Dirty Money...

You Can Be Judged by the Company You Keep

The fact that Steve King doesn’t represent any recognizable Iowa values invites a pretty obvious question: just whose whacked-out values are these?

Or, to put it another way: Congressman King, ¿quién es su padre?

When King first ran for Congress in 2002, narrowly edging three other Republicans in the primary along the way and setting up the first party nominating convention in decades, almost two-thirds of his funding came from outside Iowa.

A lot of people outside Western Iowa shelled out a great deal of money to ensure that, instead of a legitimate representative and advocate in Congress, those of us who actually live here were stuck with Ann Coulter in drag, on an admitted mission to use his seat as "a leadership position that will be used to move the political center in Washington to the right."

Who do we have to thank? See for yourself.

In times of $3+ Gas, King GIVES OUR MONEY to the Oil Tycoons

Rep. King has been a good friend to the oil companies. Astoundingly, Rep. King has even voted against cracking down on the oil and gas industries' price gouging. The GOP energy bill that Rep. King voted for gave billions to oil, gas and nuclear industries. The oil and gas industries have been good to Rep. King as well, putting $8,450 in Rep. King's campaign coffers.

Keeping Heath Care Expensive

Rep. King has received $3,250 from the big drug interests. No surprise that Rep. King voted for the GOP Medicare Prescription Drug Bill that will give billions to businesses and the health care industry, bar Medicare from bargaining for lower prices, keep re-importation from Canada illegal and penalize seniors who haven't signed up yet.

Meet some of Steve King’s more interesting friends: the people behind his top PAC contributions:

The "Club for Growth" ($12,486/est. $140,000 from members)

The so-called Club for Growth contributed heavily to King’s narrow primary victory in the summer of 2002, pushing King to their membership and ran TV ads backing King during the primary election. By their own account, over $140,000 of Club for Growth money found its way into King’s coffers, along with over $12,000 from the Club itself.

The Club—a federal PAC connected to an unregulated Section 527 "soft money" organization—was founded in 1999 by Stephen Moore, a former adviser to right-wing Texas Congressman Dick Armey. Their mission is a simple one: to sing the praises of beast-starving economics, Social Security privatization, tax cuts for the rich, and limited government interference in the lives of Americans (provided, of course, that no persistent vegetative states or wombs are involved).

And how does the Club for Growth deal with anyone who doesn’t swallow the talking points? Why, with junior-high mudslinging, of course! Republican Senators Snowe and Voinovich, both supporters of George W. Bush, had the audacity to question Bush’s massive tax cuts for the rich back in 2003.

Therefore, they’re traitorous and somehow French! (And this is how they treat other Republicans.)

We can learn a lot of really fascinating things from the Club. For instance, founder Stephen Moore clues us in yet another looming threat to our freedom. It’s the Grey Menace, and it’s right in your backyard!

"I can say this because I'm not an elected official: the most selfish group in America today is senior citizens. Their demands on Washington are: 'Give us more and more and more.' They have become the new welfare state, and given the size and political clout of this constituency, it's very dangerous. One of the biggest myths in politics today is this idea that grandparents care about their grandkids. What they really care about is that that Social Security check and those Medicare payments are made on a timely basis."

That’s right, Billy. Grandma doesn’t want you to visit because she likes you; she just wants to lift your wallet while you sleep and head right for the pharmacy.

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ARMPAC/Tom DeLay ($15,000 in 2002 and 2004)

A big-time backer of Steve King’s campaign through his Americans for a Republican Majority PAC (ARMPAC), Tom Delay, the disgraced and indicted former House Majority Leader is, as Donald Rumsfeld would say, a target-rich environment. Where do we begin?

ARMPAC itself has an interesting and murky history. Formed in the mid-90’s in Tom DeLay’s hometown of Houston, one of its earliest supporters was yet another Houston institution: Enron.

And thus birthed by Enron, DeLay was on his way to being the poster boy for the Culture of Corruption, as well as using his bully pulpit for stances chilling enough to put Steve King to shame (if he knew the meaning of the word)…

• Sticking his big-government nose into Terri Schaivo’s personal business and then threatening judges who had the audacity to enforce the law?
• Using the resources of the federal government to hunt down Democratic members of the Texas Legislature after they protested his own illegal plan to gerrymander the state’s legislative districts?
• Attempting to coerce Washington’s lobbyists into becoming an exclusive arm of the Republican Party?
• Blocking attempts by his own party to end sweatshop conditions at factories in the Northern Mariana Islands at the behest of his moneyman, convicted felon Jack Abramoff?

At any rate, when DeLay and company were finally indicted in late 2005 on charges of conspiracy and money-laundering, how did his buddy and benefactor Steve King react?

Did he express regret, or hope that DeLay would someday walk the straight and narrow path? Did he return DeLay’s contributions to his campaign?

No, he did what any good DC Republican would do when caught on the wrong side of the law—blame the people enforcing it!

King said, "From a philosophical perspective, (DeLay) and I are on the same page … You can't run from your friends because one of their political enemies found a way to throw a legal hook into them. That is not what this country is about. I'm going to stand with him for as long as I'm convinced that he is the man I believe he is." (Sioux City Journal, 10/11/2005)

Up in Smoke

Other companies that have supported King:

Reynolds American ($9,000 in 2004 and 2006 cycles)
Altria Group ($4,500 in 2004 and 2006 cycles)
Philip Morris ($2,000 in 2002 cycle)

Reynolds American are better known as RJ. Reynolds, the people who brought you Joe Camel.
Altria used to be known as Philip Morris, and they’re the people who brought you the Marlboro Man. (Of course, Steve King isn’t the only Western Iowa politician Big Tobacco has an interest in.)

Smoke 'em if you got 'em!

Campaign for Working Families/Gary Bauer ($9,472 in 2002 and 2004 cycles)

The "Campaign for Working Families" (why do so many of these Republican groups inevitably have names that demand printing in sarcastic quotes?) is the PAC of 2000 Republican presidential candidate and Mr. Bean look-alike Gary Bauer, who spent several years in the Reagan administration trying to blame as many socioeconomic problems as he could on the fact that we just weren’t praying enough.

From there, he went to the infamous Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, where he was a protégé of radical "cleric" James Dobson (until they parted ways in 2000; Bauer committed the heresy of endorsing insufficiently right-wing Sen. John McCain after packing up his own campaign amid rumors of an extramarital affair).

But Gary Bauer is no ordinary dominionist: he dabbles in foreign policy, too! Bauer was involved at an early date with the Project for a New American Century. Along with convicted felon Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, his signature appears on the Project’s 1997 mission statement and 1998 letter to President Clinton advocating overthrow of the Iraqi government.

Eagle Forum ($8,000 in 2002 and 2006 cycles)

Eagle Forum was founded in 1972 by Phyllis Schlafly: for those of you too young to remember her, she’s the 60’s and 70’s version of Ann Coulter. She ranted and raved against the Equal Rights Amendment with a fervor and disregard for the facts that would have done Coulter proud, insisting that the ERA would bring about all sorts of horrors—unisex toilets, women in the armed forces, and same-sex marriage among them. (All of which came to pass before the ERA was ever ratified).

When she isn’t out preaching the joys of Kinder, Kirche, Küche, she’s developed the unfortunate habit (like Tom DeLay and Steve King) of threatening judges when they don’t agree with her.

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