By DICK MORRIS &
EILEEN MCGANN
Published on FoxNews.com on June
8, 2007.
The son of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert
moved to Washington when his father became speaker and landed a lush lobbying
contract for Google.
When Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House
of Representatives, she promised to change things -- to enact serious, and long
overdue, ethical reforms -- to stop the growing trend of legislators and their
families accepting gifts, trips, and jobs from lobbyists and
corporations.
Well, some things never change.
Several days ago, Newsmax.com disclosed that in
February, shortly after his mother became the first woman speaker, Paul Pelosi
Jr., was hired by InfoUSA for $180,000 a year as its vice president for
Strategic Planning. Pelosi also kept his other full-time day job as a mortgage
loan officer for Countrywide Loans in California. And, unlike all of the other
InfoUSA employees, he did not report to work at the company's headquarters in
Omaha, Nebraska.
InfoUSA is the same company that has been cited by
the New York Times for creating marketing lists that were used by con artists to
fleece vulnerable elderly people. The lists had provocative names and offered
the names of elderly people with cancer, elderly people with Alzheimer's and
gamblers over 55 years of age who think their luck will change. After purchasing
the lists, the con artists would call and convince the elderly person that they
had actually ordered an expensive item. Once they received the victim's
financial information, they often emptied their bank accounts, leaving many
people penniless. Some of InfoUSA's internal e-mails suggest that company
employees were aware that several of the companies they sold the lists to were
under investigation.
And InfoUSA is also the same company that Bill
Clinton works for as a consultant, and for which the former president was paid
$3.3 million over the past five years. In addition, the Clintons got $900,000
worth of free travel.
Pelosi insisted that the unusual job opportunity
had nothing to do with his relationship with his famous and influential mother.
He just sent in an application for a job and they hired him.
Of course.
History seems to be repeating itself here. For the
past several years, Josh Hastert, the son of former Republican Speaker Dennis
Hastert, was a registered lobbyist for Google. What were his qualifications for
lobbying for such a huge and influential company? Well, to put it bluntly, he
had good connections.
Before entering the world of corporate lobbying,
Josh ran a music store in northern Illinois. But he decided that he could make
more money and work less in Washington. And apparently, he was right.
Although Pelosi's son is not lobbying Congress, the
unorthodox payment of such a large fee for a second job to someone with no
experience at all in the basic business of InfoUSA -- managing data and creating
marketing lists -- should certainly raise eyebrows. (Also note, that this job
offer came immediately after his mother became Speaker.)
And, furthermore, it is likely that Congress will
eventually address privacy issues involved with the selling of data that InfoUSA
sells. Pelosi would be directly involved in that legislation, and her son should
not be involved with the company in any way. In addition, the company apparently
sells voter lists that could be extremely valuable to the Democratic Party and
could mean lucrative contracts for Infousa.
And then, there's the issue of what InfoUSA does
and how its president operates.
Several members of Congress have asked the Federal
Trade Commission to investigate Infousa and its clients.
The chairman of InfoUSA, Vin Gupta, is a large
donor to Democratic candidates. Minority shareholders have questioned his
payments to Bill Clinton and his gifts of free travel to Hillary. The
shareholders claim that Gupta has been improperly using corporate resources to
further his own political goals. Gupta gave over $1 million to the Clinton
Library and $2 million towards Hillary Clinton's $16 million millennium New
Years' Eve Party.
So, there's no question that Gupta likes to be
close to the powerful. He's stayed in the Lincoln bedroom and hosted the
Clintons on a $146,000 vacation trip to Acapulco on his corporate jet. Lately,
Pelosi's son has been accompanying Gupta on his jet. He claims that it's been
strictly business and is "nothing like the Clinton situation."
His payment to Pelosi's son can only be viewed as
an investment and should be stopped.
Nancy Pelosi should put on her "mother of five
voice" that she brags about and tell her son to go back to his day
job.
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***Copyright Eileen McGann and Dick Morris
2007. Reprints with permission only***