THERE is a serious threat to democracy, freedom and the nation if newt gingrich(k) is the gop / tea-bagger nominee for president. He is a racist, a liar, a neo-con extreme right winger controlled by the interest of the rich, the greed of corporate America and by powerful, dangerous members of the military-industrial complex. His mastery of propaganda and manipulation of the ignorance of the white electorate is frightening, these skills present the greatest threat to the unity of the nation, recovery from the recession and the re-election of Pres Obama. To discount him a buffoon is a mistake, and the Democratic Party has to be ready to challenge him. This from HuffPost......
Republicans are worried sick about Newt Gingrich's ascendance, while Democrats are tickled pink.
Yet no responsible Democrat should be pleased at the prospect that Gingrich could get the GOP nomination. The future of America is too important to accept even a small risk of a Gingrich presidency.
The Republican worry is understandable. "The possibility of Newt Gingrich being our nominee against Barack Obama I think is essentially handing the election over to Obama," says former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a leading GOP conservative. "I think that's shared by a lot of folks in the Republican party."
Pawlenty's views are indeed widely shared in Republican circles. "He's not a conservative -- he's an opportunist," says pundit Joe Scarborough, a member of the Republican Class of 1994 who came to Washington under Gingrich's banner. Gingrich doesn't "have the temperament, intellectual discipline or ego control to be either a successful nominee or president,"says New York Republican representative Peter King, who hasn't endorsed any candidate. "Basically, Newt can't control himself."
Gingrich is "an embarrassment to the party," says New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie, and "was run out of the speakership" on ethics violations. Republican strategist Mike Murphy says "Newt Gingrich could not carry a swing state in the general election if it was made of feathers."
"Weird" is the word I hear most from Republicans who have worked with him. Scott Klug, a former Republican House member from Wisconsin, who hasn't endorsed anyone yet, says "Newt has ten ideas a day -- two of them are good, six are weird and two are very weird."
Newt's latest idea, for example -- to colonize the moon -- is typically whacky.
The Republican establishment also points to polls showing Gingrich's supporters to be enthusiastic but his detractors even more fired up. In the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 29 percent view Gingrich favorably while 51 percent have an unfavorable view of him. (Obama, by contrast, draws a 53 percent favorable and 43 percent unfavorable.)
Independents, who will be key to the general election, are especially alarmed by Gingrich.
As they should be. It's not just Newt's weirdness. It's also the stunning hypocrisy. His personal life makes a mockery of his moralistic bromides. He condemns Washington insiders but had a 40-year Washington career that ended with ethics violations. He fulminates against finance yet drew fat checks from Freddie Mac. He poses as a populist but has had a $500,000 revolving charge at Tiffany's.
And it's the flagrant irresponsibility of many of his propositions -- for example, that presidents are not bound by Supreme Court rulings, that the liberal Ninth Circuit court of appeals should be abolished, that capital gains should not be taxed, that the First Amendment guarantees freedom "of" religion but not "from" religion.
It's also Gingrich's eagerness to channel the public's frustrations into resentments against immigrants, blacks, the poor, Muslims, "liberal elites," the mainstream media, and any other group that's an easy target of white middle-class and working-class anger.
These are all the hallmarks of a demagogue.
Yet Democratic pundits, political advisers, officials and former officials are salivating over the possibility of a Gingrich candidacy. They agree with key Republicans that Newt would dramatically increase the odds of Obama's reelection and would also improve the chances of Democrats taking control over the House and retaining control over the Senate.
I warn you. It's not worth the risk.
Even if the odds that Gingrich as GOP presidential candidate would win the general election are 10 percent, that's too much of a risk to the nation. No responsible American should accept a 10 percent risk of a President Gingrich.
I'd take a 49 percent odds of a Mitt Romney win -- who in my view would make a terrible president -- over a 10 percent possibility that Newt Gingrich would become the next president -- who would be an unmitigated disaster for America and the world.
Republicans are worried sick about Newt Gingrich's ascendance, while Democrats are tickled pink.
Yet no responsible Democrat should be pleased at the prospect that Gingrich could get the GOP nomination. The future of America is too important to accept even a small risk of a Gingrich presidency.
The Republican worry is understandable. "The possibility of Newt Gingrich being our nominee against Barack Obama I think is essentially handing the election over to Obama," says former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a leading GOP conservative. "I think that's shared by a lot of folks in the Republican party."
Pawlenty's views are indeed widely shared in Republican circles. "He's not a conservative -- he's an opportunist," says pundit Joe Scarborough, a member of the Republican Class of 1994 who came to Washington under Gingrich's banner. Gingrich doesn't "have the temperament, intellectual discipline or ego control to be either a successful nominee or president,"says New York Republican representative Peter King, who hasn't endorsed any candidate. "Basically, Newt can't control himself."
Gingrich is "an embarrassment to the party," says New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie, and "was run out of the speakership" on ethics violations. Republican strategist Mike Murphy says "Newt Gingrich could not carry a swing state in the general election if it was made of feathers."
"Weird" is the word I hear most from Republicans who have worked with him. Scott Klug, a former Republican House member from Wisconsin, who hasn't endorsed anyone yet, says "Newt has ten ideas a day -- two of them are good, six are weird and two are very weird."
Newt's latest idea, for example -- to colonize the moon -- is typically whacky.
The Republican establishment also points to polls showing Gingrich's supporters to be enthusiastic but his detractors even more fired up. In the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 29 percent view Gingrich favorably while 51 percent have an unfavorable view of him. (Obama, by contrast, draws a 53 percent favorable and 43 percent unfavorable.)
Independents, who will be key to the general election, are especially alarmed by Gingrich.
As they should be. It's not just Newt's weirdness. It's also the stunning hypocrisy. His personal life makes a mockery of his moralistic bromides. He condemns Washington insiders but had a 40-year Washington career that ended with ethics violations. He fulminates against finance yet drew fat checks from Freddie Mac. He poses as a populist but has had a $500,000 revolving charge at Tiffany's.
And it's the flagrant irresponsibility of many of his propositions -- for example, that presidents are not bound by Supreme Court rulings, that the liberal Ninth Circuit court of appeals should be abolished, that capital gains should not be taxed, that the First Amendment guarantees freedom "of" religion but not "from" religion.
It's also Gingrich's eagerness to channel the public's frustrations into resentments against immigrants, blacks, the poor, Muslims, "liberal elites," the mainstream media, and any other group that's an easy target of white middle-class and working-class anger.
These are all the hallmarks of a demagogue.
Yet Democratic pundits, political advisers, officials and former officials are salivating over the possibility of a Gingrich candidacy. They agree with key Republicans that Newt would dramatically increase the odds of Obama's reelection and would also improve the chances of Democrats taking control over the House and retaining control over the Senate.
I warn you. It's not worth the risk.
Even if the odds that Gingrich as GOP presidential candidate would win the general election are 10 percent, that's too much of a risk to the nation. No responsible American should accept a 10 percent risk of a President Gingrich.
I'd take a 49 percent odds of a Mitt Romney win -- who in my view would make a terrible president -- over a 10 percent possibility that Newt Gingrich would become the next president -- who would be an unmitigated disaster for America and the world.
BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label house ethics investigation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label house ethics investigation. Show all posts
27 January 2012
15 December 2011
What Newt Gingrich Isn't Telling You About His Literacy Program 7DEZ11
WITH Mother Jones continuing to expose the true newt gingrich(k)by the time the Iowa caucus is held the voters will exclaim 'the gop / tea-bagger front runner has no clothes'!!!!
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 2004 For a politician who once proposed relocating children from single-parent households to orphanages, it was not all that surprising when Newt Gingrich recently declared that, if elected president, he'd ease child labor laws to allow poor kids to work as janitors.
What's notable, however, is the newly minted GOP presidential front-runner's explanation. Gingrich argues that poor children lack role models who can instill in them the value of hard work—something that, say, a part-time job cleaning bathrooms could easily remedy. Making his case to an audience in Des Moines, Iowa, last week, Gingrich touted the work of an educational nonprofit he founded in the early 1990s called Earning by Learning (EBL). The program offered cash—$2 per book—to students as an incentive to read over the summer. What he failed to mention is that his group also led to a formal ethics complaint amid concerns about not just who was funding Gingrich's program, but where that money was really going.
As Gingrich tells it, the program started that first summer in 1990 with 9 kids and ended with 30. "What happened was simple," he said. "The ice cream truck comes by. The kid who's in the program walks up and buys their own ice cream. Their friend says to them, 'How come you have money?' He goes, 'Well, I read.' So kids are showing up to the program saying, 'I demand that you let me read!'"
The point of the story is that private initiatives often succeed where government programs fail. EBL was a lean, mean, private machine. "The overhead is entirely voluntary," Gingrich said of the program in 1995. "The only money goes to the kids. So if you have $1,000 at $2 a book, you can pay for 500 books. Whereas, in the welfare state model, if you have $1,000, you pay $850 for the bureaucracy."
But that description turned out to be false. A 1995 Mother Jones investigation revealed that the program's all-volunteer army came at a hefty price. The group paid its Atlanta volunteers $500 each; nearly half of the total budget of the Houston branch of the program went to one salaried staff position.
A Wall Street Journal report earlier that year was even more damning, revealing that most of the money in the program's endowment in Georgia was being kicked back to Gingrich's friends, including Mel Steely, a former Gingrich staffer who was at the time working on an authorized biography of the House speaker. According to the paper, "90% of the $20,000 raised in the past year went to Steely and two other professors who help him evaluate the program. The children earned less than $10,000, from money leftover from prior years."
The Los Angeles Times piled on, noting that "reading program funds were used to reimburse Steely for travel, lodging and meal expenses during three trips to attend Gingrich's Saturday morning college course." The overhead, in other words, was actually quite substantial.
The GOP candidate holds up his old nonprofit, Earning by Learning, as a way to teach kids the value of a buck. Here's what he doesn't mention.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 2004 What's notable, however, is the newly minted GOP presidential front-runner's explanation. Gingrich argues that poor children lack role models who can instill in them the value of hard work—something that, say, a part-time job cleaning bathrooms could easily remedy. Making his case to an audience in Des Moines, Iowa, last week, Gingrich touted the work of an educational nonprofit he founded in the early 1990s called Earning by Learning (EBL). The program offered cash—$2 per book—to students as an incentive to read over the summer. What he failed to mention is that his group also led to a formal ethics complaint amid concerns about not just who was funding Gingrich's program, but where that money was really going.
As Gingrich tells it, the program started that first summer in 1990 with 9 kids and ended with 30. "What happened was simple," he said. "The ice cream truck comes by. The kid who's in the program walks up and buys their own ice cream. Their friend says to them, 'How come you have money?' He goes, 'Well, I read.' So kids are showing up to the program saying, 'I demand that you let me read!'"
The point of the story is that private initiatives often succeed where government programs fail. EBL was a lean, mean, private machine. "The overhead is entirely voluntary," Gingrich said of the program in 1995. "The only money goes to the kids. So if you have $1,000 at $2 a book, you can pay for 500 books. Whereas, in the welfare state model, if you have $1,000, you pay $850 for the bureaucracy."
But that description turned out to be false. A 1995 Mother Jones investigation revealed that the program's all-volunteer army came at a hefty price. The group paid its Atlanta volunteers $500 each; nearly half of the total budget of the Houston branch of the program went to one salaried staff position.
A Wall Street Journal report earlier that year was even more damning, revealing that most of the money in the program's endowment in Georgia was being kicked back to Gingrich's friends, including Mel Steely, a former Gingrich staffer who was at the time working on an authorized biography of the House speaker. According to the paper, "90% of the $20,000 raised in the past year went to Steely and two other professors who help him evaluate the program. The children earned less than $10,000, from money leftover from prior years."
The Los Angeles Times piled on, noting that "reading program funds were used to reimburse Steely for travel, lodging and meal expenses during three trips to attend Gingrich's Saturday morning college course." The overhead, in other words, was actually quite substantial.
Much of the funding came from Gingrich himself, in part because he had nowhere else to spend the proceeds of his 1995 book To Renew America. After Democrats cried foul over his decision to go on 25-city book tour hawking the book, Gingrich announced that he'd donate the receipts from the tour to Earning by Learning instead.
But EBL was also, as such charities tend to be, a magnet for activists and groups looking to curry favor with the GOP whip-turned speaker of the House. As Michelle Dally Johnson noted for MoJo, the list of donors was "heavy on conservative activists, elected officials, and party donors, but light on educators and people noted for volunteerism." Some of them were also donors to GOPAC, Gingrich's political action committee, which was itself the subject of multiple ethics investigations. The Houston Automobile Dealers Association, which helped sponsor that city's EBL affiliate, admitted that the relationship gave them more access to Gingrich; the group's president was later invited to testify before Congress about the luxury tax.
It was that overlap between political activism and private enterprise that ultimately led Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) to formally request an ethics investigation into Gingrich and Earning by Learning in 1996.
House rules prohibit members from using their Congressional resources (such as office space) for personal endeavors. In 2010, for instance, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) was censured by his colleagues for, among other things, using official House stationary to solicit funds for City College of New York, which was naming its school of public policy after him. Miller, at the behest of Ralph Nader's Congressional Accountability Project, alleged that Gingrich had violated those standards through Earning by Learning.
The case concerned Donald Jones, a Wisconsin-based telecommunications entrepreneur—and a major donor to Gingrich's political action committee—whom Gingrich had invited to work out of his congressional office three days a week in a voluntary capacity (through Gingrich, he'd even received a Congressional ID badge). Jones was there to help work out the wording of the major telecommunications bill that was signed into law the next year.
"That the Speaker would apparently allow a telecommunications executive to act as 'Telecommunications director for Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich' in negotiations over telecommunications legislation—which may affect Jones' own holdings directly—is cause for alarm," Nader's group wrote.
But Gingrich's somewhat contradictory excuse, as explained to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was that Jones wasn't working on telecommunications—he was in Washington on behalf of the speaker's Earning by Learning program, for which he served as the president of the Wisconsin chapter. (His telecommunications company, US Cyber, provided the 800 number for EBL, which Gingrich helpfully plugged in floor speeches.) According to Gingrich, "95 percent" of Jones' time at the Capitol was devoted to Earning by Learning.
But that explanation was also problematic. As the Congressional Accountability Project noted, "Earning By Learning is a non-profit organization with no official ties to the United States House of Representatives." Granting office space and official resources would therefore violate House rules. Either Gingrich was using his education nonprofit as cover to allow a top donor to draft legislation directly affecting his own company, or he was using official resources to help out his private endeavor.
With Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.), a Gingrich ally, in charge of the House ethics committee, the speaker got off with a slap on the wrist, in the form of a formal "letter of admonition" and no further sanctions.
But the controversy over Gingrich's Earning by Learning program spoke to the larger issues at play in Gingrich's dealings. Jones, in his role as an informal adviser, donor, and volunteer at EBL, was illustrative of just how interconnected Gingrich's private and public ventures, collectively known as "Newt Inc.," really were. (In another, related instance, Gingrich transferred money from a scholarship program an ally had set up for inner-city students*, known as the Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Fund, to his political action committee, GOPAC.)
As he pursues the GOP nomination, Gingrich's problem won't be to convince voters that Earning by Learning is a model for America. Conservatives already buy his argument that the welfare state erodes work ethic. His larger problem will be in convincing voters that, given his long rap sheet of ethics complaints and allegations of crony capitalism, Earning by Learning won't in fact be a model for how he runs his administration.
*Correction: This article originally stated that Gingrich had founded the Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Foundation; the organization was founded by a Gingrich ally.
But EBL was also, as such charities tend to be, a magnet for activists and groups looking to curry favor with the GOP whip-turned speaker of the House. As Michelle Dally Johnson noted for MoJo, the list of donors was "heavy on conservative activists, elected officials, and party donors, but light on educators and people noted for volunteerism." Some of them were also donors to GOPAC, Gingrich's political action committee, which was itself the subject of multiple ethics investigations. The Houston Automobile Dealers Association, which helped sponsor that city's EBL affiliate, admitted that the relationship gave them more access to Gingrich; the group's president was later invited to testify before Congress about the luxury tax.
It was that overlap between political activism and private enterprise that ultimately led Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) to formally request an ethics investigation into Gingrich and Earning by Learning in 1996.
House rules prohibit members from using their Congressional resources (such as office space) for personal endeavors. In 2010, for instance, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) was censured by his colleagues for, among other things, using official House stationary to solicit funds for City College of New York, which was naming its school of public policy after him. Miller, at the behest of Ralph Nader's Congressional Accountability Project, alleged that Gingrich had violated those standards through Earning by Learning.
The case concerned Donald Jones, a Wisconsin-based telecommunications entrepreneur—and a major donor to Gingrich's political action committee—whom Gingrich had invited to work out of his congressional office three days a week in a voluntary capacity (through Gingrich, he'd even received a Congressional ID badge). Jones was there to help work out the wording of the major telecommunications bill that was signed into law the next year.
"That the Speaker would apparently allow a telecommunications executive to act as 'Telecommunications director for Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich' in negotiations over telecommunications legislation—which may affect Jones' own holdings directly—is cause for alarm," Nader's group wrote.
But Gingrich's somewhat contradictory excuse, as explained to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was that Jones wasn't working on telecommunications—he was in Washington on behalf of the speaker's Earning by Learning program, for which he served as the president of the Wisconsin chapter. (His telecommunications company, US Cyber, provided the 800 number for EBL, which Gingrich helpfully plugged in floor speeches.) According to Gingrich, "95 percent" of Jones' time at the Capitol was devoted to Earning by Learning.
But that explanation was also problematic. As the Congressional Accountability Project noted, "Earning By Learning is a non-profit organization with no official ties to the United States House of Representatives." Granting office space and official resources would therefore violate House rules. Either Gingrich was using his education nonprofit as cover to allow a top donor to draft legislation directly affecting his own company, or he was using official resources to help out his private endeavor.
With Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.), a Gingrich ally, in charge of the House ethics committee, the speaker got off with a slap on the wrist, in the form of a formal "letter of admonition" and no further sanctions.
But the controversy over Gingrich's Earning by Learning program spoke to the larger issues at play in Gingrich's dealings. Jones, in his role as an informal adviser, donor, and volunteer at EBL, was illustrative of just how interconnected Gingrich's private and public ventures, collectively known as "Newt Inc.," really were. (In another, related instance, Gingrich transferred money from a scholarship program an ally had set up for inner-city students*, known as the Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Fund, to his political action committee, GOPAC.)
As he pursues the GOP nomination, Gingrich's problem won't be to convince voters that Earning by Learning is a model for America. Conservatives already buy his argument that the welfare state erodes work ethic. His larger problem will be in convincing voters that, given his long rap sheet of ethics complaints and allegations of crony capitalism, Earning by Learning won't in fact be a model for how he runs his administration.
*Correction: This article originally stated that Gingrich had founded the Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Foundation; the organization was founded by a Gingrich ally.
09 December 2011
Newt Gingrich blasts 1990s ethics investigation of him, calling it partisan 7DEZ11
WEEEELLLLLLLLLL, ISN'T THIS SPECIAL!?!?!??! AND WHO COULD BE MAKING LITTLE NEWTY TELL THESE LIES???????? COULD IT BE SATAN??????? All kidding aside, this is serious, a requires one to question two things about newt gingrich(k), his honesty, and how a person of faith can deliberately mislead and wage a propaganda campaign meant to deceive supporters for political gain? If newt really wants to be respected and to be taken seriously he needs to clean up his act....if he is worth of the presidency he should be honest with the American people....the lest thing we need is more partisanship in D.C. From PolitiFact....
The Truth-O-Meter Says:
Says the congressional ethics investigation against him was conducted by "a very partisan political committee" in a way that "related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics."
Newt Gingrich on Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 in an interview with Fox News' Greta Van SusterenNewt Gingrich blasts 1990s ethics investigation of him, calling it partisan
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During a Dec. 6, 2011, interview on Fox News, Greta Van Susteren asked Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich for his view about a comment House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had made a few days earlier.
On Dec. 5, the liberal website Talking Points Memo published an exchange with Pelosi, who, like Gingrich, has previously served as House speaker. In an article headlined, "Democrats Gleeful At Prospect Of Running Against Gingrich," Talking Points Memo quoted Pelosi saying of the fast-rising Republican presidential hopeful, "One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich. I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff."
Pelosi added -- jokingly, according to the website -- that she would elaborate "when the time’s right."
Later, Gingrich responded by calling the taunt from Pelosi -- who’s as much a bogeyman for Republicans as Gingrich is for Democrats -- "an early Christmas gift. It tells you how capriciously political (the House ethics) committee was that she was on it. It tells you how tainted the outcome was that she was on it."
Gingrich elaborated during his Fox News interview.
Van Susteren brought it up by asking him whether, "in sort of seriousness, this could be rather punishing in a race when someone comes up and says something like, I have secret information about the person."
Gingrich responded that he doubted Pelosi had any secret information to release, since the case had been thoroughly aired in public and because it would likely be illegal to disclose anything that had been purposely kept secret at the time. But Gingrich took the opportunity to link Pelosi to the investigation and cite it as evidence of how the process had been biased in a partisan way.
The back-and-forth with Pelosi "reminds people who probably didn't know that she was on the ethics committee, that it was a very partisan political committee and that the way I was dealt with related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics. And I think in that sense, it actually helps me in getting people to understand, this was a Nancy Pelosi-driven effort. They filed 85 charges and 84 were dismissed. The only one was a conflicting lawyer's letter. And then the Democrats just held out for partisan reasons."
For this item, we’re focusing on the claim that the ethics investigation against Gingrich was conducted by "a very partisan political committee" in a way that "related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics."
Gingrich has a long history with the congressional ethics process, both as an accuser (most famously against Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright, who resigned amid ethics charges Gingrich promoted in 1989) and as the accused.
The case primarily involved a course at Kennesaw State College that Gingrich taught while in Congress. The organizers of the course solicited financial support from "individuals, corporations and foundations," promising that the project qualified for tax-exempt status. But the ethics committee concluded that the course was "actually a coordinated effort" to "help in achieving a partisan, political goal" -- something that would run afoul of its tax exempt status. A further problem for Gingrich was that during the investigation, he submitted letters from his lawyers for which "the subcommittee was unable to find any factual basis." Gingrich "should have known" that the information in the letters "was inaccurate, incomplete, and unreliable."
The allegations were largely ajudicated by January 1997, with Gingrich agreeing to pay a sum of $300,000 and admitting that he had "engaged in conduct that did not reflect creditably on the House of Representatives." He became the first speaker to be sanctioned in this fashion by the House. (Here’s a time line of the case.)
As we’ve noted before, Gingrich’s intensely partisan style and his heavy use of the congressional ethics process ramped up the level of partisan warfare during his investigation. Few observers would disagree that Democrats were gleeful at the prospect of seeing the first Republican House speaker in four decades brought down by ethics charges analagous to those Gingrich himself had used to topple Wright.
But in the interview with Van Susteren, Gingrich did more than just say that partisan warriors leveraged his investigation for their own ends. He said that the investigation against him was itself conducted by "a very partisan political committee" in a way that "related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics."
In essence, Gingrich is alleging that the investigation of his actions was biased by partisanship and, by extension, that the penalty he agreed to was tainted.
To understand whether Gingrich’s assertion is correct requires a look at the venue for the investigation -- the House ethics committee, which was then known officially as the Standards of Official Conduct Committee.
The ethics panel is the only House committee with an even number of Republicans and Democrats. By longstanding tradition, the committee does not proceed with a formal investigation unless it has majority support. This means that every ethics case that moves forward -- including Gingrich’s -- required the vote of at least least one member from the same party as the lawmaker facing allegations.
In Gingrich’s case, an investigative subcommittee was convened and looked into the case for several months. Like the full committee, it included an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, and it hired a special counsel, James M. Cole, to lead the investigation. (Cole was later appointed deputy attorney general by President Barack Obama, but at the time of his appointment in the Gingrich case, Cole had worked as a Justice Department attorney in administrations of both parties.) Gingrich had legal representation during the ethics process.
On Dec. 21, 1996, the subcommittee forwarded its findings to the full committee for consideration, recommending "a reprimand and the payment of $300,000 toward the cost of the preliminary inquiry."
On Jan. 17, 1997, the full committee held nearly six hours of televised hearings before voting 7 to 1 to accept the subcommittee’s recommendation. Voting to accept it were three Republicans -- Chairwoman Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, Steve Schiff of New Mexico and Porter Goss of Florida.
"We are bringing to the floor a very tough penalty, an appropriate one," Johnson said in an interview on NBC’s Today show on Jan. 21, 1997, the day the ethics recommendation went to the House floor. "And we're bringing it to the floor as a bipartisan committee."
The full House went on to pass the ethics report 395 to 28, with 196 Republicans voting for it and just 26 voting against it.
"This is a tough penalty," Johnson said after the vote, according to the Washington Post. "I believe it is an appropriate penalty. It demonstrates that nobody is above the rules."
Schiff added in a press conference the same day that "being bipartisan doesn't mean you always agree on everything. It means you reach a consensus."
This hardly seems like a Democratic kangaroo court to us. And experts we checked with felt the same.
"The process had plenty of partisan tension, because he was the speaker," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar with the American Enterprise Institute. But Cole, the special counsel, "was terrific and thoroughly objective," Ornstein said. To Ornstein, Gingrich "is sanitizing the process and outcome. To be sure, the charges were not so explosive that he merited a ‘death penalty’ (of resignation), but the charges were not wildly different or less significant than those he had brought against Jim Wright, who did resign."
Kenneth A. Gross, the head of the political law practice at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, was one of several experts we spoke to who agreed.
"I saw that committee at work behind closed doors during that era, and it was certainly divided and partisan, but it is the only committee of Congress that has an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, and for anything to move forward, it would require a bipartisan vote."
We should add that Gingrich accepted what amounted to a negotiated plea bargain. He agreed to admit one count of wrongdoing and pay $300,000, which was the estimated cost of the investigation. If he didn’t believe in the fairness of the process, he could have refused to admit wrongdoing and taken his chances on the House floor, where he led a sizable majority.
According to the Post coverage at the time," J. Randolph Evans, Gingrich’s attorney, said his client "has apologized to the subcommittee, to the House and to the American people." Evans did not respond to an inquiry for this story.
Our ruling
While it’s true that the Gingrich case became a vicious battlefield between the two parties, contemporary accounts and experts familiar with the proceedings agree that it was not ajudicated by "a very partisan political committee" in a way that "related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics." The ethics panel’s case only moved forward with the express consent of Republicans, including the committee’s chairwoman, and it was led by a special counsel who was not a Democratic partisan and who focused on substantive legal matters.
Most notably, when it became time to vote, the House -- including nearly 90 percent of voting Republicans -- voted to support the committee’s recommendation. We rate Gingrich’s statement Pants on Fire.
Subjects: Bipartisanship, Ethics
Sources:
Newt Gingrich, interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, Dec. 6, 2011 (CQ subscribers only)
Talking Points Memo, "Democrats Gleeful At Prospect Of Running Against Gingrich," Dec. 5, 2011
Bloomberg, "Gingrich rebukes Pelosi for hinting that she’d air details of ethics charges," Dec. 6, 2011
CNN, Gingrich ethics timeline, accessed Dec. 7, 2011
Nancy Johnson, interview with NBC’s Today show, Jan. 21, 1997 (CQ subscribers only)
House Standards of Official Conduct Committee, transcript of news conference, Jan. 21, 1997 (CQ subscribers only)
PBS Frontline, text of request for funding for Renewing American Civilization," June 1, 1993
New York Times, "The Gingrich Case: Text of 'Analysis and Conclusion,' From Report by House Ethics Counsel," Jan. 17, 1997 (accessed via Lexis-Nexis)
St. Petersburg Times, "Reprimand, $ 300,000 fine urged," Jan. 18, 1997 (accessed via Lexis-Nexis)
Washington Post, "Ethics Panel Supports Reprimand of Gingrich," Jan. 18 1997
Washington Post, "Gingrich to Pay Penalty With Dole Loan," April 18 1997
New York Times, "Ethics Panel Clears Slate for Gingrich," Oct. 11, 1998 (accessed via Lexis-Nexis)
PolitiFact, "David Axelrod calls Newt Gingrich 'the godfather of gridlock,'" Dec. 5, 2011
E-mail interview with Norm Ornstein, congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Dec. 7, 2011
E-mail interview with Donald Wolfensberger, director of the Congress Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Dec. 7, 2011
E-mail interview with Kenneth A. Gross, head of the political law practice at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Dec. 7, 2011
E-mail interview with David C. Frederick, partner with the law firm Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, Dec. 7, 2011
E-mail interview with Stan Brand, congressional ethics lawyer and founder of the Brand Law Group, Dec. 7, 2011
Written by: Louis Jacobson
Researched by: Louis Jacobson
Edited by: Martha Hamilton
On Dec. 5, the liberal website Talking Points Memo published an exchange with Pelosi, who, like Gingrich, has previously served as House speaker. In an article headlined, "Democrats Gleeful At Prospect Of Running Against Gingrich," Talking Points Memo quoted Pelosi saying of the fast-rising Republican presidential hopeful, "One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich. I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff."
Pelosi added -- jokingly, according to the website -- that she would elaborate "when the time’s right."
Later, Gingrich responded by calling the taunt from Pelosi -- who’s as much a bogeyman for Republicans as Gingrich is for Democrats -- "an early Christmas gift. It tells you how capriciously political (the House ethics) committee was that she was on it. It tells you how tainted the outcome was that she was on it."
Gingrich elaborated during his Fox News interview.
Van Susteren brought it up by asking him whether, "in sort of seriousness, this could be rather punishing in a race when someone comes up and says something like, I have secret information about the person."
Gingrich responded that he doubted Pelosi had any secret information to release, since the case had been thoroughly aired in public and because it would likely be illegal to disclose anything that had been purposely kept secret at the time. But Gingrich took the opportunity to link Pelosi to the investigation and cite it as evidence of how the process had been biased in a partisan way.
The back-and-forth with Pelosi "reminds people who probably didn't know that she was on the ethics committee, that it was a very partisan political committee and that the way I was dealt with related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics. And I think in that sense, it actually helps me in getting people to understand, this was a Nancy Pelosi-driven effort. They filed 85 charges and 84 were dismissed. The only one was a conflicting lawyer's letter. And then the Democrats just held out for partisan reasons."
For this item, we’re focusing on the claim that the ethics investigation against Gingrich was conducted by "a very partisan political committee" in a way that "related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics."
Gingrich has a long history with the congressional ethics process, both as an accuser (most famously against Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright, who resigned amid ethics charges Gingrich promoted in 1989) and as the accused.
The case primarily involved a course at Kennesaw State College that Gingrich taught while in Congress. The organizers of the course solicited financial support from "individuals, corporations and foundations," promising that the project qualified for tax-exempt status. But the ethics committee concluded that the course was "actually a coordinated effort" to "help in achieving a partisan, political goal" -- something that would run afoul of its tax exempt status. A further problem for Gingrich was that during the investigation, he submitted letters from his lawyers for which "the subcommittee was unable to find any factual basis." Gingrich "should have known" that the information in the letters "was inaccurate, incomplete, and unreliable."
The allegations were largely ajudicated by January 1997, with Gingrich agreeing to pay a sum of $300,000 and admitting that he had "engaged in conduct that did not reflect creditably on the House of Representatives." He became the first speaker to be sanctioned in this fashion by the House. (Here’s a time line of the case.)
As we’ve noted before, Gingrich’s intensely partisan style and his heavy use of the congressional ethics process ramped up the level of partisan warfare during his investigation. Few observers would disagree that Democrats were gleeful at the prospect of seeing the first Republican House speaker in four decades brought down by ethics charges analagous to those Gingrich himself had used to topple Wright.
But in the interview with Van Susteren, Gingrich did more than just say that partisan warriors leveraged his investigation for their own ends. He said that the investigation against him was itself conducted by "a very partisan political committee" in a way that "related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics."
In essence, Gingrich is alleging that the investigation of his actions was biased by partisanship and, by extension, that the penalty he agreed to was tainted.
To understand whether Gingrich’s assertion is correct requires a look at the venue for the investigation -- the House ethics committee, which was then known officially as the Standards of Official Conduct Committee.
The ethics panel is the only House committee with an even number of Republicans and Democrats. By longstanding tradition, the committee does not proceed with a formal investigation unless it has majority support. This means that every ethics case that moves forward -- including Gingrich’s -- required the vote of at least least one member from the same party as the lawmaker facing allegations.
In Gingrich’s case, an investigative subcommittee was convened and looked into the case for several months. Like the full committee, it included an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, and it hired a special counsel, James M. Cole, to lead the investigation. (Cole was later appointed deputy attorney general by President Barack Obama, but at the time of his appointment in the Gingrich case, Cole had worked as a Justice Department attorney in administrations of both parties.) Gingrich had legal representation during the ethics process.
On Dec. 21, 1996, the subcommittee forwarded its findings to the full committee for consideration, recommending "a reprimand and the payment of $300,000 toward the cost of the preliminary inquiry."
On Jan. 17, 1997, the full committee held nearly six hours of televised hearings before voting 7 to 1 to accept the subcommittee’s recommendation. Voting to accept it were three Republicans -- Chairwoman Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, Steve Schiff of New Mexico and Porter Goss of Florida.
"We are bringing to the floor a very tough penalty, an appropriate one," Johnson said in an interview on NBC’s Today show on Jan. 21, 1997, the day the ethics recommendation went to the House floor. "And we're bringing it to the floor as a bipartisan committee."
The full House went on to pass the ethics report 395 to 28, with 196 Republicans voting for it and just 26 voting against it.
"This is a tough penalty," Johnson said after the vote, according to the Washington Post. "I believe it is an appropriate penalty. It demonstrates that nobody is above the rules."
Schiff added in a press conference the same day that "being bipartisan doesn't mean you always agree on everything. It means you reach a consensus."
This hardly seems like a Democratic kangaroo court to us. And experts we checked with felt the same.
"The process had plenty of partisan tension, because he was the speaker," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar with the American Enterprise Institute. But Cole, the special counsel, "was terrific and thoroughly objective," Ornstein said. To Ornstein, Gingrich "is sanitizing the process and outcome. To be sure, the charges were not so explosive that he merited a ‘death penalty’ (of resignation), but the charges were not wildly different or less significant than those he had brought against Jim Wright, who did resign."
Kenneth A. Gross, the head of the political law practice at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, was one of several experts we spoke to who agreed.
"I saw that committee at work behind closed doors during that era, and it was certainly divided and partisan, but it is the only committee of Congress that has an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, and for anything to move forward, it would require a bipartisan vote."
We should add that Gingrich accepted what amounted to a negotiated plea bargain. He agreed to admit one count of wrongdoing and pay $300,000, which was the estimated cost of the investigation. If he didn’t believe in the fairness of the process, he could have refused to admit wrongdoing and taken his chances on the House floor, where he led a sizable majority.
According to the Post coverage at the time," J. Randolph Evans, Gingrich’s attorney, said his client "has apologized to the subcommittee, to the House and to the American people." Evans did not respond to an inquiry for this story.
Our ruling
While it’s true that the Gingrich case became a vicious battlefield between the two parties, contemporary accounts and experts familiar with the proceedings agree that it was not ajudicated by "a very partisan political committee" in a way that "related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics." The ethics panel’s case only moved forward with the express consent of Republicans, including the committee’s chairwoman, and it was led by a special counsel who was not a Democratic partisan and who focused on substantive legal matters.
Most notably, when it became time to vote, the House -- including nearly 90 percent of voting Republicans -- voted to support the committee’s recommendation. We rate Gingrich’s statement Pants on Fire.
About this statement:
Published: Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 at 7:10 p.m.Subjects: Bipartisanship, Ethics
Sources:
Newt Gingrich, interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, Dec. 6, 2011 (CQ subscribers only)
Talking Points Memo, "Democrats Gleeful At Prospect Of Running Against Gingrich," Dec. 5, 2011
Bloomberg, "Gingrich rebukes Pelosi for hinting that she’d air details of ethics charges," Dec. 6, 2011
CNN, Gingrich ethics timeline, accessed Dec. 7, 2011
Nancy Johnson, interview with NBC’s Today show, Jan. 21, 1997 (CQ subscribers only)
House Standards of Official Conduct Committee, transcript of news conference, Jan. 21, 1997 (CQ subscribers only)
PBS Frontline, text of request for funding for Renewing American Civilization," June 1, 1993
New York Times, "The Gingrich Case: Text of 'Analysis and Conclusion,' From Report by House Ethics Counsel," Jan. 17, 1997 (accessed via Lexis-Nexis)
St. Petersburg Times, "Reprimand, $ 300,000 fine urged," Jan. 18, 1997 (accessed via Lexis-Nexis)
Washington Post, "Ethics Panel Supports Reprimand of Gingrich," Jan. 18 1997
Washington Post, "Gingrich to Pay Penalty With Dole Loan," April 18 1997
New York Times, "Ethics Panel Clears Slate for Gingrich," Oct. 11, 1998 (accessed via Lexis-Nexis)
PolitiFact, "David Axelrod calls Newt Gingrich 'the godfather of gridlock,'" Dec. 5, 2011
E-mail interview with Norm Ornstein, congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Dec. 7, 2011
E-mail interview with Donald Wolfensberger, director of the Congress Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Dec. 7, 2011
E-mail interview with Kenneth A. Gross, head of the political law practice at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Dec. 7, 2011
E-mail interview with David C. Frederick, partner with the law firm Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, Dec. 7, 2011
E-mail interview with Stan Brand, congressional ethics lawyer and founder of the Brand Law Group, Dec. 7, 2011
Written by: Louis Jacobson
Researched by: Louis Jacobson
Edited by: Martha Hamilton
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