NLPC Staff

Rep. Mollohan’s Foundation Got Free Rent From Earmark Recipient

Posted on by NLPC Staff

WVHTC buildingRoll Call reports today:

The West Virginia High Tech Consortium has provided more than $75,000 in free rent and administrative services to the Robert H. Mollohan Family Charitable Foundation, according to tax records, while receiving millions of dollars worth of earmarks from Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W. Va.), who serves as the family foundation’s secretary.

Questions about Mollohan’s foundation are not new. Michael Forsythe of Bloomberg News reported on June 22, 2006:

Mollohan helped funnel at least $179 million in U.S. government contracts over the last six years to companies that gave to the West Virginia Democrat’s family-run charity, tax records and other documents show.

The money went to 21 companies and nonprofit groups that contributed $564,427 to the Robert H. Mollohan Family Charitable Foundation from 2002 to 2004 — almost half of the charity’s revenue, according to the documents. The congressman, an Appropriations Committee member whose finances are under federal

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Will Bailed-Out Companies Shell Out for Sharpton?

Posted on by NLPC Staff

GM logThe 11th annual convention of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN) will take place April 1-4 in New York City. Last year’s event in Memphis had heavy corporate sponsorship. Of course, a lot has changed since then. Sponsors like Citigroup, Chrysler and General Motors have gone broke, kept alive by billions in taxpayer funds.

Healthier 2008 sponsors include Abbott Laboratories, Allstate, American Honda, Anheuser-Busch (since acquired by InBev), Chase Foundation, Colgate-Palmolive, Continental Airlines, Entergy, FedEx, Ford, Home Depot, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, Pfizer, UPS Foundation and Wal-Mart.

At the event, Colgate-Palmolive accepted a “corporate excellence” award, prompting NLPC to ask the company to give it back. In a letter to Reuben Mark, the company’s Chairman, NLPC President Peter Flaherty called the award “a dubious honor indeed.”

In an April 22 letter defending the award, Mark asserted that the NAN convention was “broadly attended by a number of elected officials and … Read More ➡

Obama Should Focus on Bank Crisis Rather Than “Fake Populism”

Posted on by NLPC Staff

NLPC President Peter Flaherty said today, “Excessive executive pay and perks are indeed a problem, as NLPC sought to highlight way before the financial meltdown. But the real scandal now is bank bailouts without end.

Citi logo

Instead of engaging in fake populism by trashing corporate travel to Las Vegas or the Super Bowl, Obama should produce a plan to deal with the banking crisis. Throwing more taxpayer money at AIG and Citigroup as they lurch from crisis to crisis is not a plan.  I am worried that by the time Obama and Timothy Geithner come up with a strategy, there will be no money left.

The tally for AIG is now $175 billion with no end in sight. AIG placed bets on derivative trades that it could not possibly pay off if it lost. This is called fraud. These bad bets were big enough to bring down the financial system. Obama … Read More ➡

NLPC Blasts Obama/Geithner Big Bank Bailout

Posted on by NLPC Staff

According to Peter Flaherty, President of the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC):

“The trillion-dollar stimulus plan has not even passed Congress and the administration proposes to throw another trillion at Wall Street on top of the $750 billion already provided without a tangible benefit.

Buying toxic assets was supposed to be the purpose of the first TARP. After Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner warned that our financial system would collapse if TARP were not passed, they spent the money on something else — bolstering the capital position of banks. Politically well-connected Citigroup has received $45 billion, more than the book value of the company, and it is still in trouble.

The burden is on President Obama and Timothy Geithner to explain why another Wall Street bailout will work when the first one did not. This latest plan would have the taxpayer finance the purchase of troubled assets, opening the … Read More ➡

NY Times: Rangel Says NLPC Does Media’s “Dirty Work”

Posted on by NLPC Staff

In an article titled “Rangel’s Financial Disclosures Omitted Data Over 30 Years, a Report Says,” today’s New York Times reports:

In an interview on C-SPAN on Sunday and in a letter mailed to supporters released Tuesday, Mr. Rangel said the conservative-oriented National Legal Policy Center had sent an investigator to examine the finances of a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic, then passed along critical information to a reporter from The Post. The newspaper subsequently printed an article questioning whether Mr. Rangel had reported all the rental income he received from the villa on his financial disclosure forms and tax returns.

“Newspapers forwent actual, independent reporting, and instead relied on this organization to do the dirty work for them,” Mr. Rangel wrote.

Unfortuntely for Rangel, the story also details a new report from the liberal-oriented Sunlight Foundation that accuses Rangel of thirty years of financial disclosure violations:

Representative Charles

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Capitol Hill Newspaper Profiles NLPC’s Rangel Investigation

Posted on by NLPC Staff

In an article titled “Conservative Watchdog Group Targeted Rangel,” NLPC’s investigation of Congressman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) is detailed in today’s edition of The Hill. The newspaper, which is widely read by members of Congress and their staffs, reports:

When the news broke that Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) may have been abusing New York City rent-control laws, Peter Flaherty and Ken Boehm smelled blood.

The two investigators are principals and founders of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative watchdog group whose research has spurred news stories taking Rangel to task for alleged ethical violations.

The center has time, money and seasoned Washington hands, who research publicly available information.

But it is not just Democrats who are the center’s targets. Some big-spending Republicans, such as former Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska) and Rep. Don Young (Alaska), also have found themselves in the center’s crosshairs.

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