Joey’s Take: Time for Transparency

A lot of the barking in the Beltway dog park these days is about transparency. While the White House does a lot of tail wagging about it, Congress basically acts as the playground police to make sure everyone else follows the rules. But Congress itself is, by law, immune from those transparency rules that apply to the executive branch, federal agencies, the military, law enforcement, and state and local governments. (Keep in mind who makes the laws.)

That’s why former Congressman-turned-inmate William Jefferson was able to keep the FBI out of his congressional office – even though he had been caught with $90,000 in cold, hard cash (kickbacks) stashed between pie crusts in his home freezer. It’s also how several congressmen were able to keep it quiet – until a brief, unintentional leak – that their principal place of residence was no longer the district they represented but Maryland. (It saved them a few thousand dollars in property taxes.)

In exempting themselves from the Freedom of Information Act, Congress expects us to believe that it is inherently trustworthy, that we don’t need to know what deals went into crafting the laws the rest of us have to live by, and that its political shenanigans are none of our business. Besides, transparency is unnecessary, many congress(wo)men insist. What’s important is that they can still look themselves in the mirror. Arf!

As a member of Congress, my plan is to become the congressional watchdog. I will insist that Congress be subject to every law it imposes on others and that it conducts its business in the glare of the public spotlight. And I won’t waste time admiring my reflection in the mirror.

I’m Joey. I’m running for Congress. And I approved this message.

The Non-Elected Policymakers

We can get so caught up in campaign politics that we forget much of our national policy is shaped by people who are never elected. On average, every president gets to appoint a few thousand political employees -- and most of those are not confirmed by the Senate. For instance, none of the White House advisers closest to the president requires confirmation.

President Obama promised unprecedented transparency and an end to politics as usual when he named his advisers. How did he do?

Consider Nancy-Ann DeParle. After leaving her government job running Medicare for the Clinton administration, DeParle earned more than $6.6 million in the private sector since early 2001, according to a tally by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University. She accepted director positions at half a dozen companies suspected of violating the very laws and regulations she had enforced for Medicare. Those companies got into further trouble on her watch as a director. Several were investigated for alleged kickbacks or engaging in other illegal billing schemes, while others were accused of serious violations of federal quality standards, including one company that failed to warn patients of deadly problems with an implanted heart defibrillator.

Her current assignment? She's Obama's director of the White House Office of Health Reform. (Sourc: MSNBC)

Or how about Rahm Emmanuel, the White House chief of staff? Another revolving door, Emanuel was named to the board of Freddie Mac by President Clinton in 2000. During his brief tenure on the board -- he resigned in 2001 to run for Congress -- Freddie Mac misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors, according to an SEC complaint. The entire board was accused by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight of having "failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention," an ABC News report says.

Then there's Steve Rattner, a top Democratic fundraiser Obama tapped as his car czar. According to the Washington Examiner, Rattner's hedge fund, the Quadrangle Group, did business with New York City’s pension fund — an arrangement at the heart of recent federal convictions for illegal kickbacks. A short time after Rattner met with a consultant for the pension fund, the city invested in Quadrangle, and Quadrangle cut a check to the consultant, who has since pleaded guilty to taking illegal kickbacks.

The Examiner says Rattner and Obama's plan to selvage Chrysler was to give the United Auto Workers union 55 percent of the automaker while attacking secured creditors — who, in a regular bankruptcy, would be repaid in full — for resisting the deal. “The government exerted extreme pressure to coerce all of [Chrysler’s] constituencies into accepting a deal which is being done largely for the benefit of unsecured creditors at the expense of senior creditors,” these targets alleged in a federal complaint.

Keep in mind that the UAW’s political action committee spent $13.1 million in the last election cycle. Of the PAC’s $2.3 million in direct contributions to candidates and candidate PACs, more than 99 percent went to Democrats. The union’s PAC also reported $4.5 million in independent expenditures supporting Obama, plus an additional $423,000 opposing John McCain.

This kind of change we could do without.