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REPORT: Sen. Tom Coburn Actively Negotiated Multi-Million Dollar Hush Money Package For Ensign’s Mistress

By Judd Legum on May 12, 2011 at 5:20 pm

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and former Sen. John Ensign (R-NV)

After a 22-month investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee released a report on the conduct of Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), who resigned early this month. The report contains voluminous evidence suggesting Ensign may have violated several laws in an effort to cover up an affair with a member of his staff. The committee has referred the matter to the Department of Justice.

Contained in the 67-page report, however, is troubling evidence of the central role that current Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) played in trying to keep Ensign’s mistress and her husband quiet — evidence that contradicts Coburn’s previous public statements on the matter.

In July 2009, Coburn said he was consulting with Ensign “as a physician and as an ordained deacon” and he considered it a “privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody.” Asked about the claim from Doug Hampton, the husband of Ensign’s mistress, that he “urged Ensign to pay the Hamptons millions of dollars,” Coburn said, “I categorically deny everything he said.”

Coburn was similarly blunt in a November 22, 2009 interview with George Stephanopoulos:

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., told me flatly that he did not offer to broker a million-dollar deal between his Senate colleague, John Ensign, R-Nev., and the family of Ensign’s mistress.

Doug Hampton, the husband of a staffer with whom Ensign had an affair, makes the explosive allegation in an interview with “Nightline’s” Cynthia McFadden that will air on Monday.

…When I asked Coburn on This Week if Hampton is telling the truth, he said, “There was no negotiation,” but acknowledged that he had worked to “bring two families to a closure of a very painful episode.”

Watch it:

Coburn eventually agreed to cooperate with the Ethics Committee; their findings on the level of his involvement are startling. According to the committees report, Coburn actively assisted in the discussions of a hush money package, negotiating a proposed package from $8 million down to $2.8 million. The ethics committee report, on pages 37 to 38, describes the negotiation between Mr. Albregts, an attorney for the husband of Ensign’s mistress, and Sen. Coburn:

Mr. Albregts tried to get a ballpark estimate from Senator Coburn as to the amount he would be comfortable with. Mr. Albregts proposed $8 million based on a document Doug Hampton prepared. According to Mr. Albregts, Senator Coburn said that the figure was absolutely ridiculous. Senator Coburn then stated that the Ensigns should buy the Hamptons home because it is so close to the Ensigns, and the Hamptons should receive an amount of money above and beyond that to start over, buy a new home, have some living money while they were looking for new employment, and possibly some seed money to send the children off to college. Senator Coburn stated that that’s what I’ve thought from day one would be fair, but said that $8 million was nowhere close to a reasonable figure. Senator Coburn told Mr. Albregts to figure out what those amounts would be, and call him back.

Mr. Albregts then spoke with Mr. Hampton, and asked him how much it would cost to get the house paid for, and how much he needed above that figure to get started somewhere new. Mr. Hampton then came back with some figures, and estimated $1.2 million for the home, and another $1.6 million to get started somewhere new. Mr. Albregts called Senator Coburn back for the final time with this revised figure on the same day in a five-minute call. Per Mr. Albregts, Senator Coburn responded by stating that okay, that’s what I had in mind and I think is fair and said he would take the figure to the Ensigns.

The Ensigns rejected the new offer. Previous reports referenced Coburn’s role as a go-between but did not reveal the extent of his inovlement in the negotations. The report notes that “Mr. Albregts testified that Senator Coburn took an active role in the negotiations between Mr. Hampton and Senator Ensign, and this role included proposing specific resolutions.” Coburn told the committee that he was “simply going to pass information” to Ensign.

One thing is certain: Tom Coburn has a lot of explaining to do.

Yglesias

The Real Difference Between RomneyCare And The Affordable Care Act Is That The ACA Is Paid For

By Matthew Yglesias on May 12, 2011 at 5:12 pm

Today’s Mitt Romney speech on health care contained a lot of nonsense, but this slide is accurate and important:

I really wish more discussions of why the Affordable Care Act is so controversial would start with this. The Affordable Care Act gives health insurance to millions of people who previously lacked it. That costs money. Money that the Affordable Care Act obtains through higher taxes (largely on the rich) and through reductions in spending (mostly subsidies to private insurance company Medicare subcontractors). That’s some controversial stuff with a lot of money at stake. People don’t like it.

And while Mitt Romney’s universal health care bill in Massachusetts is very structurally similar to the ACA, it’s not really paid for. The financing was a mix of Medicaid waivers, deficit-financed federal grant money, and hand-waving. I was fine with that stuff. I’m not really a “deficit hawk” guy. But there’s something a little bit bizarre about claiming this as the distinctive virtue of the Commonwealth Care approach.

Climate Progress

VIDEO: Climate Scientists Fight Back With Rap

By Brad Johnson on May 12, 2011 at 5:00 pm

“In the media landscape there are climate change deniers and believers, but rarely those speaking about climate change are actual climate scientists.”

So begins a new rap video by actual climate scientists from Australia, one of the continents hardest hit by global warming pollution. The group of scientist-rappers, in coordination with the Australia Broadcasting Corporation’s comedy show Hungry Beast, rap about science, politicians, and right-wing deniers with an amusing combination of fact and irreverence. Here’s their take on the dangerous risks of positive feedback loops and intensification of extreme weather:

Feedback is like climate change on crack.

The permafrosts subtracts: feedback!

Methane release wack : feedback!

Write a letter then burn it: feedback!

Denialists, deny this in your dreams,

Coz climate change means greater extremes,

Shit won’t be the norm,

Heatwaves, bigger badder storms.

Watch it:

Participating scientists include Jason Evans, Katrin Meissner, Roger Jones, Ailie Gallant, Leanne Armand, Linda Beaumont, and a host of PhD students at Australia’s top climate research units. These scientists have extensive publication records, from projected regional climate change to how global warming pollution affects ecological distribution.

These scientists are, of course, exposing themselves to the attack that they’re acting like human beings who care about the planet they’re studying. However, as they say, “Climate change is caused by people/ Earth, unlike Alien, has no sequel.”

Climate Progress

Los Alamitos School Board orders global warming class to teach the controversy, push disinformation

By Joe Romm on May 12, 2011 at 4:58 pm

Onion Scopes small

Before Los Alamitos High School science teachers can tackle topics such as global warming, they will have to demonstrate to the school board that the course is politically balanced….

Concerned that “liberal” faculty members could skew lessons on global warming, the board of education unanimously voted to make teachers give an annual presentation on how they’re teaching the class….

Although there is a consensus among scientists, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that global climate change exists, the board of education said the topic is controversial enough to require a change in the district’s policy….

“We define a topic to be controversial if it has more than one widely held view,” said Assistant Superintendent Sherry Kropp,

Darn you liberal faculty members who teach science and “skew” their lessons towards scientific facts!  We demand “politically balanced” science.

Anyone can see the AAAS has an agenda:  They want the “advancement” of science.  No doubt so they can line their pockets with all that science money out there.

The guy pushing this effort knows what’s what:

Read more

Yglesias

Taxing The Rich And Economic Growth

By Matthew Yglesias on May 12, 2011 at 4:40 pm

I think Ezra Klein has it about right here and that the main thing you need to know about American politics today on the level of ideas is the completely sincere belief of right-of-center thinkers in the idea that higher levels of taxation on the right will be economically harmful. If you’re a progressive, it’s worth marinating a bit in this idea to see how powerful it might be. The important thing to understand about it is that even a very small increase in the rate of economic growth—0.2 percentage points a year or something—has pretty gigantic benefits over the long run. In this frame, the central problem of political economy is that the hyper-empowered bottom 80 percent of the income distribution has the capability to short-sightedly vote itself more goodies by hiking taxes on the rich. These hikes will impede growth and do massive long-term harm to the true interests of the middle class and poor who essentially need to be saved from themselves.

Now what’s interesting about this is that the right has been winning this argument for decades. In particular, since the Kennedy administration we’ve seen very steady reductions in the marginal income tax rates paid by high earners:

Actual taxes paid have seen a different, though basically similar trajectory:

Obviously, the question to ask about this is “where’s the growth?” And I think that’s the context you need to understand a lot of what’s going on in political debates today. One obvious reply is that it turns out that high income taxes on the wealthy aren’t actually that big a deal.

Justice

GOP Bill Shifts Oil Drilling Cases To Court Dominated By Judges With Oil Investments

By Ian Millhiser on May 12, 2011 at 4:40 pm

Yesterday, the House passed the so-called “Putting the Gulf Back to Work Act,” which is intended to make it easier for the oil industry to drill in the Gulf of Mexico. Sadly, this bill also continues the GOP’s longstanding practice of rigging the court system to favor wealthy and influential interest groups. Tucked within the bill is a provision that consigns many lawsuits involving oil drilling into a federal court that is dominated by judges with close ties to the oil industry:

SEC. 202. EXCLUSIVE VENUE FOR CERTAIN CIVIL ACTIONS RELATING TO COVERED ENERGY PROJECTS IN THE GULF OF MEXICO.

Venue for any covered civil action shall not lie in any district court not within the 5th circuit unless there is no proper venue in any court within that circuit.

It should come as no surprise that the oil industries’ allies in Congress want to make sure that only Fifth Circuit judges get to hear the industry’s appeals. When it is not busy ordering high school cheerleaders to pay $45,000 because they sued the school district that required them to cheer for their alleged rapist, the Fifth Circuit’s judges have cozied up tightly with the oil industry.

Ten of the Fifth Circuit’s sixteen active judges have oil investments, including Chief Judge Edith Jones, who owns as much as $330,000 in oil interests. Two Fifth Circuit judges, Jerry Smith and Eugene Davis, even ruled in favor of the oil industry in a major drilling moratorium case despite the fact that they both attended expense-paid “junkets for judges” sponsored by an oil-industry funded organization. A third Fifth Circuit judge, Edith Clement, actually serves on the board of this organization, despite an opinion from the federal judiciary’s ethics committee saying that Clement violates her ethical obligations by remaining on this board.

The House GOP’s effort to shift the oil industry’s litigation into a court dominated by oil-friendly judges in only the right’s latest attempt to stack the deck in favor of corporate parties and against ordinary Americans:

  • Forced Arbitration: Last month, Justice Scalia penned a 5-4 opinion expanding an abusive practice known as “forced arbitration” that allows corporations to force their consumers, workers and patients to sign away their right to sue the company in a real court, and instead bring any lawsuits in a privatized arbitration system that overwhelming favors corporations.
  • Court Packing: The Florida GOP is pushing a court packing plan that would neuter the state supreme court’s Democratic appointees and allow Gov. Rick Scott (R) to appoint three new justices.

It’s bad enough that corporate America thinks that they are above the law, but it is inexcusable that the GOP is fighting tooth and nail to give the wealthiest and most powerful interests all the legal immunity their hearts’ desire.

Health

5 Things You Should Know About Romney’s Health Care Proposal

By Igor Volsky on May 12, 2011 at 4:15 pm

The bottom line is that it reads exactly like his health care plan from the 2008 campaign, which looks very similar to the GOP House alternative offered in the midst of the 2009 health care reform legislative battle and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) 2008 campaign plan. In other words — a rehash of traditional GOP prescriptions that deregulate the insurance market without providing adequate coverage to the sickest Americans or significantly reducing health care costs. Here are five things you should know about Romney’s plan:

1. Romney says he would empower states with greater flexibility by block-granting the Medicaid program, the federal/state initiative that provides coverage to senior citizens and poor Americans. But as a recent Kaiser Family Foundation report has pointed out, converting the existing matching rate formula into a block grant would give states less money that they would have otherwise received and force local governments to cut eligibility to the program. Kaiser examined different scenarios for state responses to reduced federal Medicaid spending and estimated 31 to 44 million Americans could lose their health insurance coverage.

2. Romney would “reform the tax code to promote the individual ownership of health insurance” and “give individuals a choice between the current system and a tax deduction to buy insurance on their own.” He thinks this would create “the best of both worlds” by allowing certain individuals to leave their employer-sponsored health insurance plans and find coverage on the individual market. But this would only entice young healthy workers to buy cheaper but less substantive insurance in the individual insurance plan market place, increasing costs for sicker workers and forcing some to opt out entirely. Among those who would lose their health care are 56 million Americans with pre-existing chronic health conditions. The credits would also fail to cover the cost of comprehensive coverage.

3. Romney says that “individuals who are continuously covered for a specified period of time may not be denied access to insurance because of pre-existing conditions” — a good idea that’s made even better by the Affordable Care Act that he wants to repeal. He’s also advocating for allowing individuals “to purchase insurance across state lines, free from costly state benefit requirements.” This means that insurers would be able to circumvent consumer protections in certain states and sell bare-bone subprime policies to the healthiest (and most profitable) beneficiaries. Companies would have little incentive to do business in states that require coverage for such things as cancer screenings or have guaranteed issue protections and sell plans across the country that deny coverage altogether to high-cost cases. The Affordable Care Act includes a similar — but far better regulated — provision that allows states to form compacts in which they can establish their own regulations.

4. Romney wants to “reform medical liability” and have the federal government “provide innovation grants to states for reforms, such as alternative dispute resolution or health care courts.” The current health care law already includes similar demonstration projects, even if the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that malpractice reforms could at most save $54 billion over 10 years or only about 3 percent of annual costs.

5. Finally, Romney proposes establishing Health Savings Accounts and eliminating “the minimum deductible requirement for HSAs.” This may help some healthy people but will do little to aid Americans with expensive chronic conditions who will quickly deplete their savings accounts.

Yglesias

Richard Lugar Abandons The DREAM Act And Illustrates Why America Can’t Have Nice Things

By Matthew Yglesias on May 12, 2011 at 4:08 pm

Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana says he doesn’t support the DREAM Act. Lots of politicians don’t support the DREAM Act, but what’s a bit surprising here is his reasoning. As recently as the 111th Congress he thought the DREAM Act was a good idea. And here in the 112th Congress he doesn’t say that he’s changed his mind on the issue. Instead, he says he’s now unwilling to vote for the DREAM Act out of spite for Barack Obama:

Lugar’s spokesman said Lugar did not join Democrats in reintroducing the federal legislation to help children of illegal immigrants – known as the DREAM Act, or Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors – because Democrats have politicized the issue.

“President Obama’s appearance in Texas yesterday framed immigration as a divisive election issue instead of attempting a legitimate debate on comprehensive reform,” said spokesman Mark Helmke. “Ridiculing Republicans was clearly a partisan push that effectively stops a productive discussion about comprehensive immigration reform and the DREAM Act before the 2012 election.”

Adam Serwer calls this “taking the Graham way out”, which it is. But it also suggests the paradoxical nature of presidential “leadership” in a polarized political environment. Bipartisan legislative initiatives are useful to congressional Republicans basically only if the President opposes them. Something like the ridiculous McCaskill-Corker CAP Act is great precisely because it’s a totally terrible idea. Barack Obama can be counted on to resist it, so criticizing him for opposition to this bipartisan measure makes sense. By contrast, if Obama wants to turn himself into a zealous advocate of a bipartisan bill like the DREAM Act, then that renders it toxic. And since the direct beneficiaries of the DREAM Act are ineligible to vote and don’t have much campaign cash to offer, that becomes all you need to know.

I’m not one to scold politicians for playing politics. That’s life. But we have a set of political institutions right now that that make it very difficult for politics-playing politicians to actually address any important problems of national significance.

Politics

As State Faces Deep Cuts, Texas Commits $250 Million Of Taxpayer Money To Auto Racing

By Marie Diamond on May 12, 2011 at 3:45 pm

At a time when Texas is dealing with a record budget deficit by slashing essential services and possibly laying off 97,000 teachers, state lawmakers have committed taxpayers to funding Formula One auto racing at a steep price: $25 million a year for the next 10 years.

The motorsport franchise left the U.S. four years ago because of low attendance, but the effort to bring it back — and base it in Texas — has been spearheaded by B.J. “Red” McCombs, the co-founder of conservative media conglomerate Clear Channel Communications. Despite being consistently ranked as one of Forbes 400 richest Americans — with a net worth last estimated at $1.4 billion — McCombs has gotten state Comptroller Susan Combs to agree to build a racing track in Austin at taxpayer expense. Austin’s city government may also invest an additional $4 million a year in tax revenue to facilitate the plan.

Even some Republicans are questioning the wisdom of committing state resources to bring the event to Texas as the state struggles to close a $27 billion deficit:

“I don’t understand why 25 people in Austin could not put up $1 million each if they thought this was a good opportunity instead of the state making a $25 million commitment,” said Senator Dan Patrick, a Houston Republican. “The developers should find the money through private sources.”

Bloomberg points out that for $25 million a year, “the state could pay more than 500 teachers an average salary of $48,000.”

Corporate backers of the plan and their GOP allies insist that F-1 racing will pump money and jobs into the Texas economy. But sporting experts say the state is betting taxpayer money on an uncertain investment. Michael Cramer, a former president of the Texas Rangers and Dallas Stars, told Bloomberg, “With places struggling, spending that much money on an essentially one-off event is tough to do.”

F-1 races have tried and failed to gain traction in the U.S. in different cities since since the 1970s. Even Bernie Ecclestone, the CEO of the F-1 series admitted that, “No one wanted to hold it,” until the Austin promoters stepped in.

Richard Viktorin, an accountant with Audits in the Public Interest, says his Austin-based group opposes government support for the races because they are a gross misuse of state funds. “It’s off-balance-sheet financing for a rich man’s sport.”

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