Congressional Earmarks: A Personal Conflict of Interest

Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) runs his local district office down the hall from where he runs his businesses worth hundreds of millions of dollars. According to the New York Times, his “dual careers” evince a “meshing of public and private interests rarely seen in government.”[1] While advocating for business in Congress, he split his holding company into separate multibillion-dollar businesses, started an insurance company, and retained a financial interest in his automobile-alarm business. At least some of his actions in government have made him richer.[2] Most notably, he secured Congressional earmarks for road widening and other public works projects that runs his local district office down the hall from where he runs  that he owns in his district. For example, earmarks that he arranged made possible the widening of a busy road in front of a medical plaza that he bought for $10.3 million. To be sure, his constituents applaud the easing of traffic, but what if the money would otherwise have been spent to relieve more severe congestion elsewhere? Even if no worse instances existed, that the congressman’s constituents benefitted from the street-widening does not mean that his action was ethical.

The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

1. Eric Lichtblau, “Helping His District, andHimself,” New York Times, August 15, 2011.

2. Ibid.

The Debt-Ceiling Disaster Flick, Hollywood-Style

During the last two weeks of July 2011, the American media was focused on the debt-ceiling negotiations. In the midst of a summer with plenty of natural distractions, an increasing number of Americans were cluing in to find their federal government at a stalemate as the clock ticked to a possible economic catastrophe said to begin on 12:01am on August 3, 2011. The U.S. Treasury department had estimated that it would run out of ways to make up for the lack of additional borrowing authority on August 2^nd.  To the media, that meant a clock ticking down to 12 midnight. In actuality, tax revenues were up so the actual date was said to be around August 10^th. In any case, the U.S. would not implode at precisely 12:01am on August 3^rd by any account, yet that made better drama, which in turn increased viewership.

The full essay is at "The Debt-Ceiling."