Hat tip to Boing Boing for passing along this juicy bit of Sunlight Foundation news:

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), a co-sponsor and major supporter of the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), deleted a retweet of an analysis of contributions to lawmakers from pro-CISPA companies.

[...]

Rep. Rogers, or possibly a member of his staff, retweeted the [Maplight] story that identified that members of the House Intelligence Committee “have received, on average, 15 times more money in campaign contributions from pro-CISPA organizations than from anti-CISPA organizations.”

Twenty-three minutes later, somebody with the keys to Rogers’ Twitter account realized how graspingly greedy and stupid this made Rogers look, and deleted the tweet — but not before the fine folk at Sunlight’s Politwoops Project had spotted it and archived it for posterity — and for kicking Rogers’ posterior. (Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Rogers himself got $214,750 from the pro-CISPA lobby, per the Maplight piece he retweeted.)

Over at Boing Boing, the commenters were wondering why White-Flight Rogers would be so Alan-Simpsonesquely stupid as to openly boast of his and other congresscritters’ corruption. What I and others think is the most likely explanation is that he apparently thinks that the amount of money a position’s lobbyist throws at you is what makes that position “popular” — you know, as opposed to, say, hundreds of thousands of people massing in the streets over it.

Thanks again, Sunlight and Boing Boing!

There was a bit of controversy in southeastern Minnesota recently when it was discovered that Dennis Egan, the newly re-elected mayor of the City of Red Wing, had taken a job as a lobbyist for a recently-organized lobbying group backing frac sand mining. As Greater Minnesota chronicler Sally Jo Sorensen notes, this was such a boneheadedly unethical move that even the pro-mining Winona Daily News asked “What was he thinking?” (My guess is that he figured that, since his being a career lobbyist for firms with Republican ties, a lobbyist so dedicated to his trade that he started and ran his own lobbying firm, hadn’t apparently set off any alarm bells for the voters of Red Wing, he could get away with having as another boss an entity determined to turn the beautiful bluffs of Red Wing and environs into huge sand mining sites.)

Calls grew for Mayor Egan to choose between his frac sand lobbying gig and his mayoral job, and early this morning — a Saturday morning, no less — he made his choice known: He kept the frac sand lobbying gig and dumped his mayoral post, his resignation from the latter to occur by April 1.

But here’s the Bizarro World coda to this affair: The editorial staff of the hometown paper, the Red Wing Republican Eagle, put out an unbelievable piece of chutzpah mourning Egan’s resignation as mayor, going so far as to say this: “While we wish he’d had the wisdom and foresight not to become executive director of the new Minnesota Industrial Sand over until Council, he did, and the resulting debate over holding both posts escalated to the point of a near lynching.”

Ahem. A “near lynching”.

A “near lynching”.

To help clarify things for the Republican Eagle editorial staff, Sally Jo Sorensen links to the story of James Cameron, who in 1930 suffered a true near-lynching, when he along with two other black men accused of killing a white man and raping a white woman was severely beaten but whose life was spared by the lynch mob, which chose instead to hang his fellow inmates from a tree in the courthouse square. (The lynch mob in this case was being relatively merciful: They did not castrate the men, nor did they douse them with oil or kerosene and set them on fire as they hung, two common practices of lynch mobs. They did, however, break the arms of one victim when he tried to get the noose off his neck.)

So when a longtime lobbyist decides he wants to become one of the elected officials his clients pay him to lobby, and he’s called out on this when he signs up with a mining lobby that wants to gouge great big holes in the area’s biggest scenic jewel and tourist attraction, to the Red Wing Republican Eagle editorial staff that’s exactly the same as being beaten to a pulp, but narrowly escaping being hung by your neck from a tree — or being mutilated and/or burned while you hang.

Words fail me.

The actual act of fracking isn’t the only controversial part of the fracking process. Mining the sand needed for fracking has its own problems, as Red Wing, Minnesota mayor and frac sand mining lobbyist Dennis Egan is discovering.

Many people were outraged at the gross conflict of interest embodied in Egan’s stances. But as Bluestem Prairie’s Sally Jo Sorensen noted, instead of immediately and publicly expressing their outrage, they quietly prepared for much more effective action:

As it turns out, the editorial board of the Rochester Post Bulletin aren’t the only ones calling for Egan to step down as lobbyist or resign as mayor. (Read the PB’s call at Our View: Red Wing mayor shouldn’t serve two masters).

Here’s the pdf we downloaded of the citizen’s complaints posted at the Red Wing City Council’s page. Since the city posted the 40-page document without redacting contact information, we’re not altering the file.

09F1 – Mayor’s Role MN Industrial Sand Council – CC 02-11-2013 

If Egan doesn’t step down from one post or the other, a recall effort will likely await him.

It’s not just the Rochester Post-Bulletin and the Red Wing City Council that are against Mayor-Lobbyist Egan over frac sand. The Ho-Chunk Nation, headquartered across the Mississippi River in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, is speaking out as well. And there are signs of greater official scrutiny as well.

(Fun fact: Egan may be the Mayor of Red Wing, Minnesota, but his Facebook page lists him as a resident of Saint Paul. Saint Paul is, of course, the state capital of Minnesota, and the place where a lobbyist would do much if not most of his or her lobbying in the state. How interesting.)

While reading this Huffington Post piece on the Hollywood Wants the Internet Dead Bill, aka the SOPA legislation, I encountered this interesting passage:

“In my experience there’s usually only one thing at stake when we have long lines outside a hearing as we do today, and when giant companies, like the ones opposing this bill, and their supporters start throwing around rhetoric like, ‘This bill will kill the Internet,’” said Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.), glowering at Oyama. “That one thing is usually money.”

Ah, yes, money.

And how much money are you getting from the SOPA lobby, Mel Watt?

Let’s go to the tape:

Among the 25 SOPA cosponsors from both sides of the aisle, here’s a breakdown of which legislators have brought in donations from big media in TV, music and movies during their careers in Congress.

[...]

Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C., $130,100

Hmmm, looks like they gave you over $130,000, Mel. Care to explain that?