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In one of their first moves of the new Congress, House Republicans have voted to gut their own independent ethics watchdog — a huge blow to cheerleaders of congressional oversight and one that dismantles major reforms adopted after the Jack Abramoff scandal.
Monday's effort was led, in part, by lawmakers who have come under investigation in recent years.
Despite a warning from Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Republicans adopted a proposal by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) to put the Office of Congressional Ethics under the jurisdiction of the House Ethics Committee.
The office currently has free rein, enabling investigators to pursue allegations and then recommend further action to the House Ethics Committee as they see fit.
Now, the office would be under the thumb of lawmakers themselves. The proposal also appears to limit the scope of the office's work by barring them from considering anonymous tips against lawmakers. And it would stop the office from disclosing the findings of some of their investigations, as they currently do after the recommendations go to House Ethics.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-republicans-gut-their-own-oversight-233111
The Office of Congressional Ethics was established in 2008 under House Democrats, in response to the era of lobbying scandals made notable by Jack Abramoff, the former lobbyist who went to prison on corruption charges.
It is the first independent body to have an oversight role in House ethics. There is no Senate counterpart. The OCE independently reviews allegations of misconduct against House members and staff, and if deemed appropriate refers them to the House Ethics Committee for review. The OCE cannot independently punish lawmakers for any ethics violations.
Update: House Republicans pull plan to gut independent ethics panel after Trump tweets
(Score: -1, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday January 03 2017, @03:42PM
It appears to be fake news about a fake office.
It appears from wikipedia the office served no purpose in its creation beyond hand wavy "we must symbolically do something" so they did something, that changed as little as possible while appearing as active as possible. The wikipedia article explains the founding leader actually did a surprisingly good job of providing better customer service, but he only lasted two years and its been pretty useless since. Possibly the founding leader is the only guy editing the wikipedia article, who knows.
The website of the office claims to be non-partisan but the wikipedia page lists the current board of directors of which exactly 1 is a republican. I'm sure you're completely shocked that the only party the office ever went after were republicans and the only supporters of the office after it got spanked was democrats. So its about as non-partisan and open minded as the McCarthy hearings were. In a display of comedy the web page of the office itself claims it behaves in a perfectly non-partisan manner and also almost every single member just randomly happens to be one party and they just randomly happen to only go after another party and I have a nice bridge for sale at a nice price and would you be interested in purchasing it from me?
The journalist coverage seems to imply the police are now on strike. However reading the FAQ on the office website itself the group never had any authority or power or advisory ability beyond being what boils down to first level customer support to open and process tickets that are exclusively handed by the "real" House Ethics Committee... You know, the one they're now officially reporting under as opposed to previously unofficially reporting under, or before the "symbolic fake action" of creating the separate but unequal dept to begin with in '08. Its like making customer support accountable to engineering officially rather than just tossing over tickets, say. Its not really going to attack or change anything because its as powerless of a figurehead as it was always, just under slightly more direct adult control now.
Curiously the actual ethics committee which held all the power and made all the choices, informally in the past, and formally now, gets no press coverage. All action of lack of action depends on the actual ethics committee, not this figurehead committee.
Maybe the purpose of the fake department all along was to be a fake fall guy for the next scandal. It does make a certain amount of sense. But now the R party is flushing it early instead of waiting, when its purpose for existing was to be the fall guys for the next D party scandal. Essentially the R are sabotaging the D backup plan for responding to getting caught.
Looking thru the reports it appears to have never really accomplished anything. If it were destroyed we'd lose a valuable source of i-dotting and t-crossing over extremely minor topics. The office never went after anything big. Admittedly there is some strategy to the whole "Send Al Capone to prison for income tax irregularities not his actual criminal acts". For example the most interesting thing they did in years, was one congressman fired a staffer and provided severance by withholding the firing paperwork from HR for a couple months instead of filling out form #WTF with HR to provide official firing pay severance, it don't really matter in the real world. Very "inside baseball". They never went after "real crime" corruption and only if the paperwork malfunction was caused by a republican, so IF it were destroyed (which the fake news article implies, but it isn't) then we're not going to be missing much.
I'd describe it as fake news because its very one sided pushing an agenda with evidence solely from one political extreme about a politically extremely polarized organization making various factually incorrect insinuations and the only discussion resulting is the traditional "I'm a R and Ds suck" vs "I'm a D and Rs suck" and no one talking about the actual issues of what the office ever did or will do. Also relevant factual evidence is being withheld in the reporting, such as who has had all the authority all along, what they did (approx nothing), why a fake office was created originally, and whats really changing, which is nothing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @03:50PM
> the office website itself the group never had any authority or power
The office had the ability to do investigations and make the results public without having to kowtow to the people they were investigating.
Your entire screed is based on the fact they were part of the process instead of the entire process. That's not just an unreasonable expectation in a democracy, coming from you its just partisan apologia.
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday January 03 2017, @04:16PM
make the results public
The fundamental disagreement is if the ethics committee 1st level customer support people are essentially running a trial complete with judicial oversight and the public discovery of evidence as you state, or if they are not running a trial with all the judicial oversight and procedure and evidence procedures required. Clearly they are not running a trial, in fact going all public kangaroo court like a bad episode of Judge Judy is likely to make actual legal prosecution more complicated or difficult later on. In that way I'm not certain they accomplish anything useful.
We could try chronological view:
Once upon a time there was this organized crime kingpin named Abramoff who nominally was a republican in private life but in his private life was solely out for himself. In the 00s he did all kinds of "Tony Soprano" type stuff involving wire fraud and mobsters killing each other over real estate fraud and ripping off indian tribe who hired him to support them but he double crossed them to try and double down for more money, and he did some bribes and stuff.
You know the jokes about garbage disposal being all mobster controlled and corrupt, well, Abramoff figured out financial control fraud was even easier in lobbying than in garbage trucking. So thats why he did what he did.
He got busted like a decade ago and the D party will always kick a R when he's down so endless insinuation that all R are in organized crime and such BS. Anyway they outsourced first level customer support from the existing ethics committee in order to appear to be "doing something" while actually doing mostly nothing. Also they stocked it with all democrats to enable an anti-R witch hunt. In usual political fashion the problem was never really congress or the ethics committee or the first level customer support team, so they reorg'd that of course. Never fix the actual problem if you can profit politically off it.
After a decade of lording over the R party that they've got a special outsourced team watching their every move because they're all Hitler Mobster Killers every last one of them, and finding nothing but some minor paperwork malfunctions and boring office drama that don't really matter on the national stage, which isn't much, its time to flush it. Abramoff was water under the bridge and never really mattered all that much on the national stage anyway and it was a decade ago. The propaganda photo op of the whole saga of the office has been over for years, time to flush it, go back to normal operation. They were never set up to make things public, they were never set up to reduce corruption, it was all a big anti-R party photo op from the mid 00s. It don't mean nothing no more, not in 2017. Flush it.
Needless to say as a propaganda coup the D party and therefore the legacy media is really annoyed that its getting flushed for political propaganda reasons that very few people remember from 2004 anyway; but its all on wikipedia if you're bored and want to read the historical truth.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @10:07PM
The office had the ability to do investigations and make the results public without having to kowtow to the people they were investigating.
Here's an interview with Leo Wise [vox.com] the first director of the OCE:
...
Interviewer: I imagine this didn’t make you the most popular man on the Hill. How much resistance was there to your work?
Leo Wise:
There was enormous resistance. We were being screamed at in a tirade of curses, thrown out of a member’s office, and threatened. There was huge resistance to even the idea of having to talk to us — to the notion that questions would be raised. So it was very challenging right from the start.
There were members who behaved responsibly and professionally. But it ran the gamut of opposition, with all sorts of threats about getting the office shut down or the funding for our office cut.
One incident where we got screamed at and thrown out of the office — it was just an initial meeting with a member. It wasn’t some confrontational interview. At the start of this process, which is very sensitive to members and their political concerns, we’d set up a meeting to come and directly talk to the member about the allegation the board had authorized us to look into.
It wasn’t a big public hearing. [The members] could decide what, if any, staff they wanted to have involved or if they wanted to retain legal counsel.
Once we handed the member a sealed envelope — it had just one or two sentences about the subject matter we were authorized to look into — and the member erupted at that. It was just the fact that we had the temerity, even just as staff, to raise a question that provoked this fury from a senior member who had been there for a long time.
...
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @04:41PM
> I'm sure you're completely shocked that the only party the office ever went after were republicans
That's false.
Are you now writing fake news?
Here's a list of investigations [house.gov] conducted by the OCE.
An incomplete tally of the democrats on that list:
Tim Bishop [wikipedia.org]
John Tierney [wikipedia.org]
Luis Gutierrez [house.gov]
Bobby Rush [wikipedia.org]
Ruben Hinojosa [wikipedia.org]
Mike Honda [wikipedia.org]
Yvette Clarke [wikipedia.org]
Sheila Jackson Lee [wikipedia.org]
——————————
Given how spectacularly wrong you got that claim what else are you lying about?
> lists the current board of directors of which exactly 1 is a republican.
Juddy Biggert [house.gov] - republican [soylentnews.org]
Allison Hayward [house.gov] - former chief of staff to republican federal elections chairman Bradley Smith [wikipedia.org]
Jay Eagan [house.gov] - former chief of staff to republican Rep William F Goodling [wikipedia.org]
3 democrats, 3 republicans and 1 independent.
Why does anyone trust a single damn word you write anymore?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @07:15PM
Thanks for the research. It's too bad that several posters had to waste their time debunking what turns out to be BS.
I have to admit that I find it profoundly disturbing that VLM's post remained at "+5 Insightful" for so long. (It even dipped down briefly, but was modded back up. As I write, it is now down to +3 apparently due to Troll mods.)
For full factual disclosure here, I'd just like to note yesterday VLM said [soylentnews.org]:
Actually "The Washington Post" is what they mean by fake news.
He later said [soylentnews.org]:
Historically they'd get the basic facts right, at least mostly, and merely slant the story via extreme language and strange insinuations, and now they're not even bothering with fact checking, its pure creative writing class. [...] If I wanted the opinion of a stoned nutcase mumbling in the park, I'd go to the park, not legacy "fake news" media.
I'd ask VLM to come forward and offer corrections/retractions to his post, now that it has been heavily debunked. I'm NOT going to engage in rhetoric accusing him of a being "a stoned nutcase mumbling in the park," but since he holds journalists to such high standards, I think we deserve to hear him publicly state that he made some errors and revisit what he said. In the time that I've been reading stuff here, I've seen VLM offer some insightful comments (which I commend him for) and also a lot of nonsense or trolling. I've mostly just ignored the latter. But I have to agree with AC here -- VLM, if you want people to believe ANYTHING you will ever say again, it's time to admit you too, like the WaPo, have presented false information as fact (and then built an entire rant around that false information).
Many people on both sides were critical of the WaPo yesterday for their shoddy journalism. I'll call out BS where I see it. You want to climb up to even the low standards of the WaPo "stoned nutcases"? Time to correct what you wrote. Otherwise, you're going to prove yourself not only a troll, but a hypocrite.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday January 03 2017, @09:50PM
I'm NOT going to engage in rhetoric accusing him of a being "a stoned nutcase mumbling in the park," but since he holds journalists to such high standards, I think we deserve to hear him publicly state that he made some errors and revisit what he said.
I WILL! Mostly because I doubt VLM will do any such thing. It's the second law of jmorrises. And I will go even further, and suggest a "final solution" the the VLM question, just like he did for the immigration issue, because that is not Nazi at all.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Tuesday January 03 2017, @09:55PM
But "citizen journalists" *aren't* held to the same standards as "established" media. Often, they are *proud* of being "free" of the "rules".
"Truth", "fact", even "reality" can all be redefined, and then "consequences" can be ignored (or blamed on someone else).
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @09:26PM
FWIW here's an example of an ethics scandal that should have got a lot more coverage than it did:
10 members of Congress took trip secretly funded by foreign government [washingtonpost.com]
The state-owned oil company of Azerbaijan secretly funded an all-expenses-paid trip to a conference in Baku, on the Caspian Sea, in 2013 for 10 members of Congress and 32 staff members, according to a confidential ethics report obtained by The Washington Post. Three former top aides to President Obama appeared as speakers at the event.
Lawmakers and their staff members received hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of travel expenses, silk scarves, crystal tea sets and Azerbaijani rugs valued at $2,500 to $10,000, according to the ethics report. Airfare for the lawmakers and some of their spouses cost $112,899, travel invoices show.
The State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, known as SOCAR, allegedly funneled $750,000 through nonprofit corporations based in the United States to conceal the source of the funding for the conference in the former Soviet republic, according to the 70-page report by the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent investigative arm of the House.
The report reflects the most extensive investigation undertaken by the ethics office, which was created seven years ago in response to a number of scandals on Capitol Hill, including lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s illegal funding of lawmakers’ trips.
...
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday January 03 2017, @05:18PM
The website of the office claims to be non-partisan but the wikipedia page lists the current board of directors of which exactly 1 is a republican. I'm sure you're completely shocked that the only party the office ever went after were republicans and the only supporters of the office after it got spanked was democrats. So its about as non-partisan and open minded as the McCarthy hearings were.
Wow, the title of your post is intended as irony, I assume? Let's just set aside that McCarthy quip -- I'm not sure you really want to compare the actions here to the insane rantings of the leader of the communist purges, do you?
Anyhow, let's dig into those board members [house.gov], shall we? There are 7 listed.
(1) Acting Chair - Judy Biggert [wikipedia.org] - former Republican House rep from Illinois. In her bio it notes: "Ms. Biggert was voted by her House colleagues in 2010 as one of the 'Top ten most bipartisan members of the U.S. House.'"
(2) Co-Chair - David Skaggs [wikipedia.org] - former Democratic House rep from Colorado. In his bio it notes: "He was the founding co-chairman with Congressman Ray LaHood (R-Illinois) of the House Bipartisan Retreat, the first such meeting in history, held in March, 1997, at Hershey, Pennsylvania. He was also co-founder with Representative Jim Leach (R-Iowa) of the Constitutional Forum, a series of seminars with distinguished guest lecturers who led Member discussions of constitutional issues."
(3) Belinda Pinckney - retired Brigadier General and CEO of BHP consulting. I can't find any source for Wikipedia's contention that she's a Democrat, but given her association with diversity efforts [bhpconsultingllc.org], it seems reasonable to say she slants that way.
(4) Jay Eagen - former Chief Administrative Officer of the House. Wikipedia claims independent, and (according to OCE bio) "A bipartisan House search committee unanimously selected Mr. Eagen." On the other hand, his bio also states that he had previously served as Chief of Staff to both Bill Goodling of PA and Steve Gunderson of WI, both House Republicans, so I think we should probably give him a "slant R."
(5) Karan English [wikipedia.org] - a former Democratic House rep from Arizona. But, notably, she was endorsed for her seat AGAINST the Republican candidate by no other than BARRY GOLDWATER. Huh. Hardly a bio of a typical far left liberal.
(6) Allison Hayward - again, Wikipedia SAYS she's a Democrat, but I can't find any evidence of that. Instead, we find out she was VP of Policy at the Center for Competitive Politics [wikipedia.org], which is basically an organization dedicated to removing barriers to spending in elections. While politicians on both sides can benefit from such deregulation, I think we can all agree that the folks more strongly arguing in favor of stuff like Citizens United are Republicans. Hayward was also Chief of Staff to Bradley Smith [wikipedia.org], former Commissioner of the FEC, who came to the attention of Republicans for his pro-business and "free money" stance on contributions to political campaigns (and was recommended to Bill Clinton as the Republican choice for his FEC appointment by Trent Lott and Mitch McConnell). So, maybe she's a registered Dem... I don't know. But one whose interests seem to also be tied up with more typical Republican issues.
(7) Michael Barnes [wikipedia.org] - former Democratic congressman from Maryland.
So what do we really have here? On the Dem side: three former Democratic house reps, one of which is notable for founding bi-partisan groups in Congress and another of which was endorsed by Barry Goldwater. One former Rep house rep, who is chair (and also notable for bipartisan action). And three other people without clear partisan affiliation, one of which is claimed to be "independent" but served as chief of staff to two different Republican reps, and another of which was previously entrenched in lobbying to overturn campaign finance regulations. Only one of those three "unknowns" seems to have clear Democratic leanings (based on her corporate bio).
Is this a good mix? Heck if I know. But I'd say there's pretty good evidence that at least three of the board members lean Republican in terms of their background, and another was a Democrat endorsed by Goldwater. So I'd hardly say it's the "one lone Republican rep on the board" that you claim.
In a display of comedy the web page of the office itself claims it behaves in a perfectly non-partisan manner and also almost every single member just randomly happens to be one party and they just randomly happen to only go after another party and I have a nice bridge for sale at a nice price and would you be interested in purchasing it from me?
Wow -- are you seriously going to say that here when anybody can check it in the published LIST of every Congress rep the OCE has recommended to the ethics committee [house.gov]?
I just spent about 10 minutes going through and checking all the ethics reports for the past four years (2013-2016), which includes concerns about 14 Republican Congress reps, 13 Democratic Congress reps, and 4 investigations into other people (1 Republican staffer and 3 Democratic staffers).
Granted, I didn't dig through all the reports going back to 2009, because I have better things to do with my time, but you're welcome to do so if you wish. But the kind of bias you claim is VERIFIABLY FALSE.
However reading the FAQ on the office website itself the group never had any authority or power or advisory ability beyond being what boils down to first level customer support to open and process tickets that are exclusively handed by the "real" House Ethics Committee... You know, the one they're now officially reporting under as opposed to previously unofficially reporting under, or before the "symbolic fake action" of creating the separate but unequal dept to begin with in '08. Its like making customer support accountable to engineering officially rather than just tossing over tickets, say. Its not really going to attack or change anything because its as powerless of a figurehead as it was always, just under slightly more direct adult control now.
Maybe it's a useless organization as you say. I don't really know how to gauge effectiveness. BUT one might argue that even a group with no formal power can still draw attention to ethics violations. The House still officially would have to RESPOND to any allegations the OCE sent them. Arguing that the OCE is useless is like arguing that a petition circulated by voters to look into an issue is useless. It may have no power to expel a member from Congress or whatever, but I think most reasonable people would argue that having SOME outside party's opinions heard and FORCING Congress to at least respond to ethics allegations might have SOME value.
I'm not going to even bother responding to the rest of your post. Once you have some actual evidence to back up any of your claims, maybe try again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @08:53PM
why are all of these older users suddenly coming out as cranks in this election cycle? Many of these people (not all of them) were pretty normal sounding prior to the election.
Spouting pure BS under the assumption that people here would not fact check anything?
It's like Ethanol Fueled is possessing half the conservatives that post here...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @08:59PM
You just didn't realize their idiocy because they weren't talking about politically topical issues. Ethan talks about politics, mostly white supermacy, more than anything else so everybody knows he's an idiot.
People can be pretty smart about one topic, especially one they have professional involvement in, and utter idiots in other areas of life.
I would argue that the more time someone has spent specializing, the less likely they are to have a clue about anything outside of their specialty.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 04 2017, @05:31AM
The people you're referring to were NEVER normal, and I've been pointing this out from the very beginning...usually to be ignored or attacked back for it. From this end, their crazy stands out like a gigantic neon sign in the darkness. It's nice to be vindicated, though it's something I wish I were wrong about :(
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...