GOP-led House quietly eliminates annual disclosure requirement for lobbyist-sponsored travel

[Triana]

On Monday, National Journal reported that the GOP-led House quietly stripped away a key disclosure mechanism for lobbyist-sponsored travel:

It's going to be a little more difficult to ferret out which members of Congress are lavished with all-expenses-paid trips around the world after the House has quietly stripped away the requirement that such privately sponsored travel be included on lawmakers' annual financial-disclosure forms.

The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee, reverses more than three decades of precedent.

All is not lost: The travel gifts must still be reported to the House clerk, which is responsible for disclosing them. But removing them from annual disclosure forms—especially without announcing the change—serves no purpose other than to make it harder to keep tabs on lobbyist-sponsored travel.

THE REST:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/01/1310910/-GOP-led-House-quietly-eliminates-annual-disclosure-requirement-for-lobbyist-sponsored-travel

[onehandle]

1. Impeach The House. nt

[woo me with science]

2. CORRUPTION

[JEB]

3. Fucking sum of the earth.

[Blue_In_AK]

4. Alaska's old Don Young (who we will hopefully put out to pasture this fall)

will be thrilled by this. In fact, he's probably responsible for it.

http://www.adn.com/2014/06/25/3534430/don-youngs-fondness-for-gift-hunts.html

<snip>

While Young may be familiar with the bog-slogging and bug-swatting Alaska experience in home-state hunts for moose and caribou, that's not the description of Young's hunting trips contained in the House Ethics report that rebuked him last week.

Those hunting trips, taken by Young when he was elevated to chairman of the House Transportation Committee and became sought after by lobbyists, contractors and developers, were often to luxury lodges where game lived behind fences and was raised to be killed by paying guests -- or, in the case of Young, by a guest whose stay was paid for by someone else.

The Mariposa Ranch in South Texas, for example, offers its guests exclusive hunting on 45,000 acres of scrub and ranchland. An executive of Kellogg, Brown & Root, the engineering firm that paid some of Young's 2006 expenses, described to House investigators how Young hunted nilgai -- an introduced Asian antelope.

"How it's arranged is that it's a 4-door pickup truck, and you have a guide who's driving you around, and these things are very skittish animals and they know the sound and the look of the trucks, so the minute they see you they start running. So the person who's to kill the animal sits in the front seat with the guide, and the partner sits in the back seat. Now, in that back seat, you have a gun too, just in case. And so you drive around, then you see one. The guide stops and says, 'OK, there you go, try to shoot it,' and you hop out and try to shoot the animal."

<snip>

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2014/06/25/3534430/don-youngs-fondness-for-gift-hunts.html#storylink=cpy

[Uncle Joe]

5. There's ethics and then there's "House ethics" and "never the twain shall meet."

Thanks for the thread, Triana.

[freshwest]

6. K & R

[Lurks Often]

7. The House Ethics Committee is equally divided between Democrats & Republicans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Committee_on_Ethics

and the article is misleading, it was the House Ethics Committee that made the change, not the House itself

"The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee," &

"House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Conaway, R-Texas, did not return a call for comment; ranking member Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., referred questions to committee staff. The committee declined to comment."

http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/congress-quietly-deletes-a-key-disclosure-of-free-trips-lawmakers-take-20140630

And yet the vast majority of Congress will be re-elected yet again in November

[woo me with science]

9. +10000 Bipartisan corruption.

[Lurks Often]

10. Agreed

[Takket]

8. BENGHAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!