Free Republic

AUGUSTA - Gubernatorial hopeful John Baldacci continues to lead all other candidates with a little more than $900,000 raised through July 16, but he finished third in the critical area of available cash on hand, according to campaign finance reports filed Tuesday. The undisputed leader among the four competing candidates in that category was Green Independent Party nominee Jonathan Carter of Lexington Township. The publicly funded candidate reported $227,372 in available funds, more than the combined total of his two major party rivals. David Flanagan, the Manchester independent who pulled out of the race last week, held the distinction of...

Months after the collapse of Enron, President Bush, members of Congress and the Justice Department are again on the trail of what looks to be one of the biggest cases of fraudulent accounting practices yet. On June 25, WorldCom, the nation’s second largest long-distance carrier, announced that it had overstated its cash flow by nearly $4 billion during the last two years, sending its stock into a virtual freefall and leaving the company on the brink of bankruptcy. How did it happen? That’s what Congress wants to know, especially during an election year. With voters already disgruntled after what seems...

SACRAMENTO -- What makes Dean Florez run? Why does the assemblyman from Shafter alienate so many people, especially members of his own Democratic Party, by sticking stubbornly to an independent course of action? Elected to a legislative position in which success usually depends on building coalitions and alliances to help push your agenda, would it hurt him so much to go along a little more to get along a little more? Those are questions a whole lot of people in Sacramento and Bakersfield are asking these days after Florez was publicly chastised by Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, ostensibly for...

<p>Deep-pocketed donors are writing hefty checks to Gray Davis and Bill Simon in the last hurrah for the state's no-limit political campaign system.</p> <p>Since the March 5 primary, each of the two candidates for governor has collected more than $2.5 million from contributors who have given $50,000 or more. That's more than double the $20,000 limit Proposition 34, which was passed in 2000, has set for the next governor's race in 2006.</p>

WASHINGTON -- The relationship that Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) shares with Arab-Americans runs deeper than her call for more attention to the Palestinian side of the Middle Eastern conflict. The DeKalb County congresswoman's connections stretch significantly into the pockets and purses of the Arab-American and Muslim communities.About one-fourth of the individuals who have contributed to McKinney's campaigns over the past five years have names that appear to be Arab-American or Muslim, according to an informal study of Federal Election Commission records.Their contributions total $142,950, a full third of the money McKinney has collected from individuals over the last five years,...

On Thursday, the Federal Election Commission announced that it was closing the books on an investigation of the Democratic National Committee pertaining to fundraising issues in the 1995-1996 campaign cycle. At issue were "misdeposited contributions; excessive contributions; (and) failure to accurately report initial receipt of contributions and subsequent transfers" of funds raised during the 1995-1995 presidential re-election effort. The two parties reached a conciliation agreement requiring the Democrats to pay a $70,000 civil penalty. They also agreed to "file on the public record miscellaneous reports for 1995 & 1996 regarding the 95-96 disclosure reports to show the full initial receipt...

SACRAMENTO -- A British-born water mogul who has directed more than $250,000 to Gov. Gray Davis is drawing conflict of interest complaints as he pushes a massive Southern California water project that could earn his company half a billion dollars over 50 years. Davis has turned to Keith Brackpool repeatedly for advice on water issues, and the governor's aides have asked him to weigh in on key policymaking sessions, even when Brackpool's companies stood to gain. An early Davis supporter, Brackpool is a prominent example of the entrepreneurs who have contributed heavily to Davis and been rewarded with high-profile appointments...

<p>The Davis administration's much-ballyhooed effort to update the state's Internet presence has become the focus of an internal investigation into contracting irregularities on state information technology projects.</p> <p>Gov. Gray Davis has summoned top administration lawyers, including former Sacramento County District Attorney Steve White, to lead the inquiry. White, whom Davis appointed inspector general of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency in 1999, has been assigned to the governor's secretary of legal affairs for the investigation.</p>

<p>With his fund-raising practices under close Capitol scrutiny, Gov. Gray Davis recently announced he canceled a "couple" of fund- raising events "out of an excess of caution."</p> <p>But the Democratic governor soon found he can't shake fund-raising questions that easily.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO -- The timing of the state's Oracle contract debacle couldn't have been better for Dean Florez. The Assembly member from Shafter had been chairman of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee for only a month when the state auditor issued its scathing report on a $95 million no-bid contract for software that state officials had signed with Oracle Corp. -- a deal the auditor says could cost taxpayers up to $41 million.</p>

<p>Gov. Gray Davis has been forced to admit that his administration is either corrupt or incompetent. He has chosen incompetence. And he and his people are doing a pretty good job proving their case.</p> <p>The question is why the administration signed a $95 million contract with the Oracle Corp. last year for computer software the state didn't need and still hasn't used.</p>

<p>There is, in any political scandal, a tipping point -- an indefinable moment when it becomes evident that it will be someone's political ruination or fade away.</p> <p>The Watergate scandal is the most famous example of the former. When former Sen. Howard Baker asked his famous question -- "What did the president know and when did he know it?" -- it became clear that Richard Nixon had lost Republican support and was doomed.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO - As lawmakers threatened to subpoena Oracle officials to testify, the governor's deputy chief of staff conceded Tuesday that California had signed a bad deal with the software company but blamed other state officials for their lack of scrutiny.</p>

SAN FRANCISCO, May 21 (Reuters) - These should be golden days for California's Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. The state's power crisis is all but over, and Davis has declared political and moral victory. The Republicans have nominated a conservative rookie to face him in November -- boosting the Democrat's chances for a second term despite his own dreary ratings in the polls. ADVERTISEMENT And Davis has no shortage of campaign funds to fight the battle, promising an aggressive statewide publicity campaign to persuade voters that he has made good on his promise to deliver a "stronger, kinder and better" California....

<p>To understand the fund-raising scandals that are engulfing the Davis administration, one needs to understand an anecdote shared on National Public Radio recently by Dan Walters, the Sacramento Bee columnist whose pieces regularly appear on these pages.</p> <p>Back when Gray Davis was an assemblyman, Mr. Walters asked him which politician he most admired. The answer was U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston. Was it because of his principles? Nope. Mr. Davis was impressed that Cranston spent a portion of every day dialing for campaign dollars.</p>

Got this email from the Republican Liberty Caucus here in California. I think this is great while all this new stuff about Davis fundraising keeps coming out. Now if anyone just knew how to get this in the hands of the "bitter secretary" who wants to spill her guts :) ====== FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MAY 12, 2002 Contact: Douglas Lorenz Phone: (916) 213-0543 Email: Doug@Lorenz.net Oraclegate Scandal Prompts DirtyDonations.com+ Public Invited to Report Davis Fundraising Misdeeds at www.DirtyDonations.com + The California Republican Liberty Caucus (CA-RLC) today launched the website www.DirtyDonations.com to encourage whistleblowers to come forward and expose corruption and...

<p>Oracle dispute, a top aide said Friday.</p> <p>At the same time, state lawmakers scrutinizing the Oracle deal plan to ask the state auditor next week to take a broader look at the controversial practice that also was used to hire companies to revamp the state's $5 million Web portal.</p>

You may have been reading about the Oracle Corporation, which recently received a lucrative state contract without a competitive bidding process. State analysts dissected the contracts and reported that the contract overpays Oracle $41 million for software state employees contend is not needed or wanted. Ever emerging details of the 6-year deal, valued between $95 million and $123 million, shows the contract was rushed through to benefit the vendor without any regard for the taxpayer. The claims made by Oracle and the Department of Information Technology of remarkable cost savings to taxpayers were never independently verified. Subsequent campaign donations by...

Energized by Enron Governor helped by memos, hurt by Oracle By Will Shuck Capitol Bureau Chief SACRAMENTO -- On Thursday, when Gov. Gray Davis said memos detailing Enron's techniques for manipulating the state's energy markets were a "vindication" for Californians, he clearly had one particular Californian in mind -- himself. And that vindication -- that he had been right all along about California being robbed blind by big energy companies -- couldn't come at a better time. Because at the same moment Davis was in Sacramento talking with reporters and congressional members about Enron, Republican challenger Bill Simon was in...

<p>SACRAMENTO - Gov. Gray Davis changed his position on a tax break for the insurance industry after a prominent California insurance company hired one of his top fundraisers as a lobbyist and contributed more than $250,000 to the governor's re-election campaign.</p>