The following is a joint statement issued on behalf of a number of bloggers concerned with the forthcoming House leadership elections; the text was prepared by NZ Bear:
We are bloggers with boatloads of opinions, and none of us come close to agreeing with any other one of us all of the time. But we do agree on this: The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street.
We are not naive about lobbying, and we know it can and has in fact advanced crucial issues and has often served to inform rather than simply influence Members.
But we are certain that the public is disgusted with excess and with privilege. We hope the Hastert-Dreier effort leads to sweeping reforms including the end of subsidized travel and other obvious influence operations. Just as importantly, we call for major changes to increase openness, transparency and accountability in Congressional operations and in the appropriations process.
As for the Republican leadership elections, we hope to see more candidates who will support these goals, and we therefore welcome the entry of Congressman John Shadegg to the race for Majority Leader. We hope every Congressman who is committed to ethical and transparent conduct supports a reform agenda and a reform candidate. And we hope all would-be members of the leadership make themselves available to new media to answer questions now and on a regular basis in the future.
Signed,
N.Z. Bear, The Truth Laid Bear
Hugh Hewitt, HughHewitt.com
Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com
Kevin Aylward, Wizbang!
La Shawn Barber, La Shawn Barber’s Corner
Lorie Byrd, Polipundit
Beth Cleaver, MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
Jeff Goldstein, Protein Wisdom
Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
John Hawkins, Right Wing News
John Hinderaker, Power Line
Jon Henke / McQ / Dale Franks, QandO
James Joyner, Outside The Beltway
Mike Krempasky, Redstate.org
Michelle Malkin, MichelleMalkin.com
Ed Morrissey, Captain’s Quarters
Scott Ott, Scrappleface
John Donovan / Bill Tuttle, Castle Argghhh!!!
****
Others commenting: Gay Patriot, Illinipundit, California Conservative, Three Sources, Latino Issues, Right Wing Nation, The Right Track, dcthornton, Don’t Go Into the Light, Caltechgirl, Martin’s Musings, Medary, reverse vampyre, California Yankee, Suitably Flip, Crazy Politico’s Rantings, Save the GOP, Publius Rendezvous, Random Numbers, Stuck on Stupid, and Blogan.
On the wall at The Fort
“It’s quiet tonight, sarge.”
“Yeah… Too quiet.”
http://www.overlawyered.com/2006/01/indian_land_claims_give_us_den.html
Powerline, Michelle Malkin and LaShawn Barber are “Center-Right”?
This brings up an interesting point: why are conservatives in the blogosphere so ashamed of the term “conservative?” Bloggers like Roger Simon, Charles Jonson, Althouse, Reynolds, etc. get blue in the face if one calls them on their ideological underpinnings.
Now you have, in the parlance of our times, the wingnuttiest of wingnuts calling themselves “Center-Right.” Why be ashamed of what one is?
So you are finally ready to admit to being a shit eating baby raper, then?
The term “the undue influence of K Street” is pretty sloppy language.
Geez, Vino, can’t you read English?
It doesn’t mean that each blogger is Center-Right, it means that they’re EITHER center or right. It’s a consortium of center and right bloggers, ie, center-right.
Which of the above bloggers does not fit, then?
TV (Harry)
(Fingers crossed that this works even though it looks bad in preview)
[url=”http://www.msu.edu/~nixonjos/armadillo/food.html”]
What I think we’ve all been waiting for:[/url]
Yeah, worked real good. Sheesh.
Why do you throw out red herrings? Some people like sardines, y’know!
Jeff
Read the letter.
Now where is my damn PIE????
I have one question about this:
The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street.
Can we wait and see who is actually guilty before we start purging our ranks? Some of the people who supposedly received money from Abramoff received it through a 3rd party and aren’t aware of the connection.
I did, Todd, but was replying to In Vino Veritas. Or did you mean our blog host?
mamapajamas —
Absolutely. And in fact, one of the questions I raised when Bear contacted me was that I didn’t want lobbying demonized in such a way that lead to the far more dangerous (and, in my opinion, prima facie unconstitutional) campaign finance reform.
Bust violators. Punish the guilty. But don’t play this as a showy object lesson, where some have to suffer unfairly for the greater good.
Individual responsibility; innocent until proven guilty (with the requisite understand that in some situations, political pragmatism—falling on one’s sword for the party—is an option, so long as it’s voluntary).
After all, I’m not a progressive. My collectivism stop at my support for local sports teams.
Frankly Josh, half the signatories are squarely “to the right of Attila the Hun†to use John Carpenter’s famous description of Kurt Russell and Lee Van Cliff!
To qualify them as “center-right†activists is kind of like Jorg Haider’s pathetic pretense of being an “<i>Austrian liberal democrat</i>â€Â, or comrade Fidel Castro’s self-description as “<i>moderate center-left socialist</i>â€Â…
Dr Victor de la Vega
Thomas More Center for Middle-East Studies
http://www.mideastmemo.blogspot.com/
To summarize this statement:
The House leadership should be free
from undue influence.
Congress should be open, transparent, and
accountable.
Laudable goals, but weakly presented in this appeal, which is unlikely to have any measurable effect.
Real progress to achieving those goals could be made with the repeal of McCain Feinstein. This is an issue that should unite all bloggers.
If the blogsphere brought down that travesty, the result would be a real transfer of power back to the people.
Vino, your comment is rich given that every Democrat on the planet ran screaming away, Howard Dean style, from the “liberal” tag and became a “progressive” during the 2004 election cycle.
You can add me to the list too.
Given what I read here, it sounds like your endeavor is pointless.
And including Malkin? She’s suspected of doing something like a Jason Blair, last I heard.
A quick guide to dumb 2 dimensional political orthography:
Kos —- Left
Dean — Centre
Kerry—Centre Right
Hilary – Right
The above list of extremist nazi bloggers – Far Right
Adolf von Chimpy … well you get the picture.
At least from the viewpoint of the ‘moderates’.
To reduce the complexity of human social relationships to a straight line and then demand that people agree with everything your wing believes otherwise they’re banished to the other end is ridiculous but. sadly, all too human
“Center-Right” is not a specific position but a range. More elegantly…those Right OF Center which covers the majority of conservatives and libertarians and the hybrids of those two.
(I signed on, too)
just tell them to stop agreeing to fund every friggin thing under the sun, and most of this could go bye-bye in the near term
the text was prepared by NZ Bear:
Good thing it wasn’t prepared by Protein Wisdom! They’d probably have called in the bioweapons team.
As it is, they’ll chuckle and toss it.
I guess 3 and a half mill wasn’t enough to put Rog and the Pony Tail into the Abrahmof league.
I’m not sure what that means, Davebo, but I suspect it’s a shot at me, at PJM, and an excuse for Harry Reid, et al, all-rolled up into one great big bag of lefty pixie dust that magically wins elections and turns the world into an egalitarian utopia by dint of pure will.
No?
Ah, who cares. I’m on Klonopin now. Howsabout I don’t worry about what you meant by it and instead just ban your boring, stupid, predictably flabby-brained pronouncements and have myself some wine?
Then you can head back over to Cole’s place and, with the help of fifty of your most meanspirited, joyless friends, play kick the the self-reflective conservative.
Here’s my pollyanna plan for dealing with influence:
Congressmen must list quarterly (and large font!) in their local newspapers any trip they went on or any perk they received, the group they got it from, and the legislation pending from regarding that group. If their own constituents read it and don’t care and still vote them in, there’s not much the rest of us can do about it.
Disclosure disclosure disclosure. Then, let the people decide.
Can the defeatists join the coalition? I admit we aren’t “center-right”. But we don’t believe in corruption. We would be most delighted to see more transparency and accountability in the Congress.
If the members of the House Republican Conference would take their advice on this vote from the younger members of their staff who actually know how to operate the Intarweb thingy and are familiar with things like blogs and bit torrents and trogdor the burninator and zombo and such, then maybe this letter can have an impact.
P.S. All hail benzodiazipines
Time for me to make my standard suggestion for Congressional reform vis-a-vis lobbying and campaign finance. It comes in two parts, and requires both:
1) Term limits. Twelve years—two Senatorial terms or six Representative. Don’t bother; I’ve heard all the arguments against, and given the present situation I agree, but if part two is adopted term limits are vital.
2) All Government receipts, whether taxes, fees, or whatever, become the private, individual property of the Congressman in whose district they were collected. The Treasury skims off the top to pay the other Constitutional officers—the President and Senators—and other than that there are no set-asides or restrictions; the rest of it is delivered to the Representative and becomes his personal funds. When the Government funds anything, it means the Representatives have to dig in their own pockets to pay for it. –Oh, and it’s all public. Every expenditure made by a Representative, whether to fund Government or buy a packet of Kit-Kats, gets listed in a public place. But if the Representative wants to bug out, buy Andorra, and retire, there is no recourse except at the ballot box next time.
Drawbacks? Sure. Discuss.
But it has a couple of really important features. One, I’m continually struck by how cheap it is to buy a Congresscritter—the average recipient of an Abramoff (sp?) check got something like two grand. $2K is a bunch to me, but for somebody working in billions it ought to get lost in the noise. And second, a lot of what gets paid for by the Government gets funded because there’s this sense that the money just comes out of the air. If the Congrescritter is paying for, e.g., a bridge to nowhere out of his own pocket, with money he could be using to buy midget porn or a new G-V it might make a difference in attitude.
A third, optional but IMO useful, feature would be to add a recall vote.
Regards,
Ric
tw: million. Why should a million dollars matter to somebody managing 1/435th of two and a half trillion bucks?
“Vino, your comment is rich given that every Democrat on the planet ran screaming away, Howard Dean style, from the “liberal†tag and became a “progressive†during the 2004 election cycle.”
Progressives?
Yes I suppose it COULD be called “progress” to throw away all your worldly possessions to the nanny-state and give up all personal responsibility.
At least in some fairy tales.
My letter’s better than that letter by a mile.
Mile and a half, even.
scapegoat, Vinnie: In Democratic politics, liberal and progressive are synonymous, because liberals aren’t and progressives don’t. Two values equalling zero are equal.
ric locke  Hey, it adds up. Ted Kennedy’s taken over $7,000,000 in lobbyist payola over his squalid career… Byrd would be ahead of him but he took his first bribes in Confederate dollars…
This was a great site. I needed to find something for my Homework and This site helped me out so much! Thanx alot!!!!