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Skriven 2006-07-29 08:47:20 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
Ärende: Surprise
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The following is a letter from former Republican Congressman and
Presidential candidate Pete McCloskey.
THE NEED FOR A DEMOCRAT MAJORITY IN THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES IN
2007 

I have found it difficult in the past several weeks to reach a conclusion
as to what a citizen should do with respect to this fall's forthcoming
congressional elections.

I am a Republican, intend to remain a Republican, and am descended from
three generations of California Republicans, active in Merced and San
Bernardino Counties as well as in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have just
engaged in an unsuccessful effort to defeat the Republican Chairman of the
House Resources Committee, Richard Pombo, in the 11th Congressional
District Republican primary, obtaining just over 32% of the Republican vote
against Pombo's 62%. 

The observation of Mr. Pombo's political consultant, Wayne Johnson, that I
have been mired in the obsolete values of the 1970s, honesty, good ethics
and balanced budgets, all rejected by today's modern Republicans, is only
too accurate. 

It has been difficult, nevertheless, to conclude as I have, that the
Republican House leadership has been so unalterably corrupted by power and
money that reasonable Republicans should support Democrats against
DeLay-type Republican incumbents in 2006. Let me try to explain why.

I have decided to endorse Jerry McNerney and every other honorable Democrat
now challenging those Republican incumbents who have acted to protect
former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who have flatly reneged on their Contract
With America promise in 1994 to restore high standards of ethical behavior
in the House and who have combined to prevent investigation of the
Cunningham and Abramoff/Pombo/DeLay scandals. These Republican incumbents
have brought shame on the House, and have created a wide-spread view in the
public at large that Republicans are more interested in obtaining campaign
contributions from corporate lobbyists than they are in legislating in the
public interest.

At the outset, let me say that in four months of campaigning I have learned
that Jerry McNerney is an honorable man and that Richard Pombo is not. Mr.
Pombo has used his position and power to shamelessly enrich his wife and
family from campaign funds, has interfered with the federal investigation
of men like Michael Hurwitz, he of the Savings & Loan frauds and ruthless
clear-cutting of old growth California redwoods. Mr. Pombo has taken more
money from Indian gaming lobbyist Jack Abramoff, his associates and Indian
tribes interested in gaming than any other Member of Congress, in excess of
$500,000. With his stated intent to gut the Endangered Species and
Environmental Protection Acts, to privatize for development millions of
acres of public land, including a number of National Parks, to give veto
power to the Congress over constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court,
his substantial contributions to DeLay's legal defense fund, and most
particularly his refusal to investigate the Abramoff involvement in Indian
gaming and the exploitation of women labor in the Marianas, both matters
within the jurisdiction of his committee, Mr. Pombo in my view represents
all that is wrong with the national government in Washington today.

It is clear that the forthcoming campaign will be a vicious one, with Mr.
Pombo willing to stretch the truth as he has in the past with respect to
the elderberry beetle, levee breaks, his steadfast opposition to veterans'
health care, including prosthetics research for amputees from Iraq and
other wars, the impact on Marine lives of endangered species protection at
Camp Pendleton and other issues. That Mr. Pombo lied in testimony to the
Senate in 1994 is an accepted fact. He testified that the U.S. Fish &
Wildlife Service had designated his farm near Tracy as habitat for the
endangered California kit fox. This was untrue, and Pombo admitted to the
untruthfulness a few months later when questioned over public television,
an agency for which he recently voted to cut federal funds.
Such a man should not be allowed to be in charge of the nation's public
lands and waterways, a position to which he was elevated by the
now-departed Tom DeLay.

Some 18 months ago, my former law partner, Lewis Butler, an Assistant
Secretary of HEW in the Nixon Administration and subsequently the
distinguished Chair of California Tomorrow and the Plowshares Foundation,
and I initiated an effort we called The Revolt of the Elders. All of us
were retired and in the latter years of Social Security entitlement. Most
of us were Republicans who had served in the Congress or in former
Republican administrations with men like Gerry Ford, John Rhodes, Bob
Michel, Elliot Richardson, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and the
president's father, George H. W. Bush, all men of impeccable integrity and
ethics.

We had become appalled at the House Republican leadership's decision in
early 2005 to effectively emasculate the House Committee on Standards of
Official Conduct by changing the rules to protect Majority Leader Tom
DeLay. DeLay had been admonished three times by the Committee for abuse of
power and unethical conduct. It was our hope to persuade Speaker Hastert and
the Republican leadership, of which Northern California Congressman Richard
Pombo and John Doolittle were prominent members, to rescind the rules changes
and to act in accord with the promise of high ethical standards contained in
Speaker Gingrich's Contract With America which brought the Republicans majority
control in 1994. We failed. Letters to the Speaker from an increasing number of
former Republican Members were ignored and remained unanswered. Then, only a
few weeks ago, the House leadership refused to allow even a vote on what could
have become an effective independent ethics monitor. Instead of repudiating the
infamous "Pay to Play" program put in place by DeLay to extract maximum
corporate campaign contributions to “Retain Our Majority Party”
(ROMP), DeLay's successor as Majority Leader called for a continuance of the
free luxury airline trips, mammoth campaign contributions to the so-called
"Leadership PAC" and the continuing stalemate on the Ethics Committee.
Strangely, even after the guilty pleas of Abramoff, Duke Cunningham and a
number of former House staffers who had been sent to work for Abramoff and
other lobbyists. The Republican House leaders don't see this as corruption
worthy of investigation or change. That their former staff members and Abramoff
were granted preference in access to the legislative process is not seen as a
problem if it helps Republicans retain control of the House. It reminds one of
the contentions of Haldeman and Ehrlichman long ago that the national security
justified wire-tapping and burglary of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and the
Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate. Republicans are happy with
this new corporate lobby/House complex, which is far more dangerous that the
Industry/Defense complex we were long ago warned about by President Eisenhower.

I have therefore reluctantly concluded that party loyalty should be set
aside, and that it is in the best interests of the nation, and indeed the
future of the Republican Party itself, to return control of the House to
temporary Democrat control, if only to return the House for a time to the
kind of ethics standards practiced by Republicans in former years. I say
reluctantly, having no great illusion that Democrats or any other kind of
politician will long resist the allure of campaign funds and benefits
offered by the richest and most profitable of the Halliburtons, oil
companies, tobacco companies, developers and Indian gaming tribes whose
contributions so heavily dominate the contributions to Congressmen Pombo
and Doolittle.

As an aside, it seems to me that the Abramoff and Cunningham scandals make
it timely for the Congress to consider public matching funds for small
contributions to congressional candidates, the same type of system we
adopted some time ago for presidential elections. It may be cheaper for the
taxpayer to fund congressional elections than to bear the cost of
lobbyist-controlled legislation like the recent Medicaid/Medicare drug
bill.

There is another strong reason, I believe, for Republicans to work this
fall for Democrat challengers against the DeLay-type Republicans like Pombo
and Doolittle. That is the clear abdication by the House over the past five
years of the Congress' constitutional power and duty to exercise oversight
over abuses of power, cronyism, incompetence and excessive secrecy on the
part of the Executive Branch. When does anyone remember House Committee
hearings to examine into the patent failures of the Bush Administration to
adhere to laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or
to the arrogant refusal of the President to accept the
congressionally-enacted limits on torture of prisoners? When can anyone
remember the House's use of the subpoena power to compel answers from
Administration officials? Why have there been no oversight hearings into
the Cunningham bribery affair or Abramoff's Indian gaming and exploitation
of women labor in the Marianas?

When three former congressional staff aides join Abramoff in pleading
guilty to attempting to bribe Congressmen, and a fourth takes the 5th
Amendment rather than answer Senator McCain's questions about his
relationship with Abramoff and Indian gaming, with all five having given
substantial campaign contributions to Mr. Pombo, with Indian tribes alone
having given more than $500,000 to Pombo, would it not seem reasonable to
ask him to conduct an appropriate oversight committee 
Hearing into these matters, as long demanded by members of both parties,
notably including his neighbor, George Miller?

For all of these reasons, I believe and hope that the Republicans who voted
for me on June 6 will vote for Mr. McNerney and against Mr. Pombo in
November.

The checks and balances of our Constitution are an essential part of our
system of government, as is the public faith that can be obtained only by
good ethical conduct on the part of our elected leaders.

If the Republicans in the House won't honor these principles, then the
Democrats should be challenged to do so. And if they decline to exercise
that privilege, we can turn them out too. I appreciate that I had serious
deficiencies as a candidate, and that four months of campaigning and the
expenditure of $500,000 of the funds contributed by old friends and
supporters were unsuccessful in convincing Republicans of the 11th District
to end the continuing corruption in Washington. I hope, however, to
partially redeem my electoral failure by working, as a simple private
citizen, to rekindle a Republican sense of civic duty to participate in the
electoral process this fall. The goal of The Revolt of the Elders was and
is to educate voters to the need for a return of ethics and honesty in
Washington. That goal was right 18 months ago, and seems even more
worthwhile today.

Pete McCloskey, Dublin, California. July 26, 2006
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