Tag: moran

Why Jim Moran’s son Patrick will get away with domestic abuse.

Spoiler warning: it’s because the Democrats use the concept of “acceptable losses.”

Consider the story of Jim and Patrick Moran… and let us not make this a Democratic/Republican thing. Instead, let us go foreign: imagine that a report had come out that the son of an Australian* politician had been caught viciously beating his girlfriend in a drunken rage. The incident was witnessed by police, who made an arrest (getting assaulted themselves in the process); the victim went to the hospital, and allegedly treated for a skull fracture and a broken nose. Now also imagine that the politician HAPPENED to be a senior figure in his political party, and who HAPPENED to belong to a federal-level legislative body that HAPPENS to have direct oversight over the municipality where the attack took place; and that the politician’s son just HAPPENED to be able to plead down from felony assault to regular assault and probation. And, to cap it all off… the victim is in classic fashion sent out to claim that it was all an accident – and then the politician declares the whole thing to be an ‘embarrassing situation.’

If all of this happened on the other side of the world, do you think that there would be anybody credible – on either side of the American political spectrum – who would not agree that the politician needed to be investigated?

Anybody? Continue reading Why Jim Moran’s son Patrick will get away with domestic abuse.

Looking at the PMA Porkers: An examination of CQ’s List of Appropriators.

So, I crunched the numbers of the PMA defense budget earmarks (raw info found here), and came up with something interesting. Below are the top twenty current House members who have taken money from PMA and placed earmarks in that bill, sorted by cumulative donations. A “#” represents being on the Defense Appropriations Committee at the time, and Republicans are bolded:

Requesting Member Total Credited PMA campaign $ since 2001
Peter J. Visclosky# $23,800,000 $219,000
John P. Murtha# $34,105,000 $143,600
James P. Moran# $10,800,000 $125,250
Norm Dicks# $12,130,000 $91,600
Bill Pascrell Jr. $2,400,000 $73,200
Mike Doyle $1,600,000 $69,400
Loretta Sanchez $3,200,000 $60,118
Tim Holden $3,200,000 $57,275
Tim Ryan $1,000,000 $54,250
Michael E. Capuano $2,800,000 $54,000
Chet Edwards $6,040,000 $48,734
Silvestre Reyes $800,000 $42,300
Christopher Carney $5,900,000 $38,500
Paul E. Kanjorski $4,800,000 $37,150
Jerry Lewis $8,000,000 $34,649
Marcy Kaptur# $1,600,000 $34,500
Carolyn McCarthy $1,000,000 $31,500
Patrick J. Murphy $1,600,000 $29,250
Rodney Frelinghuysen# $7,300,000 $29,129
Ander Crenshaw $1,000,000 $27,300

Continue reading Looking at the PMA Porkers: An examination of CQ’s List of Appropriators.