A Little Triumphalism on The Occasion Castle’s Defeat
I think my favorite Castle series was the one that showed how Mike Castle paid back a couple of large agra-businesses for $100 k in campaign donations with 103 tariff suspension bills. Basically, tax cuts that ended up costing the treasury at least $120,000,000 in lost tariff revenue.
Who Does Castle Really Work For? Part I
Who Does Castle Really Work For? Part II
I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but it struck me as a bit odd that Castle introduced so many bills to help out the very narrow constituency of benzene-sulfonamide importers.
Who Does Castle Really Work For? Part III
With the help of a bunch of commenters, I worked out who was paying Castle and what a fantastic deal they were getting.
Who Does Castle Really Work For? Part IIIb
The bills were so narrowly written that it was obvious that a “quid pro quo” existed, so I started asking peskier questions:
Clearly, someone had to ask the Congressman to propose these pieces of legislation. Who at DuPont and Syngenta contacted Castle about the legislation? Did the companies volunteer the campaign contributions or were they shaken down? Did Castle solicit these contributions directly? Or did someone on Castle’s staff do the dirty work?
Perhaps, our Congressman and the companies involved would be willing to voluntarily disclose all of the e-mails and other communications regarding those bills and contributions, so we can understand how Castle came to sponsor these measures. (HA!!! I kill myself.)
No. I don’t think Castle and the chemical companies are going to come clean voluntarily. Maybe our crusading U.S. Attorney, Colm Connolly always concerned about public corruption could issue a subpoena and get to the bottom of this.
Who Does Castle Really Work For? Part IV
I got to the end of the string and as it turns out, there is an office in the government that works out the economic impact of tax cuts and industry earmarks like the ones Castle was pushing through.
Based on our own government’s estimates, just these 18 of Mike Castle’s tariff suspension bills would cost the US Treasury over $21,000,000 in lost tariff revenue. I know this is a rough extrapolation, but if you take the average lost tariff revenue of these 18 ($1,166,666) and multiply that by the 103 bills like this Mike Castle has sponsored, it appears Mike Castle has provided over $120,000,000 of benefit to his chemical industry contributors. To see one of these Commission memos on one of Mike Castle’s bills, click here.
Epilogue: Tom Carper was also implicated because he was working the Senate side of this corporate welfare scheme, so there was no real appetite anywhere to expose this scam to a wider audience. The News Journal ran a little, “nothing to see here folks” article and that was that.
I know this series played no part what-so-ever in Castle’s downfall, but for a moment it was kind of nice to glimpse the big picture and think that malefactors in high places could be caught. Perhaps they can. If not by cops, by karma.
Unfortunately, this is definitely a bipartisan problem. The ag subsidies for campaign cash, I mean. Many influential ag committee members in both chambers from both parties do stuff like this pretty frequently and sometimes even more blatantly. He just had to be a bit stealthier because it’s not a district automatically associated with agriculture so it looks less plausibly honest.
I was thinking about you last night… Last night’s news caused me to remember: he’s why we each got started. … lol..
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I know this series played no part what-so-ever in Castle’s downfall,
I don’t know… it’s what started me blogging…. so, who knows…:)
Addendum: I wanted to gloat too, but didn’t want to disrupt my own pages right now (so i’ll do it here), simply because it would be a distraction from what I’m trying to accomplish, but… I felt like it was the end of a long, long battle of attrition, a brutal stalemate of slogging back and forth, and just before my last gasp,with the blackness closing in, someone comes off the bench and makes a touchdown. Game over… Finally, peace. 🙂
I’ll leave it for history to decide, but, I think we did something. I think we changed the playing field. They couldn’t operate as usual, assuming we’d be ignorant.
I have the same feeling of (kinda) winning. Even though Castle’s rebuke was for something totally different than what I think he should have been rebuked for, it is still a rebuke. Finally…Peace. The universe does make sense after all.
Nobody ever said it, but I think (our arms being to short to box with Rove) there was an unspoken agreement to keep on eye on George Bush’s man in Delaware. I think we did that, and maybe have had a little impact along the way.
NICE JOB,jason330!
Didn’t “gloryhole” Mike realize we could have provided BODYARMOUR to our troops in that ginned-up war he supported in IRAQ with that money?
What a TOOL!
Nice job Jason, nice job. And thanks for having the patience to keep on keeping on. These things don’t happen in one election cycle or two, or even three. But eventually. As long as we are not quitting we are winning.
Yes, great job Jason. Like Bill says, it’s all too common and it’s certainly not unique to Castle. Castle got rebuked by someone who could be even worse…or is she even smart enough to know how to sneak these things by? Perhaps since she’s already made enemies with the local press they’ll be a lot more likely to investigate her seriously. Is this what we need…dumber crooks?
It was great work ignored by what passes for the media. Time to start a series on Carper. Nobody else is gonna do it. Just remember:
“The Liberal Media Is Only As Liberal As the Corporations that Own Them Allow Them to Be.”
oh ppplllleeeezz-kavips, jason,auntie dem, and skippertee make it sound like they actually voted in the republican primary. hey, you guys get to enjoy the spoils of war, but quit acting like you were the returning vet. The blood is on the party’s hands, you folks only get to sit in the jury or peanut gallery.
Good point EL Som. Bloggers, Karma, and father time. Carper can’t outrun all three.
This was a good one too:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/5/92944/9326
And this:
http://delawareliberal.wordpress.com/2007/09/16/one-year-ago-today-mike-castle-was-in-a-coma-but-it-was-a-secret/
I couldn’t find the original story, but it was really attention grabbing to run that graphic of a guy on a ventilator. It made the point in a way words never could.
If Obama wants to get anything done he needs to appoint Carper to something useless.
Interesting coda… I noticed this on Chris Coons’ website:
Forgot link and can’t edit atm: It’s from http://www.chriscoons.com/page/fiscal_responsibility