How does Washington actually work? It rewards “rain makers” who can raise large amounts of campaign cash. And it reins in those who are sentimental, and does so in a way that cruelly punishes the gullible and the uninformed. The point can be made in the case and career of Tony Coelho.
Coelho graduated with a B.A. from Loyola University of Los Angeles (now Loyola Marymount University) in 1964. At Loyola, he was initiated as a brother in Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity and a member of the prestigious Crimson Circle, and later was elected Student Body President during his senior year.
After the Kennedy assassination, Coelho decided to become a priest. He went to a doctor for a medical exam, a prerequisite for entering into the seminary. The doctor informed him that he had epilepsy. Because of canon law, he was unable to become a priest. Once the diagnosis was reported to the state, Coelho lost both his driver's license and his health insurance.
Early political career
Coelho worked as a staff member for Congressman Bernie Sisk from 1965 until 1978. By 1970, Coelho was serving as Sisk’s administrative assistant. He enhanced his expertise in agriculture policy as staff director for the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Cotton. As staff coordinator for the House Rules Subcommittee on Broadcasting, on which Sisk served, Coelho helped develop the procedures that made possible the television coverage of the House proceedings via C-Span. When Sisk retired, Coelho ran for his seat and won.
During his first campaign for Congress, Coelho’s opponent asked how people would feel if Coelho went to a meeting at the White House and had a seizure. “The press called me and the good Lord was with me,” Coelho later related. “Off the top of my head I said, ‘Well, in the 13 years I have served in Washington I knew a lot of people who went to the White House and had fits. At least I’d have an excuse.”
Congressional career and politics
In November 1978, Coelho was elected as a Democrat to the 96th Congress. He was later elected to the five succeeding Congresses where he served until his resignation on June 15, 1989. He served on the Agriculture, Interior, Veterans Affairs, and Administration Committees during his tenure, but he specialized in disabled rights.
In 1980, Coelho was named chairman of what is often called in Washington, “The D Triple C (The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee).” As the Washington Post observed, “They made the sophomore congressman from central California, their chief House fund-raiser, a position not bestowed on such a junior member since it was given to a young Texas congressman named Lyndon B. Johnson in 1940.”
As a member of the House leadership, Coelho helped lead the effort to pin the political blame for enactment of the Reagan economic program on the Republicans in the House. One Democratic campaign advertisement, airing early in the 1982 election season, featured scissors cutting a Social Security card and a voice accusing Republicans of trying to cut benefits.
In 1986, Coelho was elected House Majority Whip. A the chief vote counter for his party, Coelho oversaw a series of Democratic victories in the House on measures ranging from the budget to cutting off funds for the war in Central America.
In 1989, Coelho resigned from the House after six terms in the wake of press reports that he had received a loan from a savings and loan executive to purchase junk bonds. He was not charged with any crime.
While in the House, he was a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Coelho was credited by Congressional colleagues as the primary sponsor of the Ameruicans with Duisabilities Act, signed into law by President George H.W. Buysh. By 1994, four years after the law's passage, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that some 800,000 more people with severe disabilities had found employment than were employed when the ADA was first enacted. The promise of Coelho’s political career had been redeemed by the community of persons with disabilities from whose ranks he had risen.
After leaving Congress, he joined Wertheim Schroder & Company, an investment firm, as a managing director.
From 1990 to 1995, he also served as president and CEO of Wertheim Schroder Investment Services, which grew from $400 million to $4 billion in managed investments under his management.
In 1995, Coelho formed ETC w/tci, an education and training technology company in Washington, D.C. He was the chairman and chief executive officer until 1997.
President Bill Clinton appointed Coelho to serve as Chairman of the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, a position he held from 1994 to 2001; he also served as Vice Chair of the National Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities. In 1998, Clinton appointed Coelho as the United States Commissioner General for the 1998 World Expo in Portugal. Clinton also appointed Coelho as Co-Chair to the U.S. Census Monitoring Board, a position he held until his appointment as general chairman of the Gore Presidential campaign.
In the summer of 1994, Coelho was the principal Democratic political strategist during the run-up to the mid-term Congressional elections. Officially, he was Senior Advisor to the Democratic National Committee. The Republican Party won a landslide victory in the fall congressional elections, capturing both the House and Senate by commanding margins.
On November 29, 1994, then-Speaker of the House Tom Foley appointed Coelho as one of 17 members of the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community. Congress created the commission to study what intelligence agencies should do after the Cold War, and was charged with preparing a report of its findings and recommendations to the President and the Congress.
In 1999, Coelho was made Chairman of Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign. During his tenure, Coelho moved the campaign headquarters from Washington, DC to Nashville, Tennesseed. He oversaw an overhaul of the campaign’s message and strategy, and changed personnel and consultants. Gore prevailed over former Senator Bill Bradley in the Democratic primaries of 2000 in every primary and caucus contest and received the Democratic nomination to be president.
Before the 2000 Democratic Convention, Coelho became ill and resigned his position as General Campaign Chairman. Doctors later found and removed a tumor on the left side of his brain. He was replaced by former Commerce Secretary William Daley.
Coelho now lives in Arlington, Virginia. He participates annually at New York Law School for its Tony Coelho Lecture in Disability Employment Law & Policy. He has endowed a chair in Public Policy at the University of California in Merced. He is the current chairman of the Board of Directors of the Epilepsy Foundation. He is a former chairman and current member of the Board of Directors of the American Association of People With Disabilities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Coelho
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But there is more to this story! It gets murkier. Darker...
Slate – April 7, 2000
Using government resources to fund a non-profit. In an audit last year, the State Department criticized the close financial ties between the U.S. Pavilion and a non-profit organization, which appears to be the Luso American Wave Foundation. Coelho created the Wave Foundation to collect money for a sculpture presented as a gift from Portuguese-Americans to the people of Portugal at the Expo. Auditors discovered that the government often paid for foundation expenses such as airline tickets and lodging.
In addition, Coelho took out a $300,000 personal loan to finance the foundation that, given his position as a representative of the U.S. government, might have become the federal government's financial responsibility. (Coelho personally repaid the loan after the release of the audit.)
• Living high on the hog. The State Department's audit reported that Coelho's official Lisbon apartment, which reportedly cost the government $18,000 a month, exceeded the department's per diem rate of just over $4,000 a month. The report also noted that Coelho improperly charged the U.S. government for several stays at a Lisbon hotel when he could have been living in his apartment instead.
• Nepotism. The audit concluded that the U.S. Pavilion violated government policies against nepotism when it hired Coelho's niece as the Assistant to the Deputy Commissioner General. She was paid a salary of $2,500 a month during the Expo.
• Drumming up personal business on the taxpayers' dime. In addition to the issues raised in the audit, the National Journal article reports that Coelho may have violated laws by mixing his personal business with the government's. While he was in Portugal, Coelho was raising capital for an Internet mortgage firm called LoanNet. Coelho invited two lobbyists to Portugal, ostensibly for work related to his government position. The lobbyists were picked up at the airport by a chauffeur, which was paid for by the U.S. government, and spent part of their time at Coelho's apartment, also paid for by the government. The lobbyists may have used airline tickets that had been donated for the government's use. Each lobbyist subsequently invested $200,000 in LoanNet.
Coelho has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing. If the State Department uncovers evidence of criminal activity, it will be forwarded to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.
This is not Coelho's first federal criminal probe. In 1989, Coelho, then a six-term congressman and House majority whip, resigned from Congress after reports surfaced that he had accepted a sweetheart loan from a troubled S&L operator. The loan helped Coelho buy a $100,000 junk bond, but he never reported it on his government disclosure form. The Justice Department decided not to bring charges against him.
http://www.slate.com/id/1005051/
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Yet more: the actual legacy of Tony Coelho
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The Tony Coelho Factor
Washington Times, January 17, 2006
“....As former Wall Street Journal reporter Brooks Jackson documented in his masterful look into Capitol Hill corruption, “Honest Graft,” the system that allowed a man like Mr. Abramoff to flourish largely was built by former Rep. Tony Coelho, California Democrat, in the 1980s. Allowed inside Mr. Coelho’s Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Mr. Jackson saw first hand how donations were wrung from corporate political action committees, which in turn expected a return on their investment, often in the form of legislative gifts.
“By 1978, Mr. Jackson writes, “the cost of staying in office was rising rapidly.” Indeed, “the incumbents of 1978 had spent on the average only $87,000 to win their seats two years earlier. But the average cost of winning rose by 46 percent, to nearly $128,000, in the 1978 campaigns.” Newcomer Tony Coelho “was alert to the change.” He outspent his first House opponent $266,000 to $104,000. Veteran House Democrats took notice of Mr. Coelho’s fund-raising abilities and soon enough installed the young congressman as chairman of the DCCC, which is responsible for siphoning contributions to Democratic candidates.
“Republicans too were getting in the fund-raising game, albeit belatedly, but Mr. Coelho outmaneuvered them. Writes Mr. Jackson, “Coelho appreciated… that business PACs gave mostly to open the doors of the lawmakers who controlled the good things the federal government had going.” Republicans erred in thinking businesses would support their free-market ideology. Mr. Coelho understood that what businesses really want from government is protection, tax breaks, loopholes and contracts. Ideology had nothing to do with it. Rather, business interests are best served by supporting incumbents and the party in power.
“It was a lesson Republicans wouldn’t forget when they took control of the House in 1994. Specifically, Rep. Tom DeLay and others designed the “K Street Project” to co-opt the Coelho fund-raising juggernaut. “It’s not an overstatement to say that the K Street Project was a very direct attempt to replicate what Coelho had done in the mid-80s,” former Republican Rep. Vin Weber told us. “Republicans were frustrated with the Democrats’ success in extracting substantial amounts of money from the business community.”
“This is not to suggest that only Mr. Coelho’s Democrats — or Mr. DeLay’s Republicans — benefited from the system. Mr. Jackson notes that “House members elected in 1976 got an average of 25.6 percent of their campaign funds from PACs. But those elected in 1986 would rely on PACs for 42 percent of their campaign receipts. Lawmakers of both parties leaned more and more on PACs, and less and less on the voters, to finance their campaigns.”
”The same holds true today. As the Center for Responsive Politics records, between 1999 and 2006, Abramoff clients and associates gave $778,180 to the DCCC and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The very same clients gave just $156,320 more to the two Republican committees — not a significant advantage for the party in power. Or, as Mr. Weber said, “whatever culture exists in Washington, it is purely bipartisan.”
“Also reminiscent of today, the Coelho story ended in scandal, with Mr. Coelho retiring in humiliation. His departure, however, “changed nothing,” Mr. Jackson warned. 'He left intact a deeply rooted system of money-based politics… and it continued to flourish after he was gone.'”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/jan/17/20060117-092150-3845r/
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A Great Danger: Law Passed by Sentimentality
The blog author notes that Tony Coelho in the House, as well as Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Bob Dole (R-KS) in the Senate, were instrumental in passing the Americans with Disabilities Act. Coelho was an epileptic who rose to leadership in the House. Bob Dole was a seriously wounded World War II veteran who rose to leadership in the Senate (as well as his party's nomination for vice president in 1976 and for president in 1996). Knowing first hand the hardships of being young and disabled, they sought to make the road easier for other Americans. Tom Harkin, who has a disabled brother, knew this story and joined in the effort.
The blog author challenges the competence of this sort of personal sentimentality by politicians.
A wealthy, successful, powerful individual can do great things with his money to help those less fortunate or facing similar hurdles that are overcome too seldom. Such an individual has the resources at his disposal to make a difference.
A successful politician, however, is not dispensing capital garnered by himself to help others. Rather, it is public money that is authorized by the legislature, administered by the executive branch and subject to review by the courts. The blog author avers that legislation, especially sentimental legislation, is unpredictable and often potentially injurious.
The blog author, a certified public accountant with a license to practice in Virginia, contacted several attorneys licensed to practice in Virginia in 2004 and 2005, inquiring about the Americans with Disabilities Act. The attorneys, specialists in labor law, all said that this legislation had been “gutted” and had “no teeth” and “could not be relied upon.” The Americans with Disabilities Act, they stated, was “expensive” and intensely inconvenient for employers. One group of employers, state governments, was particularly upset by this legislation and had fought it case by case in court. The attorneys admitted that the disability act was still federal law, but they warned me that it was foolish, for me and for anyone I was advisiung, to believe that it remained enforceable after these successful court actions of its opponents.
As a licensed CPA talking to attorneys, themselves members of the Virginia bar, it is unethical for me to mention their names to support their private statements. But I don't have to do that to support the point – a Google search immediately revealed strong support for their line of reasoning:
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Unbossed.com had an internet posting on April 15, 2007 about the way the courts had weakened the Americans with Disabilities Act:
“Anyone who pays attention to laws enacted to protect worker rights will notice that they all have the same lifecycle. Law is enacted. Rights in the law are attacked. Judges hand down cases that weaken the law. Two recent laws where you can see this dynamic are the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
”But now one Republican has now taken up the fight to restore worker rights under Americans with Disabilities Act.
Background
“This dynamic of legislative birth and decline . . . and revivification happened with Title VII. Almost from the time it was enacted, its rights were whittled away. I won't go through the myriad ways in which judges weakened it. Some would require a long explanation to understand - and were therefore caused more harm. You couldn't get people outraged, as a result.
“Finally, in 1991, Congress legislatively reversed these judicial "amendments" by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Congress chided the Supreme Court for its decisions right in the text of the CRA:
“Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., (R-Wisconsin), an author of the Americans with Disabilities Act, has long felt that that enough is enough and tried to restore the rights Congress intended disabled Americans to have. The courts have all but made the ADA a useless piece of legislation. They have limited the definition of what a disability is and created impossible to meet procedural and definitional barriers, to name just a few.
“A new attempt at such a law is in the works. Recently Rep. Sensenbrenner gave the Tony Coehlo lecture at N.Y. Law School in which he laid out the need for such a law. Here is Tony Coehlo's description of the lecture and invitation to it.http://www.unbossed.com/index.php?itemid=1447
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Education and early career
Coelho was born in rural Los Banos, California, to parents of Portuguese descent, attended public schools in nearby Dos Palos, and grew up working on his family’s dairy farm. At age 15, Coelho was injured in a pickup truck accident, which doctors later suggested was the precipitating event for the onset of his epilepsy. For years after the accident, Coelho did not know he had the illness.Coelho graduated with a B.A. from Loyola University of Los Angeles (now Loyola Marymount University) in 1964. At Loyola, he was initiated as a brother in Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity and a member of the prestigious Crimson Circle, and later was elected Student Body President during his senior year.
After the Kennedy assassination, Coelho decided to become a priest. He went to a doctor for a medical exam, a prerequisite for entering into the seminary. The doctor informed him that he had epilepsy. Because of canon law, he was unable to become a priest. Once the diagnosis was reported to the state, Coelho lost both his driver's license and his health insurance.
Early political career
Coelho worked as a staff member for Congressman Bernie Sisk from 1965 until 1978. By 1970, Coelho was serving as Sisk’s administrative assistant. He enhanced his expertise in agriculture policy as staff director for the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Cotton. As staff coordinator for the House Rules Subcommittee on Broadcasting, on which Sisk served, Coelho helped develop the procedures that made possible the television coverage of the House proceedings via C-Span. When Sisk retired, Coelho ran for his seat and won.
During his first campaign for Congress, Coelho’s opponent asked how people would feel if Coelho went to a meeting at the White House and had a seizure. “The press called me and the good Lord was with me,” Coelho later related. “Off the top of my head I said, ‘Well, in the 13 years I have served in Washington I knew a lot of people who went to the White House and had fits. At least I’d have an excuse.”
Congressional career and politics
In November 1978, Coelho was elected as a Democrat to the 96th Congress. He was later elected to the five succeeding Congresses where he served until his resignation on June 15, 1989. He served on the Agriculture, Interior, Veterans Affairs, and Administration Committees during his tenure, but he specialized in disabled rights.
In 1980, Coelho was named chairman of what is often called in Washington, “The D Triple C (The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee).” As the Washington Post observed, “They made the sophomore congressman from central California, their chief House fund-raiser, a position not bestowed on such a junior member since it was given to a young Texas congressman named Lyndon B. Johnson in 1940.”
As a member of the House leadership, Coelho helped lead the effort to pin the political blame for enactment of the Reagan economic program on the Republicans in the House. One Democratic campaign advertisement, airing early in the 1982 election season, featured scissors cutting a Social Security card and a voice accusing Republicans of trying to cut benefits.
In 1986, Coelho was elected House Majority Whip. A the chief vote counter for his party, Coelho oversaw a series of Democratic victories in the House on measures ranging from the budget to cutting off funds for the war in Central America.
In 1989, Coelho resigned from the House after six terms in the wake of press reports that he had received a loan from a savings and loan executive to purchase junk bonds. He was not charged with any crime.
While in the House, he was a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Coelho was credited by Congressional colleagues as the primary sponsor of the Ameruicans with Duisabilities Act, signed into law by President George H.W. Buysh. By 1994, four years after the law's passage, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that some 800,000 more people with severe disabilities had found employment than were employed when the ADA was first enacted. The promise of Coelho’s political career had been redeemed by the community of persons with disabilities from whose ranks he had risen.
Life after Congress
In nearly two decades since his retirement from Congress, Coelho has pursued careers in business and public service, while remaining active in the disabilities community.After leaving Congress, he joined Wertheim Schroder & Company, an investment firm, as a managing director.
From 1990 to 1995, he also served as president and CEO of Wertheim Schroder Investment Services, which grew from $400 million to $4 billion in managed investments under his management.
In 1995, Coelho formed ETC w/tci, an education and training technology company in Washington, D.C. He was the chairman and chief executive officer until 1997.
President Bill Clinton appointed Coelho to serve as Chairman of the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, a position he held from 1994 to 2001; he also served as Vice Chair of the National Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities. In 1998, Clinton appointed Coelho as the United States Commissioner General for the 1998 World Expo in Portugal. Clinton also appointed Coelho as Co-Chair to the U.S. Census Monitoring Board, a position he held until his appointment as general chairman of the Gore Presidential campaign.
In the summer of 1994, Coelho was the principal Democratic political strategist during the run-up to the mid-term Congressional elections. Officially, he was Senior Advisor to the Democratic National Committee. The Republican Party won a landslide victory in the fall congressional elections, capturing both the House and Senate by commanding margins.
On November 29, 1994, then-Speaker of the House Tom Foley appointed Coelho as one of 17 members of the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community. Congress created the commission to study what intelligence agencies should do after the Cold War, and was charged with preparing a report of its findings and recommendations to the President and the Congress.
In 1999, Coelho was made Chairman of Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign. During his tenure, Coelho moved the campaign headquarters from Washington, DC to Nashville, Tennesseed. He oversaw an overhaul of the campaign’s message and strategy, and changed personnel and consultants. Gore prevailed over former Senator Bill Bradley in the Democratic primaries of 2000 in every primary and caucus contest and received the Democratic nomination to be president.
Before the 2000 Democratic Convention, Coelho became ill and resigned his position as General Campaign Chairman. Doctors later found and removed a tumor on the left side of his brain. He was replaced by former Commerce Secretary William Daley.
Coelho now lives in Arlington, Virginia. He participates annually at New York Law School for its Tony Coelho Lecture in Disability Employment Law & Policy. He has endowed a chair in Public Policy at the University of California in Merced. He is the current chairman of the Board of Directors of the Epilepsy Foundation. He is a former chairman and current member of the Board of Directors of the American Association of People With Disabilities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Coelho
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But there is more to this story! It gets murkier. Darker...
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Is Tony Coelho a Crook?
Ted RoseSlate – April 7, 2000
The National Journal recently reported that Al Gore's campaign chairman, Tony Coelho, is the subject of a criminal investigation by the State Department, related to his work as the commissioner general of the United States Pavilion at the 1998 World Expo. What might Coelho have done?
Using government resources to fund a non-profit. In an audit last year, the State Department criticized the close financial ties between the U.S. Pavilion and a non-profit organization, which appears to be the Luso American Wave Foundation. Coelho created the Wave Foundation to collect money for a sculpture presented as a gift from Portuguese-Americans to the people of Portugal at the Expo. Auditors discovered that the government often paid for foundation expenses such as airline tickets and lodging.
In addition, Coelho took out a $300,000 personal loan to finance the foundation that, given his position as a representative of the U.S. government, might have become the federal government's financial responsibility. (Coelho personally repaid the loan after the release of the audit.)
• Living high on the hog. The State Department's audit reported that Coelho's official Lisbon apartment, which reportedly cost the government $18,000 a month, exceeded the department's per diem rate of just over $4,000 a month. The report also noted that Coelho improperly charged the U.S. government for several stays at a Lisbon hotel when he could have been living in his apartment instead.
• Nepotism. The audit concluded that the U.S. Pavilion violated government policies against nepotism when it hired Coelho's niece as the Assistant to the Deputy Commissioner General. She was paid a salary of $2,500 a month during the Expo.
• Drumming up personal business on the taxpayers' dime. In addition to the issues raised in the audit, the National Journal article reports that Coelho may have violated laws by mixing his personal business with the government's. While he was in Portugal, Coelho was raising capital for an Internet mortgage firm called LoanNet. Coelho invited two lobbyists to Portugal, ostensibly for work related to his government position. The lobbyists were picked up at the airport by a chauffeur, which was paid for by the U.S. government, and spent part of their time at Coelho's apartment, also paid for by the government. The lobbyists may have used airline tickets that had been donated for the government's use. Each lobbyist subsequently invested $200,000 in LoanNet.
Coelho has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing. If the State Department uncovers evidence of criminal activity, it will be forwarded to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.
This is not Coelho's first federal criminal probe. In 1989, Coelho, then a six-term congressman and House majority whip, resigned from Congress after reports surfaced that he had accepted a sweetheart loan from a troubled S&L operator. The loan helped Coelho buy a $100,000 junk bond, but he never reported it on his government disclosure form. The Justice Department decided not to bring charges against him.
http://www.slate.com/id/1005051/
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Yet more: the actual legacy of Tony Coelho
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The Tony Coelho Factor
Washington Times, January 17, 2006
“....As former Wall Street Journal reporter Brooks Jackson documented in his masterful look into Capitol Hill corruption, “Honest Graft,” the system that allowed a man like Mr. Abramoff to flourish largely was built by former Rep. Tony Coelho, California Democrat, in the 1980s. Allowed inside Mr. Coelho’s Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Mr. Jackson saw first hand how donations were wrung from corporate political action committees, which in turn expected a return on their investment, often in the form of legislative gifts.
“By 1978, Mr. Jackson writes, “the cost of staying in office was rising rapidly.” Indeed, “the incumbents of 1978 had spent on the average only $87,000 to win their seats two years earlier. But the average cost of winning rose by 46 percent, to nearly $128,000, in the 1978 campaigns.” Newcomer Tony Coelho “was alert to the change.” He outspent his first House opponent $266,000 to $104,000. Veteran House Democrats took notice of Mr. Coelho’s fund-raising abilities and soon enough installed the young congressman as chairman of the DCCC, which is responsible for siphoning contributions to Democratic candidates.
“Republicans too were getting in the fund-raising game, albeit belatedly, but Mr. Coelho outmaneuvered them. Writes Mr. Jackson, “Coelho appreciated… that business PACs gave mostly to open the doors of the lawmakers who controlled the good things the federal government had going.” Republicans erred in thinking businesses would support their free-market ideology. Mr. Coelho understood that what businesses really want from government is protection, tax breaks, loopholes and contracts. Ideology had nothing to do with it. Rather, business interests are best served by supporting incumbents and the party in power.
“It was a lesson Republicans wouldn’t forget when they took control of the House in 1994. Specifically, Rep. Tom DeLay and others designed the “K Street Project” to co-opt the Coelho fund-raising juggernaut. “It’s not an overstatement to say that the K Street Project was a very direct attempt to replicate what Coelho had done in the mid-80s,” former Republican Rep. Vin Weber told us. “Republicans were frustrated with the Democrats’ success in extracting substantial amounts of money from the business community.”
“This is not to suggest that only Mr. Coelho’s Democrats — or Mr. DeLay’s Republicans — benefited from the system. Mr. Jackson notes that “House members elected in 1976 got an average of 25.6 percent of their campaign funds from PACs. But those elected in 1986 would rely on PACs for 42 percent of their campaign receipts. Lawmakers of both parties leaned more and more on PACs, and less and less on the voters, to finance their campaigns.”
”The same holds true today. As the Center for Responsive Politics records, between 1999 and 2006, Abramoff clients and associates gave $778,180 to the DCCC and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The very same clients gave just $156,320 more to the two Republican committees — not a significant advantage for the party in power. Or, as Mr. Weber said, “whatever culture exists in Washington, it is purely bipartisan.”
“Also reminiscent of today, the Coelho story ended in scandal, with Mr. Coelho retiring in humiliation. His departure, however, “changed nothing,” Mr. Jackson warned. 'He left intact a deeply rooted system of money-based politics… and it continued to flourish after he was gone.'”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/jan/17/20060117-092150-3845r/
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
A Great Danger: Law Passed by Sentimentality
The blog author notes that Tony Coelho in the House, as well as Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Bob Dole (R-KS) in the Senate, were instrumental in passing the Americans with Disabilities Act. Coelho was an epileptic who rose to leadership in the House. Bob Dole was a seriously wounded World War II veteran who rose to leadership in the Senate (as well as his party's nomination for vice president in 1976 and for president in 1996). Knowing first hand the hardships of being young and disabled, they sought to make the road easier for other Americans. Tom Harkin, who has a disabled brother, knew this story and joined in the effort.
The blog author challenges the competence of this sort of personal sentimentality by politicians.
A wealthy, successful, powerful individual can do great things with his money to help those less fortunate or facing similar hurdles that are overcome too seldom. Such an individual has the resources at his disposal to make a difference.
A successful politician, however, is not dispensing capital garnered by himself to help others. Rather, it is public money that is authorized by the legislature, administered by the executive branch and subject to review by the courts. The blog author avers that legislation, especially sentimental legislation, is unpredictable and often potentially injurious.
The blog author, a certified public accountant with a license to practice in Virginia, contacted several attorneys licensed to practice in Virginia in 2004 and 2005, inquiring about the Americans with Disabilities Act. The attorneys, specialists in labor law, all said that this legislation had been “gutted” and had “no teeth” and “could not be relied upon.” The Americans with Disabilities Act, they stated, was “expensive” and intensely inconvenient for employers. One group of employers, state governments, was particularly upset by this legislation and had fought it case by case in court. The attorneys admitted that the disability act was still federal law, but they warned me that it was foolish, for me and for anyone I was advisiung, to believe that it remained enforceable after these successful court actions of its opponents.
As a licensed CPA talking to attorneys, themselves members of the Virginia bar, it is unethical for me to mention their names to support their private statements. But I don't have to do that to support the point – a Google search immediately revealed strong support for their line of reasoning:
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Unbossed.com had an internet posting on April 15, 2007 about the way the courts had weakened the Americans with Disabilities Act:
“Anyone who pays attention to laws enacted to protect worker rights will notice that they all have the same lifecycle. Law is enacted. Rights in the law are attacked. Judges hand down cases that weaken the law. Two recent laws where you can see this dynamic are the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
”But now one Republican has now taken up the fight to restore worker rights under Americans with Disabilities Act.
Background
“This dynamic of legislative birth and decline . . . and revivification happened with Title VII. Almost from the time it was enacted, its rights were whittled away. I won't go through the myriad ways in which judges weakened it. Some would require a long explanation to understand - and were therefore caused more harm. You couldn't get people outraged, as a result.
“Finally, in 1991, Congress legislatively reversed these judicial "amendments" by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Congress chided the Supreme Court for its decisions right in the text of the CRA:
The Congress finds that -ADA
. . .
(2) the decision of the Supreme Court in Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 U.S. 642 (1989) has weakened the scope and effectiveness of Federal civil rights protections . . .
“Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., (R-Wisconsin), an author of the Americans with Disabilities Act, has long felt that that enough is enough and tried to restore the rights Congress intended disabled Americans to have. The courts have all but made the ADA a useless piece of legislation. They have limited the definition of what a disability is and created impossible to meet procedural and definitional barriers, to name just a few.
"Seventeen years ago, Congress took a major step to break down physical and societal barriers that kept disabled individuals from fully participating in all aspects of American life,” Sensenbrenner said. “The ADA restores the full meaning of equal protection under the law. Although we’ve made great progress for disabled Americans, our work is not complete. The Supreme Court has chipped away at some of the ADA’s broad protections, and this is unacceptable. One of my primary goals this Congress is to restore the ADA’s clear and comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination on the basis of disability."”In September 2006, he introduced H.R. 6258 [109th]: Americans with Disabilities Act Restoration Act of 2006, a bill that died when that congress adjourned. Link to Sensenbrenner bill announcement.
“A new attempt at such a law is in the works. Recently Rep. Sensenbrenner gave the Tony Coehlo lecture at N.Y. Law School in which he laid out the need for such a law. Here is Tony Coehlo's description of the lecture and invitation to it.
"March 26th for the Third Annual Tony Coelho Lecture in Disability Employment Law & Policy. Our speaker will be Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, the former Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and one of the most important voices in Congress on disabilities employment issues.
"This is a critical time in Washington for the Americans with Disabilities Act. As you know, the Supreme Court has dramatically curtailed the scope of this essential civil rights law. Most troubling, the Court has interpreted the ADA to deprive millions of Americans of the law's protections. That's not what Jim Sensenbrenner and I intended when we originally sponsored the ADA in the late 1980s.
"Now, I am working with Congressman Sensenbrenner to restore the ADA. His speech on March 26th will lay out some of the principles and goals of the legislation he will co-sponsor with other leading members of Congress from both parties. In my view, the speech will be a critical moment for the disabilities movement and anyone who is interested in civil rights and justice. I hope you will be there to witness it....In the talk, Sensenbrenner pulls no punches in criticizing the Supreme Court for disabling the ADA."
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