CREW FILES JUSTICE AND SENATE ETHICS COMMITTEE COMPLAINTS AGAINST SEN. MARY LANDRIEU (D-LA)

[L. Coyote]

CREW FILES JUSTICE AND SENATE ETHICS COMMITTEE COMPLAINTS AGAINST SEN. MARY LANDRIEU (D-LA)
http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/30690


8 Jan 2008 // Washington, D.C. – Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) today sent a complaint to the Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District for Louisiana and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, asking for an investigation into whether Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) violated federal bribery law by including a $2 million earmark for Voyager Expanded Learning in a bill a mere four days after receiving $30,000 in campaign contributions from company executives and their relatives. CREW also asked the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate the matter.

[TwilightGardener]

1. Ooops. Bye, Mary.

[truebrit71]

2. C-Ya Dino.

...

[midlife_mo_Jo]

3. Ouch.

[rodeodance]

4. oh my my my.

[rodeodance]

5. good details HEREE:

Randy Best, a top Republican donor and Bush pioneer, founded Voyager, an educational products company and rather than selling the company’s reading program to school districts, hired lobbyists to obtain earmarks for it. Although the House had appropriated $1 million for his program for the D.C. public schools, Best still needed a Senate sponsor. A lobbyist arranged a meeting with Sen. Landrieu, the chair of the Appropriations subcommittee responsible for the District of Columbia, to press for an earmark. Shortly after Sen. Landrieu met with Best, a member of Sen. Landrieu’s staff asked him to hold a fundraiser for her and he agreed. After the fundraiser, she received $30,000 in campaign contributions from individuals associated with the company -- donors who had never before contributed to her. Four days after she received the money, she inserted an earmark into a D.C. appropriations bill, giving D.C. schools $2 million to buy Best’s reading program, which was unproven and had not been requested by the school system.

Federal law prohibits public officials from directly or indirectly demanding, seeking, receiving, accepting, or agreeing to receive or accept anything of value in return for being influenced in the performance of an official act. Accepting a contribution to a political campaign can constitute a bribe if a quid pro quo can be demonstrated.

Given that Sen. Landrieu asked Best to hold a fundraiser for her, which he did, and then inserted the Voyager earmark only four days after receiving contributions from individuals connected with the company, it certainly appears she traded the earmark for the contributions in violation of federal criminal law. Sen. Landrieu also may have violated the Senate rule prohibiting “improper conduct which reflects upon the Senate.”

[RB TexLa]

6. Frivolous waste of time and paper

I guess if the campaign contributions had been forty days or four years before it would be ok with them?

Crazy.

Not against the law for people to give to her campaign. Not against the law for her to put amendments to spending bills.

Frivolous waste of time from these people.

[Toots]

12. No one mentioned anything about breaking any laws. It might be an ethics violation

You know unethical behavior... Do you understand the difference?

[RB TexLa]

13. Oh yes, and I know many on DU want to take ethics lay it down on a bed turn on a Barry White cd

and ... :puke:

[rodeodance]

7. UPDATE

UPDATE:

Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, responds to Senator Landrieu’s release today on CREW’s complaints (Sen. Landrieu's release is posted to the right):

“Sen. Landrieu’s response to CREW’s Department of Justice and Ethics Committee complaints fails to address the key allegation: that she inserted an earmark in return for campaign contributions. According to a document just provided by Sen. Landrieu, the District of Columbia apparently asked the senator on April 25, 2001 to include an earmark for Voyager in the D.C. appropriations bill. Nevertheless, by September 24, 2001, when a House committee included a $1 million earmark for Voyager, the company still had not attracted a Senate sponsor. Sen. Landrieu has not explained why she didn’t follow through on the District’s request until November 6, 2001, four days after Mr. Best and his associates contributed $30,000 to the senator’s campaign.”

***

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a non-profit legal watchdog group dedicated to holding public officials accountable for their actions.

For more information, please visit www.citizensforethics.org or contact Naomi Seli

[rodeodance]

9. A Reading Program's Powerful Patron WPost:

http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/30697
A Reading Program's Powerful Patron

20 Dec 2007 // When Congress decided to appropriate $2 million in fall 2001 to help D.C. kindergartners and first-graders learn to read, city school officials were told that the money could be spent only on the Voyager Expanded Learning literacy program, a new product with virtually no track record. They had just picked a different reading curriculum, and "we didn't want to be guinea pigs," recalled Mary Gill, then the system's chief academic officer.

School leaders did not know that the $2 million was an earmark that had been guided into law by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) just after she had received more than $30,000 in campaign contributions at a fundraiser held by Voyager's founder and chairman.

Landrieu's earmark illustrates the unusual role that Congress has played in shaping the District's troubled school system. No other school budget is subject to approval by Capitol Hill. None is so susceptible to the whims and policy prescriptions of federal lawmakers. And the parents, teachers and administrators of D.C. schools are the only ones in the country who lack a voting representative in Congress.

The Voyager story also highlights the haphazard way that curricula end up in the District's classrooms. For many years, educators have said that the patchwork of instructional material is one reason the city's students hover near the bottom of rankings in national test scores.

Landrieu, as the ranking Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate's D.C. appropriations subcommittee until early this year, was a pivotal figure in school spending and policy issues. With the Voyager earmark, she intruded on a curriculum decision normally made by teachers, principals, administrators and educational advisers........

[AndyA]

8. I hope her sorry DINO butt gets fried big time.

She is a disgrace.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

10. A mystery solved. eom

[Kucinich4America]

11. Now if we could just find a REAL Democrat to run for her seat....

Probably would need a carpetbagger though, since there doesn't seem to be many actual Democrats down in the Delta.

[Rageneau]

14. Te Bribing company here is not only GOP, it is a third-rate enterprise.

I volunteer to teach adults to learn to read. The agency I work at has many tools, including four different, multi-volumed series of "skill" book and workbooks, graduated from Level One to Level Eight in difficulty.

When I came to this facility, all the tutors were using the "Voyager" series -- because they had been advised to buy and use it instead of the other already existing series of books.

I soon found the Voyager books difficult to use, poorly targeted, and confusing to my students. After grousing a while, I arbitrariy switched to an entirey different set of books, and both my students and I are better for it.

All the time I was using the Voyager series, I kept asking "Who SAYS this is the best series? Who decided to use these clumsy books? Where are these recommendations coming from?"

So imagine my non-surprise a few months back when I earned that the Voyager series is pubished by a pal of, and big campaign contributor to, George W Bush.

Now I now why schools and non-profits are spending big money on books they not only don't need, but which are inferior to books they aready possess.

So now we discover that Landrieu -- who is as close to a Repubican as a Democrat can be -- is another politician whose concern for re-election outweighs her concern for education and general wefare.

These Bush bastards steal from every pocket a fellow has.