Posted: August 6, 2012 at 7:53 am

Beltway Quick Hits

Flap over Messina Meetings with Drug Lobbyists

There was a story reported in Politico and elsewhere a few days ago, that Jim Messina had been taking meetings with lobbyists at a Coffee shop in Washington DC during the negotiations over the health care legislation in 2009 and 2010, when he was deputy chief of staff to Obama (he is now campaign manager).  The focus of this revelation, in the DC press, has been on the fact that Messina was also communicating by email with these lobbyists but did not hand over these emails to Congress when they requested them.  He is also being accused of having kept the meetings secret, intentionally meeting the lobbyists at coffee shops so that there was no official record of the lobbyists visiting the White House.

The GOP is claiming he thus broke the law.  Messina says that the emails and meetings were legal, and that the emails were from his personal email account, and thus private.  Perhaps he has a point.

But setting aside that issue, what’s of interest to the Cowgirl Blog is the content of the emails.  Messina in one exchange is assuring a pharmaceutical lobbyist that the health care law will be written so that it contain billions of dollars for his clients, the drug companies.

And yet it is the GOP that is complaining about this interaction with lobbyists.  Shouldn’t progressives be the ones raising holy hell about this?

 

Reid Going After Romney?

I’m surprised that Harry Reid has started throwing stones at Romney, about his taxes.  While the issue is ripe and the criticism accurate, if I were Mitt Romney, of all the politicians in the world I’d want attacking me, Reid would be at the top of the list.  This man is the head of one of the most incompetent institutions on earth.

The United States Senate, and the Congress in general, accomplishes very little, wastes money, runs up deficits, and passes legislation that compounds problems rather than solving them.  Congress’s approval rating is around 10%.  On large issues facing the country, like energy independence and corrupt financial practices of Wall Street, Congress offers no resolution and merely punts.   So I believe the Democrats have made a strategic error in having Reid be the public critic of Mitt Romney’s tax practices.

Then again, Romney is a real sheep and a poor politician, so I doubt he’ll take advantage it.  Romney likes to play things safe, and not mix it up.

13 comments

  2. Helena Boxes

    Actually, I disagree with Cowgirl on the Reid thing. He’s keeping alive the conversation about whatever it is Romney’s hiding in his tax returns, and what kind of shelters he’s used, etc. And it seems to have the Rebupli-whiners really bent out of shape. Dave Budge over at Electric City Fools is so enraged at Reid he can barely see and has ALMOST called for political violence. Read the civility here… http://electriccityweblog.com/?p=15079 … This is a great thing to have rightwingers bleating about, and I think Reid is playing this perfectly. Also, no one cares who Reid’s sources are. People want to know how much Romnay is worth, how he hides it, and how little he pays in taxes. That’s not going away, and beating up on Reid keeps it all alive.

    • Zippy

      You guys need to keep up with the news. The whole “look it’s a squirrel” distraction is starting to backfire on Reid, and his master, Obama.

  3. Norma Duffy (@Ilikewoods)

    There is a lot unanswered questions about the Messina stuff for me too, but why are we asking that now. Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda, We have a health law now, and it can be improved. Why dont we work on that! Its More Important to me, to make ACA work better for the country as a whole…. not coffee shop memos.

    Reid isn’t saying anything about Romney that hasn’t been verified. CNN now says they have conformation also from Bain insiders that Romney hasn’t paid taxes for quite a few years now.

    The there is the IRA snafu aw well were the presidenial canidate has hidden 100 million dollars in a tax exempt IRA with a ceiling of 6000 dollars? How is this Possible?

    If anyone remembers anything about Reid, it was that he was a pretty accomplished Boxer in his younger years… and I also have it on good authority, that he is a very tough negotiator behind closed doors. Apparently not the mild mannered and unflappable guy we see on TV.

    Anything he can do, to hold down Romney, until he gives up those tax returns, is okay in my book.

  4. Paul S.

    Seems to me what Reid is doing is great, but couldn’t we have found someone else to do it? Someone without a 9 percent approval rating- which applies to all of congress.

  5. Dallas Reese

    Rmoney claims to have paid a “lot of taxes” and he’s also stated that everything he’s done has been legal, including the oversees banking stuff. On top of that, he wants us to vote for him because he’s a job creator.

    Here’s my question: If Rmoney is the “job creator” he claims to be, why didn’t he invest his legally taxed money in American banks? American banks loan the money to small businesses and consumers and THAT creates jobs too. So, if Rmoney is this generous and altruistic “job creator” why wouldn’t he take the opportunity to creat even more jobs by investing in good ol’ American banks?

    • Heath Robinson

      Mainly because insider trading fully legal for Congress that Reid raked in millions.

      Reid disgusts me over Auditing the Federal Reserve. Baucus & Tester should be pushing for it too.

  8. Are you kidding me?

    I am a RN…I worked for 25 years in a large Operating Room….I fielded multiple calls for certain surgeons who had international banking deals to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to off shore accounts. (yup folks, your surgeon has to think about something when he is operating on you) And this way his soon to be ex-wife won’t find out….I understand completely….
    sorry….I’m a little off track…..
    Anyway,
    ….it is not a crime to avoid taxes on large sums of money. And it is not a ime to be rich.

    But, do I really want a US President who has that kind of mind set. It’s in my opinion a morality issue. Just because it’s legal and you can, doesn’t make it right.

    I hope Harry Reid keeps on pushing the Romney button. Like a cockel burr under a fancy dressler horse’s saddle. (that Romney gets to claim a $14,000.00 tax deduction for).

    Vote Obama 2012
    Vote Tester 2012

  9. Are you kidding me?

    It is not a crime to be rich….sorry if you can’t spell it, you can’t be it…..