The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) had its people call our people to set up a meeting for June 18th.  They asked to learn about our campaign on election reform.  More specifically they asked, "What are the most pressing issues facing the American electoral process in 2008 This past Wednesday, we got the full biography on who their people are, exactly.

The OSCE is  "is a very  large regional security organization which includes 56 member countries, hailing from a range of six geographical regions: Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe, Western Europe, South Caucus, Central Asia, and North America.  The OSCE's operation, which has headquarters in Vienna, projects three primary pillars of objectives: the politico-military, the economic and environmental, and the human dimension.  Institutional structure parallels can easily be drawn from the OSCE to the European Union.

From this morning's Times ...

Government Reform Committee in House releases "proposed report" on Jack Abramoff's connections with the White House:

report (pdf)

Hey, in case you thought our Congress was in the grips of partisan bickering while the country grapples with high fuel prices, Iraq, tanking economy, etc. - not to worry. The NYT tells us that the "House voted Tuesday to designate National Watermelon Month and National Funeral Director and Mortician Recognition Day."

Awesome.

From the Politico:


Double givers, as we call them, are perhaps the best example of how money talks in Washington. You may spend a career in Congress throwing bombs at the other side, but once you become a lobbyist and need to deliver for your clients, all that is history.

So, if you haven't heard, the Senate has voted in favor of the Department of Justice conducting an investigation of Alaska Congressman Don Young for mysteriously inserting a provision into a piece of legislation AFTER it had passed the House and Senate but before the President had signed it.

The provision would have widening an interchange at Coconut Road and Florida's I-75 -- an interchange that would have been helpful to a developer who'd held a fundraiser for Young shortly before the earmark was inserted.

The House has not voted on this yet, but probably will soon.

It is certainly an unfortunate and scare precedent to have a member of Congress insert changes to a bill after it has already been passed. It also seems a commentary on the level of `favoring' that goes on in Congress to benefit campaign contributors.

It's not like we couldn't find some other way to spend the money on infrastructure, like some new bridges, say.

Some thoughts on the article in today's NYT about the McCain/Obama public financing question.

First, you can obviously understand Obama's reticence in signing up for public matching funds during the general election because he's raised about a gazillion dollars. So has Clinton for that matter.

As for Obama's claim that he has created a parallel public financing system, that's kind of a stretch. The idea of public financing is to create a SYSTEM that builds in incentives for candidates to raise money from lots of small contributions, like Obama has, by matching small donations with, say, a 3-1 match.

As for McCain, his campaign takes delight in blasting Obama for hinting that he is not taking public financing even though he said he would. But if you read the rest of the article, McCain's people say he is not committed to it either. He may not have said explicitly that he would take public financing during the general election, but one would certainly hope that he would considering how much mileage he is getting out of his self-styled identity as a reformer (aka maverick).

Yesterday, Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs unveiled its bipartisan Foreclosure Prevention Act. While it includes some generous tax breaks and credits for home builders, who will be able to write off in 2008 and 2009 major losses going back four years, it does not contain a bankruptcy provision aimed at helping homeowners in foreclosure. The bankruptcy provision would have empowered bankruptcy judges to reduce mortgage interest and principal for struggling homeowners.

Democrats have said they will offer the bankruptcy measure as an amendment, but it probably won't pass because it is seen as a "bailout" by Republicans.

Home builders, btw, gave $10,414,568 in campaign contributions in the 2004 election cycle, 78 percent to Republicans, according to Center for Responsive Politics. They gave $9,165,700 in 2006 cycle (76 percent to Rs) and $4,940,220 so far in 2008 cycle (64 percent to Rs).

Mortgage companies are also big fans of the new bill, whose contributions total $7,814,104 in 2004 cycle, $6,887,354 in 2006, and $3,372,789 so far in 2008 cycle.

You could say these guys are partly to blame for the whole sub-prime lending crisis, since they are the ones who helped drive it. They also made tons of profits in the process - obviously why they kept lending and building even in the face of obvious market distortions.

I wonder if they have learned their lesson? I am sure the countless families that wanted to own a home certainly have learned their lesson because Congress won't bail them out now. Democracy in action.