional wives. There's Enron board member Wendy Gramm, whose husband, Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, pushed through legislation in 2000 that exempted Enron from rules that govern other commodity traders. Airline lobbyist and former Reagan administration official Rebecca Cox is the wife of California Republican Rep. Christopher Cox. Jean Kurth Oberstar, wife of Minnesota Rep. James Oberstar, the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee, owns an airport-consulting firm which contracts with airports for which her husband helped secure federal grants.

Unlike the days when former House Speaker Jim Wright's wife got a do-nothing job from a Texas investor seeking favors from her husband, it's much harder today to prove that congressional wives' business portfolios are solely the product of their husbands' connections. As the Daschle marriage illustrates, that doesn't mean that the potential conflicts are any less serious.

Under the Radar

In 1993, Linda Daschle took a break from her lobbying career (she was by then senior vice president of the American Association of Airport Executives), when Bill Clinton appointed her to be deputy administrator of the FAA. The job required Senate confirmation, and Daschle's husband joined his colleagues in voting for her unanimously. The appointment naturally stirred rumors at the FAA that she had been chosen because of who her husband was. That year, Clinton had also nominated three other congressional wives for top government jobs, in a move widely viewed as a shrewdly ingratiating gesture from a president who'd never served in Washington. But Daschle says that not only did she take a pay cut to take the FAA job, she did not seek the position. The Clinton administration asked several times before she finally agreed to take the post. "If Tom Daschle could have helped me get a job, how come I'm not ambassador to France?" she says.

In Daschle's defense, one industry source, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that Linda was far more qualified for the job than many of her predecessors, noting that during the first Bush administration, the deputy FAA administrator had been the Bush family's private campaign pilot. By contrast, Daschle actually had some experience in government. Former Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater (now also a lobbyist) says that during her four-year tenure at FAA, Daschle was a "true professional" who "clearly brought a unique insight to the job, especially when at the end of the day, you have to get the resources from Congress. Having those relationships and contacts is helpful."

Those contacts, though, also landed Daschle in the middle of an inspector general's investigation over charges that her husband had inappropriately intervened to reduce safety inspections of an air-charter company owned by a family friend. In 1994, a plane chartered by the Indian Health Service crashed in a snowstorm in Minot, North Dakota, killing the pilot and three doctors on their way to a reservation clinic. The charter company was owned by Murl Bellew, a friend of the Daschles who had taught the senator how to fly.

For several years, Forest Service inspectors had been raising serious questions about the safety of Bellew's operation---issues that the FAA had overlooked---and had argued that the company should be disqualified from seeking government contracts. Bellew wanted to get rid of the Forest Service inspections, and Sen. Daschle obliged by pushing legislation to eliminate the Forest Service's inspection role altogether, leaving his wife's agency as the sole overseer. He argued at the time that the legislation would streamline the bureaucracy by eliminating duplicative services.

In part of the ensuing investigation by the DOT inspector general, senior FAA officials claimed that Linda Daschle had also worked to quash a proposed program to train Forest Service inspectors to conduct FAA inspections. Then, an FAA inspector said agency officials had destroyed documents to cover up the Daschles' role in minimizing inspections of Bellew's planes. Linda Daschle insisted that she had recused herself from any decisions on that issue, and the IG later absolved her of any wrongdoing.

Daschle's position on safety issues came up again when the FAA was considering mandating full criminal-background checks of all airport employees, which she opposed. DOT inspector general Mary Schiavo was at a meeting with then-Transportation Secretary Federico Pena and Daschle at which Daschle vehemently objected. "I thought her position on the background checks was insane," says Schiavo. But Daschle's position shouldn't have come as much of a surprise, given that it's exactly the same one taken by her former employer, the Air Transport Association.

After serving briefly as the FAA's acting director, Daschle returned to lobbying in 1997, though federal law barred her from lobbying DOT for five years. Instead of going back to a trade association, Daschle joined a powerful law firm headed by former Sen. Howard Baker, Baker, Donelson, Bearman & Caldwell, where she is now a chair of the firm's public policy practice group. Daschle has stayed largely under the radar, mostly lobbying the House and sticking to aviation clients. All that changed after September 11, when her role in lobbying for the airline bailout bill became public.

Not only have reporters revealed Daschle's role in the airline bailout negotiations, but they have brought to light a provision in the 2000 transportation budget that required the FAA to buy baggage-scanners from one of Daschle's clients, L-3 International. The DOT's inspector general has found the L-3 equipment to be substandard, yet the FAA now has no choice but to purchase one of L-3's scanners for every one it buys from an L-3 competitor. The L-3 machines have been so bad that the one at the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport leaked radiation, and most others purchased by the FAA have not been installed. The inspector general told Congress that the FAA's requirement to buy L-3's machines is one reason that DOT will not be able to meet the new mandate to screen all luggage for bombs for many years.

Daschle reiterates that she never lobbied her husband on any of these issues, nor has her firm. But when it comes to lobbying Congress, does it really matter whether a congressional spouse lobbies her husband? The House Democrats on whom Daschle focuses her attention aren't likely to ignore calls from the majority leader's wife. And given the soft currency of Washington's access business, it's awfully hard to separate influence in such concrete ways, especially when many of Daschle's clients are lobbying both her husband and the Senate as well. The best example of this conflict came in 1999, when Daschle departed from her traditional aviation portfolio and took up the cause of drug company Schering-Plough, which was waging a fierce battle with the FDA to extend the patent on the allergy drug Claritin beyond its 2002 expiration. Daschle was one of many lobbyists the company hired to press its case, but the contract raised questions about Schering-Plough's motives for hiring her, given that Daschle has no expertise in pharmaceutical issues or at the FDA.

Daschle took something of a beating in the press and from public interest groups for taking up Schering-Plough's case, which if successful, would add billions of dollars to national prescription drug expenditures. "I was stunned at the criticism and how personal it became," she confesses. Daschle says she took the client at the request of Howard Baker, but she eventually became "a believer" in Schering-Plough's cause. And again, she insists she never lobbied the Senate.

Daschle may not have been lobbying the Senate, but Schering-Plough was, contributing $100,000 in soft money to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee over the past three years. The drug company has also been kind to Sen. Daschle's pet charity, the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (NOFAS). In 1997, Richard Kinney, Schering-Plough's in-house lobbyist who was working on the patent issue, joined the board and the company has sponsored NOFAS's annual fundraiser, which both Daschles host every year. Sen. Daschle says he opposes the patent extension on its merits.

But Schering-Plough isn't the only one of Linda Daschle's clients to simultaneously seek good will from her husband: The air transport industry gave more than $100,000 in campaign contributions to the senator's campaign in the last election cycle. Northwest Airlines, which paid Linda Daschle's firm $190,000 in 1999, was the second-largest donor to Tom Daschle's Senate campaign in 1998. Charles Barclay, the head of the American Association of Airport Executives, Linda's former employer and now a client, has personally given $10,000 to the senator's political action committee, DASHPAC. Daschle says Northwest Airlines is one of her husband's constituents as the only major airline with comprehensive service to South Dakota. As for the others, she says, "All my clients have the right to lobby Tom Daschle and the Senate. What does not have to happen is for Linda Daschle to be involved in that effort."

Gary Ruskin, director of the Congressional Accountability Project, says he isn't concerned with who Linda's clients are, but what Tom Daschle may have done for those clients. At least for Linda Daschle's airline clients, the answer to that question is fairly clear: The airline bailout bill, shepherded through the Senate by Tom Daschle, sent nearly a billion dollars to American Airlines and Northwest Airlines. Northwest, which has received $404 million in cash grants from the government, actually posted $19 million profit in the third quarter.

Blinded by Ethics

So here's a case where a senator's wife gets a high-ranking government job, which in turn boosts her earning power as a lobbyist. She then represents clients who have business with and give money to her husband. Those clients pay her big bucks to help fight safety regulations and to win government money---money which helps pay the senator's mortgage. Yet so far, the press and congressional ethics hawks have largely given the Daschles a pass. So why isn't this a bigger story?

Mostly because no one in Congress has the slightest interest in raising it. Democrats certainly don't want to attack one of their own, and as they point out in defending the Daschles, Republicans are married to lobbyists, too. In addition, both Republicans and Democrats are beneficiaries of Linda Daschle's clients. "This town is so bizarre that Linda Daschle may even deliver campaign contributions to Trent Lott," says the Heritage Foundation's Ron Utt. Indeed, she freely admits to giving campaign contributions to Republicans.

So who's left to scrutinize the relationship? The answer is the press. But Daschle has them covered too. Unlike Hillary a decade ago, Linda Daschle is a Beltway insider who understands the rules of the game. The main rule is that the effects of your actions, no matter how dubious---say, weakening airline safety---are never grounds for a scandal so long as you first, disclose your actions, and then, don't violate the ethics rules in the process. If Tom or Linda Daschle had secretly taken a free pair of Superbowl tickets from Northwest Airlines and then pushed the airline bailout plan, that would be a big story. But the fact that Tom Daschle takes thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Northwest and his wife's firm collects $200,000 a year to lobby for them is no problem at all.

Congress has no rules prohibiting members' spouses from lobbying. Notoriously porous, congressional ethics rules were written on the not so unreasonable theory that it's impossible to forbid each and every potential conflict of interest, and that in the end, the voters are the ultimate arbiters of congressional behavior.

Linda Daschle's reputation for scrupulously adhering to the ethics rules shows just how well she understands the rules. But when it comes to a presidential election, a different set of rules comes into play: Win at all costs. And at this game, the Republicans have proved themselves uncommonly adept and not just within the chamber of the Supreme Court. If Tom Daschle poses a legitimate threat to Bush, his wife's lobbying will attract more attention from partisan Republicans and investigative reporters.

These attacks on his wife may not hurt Tom Daschle in Washington, where politicos find very little unseemly. But the American voter is a different animal. Voters may not buy Linda Daschle's defense of keeping her career at all costs. Nor are they likely to swallow the claim that her work has absolutely no bearing on her husband's. If Linda Daschle lobbied one arm of Congress to weaken airline safety and give away billions of taxpayer dollars to corporate clients, the voters are likely to assume that her husband was in there, too. And they'll probably be right. After all, American voters may not understand the inner workings of Washington politics, but they do understand the inner workings of marriage.

Stephanie Mencimer is an editor of The Washington Monthly.

To out-compete politics one must think beyond politics.

Daschle's criticism of Pitt is also unusual because Mrs. Daschle had a similar career trajectory to Pitt's, going from industry representative to industry regulator. After years of lobbying for aviation interests, Mrs. Daschle became deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in 1993. Later, she served as acting administrator of the agency.
After leaving office, Mrs. Daschle went back to lobbying for airlines she had regulated.

That's a glaring example of how the federal government and Capitol Hill operate by enslaving the business community to engage in colluding with the government. ...To enjoin parasitical politicians and self-serving bureaucrats with political-businessmen seeking unfair competitive advantages. Whereas market-businessmen do not seek the government's monopoly on force to gain unfair advantages. Yet they get stuck paying the price for not bowing to parasitism. They are burdened by government regulators and government-colluding competitors.

The Daschle Duo are the champions. The leftover mascots of their "great" leader, William Jefferson Clinton. Now their trying to mirror his tactics.

How the collusion pans out.

Congress has created so many laws that virtually every person is assured of breaking more than just traffic laws. Surely with all this supposed lawlessness people and society should have long ago run head long into destruction. But it has not.

Instead, people and society have progressively prospered. Doing so despite politicians creating on average, 3,000 new laws each year which self-serving alphabet-agency bureaucrats implement/utilize to justify their usurped power and unearned paychecks. They both proclaim from on high -- with complicit endorsement from the media and academia -- that all those laws are "must-have" laws to thwart people and society from self-destruction.

Again, despite not having this year's 3,000 must-have laws people and society increased prosperity for years and decades prior. How can it be that suddenly the people and the society they form has managed to be so prosperous for so long but suddenly they will run such great risk of destroying their self-created prosperity?

Supply-side consultant Jude Wanniski, in a letter to clients last Thursday, said: "There is absolutely no doubt that the beating Wall Street is taking is the result of the frenzy in the U.S. Senate to make it a crime to do business in the United States."
Threatened by Congress

Foreign capital is exiting the stock markets too. Here's another example of how the government harms the economy via it's monopoly on force.

"...It gets even worse. Because of the IRS implementation, earlier this year, of "Qualified Intermediary" (QI) Regulations, privacy concerned foreign billionaires (and millionaires), who have until recently been responsible for large amounts of foreign investment in the United States, are now moving their investments to more "private" jurisdictions, as well. The reason is simple. The QI Regulations require foreign financial institutions who invest client money in the United States to reveal the true identity of individual investors or lose the right to serve as a "Qualified Intermediary" for US investments. Those billionaires (and millionaires) who want to preserve their privacy are just directing those financial institutions to invest their money elsewhere...."
http://www.actionamerica.org/taxecon/privfactor.html

He sees the two big political parties competing "to see which can force more morality on the American businessman."

The government is the all time champion of cooking the books and it has the gall to point fingers at the whole business community because of a few bad apples. The entire business community and employees that support it should stand tall against a government feigning to protect the little guy from organizations that cook their books.

If there was ever a prime example of the fox guarding the hen house it is the government claiming to protect the little guy from organizations that cook their books. President Bush will have to militarily smash down terrorism. For that is his job. It's not the President's, congress or' the government's job to manipulate the economy.

The business community with their employees will have to stand tall against the PC-status-quo fox -- self-proclaimed authorities claiming/feigning they'll use the government to protect the little guy and a complicit media and academia that supports them; for they are all the fox -- to regain their rightful place as the champions of honest business that has always increased the well-being of people.

The government, having already manipulated the economy to almost no-end, President Bush can play the unbeatable five-ace hand of replacing the initiation-of-force IRS and graduated income tax with a don't-pay-the-tax-if-you-don't-want-to consumption tax. For example, implement the proposed national retail sales tax (NRST). Not only would that win votes for Bush and republicans in congress it would boom the economy while fighting off a looming economic double-dip inflation/recession headed for depression.

Yes, the genie is out of the bottle. Where will it lead?

War of Two Worlds
Value Creators versus Value Destroyers

Politics is not the solution. It's the problem!

The first thing civilization must have is business/science. It's what the family needs so that its members can live creative, productive, happy lives. Business/science can survive, even thrive without government/bureaucracy.
Government/bureaucracy cannot survive without business/science. In general, business/science and family is the host and government/bureaucracy is a parasite.
Aside from that, keep valid government services that protect individual rights and property. Military defense, FBI, CIA, police and courts. With the rest of government striped away those few valid services would be several fold more efficient and effective than they are today.

Underwriters Laboratory is a private sector business that has to compete in a capitalist market. Underwriters laboratory is a good example of success where government fails.

Any government agency that is a value to the people and society -- which there are but a few -- could better serve the people by being in the private sector where competition demands maximum performance.

Wake up! They are the parasites. We are the host. We don't need them. They need us.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Photos of Daschle using federal resources for campaign fundraising!

Mrs. Daschle, Big Business Lobbyist/Daschle: No Conflict, Won't Release Tax Returns