Political Skullduggery

Today's main installment in our continuing coverage of the theft of the nation's riches by suit-wearing crooks--deals, as is too often the case, with lobbyists and earmark-related shenanigans.

At issue is a symbiotic relationship between lawmakers well positioned to slip special-interest projects into legislation, and wealthy lobbying groups that raise large sums of campaign funds or provide trips and other benefits to those lawmakers.

In the latest example of these backstage dealings, Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) told The Washington Post that he helped steer defense funding, totaling $37 million, to a California company, whose officials and lobbyists helped raise at least $85,000 for Doolittle and his leadership political action committee from 2002 to 2005.

Brent Wilkes, a director of the company, PerfectWave Technologies LLC, and a major contributor to House Republican leaders, was identified as "Co-conspirator No. 1" in criminal charges brought against Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) late last year. Cunningham pleaded guilty in November and resigned from Congress after admitting he conspired to take $2.4 million in bribes in return for using his office to help Wilkes and another defense contractor, in part by placing earmarks in defense appropriations bills.

This Wilkes MoFo keeps popping up everywhere these days.

With so much money at stake, some strategy to maximize profits has to be implemented:

The link between special interests and members of Congress has grown so tight that nearly a dozen House and Senate members who control federal spending have retained lobbying veterans to raise campaign funds for them, and those lobbyists have secured lucrative favors in spending bills.

These relationships have coincided with the rapid growth in the volume of home-state pork-barrel projects, commonly called earmarks, that have swelled appropriations bills in recent years, according to congressional experts and watchdog groups.

"It's the currency of corruption," Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said of appropriations earmarks.

It's "hard work" being a lawmaker with the occupational hazards in a seductive environment:

Once a backwater for boutique lobbying shops, the House and Senate Appropriations committees are fueling a lobbying boom in Washington. The hunt for earmarks has become so consuming that lawmakers are neglecting other duties, said Scott Lilly, who recently retired as chief Democratic aide on the House Appropriations Committee. Last year, the committee received 10,000 requests for home-district projects on one spending bill alone -- 25.4 projects per lawmaker, said committee spokesman John Scofield.

"It has become an obsession of the Congress," Lilly said. "That's all they do."

It's kinda like when the first flush of success comes to a rock band.

All of a sudden, otherwise ordinary guys are surrounded by chicks and coke.

Sometimes the music gets neglected.