According to an internal letter given to The Post by a potential client, K&L Gates hoped to share a cut of its clients’ earmark success.
K&L’s Olivares offered a menu of pricing options, including a “success fee” in which the client would pay 7.5 percent of its earmark haul to K&L Gates, on top of a $6,500 monthly retainer.‘To build a relationship’
Several firms said that signing K&L Gates helped them gain the access they had long been denied by federal agencies.
David Rosenberg, who founded Hycrete in New Jersey in 2005, said he hired K&L in August 2007 and has since paid the firm $190,000 to help obtain defense appropriations and other funds. ...
Rosenberg said K&L encouraged him to
donate to Visclosky — “to build a relationship with a member of Congress.” Last year, Visclosky requested a $2 million Army earmark to evaluate Hycrete’s technology. The next month, Rosenberg and his colleagues donated $20,000 to Visclosky and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.“I’m a fan of earmarks,” Rosenberg said. “None of that would have happened without this funding — there was no light at the end of the tunnel.”
http://www.dmzhawaii.org/?tag=defense-subcommittee-nanosonixIndeed. "No light at the end of the tunnel” is a metaphor for many problems in our government.
Yuck. This is the dirtiest post I've ever made. :(
To think that this unethical shit seems to be the standard operating procedure for our govt. sickens me.
And I thought I couldn't get more cynical.