One is left to wonder, though, if negative talk from the right upsets the democratic senator who appears to help the GOP more than the democrats. Republicans certainly appear to make her sing GOP-written tunes. It certainly appears that the more money a legislator has, the closer they will align themselves with the GOP.
Sen. Feinstein, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, whose husband's company has garnered billions of dollars in US Government contract related to the so-called war on terror has apparently had her 'Marie Antionette' moment! Feinstein seems to have been insultingly dismissive of the concerns of the majority of the country:
Now Feinstein has hit back at the criticism from the left in an article about lefty groups targeting Dems for waffling on key components of health care reform:
"I do not think this is helpful. It doesn’t move me one whit," she said. "They are spending a lot of money on something that is not productive."
theplumline.whorunsgov.com has the coments
Mr. Blum, Feinsteins's husband, is receiving hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in ways that seem to demonstrate a serious conflict of interest for one of our wealthiest senators.
thehilll.com has an intersting article about the conflict
The relevant piece says, that, in addition to the fact that she chairs the Senate Rules Committee, she is chairwoman of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies subcommittee, and until last year was for six years the top Democrat on the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies sub-committee, where she may have directed more than $1 billion to companies controlled by her husband. I wonder how much Feinstein had to do with the unprecedented, 10-year, exclusive, worldwide contract given to everyone's favorite -- Halliburton!.:
It may be irrefutable, but she almost got away without anyone even knowing what she was up to. Her colleagues on the subcommittee, for example, had no reason even to suspect that she knew what companies might benefit from her decisions because that information is routinely withheld to avoid favoritism. What they didn’t know was that her chief legal adviser, who also happened to be a business partner of her husband’s and the vice chairman of one of the companies involved, was secretly forwarding her lists of projects and appropriation requests that were coming before the committee and in which she and her husband had an interest — information that has only come to light recently as a result of the efforts of several California investigative reporters.
This adviser insists — apparently with a straight face — that he provided the information to Feinstein’s chief of staff so that she could recuse herself in cases where there might be a conflict. He says that he assumes she did so. The public record, however, indicates that she went right ahead and fought for these same projects.
During this period the two companies, URS of San Francisco and the Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass., were controlled by Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, and were awarded a combined total of over $1.5 billion in government business thanks in large measure to her subcommittee. That’s a lot of money even here in Washington.
Interestingly, she left the subcommittee in late 2005 at about the same time her husband sold his stake in both companies. Their combined net worth increased that year with the sale of the two companies by some 25 percent, to more than $40 million.
In spite of the blatant appearance of corruption, no major publication has picked up on the story, the Senate Ethics Committee has reportedly let her slip by, and she is now chairing the Senate Rules Committee, which puts her in charge of making sure her colleagues act ethically and avoid the sorts of conflicts of interest with which she is personally and so obviously familiar.
This SFGate.com mentions additional contract and potential conflict of interest concerns:
SFGates link
URS Corp., a San Francisco planning and engineering firm partially owned by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, landed an Army contract Monday worth up to $600 million.
The award to help with troop mobilization, weapons systems training and anti-terrorism efforts is the latest in a string of plum defense jobs snared by URS. In February, the firm won an army engineering and logistics contract that could bring in $3.1 billion during the next eight years.
Government contracting has come under increasing scrutiny by Congress and citizen groups, with critics decrying the political connections of firms winning lucrative jobs. Richard Blum, Feinstein's husband, serves on the company's board of directors and controls about 24 percent of the firm's stock,
according to Hoover's Inc. research firm.
A Feinstein spokesman Monday declined to comment on the contract.
Blum and several URS representatives could not be reached for comment. A Pentagon spokesman said he was unfamiliar with the contract.
Wealthy legislators, as a rule, will address the concerns and worries of wealthy Americans at the expense of regular citizens. Perhaps FDR might have been an exception but my 95-year old grandfather says that even he was mistaken. He thought that pride would force folks off of welfare. FDR knew very little of the extremely downtrodden.
But Recall that George W. Bush, at a gathering of political contributors President Bush had this to say to his audience:
"This is an impressive crowd: the have's and have-more's. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base."
Politicians take care of their base. Bush certainly did. It appears that Feistein does as well!
Update: First time on the rec list. Thanks!