(I love me my Doolittle corruption stories. – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Night Swimming links to this Sacramento Bee article regarding Representative John Doolittle’s (CA-4) active involvement in support of a Jack Abramoff Indian client. Support that garnered Northern California’s Doolittle a $5,000 campaign contribution from the Iowa tribe.

As with many of Doolittle’s dealing with Abramoff, Doolittle’s former chief of staff, Kevin Ring, was in the middle of things.

When lobbyist Kevin Ring brought dissident members of Iowa’s Meskwaki tribe to Rep. John Doolittle’s office in early June 2003, it was a good bet that the Roseville Republican would be helpful.

Ring was a former staff aide to Doolittle and his employer then, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, was a friend of the congressman and at the pinnacle of his ill-fated power.

The letter Doolittle wrote to Interior Secretary Gale Norton a few days later pressed for elections that would end an escalating tribal dispute – just what Ring’s clients wanted.

In writing it, however, the vehemently anti-gambling congressman was taking a stand on behalf of a tribe fighting to reopen a casino.

Doolittle’s letter was probably of little importance in the case. The Department of the Interior was already working to resolve the tribal conflict, when Doolittle stepped in to help. But, what Doolittle’s involvement did do was allow Abramoff’s firm to demonstrate to its client how it could quickly deliver members of congress in their support.

At the time, Doolittle had nothing to loose when he helped out his former chief of staff and allowed him to show off his influence with a key member of congress. That is the influence that Doolittle was selling to Ring and through Ring to Abramoff. It was the advertising value of Abramoff being able to tell potential clients that he could deliver Republican congressmen to support them any time he need to do so.

When Doolittle says he did nothing unethical, he is lying. Doolittle demonstrated to Abramoff’s clients how the game was played. He allowed himself to be used as part of an elaborate Abramoff con to convince Indian tribes that Abramoff owned the Republican Congress and Administration.

The Sunday San Diego Union Tribune continues the paper’s excellent coverage of the Randy “Duke” Cunningham saga. Dani Dodge’s article concentrates on Cunningham’s wife, Nancy, leaving it to readers to determine if this woman who spent 32 years was a victim or another of his co-conspirators.

Certainly, when Nancy Cunningham filed for divorce from flying ace, Randy Cunningham just two years into their marriage, she felt victimized.

“He is a very aggressive spontaneously assaultive person,” she wrote in a court declaration, “and I fear for my immediate physical safety and well being.”

But, the Cunningham’s reconciled and Nancy worked diligently to smooth Duke’s rough edges and restrain his spontaneously assaultive personality.

Nancy also wouldn’t accept Duke’s tactless behavior, sticking close to her husband at military parties.

“When she was around, Duke wouldn’t say boo,” Criss said. “Randy was a guy who talked first and thought second, and when he would do that, she would correct him and roll her eyes.”

Duke stopped going to bars with others in his unit and turned to sports, hunting and riding off-road motorcycles.”

Nancy Cunningham worked to create her own identity and to build a stellar career in public school administration. While Duke moved to Washington and attempted to reprise his “top gun” days, complete with boorish behavior and copious quantities of alcohol, Nancy stayed in San Diego and stuck with her family and career.

Through the years, Nancy advanced in the Encinitas school district and was promoted to principal, first at Flora Vista Elementary School in 1989 and later at Paul Ecke Central/Pacific View Schools.

Nancy was named the school district’s 1998 principal of the year. She was promoted to director of administrative support services later that year and a state school administrators group recognized her as administrator of the year in 1999.

The Cunningham’s are now separated. She is fighting the federal government to retain her half of the proceeds from the sale of their Rancho Santa Fe home and other assets of the couple. The Rancho Santa Fe home was purchased and financed by bribes from Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade to Cunningham. Much of the homes elaborate furnishings were also given to Duke Cunningham for illegal services rendered.

The problem Nancy Cunningham faces is to convince federal prosecutors and the IRS that she was unaware of the sources of the couple’s vastly expanding wealth. Many of the largest bribes to Duke Cunningham were laundered through Cunningham’s Top Gun Enterprises, a company he started to exploit his fighter pilot reputation. Nancy Cunningham served as treasurer of Top Gun Enterprises while huge bribes were being passed through the company to Cunningham.

State corporate filings show that Nancy was the secretary/treasurer of Top Gun Enterprises Inc. until May, when she changed her title to secretary. The company’s Web site had listed Nancy’s father, Richard W. Jones, as operating the company.

Her attorneys, James Macy and Doug Brown, said: “For all practical purposes, Mr. Cunningham was handling all aspects of Top Gun.” The company’s Web site is no longer functioning.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes Duke collected were in the form of checks made out to Top Gun Enterprises, which sold his autobiography, Navy fighter pilot baseball caps and Buck knives emblazoned with congressional seals.

While money was flowing through Top Gun Enterprises, expensive furnishings were being delivered to the Cunningham’s newly acquired Rancho Santa Fe mansion that Nancy shared with Duke. While all this money and antiques were flowing by, Nancy Cunningham’s signature managed to end up on the couple’s tax returns.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office is continuing its investigation, and Duke’s plea deal didn’t grant her immunity. Although it’s rare for spouses of elected officials to be prosecuted in bribery cases, it’s not as unusual for prosecutors to go after them for tax evasion.

Also, if she can’t negotiate a settlement about the money the couple made selling their Del Mar Heights home, she may have to testify in court. That would be a dicey step because it could further expose her to criminal prosecution.

Nancy Cunningham stuck with her husband during the early trials of their marriage. She helped him get elected to congress and created a career of her own. Now, thanks to Duke Cunningham’s greed, she faces potential prosecution, humiliation and financial uncertainty.

Do you think she ever looks at her husband – war hero, congressman, and once respected member of the community – and asks him why he destroyed everything of value in his life for a small pile of money and some antique furniture?

Not long ago, Representative John Doolittle (CA-4) demanded that he be investigated for his connections to Jack Abramoff. Doolittle apparently wanted the Department of Justice to start to lock down the continually drip, drip, drip of media and blog aligations of links between Doolittle and, convicted felon, Abramoff.

I’m pretty certain that Doolittle’s name has come up in the federal investigatory plans regarding Abramoff’s cooperative testimony. And, Doolittle’s approach of demanding an investigation, when one was probably already in place is much like his refusal to return any Abramoff tainted campaign money. Doolittle has developed a strategy that allows him to be the victim of the “vast leftwing media conspiracy.”

Clearly, Doolittle can’t return Abramoff’s money as that would highlight all the work Doolittle did at Abramoff’s bidding. Clearly, Doolittle can’t attempt to refute all of his links to Abramoff in the “liberal press,” because doing so will highlight the fact the Doolittle’s wife worked for Abramoff. Talking about those links will highlight the fact that Doolittle’s former chief of staff, Kevin Ring, moved from Doolittle’s office to Abramoff’s.

Doolittle’s strategy is to keep his constituents in the dark as much as possible. Vilify the messengers and pretend to be the honest public servant under siege by the evil “left wing media.”

The problem with this strategy is that his constituents actually have access to the news media and the Internet. And, every day brings new evidence of the depths of the Doolittle-Abramoff connection.

In the last 48 hours two new links between Doolittle and Abramoff have been exposed.  Over at TPM, Doolittle’s constituents can read about a 1999 trip their congressman made to the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) on Jack Abramoff’s dime.

Yesterday also brought this revelation regarding a visit to Puerto Rico in 2001 by Doolittle’s chief of staff. This trip was paid for by Abramoff at the behest of another of his clients. The Sacramento Bee has the story.

The point here isn’t that a member of congress or his chief of staff went on a trip. That happens all the time. The point is that at every turn in the road, there are links between John Doolittle’s office and Jack Abramoff’s office. Where Jack Abramoff’s interests intersect with public policy, John Doolittle’s personal actions and the actions of his staff are directly linked to Abramoff’s interests. That is not coincidence.

Doolittle can play the role of besieged innocent, but it is just an act and even in the hinterlands of CA-4 his constituents are going to begin to see through the act and come to understand that John Doolittle was in Jack Abramoff’s pocket.

Side Note: Doolittle’s former chiefs of staff certainly do find ways to milk their association with Doolittle into a nice income stream. Former COS, Ring is now a registered lobbyist for two cities in Doolittle’s district to the tune of over $150K per year. If, Lopez’s 4th quarter 2005 results are indicative of his annual take from fundraising for Doolittle his has a nice five figure supplemental income.

( – promoted by SFBrianCL)

And, it’s the Democrats!! Yay!

Ok, enough of my cheerleading.  The Democrats are beginning to muster strength to challenge Arnold’s infrastructure bond plan, which is now sailing through on conference committee fast track.

Sacramento — As negotiations over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to pump $222 billion into the state’s aging public works system enter a crucial phase, Democratic lawmakers say they want to rein in the size and scope of the governor’s plan.(SF Chronicle 2/6/06

I suppose the concern is that the bond measure might get held up if the Dems fight it too much.  But, I’m of the mind that it’s a good idea to make sure that we aren’t putting ourselves into too much debt here.  Now, I do believe that this is for a good purpose.  For more legitimate purpose for bond funds than say, stem cell research (which I think is very important, but should come from the federal government).  But apparently a compromise is in the works:

“The good news is that we’re in the same chapter of the book,” said Sen. Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch. “We’re not yet on the same page, but at least everyone agrees investing in our infrastructure is long overdue.”

Cross posted at Happening-Here

The San Francisco Chronicle is doing a huge service to the people of the city with its current series, “Use of Force,” documenting and describing the pattern of brutal behavior by a some of officers of the San Francisco Police Department.

The Chron has done what the city government ought to have done a long time ago: using public records, they have complied a data base of use of force reports, citizen complaints against police, and settlements payments by the city to injured citizens. The picture isn’t pretty:

San Jose’s department, about 60 percent San Francisco’s size, studied its citizen-filed force complaints at The Chronicle’s request and found that from 1996 through 2003 the officer with the most complaints had four, while nine officers had three. Seventy officers had two complaints, and 566 officers had one.

In San Francisco during the same period, the officer with the most unnecessary-force complaints had 26. Another had 20; one had 18, 4 had 15 and 3 had 13 the Office of Citizen Complaints records show.

While San Jose reveals only a few incidents, the SFPD keeps and promotes officers who use force improperly. There can be no other conclusion.

Nothing in “Use of Force” is much of a surprise to residents of the poorer, blacker and browner neighborhoods of the city or to political activists. A few memorable incidents in a long catalogue of SFPD misconduct include

• the 1989 Castro Street Sweep in which 200 San Francisco police officers swept through the Castro and broke up a peaceful march by gay and lesbian activists protesting the federal government’s neglect of people with AIDS;…only one police officer was disciplined, but the city paid out $250,000 to settle lawsuits brought by victims.

• the police beating of United Farm Workers Vice President Dolores Huerta that ruptured her spleen;

• the fatal shooting of 17 year old Sheila Detoy by cops who were trying to arrest a drug dealer. Community activists spent years trying to get the shooter disciplined, while the city paid out a wrongful death settlement of $505,000 to her family.

What will be telling is whether the Chronicle uses its series to push for any remedies with bite. Some of what is needed is obvious:

1) Put in place a system of reporting that forces the SFPD to acknowledge that a few cops cause most of the complaints.

2) Fix or fire those officers, pronto. Simply doing those two things would be incredibly cost effective — whatever a new computer reporting system and the training to use it would cost, it has to be less than the city pays in settlements to police misconduct victims.

So why won’t the obvious get done? Here’s where things get rough.

3) The police brass is riddled with officers who are willing to look the other way when cops use excessive force. It may have seemed a little over the top a few years ago when D.A. Terrance Hallinan indicted the whole command structure of the department over the chief’s son beating up a bartender. Hallinan didn’t have the evidence to make the charges stick. Nonetheless, the clubby chain of command where bad apples rise in rank makes reform nearly impossible.

4) Unhappily, the Police Officers Association (POA) is part of the problem. The current head of the union, Gary Delagnes, wracked up over 100 complaints of misconduct himself before rising to his current job.

5) And this points to the final, possibly fatal, obstacle to police reform: the city’s political ruling class apparently doesn’t mind seeing the SFPD out of control in its treatment of brown, black and uppity citizens. And so successive mayors have appointed chiefs acceptable to the existing command and the union. Willie Brown changed the race of the police brass, but did nothing to rock the boat. Gavin Newsom appointed a Chinese American woman chief, but so far has not used his clout to stop misconduct. It remains to be seen whether he’ll act after this Chronicle series, since the POA has long been a political supporter.

On the front page of today’s Chron, next to the “Use of Force” story, a headline reads “Push to open up mayor’s races in S.F.” In recent years, deluges of corporate and developer money of dubious legality have flooded San Francisco mayoral contests. The current mayor spent $5.7 million to win the office against a more progressive opponent who spent less than a million and still got 47 percent of the vote. The two previous mayoral elections were dominated by Willie Brown’s ability to leverage vast funds to bury progressive challengers.

Gavin Newsom is probably guaranteed another term (he is popular) but the public financing plan now before the city council might change the electoral terrain after he leaves office. A more equitably financed electoral system might enable a future mayor to confront the culture of police brutality that has long festered in corners of the SFPD. Without political change, the SFPD will continue to get away with periodically beating people up and the city will go on paying settlements.

Edited by Brian: Fixed PDF links.

Benawu at MyDD lists 47 remaining House districts where the Republicans are running unopposed. Benawu’s list includes three California districts:

CA 3 (Sacramento, Amador, Calaveras and Alpine Counties)
CA 21  (Fresno & Tularo Counties)
CA 22 (Kern & San Luis Opispo Counties)

So what can we do to fill these seats? Any ideas? Volunteers?