Monday, March 24, 2008

Pardon Me, Congressman, but you dropped your crown...

In a timely pre-game show to the launch of Larry Lessig's Change Congress campaign, Ken Silverstein published a delightful piece in the March issue of Harper's, entitled Beltway Bacchanal: Congress lives high on the contributor's dime . Apparently, the only service our elected officials perform for the public anymore is creating "campaign" jobs for needy college grads, ahem, friends and relatives. Also, I just realized that you can't read the article unless you subscribe to Harper's, which I highly recommend! :)


Despite my post, which is the opposite of timely (March is now nearing an end and Lessig actually launched CC last week), you can still learn a lot about PAC Leadership funds and campaign treasuries from Silverstein's article.


For example, I learned how useful contributor's funds can be when one wants to spend

  • $32,036 to golf at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort (Rep. James McCrery, R-LA), or say, slam down
  • $66,146 on luxury hotels over the 2006 election cycle (Congressman Steny Hoyer, D-MD)

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