GOP Commissioners Leak Confidential Info to Lobbyists

Financial Crisis Panel Commissioners Leaked Confidential Information To Lobbyists, Report Alleges

Republican commissioners on the panel created by Congress to probe the roots of the financial crisis leaked documents to partisan allies and shared confidential information with influence peddlers, according to a Wednesday report by Democrats on a Congressional oversight committee.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, sought to investigate allegations that the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was mismanaged by its Democratic majority, misused taxpayer funds, was compromised by conflicts of interest and colluded with Democrats in Congress as they sought to pass a financial reform bill.

Instead, the 400,000 emails and documents obtained by the investigative committee show that Republican commissioner Peter Wallison broke confidentiality rules by leaking documents to Ed Pinto, a colleague of his at the American Enterprise Institute, a prominent right-leaning Washington-based research and policy organization.

The assistant of Bill Thomas, the panel's vice chairman and another of the four Republican commissioners, shared information about the commission's hearings, targets and investigative direction with one of Thomas's colleagues at the law firm Buchanan, Ingersoll, and Rooney, one of Washington's top lobbying shops. In one case, Thomas's colleague, Alex Brill, asked Thomas's assistant in a March 31, 2010, email about an upcoming hearing on Citigroup for his "friend who represents Citi." The bank was concerned it would be unfairly singled out at its hearing, wrote Brill, who is also the chief executive of economic and political consulting firm Matrix Global Advisors.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/1 ... 97186.html


Golly... You can hear the surprise in *MY* voice.... :VeryScared:

You know, it's not like I can't see why Republicans are afraid of "big government". But what I don't see is why they aren't even MORE afraid of big government when it's obviously in bed with big corporations.

I can't think of anything more scary.

Like when Sen. Chris Dodd(D) was getting sweetheart mortgage deals from Countrywide when he was on the mortgage company monitoring panel?
Don't have to worry about new regulations if you bribe the regulators, right?

Insert standard "They did it too" response here: ______________________________

LJ I would think you would be overjoyed by this report considering the Republicans went after Republicans even though the original allegations were targeted at Democrats. So what's the problem? A crook is a crook. I think you just like to here yourself talk.

Odd that the public can't have access to this kind of information in the first place.

As it relates to what is currently going on with the "debt limit crisis", as the media has termed it... I wish mroe than anything we could have transcripts of each and every meeting available shortly after each meeting. I have a feeling both sides hammered out weeks ago what they're actually going to do, and now it's all theater from both sides. Somebody says too much here, somebody fights back on topic X, they're all supposedly mad at each other, and the people are happy because even if a compromise is reached, it was hard-fought and little-sacrificed.

The sad reality is that 99% of it, anymore, is theater. The US has such a large chasm between the left and right that it's easier to act like there is a disagreement then actually get anything done.

If we actually had access to this kind of information and the transcripts, we could make our own decisions on who is compromising, who is not, and there would be no more information to "leak". I say they do a full investigation from both sides, though, if rules were not followed. If they're going to hide it from us, and make it unethical (illegal?) to violate such rules, at least stand by what you say. It's the least I can ask of them.