Posted by
Defend America on Saturday, March 06, 2010 4:51:21 PM
In e-mails, lobbyists perceive ties between campaign cash, earmarks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Lobbyists and corporate officials talked bluntly in e-mail exchanges
about connections between making generous campaign donations and
securing federal funds through members of an important House
Appropriations subcommittee, according to not-yet-public documents
reviewed by ethics investigators.
In summer 2007, for example, senior executives at a small McLean
defense firm tried to figure out which of them would buy a ticket to a
wine-tasting fundraiser for Rep. James P. Moran
Jr. (D-Va.), a member of the Appropriations subcommittee on defense. At
the time, the company sought help from Moran's office in securing
contracts through special earmarks added to the defense bill.
In an e-mail exchange, one senior officer said he didn't understand why
he had to attend the fundraiser when he didn't even drink wine.
"You don't have to drink," Innovative Concepts' chief technology
officer, Andrew Feldstein, shot back in an e-mail. "You just have to
pay."
"LOL," responded the other officer.
The fundraiser was hosted by the PMA Group, a powerful lobbying firm
whose unusual success in obtaining "earmarked" contracts from members
of the military subcommittee was a key focus of a recent House ethics
investigation.
Moran raked in $91,900 in campaign checks to his personal campaign and leadership PAC that day. He secured an $800,000 earmark for Innovative Concepts in the 2008 defense appropriations bill.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/05/AR2010030504304.html?hpid=topnews⊂=AR