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.