Local tie-ins with federal scandal
McClatchy News had a big article yesterday on how the Bush White House gave federal agencies briefings on how to disperse money to vulnerable Republicans in tight races in 2004 and 2006:
Political appointees in the Treasury Department received at least 10 political briefings from July 2001 to August 2006, officials familiar with the meetings said. Their counterparts at the Commerce Department received at least four briefings — all in the election years of 2002, 2004 and 2006.
(snip)
During the briefings at Treasury and Commerce, then-Bush administration political director Ken Mehlman and other White House aides detailed competitive congressional districts, battleground election states and key media markets and outlined GOP strategy for getting out the vote.
Commerce and Treasury political appointees later made numerous public appearances and grant announcements that often correlated with GOP interests, according to a review of the events by McClatchy Newspapers. The pattern raises the possibility that the events were arranged with the White House’s political guidance in mind.
I’m going to comb through all the grants made from federal agencies to local Republican Congressman in 2006 to see how much of this went on locally. So far, I discovered that Kuhl got a 2.7 million dollar grant from the Energy Department a few weeks before the election — a grant Kuhl touted in this press release, which also quotes an Energy Department official at length, praising Kuhl for getting the grant (this is the pattern with these politically motivated grants).
It would be interesting to know if the Energy Department was given these briefings about helping Republicans as well.
Hatch Act and Grants…
Over at Rochesterturning, poster Exile asks whether the recent McClatchy investigation into the politicization of the grant-making process has any relevance to the 29th. The McClatchy reporters showed that grant announcements from agencies, and public …