Back-Room John

Is soon to be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi deaf, dumb, and blind? My answer to all three is a resounding YES I seem to recall it was Nancy herself who coined the phrase "culture of corruption" yet here she is throwing her support behind Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), who appears somewhat ethically challenged himself, to be the House Democratic majority leader, the powerful number-two job in the body. John Murtha is a seventeenth-term member of Congress, representing the 12th district of Pennsylvania. His ethics issues stem from abuse of his position as Ranking Member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee to benefit clients of his brother, Robert “Kit” Murtha, a registered lobbyist. **** In 2002, Kit Murtha was hired by KSA Consulting, a firm that lobbies the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee on behalf of defense contractors. Mr. Murtha joined the firm at the invitation of top KSA official Carmen Scialabba, who had worked for Rep. Murtha on the House Appropriations Committee for 27 years. In 2004, Congress passed a $417 billion defense appropriations bill that went through Rep. Murtha’s subcommittee. The bill benefitted at least 10 companies represented by KSA and KSA directly lobbied Rep. Murtha’s office on behalf of seven of those companies, which received a total $20.8 million in earmarks. If that doesn't raise the un-ethical barometer up a notch then let's look at a company named The PMA Group and its' founder Paul Magliocchetti Paul Magliocchetti worked with Rep. Murtha as a senior staffer on the Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Defense for 10 years. After leaving the committee, Mr. Magliocchetti founded the PMA Group, which has become one of the most prominent Washington, D.C. defense lobbying firms. In the current campaign cycle, the PMA Group and 12 of the firm’s clients rank in the top 20 contributors to Rep. Murtha, having made campaign contributions totaling $274,649. In turn, many of PMA’s clients have benefited significantly from Rep. Murtha’s earmarks. In the 2006 Defense appropriations bill, PMA clients received at least 60 earmarks, totaling $95.1 million. Read on... We have all heard over and over ad-nauseum about how "disloyal" Joe LIEbermann is towards his (then) fellow Democrats, yet here we have the soon to be Speaker supporting a member who, as David Corn points out in The Nation magazine, has voted more with the Republicans than almost every other House Democrat. Yes Nancy, you are deaf to the will of the 42 percent of voters who considered corruption and congressional scandals critical to their voting decisions. The same voters who made you Speaker of the House in-waiting when they spoke with their votes against the "culture of corruption". You are dumb if you think liberal and progressive bloggers are going to stay quiet when we see a problem just because the Dems are in power. And you are blind if you don't see the hazards in front of you by supporting John Murtha. Other than speaking out against the Iraq occupation which made him a darling of the left and your ally as a spokesman against the war, he is now and always has been a hawkish conservative with questionable ethics as well.