Having chewed over the story all day, I’ve come to suspect strongly that this business of a lobbying firm forging letters sent to Rep. Tom Perriello’s office could well be a Big Story™, the sort of thing that turns out to snake into the offices of elected officials, businesses, and lobbyists across the country. It’s possible that Bonner & Associates’s excuse is true—that some employee, all by himself, decided it might be fun to send fraudulent letters to a member of congress. But I think it’s significantly more likely that it’s not true, in which case a whole host of questions are raised.

If I were a reporter looking into this story, I’d want to get the following questions answered:

• On what client’s time did Bonner & Associates do this work?
• Did the client know about Bonner’s tactics? Did they approve of them?
• How many letters did Bonner send in all? To which congressmen? Under the names of what people and what organizations?
• Has Bonner done this for other clients?
• Has the client had other lobbyists engage in the same tactic?
• Where did Bonner get the idea to do this? Is this a tactic employed by others in the industry, or is this an invention of Bonner?

Here’s hoping we start seeing these answers soon. If Bonner doesn’t start talking, they’re going to find themselves the subject of a federal inquiry.

My friend and Sorensen classmate Tim Heaphy has been nominated for the position of U.S. attorney for the western district of Virginia. My class named him, if memory serves, the person that we most wanted to represent us, and that was agreed upon by Democrats and Republicans alike. Tim’s a Democrat, but inscrutably so (many of my classmates assumed him to be a Republican for months until he called up that he’s a Democrat), happy to agree with Republicans when they’ve got a good idea, happy to disagree with Democrats when he thinks they’re out of line. His father-in-law is, incidentally, General Eric Shinseki. I imagine he’ll sail through the confirmation process, and for good cause.

As U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello was considering how to vote on an important piece of climate change legislation in June, the freshman congressman’s office received at least six letters from two Charlottesville-based minority organizations voicing opposition to the measure.

The letters, as it turns out, were forgeries.

Thus begins the story in today's Charlottesville Daily Progress.

The person who sent the letter has not been identified, but he or she was employed by a Washington lobbying firm called Bonner & Associates.

Five of the letters purported to be from the Albemarle-Charlottesville branch of the NAACP, and one from Creciendo Juntos, and advocacy group for Charlottesville's hispanic population.

Gwynn Geiger Hegyi, a partner with Bonner and Associates allegedly called the forgeries "a mistake".

Sorry Gwynn, sounds like criminal behavior to me.

Needless to say, spokespeople for Creciendo Juntos and the Albemarle-Charlottesville NAACP aren't exactly thrilled that their groups were targeted by the Bonner employee.

I wonder if there will be any investigation of this by the Justice Dept. I'm certainly not surprised to see the tea baggers silent on this...

UPDATE: According to ThinkProgress, Bonner and Associates have a long history of deceit.

Protestors showed up out Bonner's offices after the forged letters were made public.

The Roanoke Times at its roanoke.com website reports on a visit Wednesday by Steve Shannon who the report indicates is running for Attorney General as the Democratic party nominee. The article notes that Shannon said he wanted to keep taxes low but increase expenditures for public and higher education, safe communities, and transportation infrastructure. Since Virginia must have a balanced budget, and is currently running a deficit, his proposals presume either increasing taxes or cutting other spending. He did not say which spending he wished to reduce. He also did not mention that other...

[Read More]

…and as your next Governor, he will put that kind of experience to work for the Virginia economy?

I kid you not — this was the “experience” that Deeds offered to Virginia’s farmers during a candidates forum today.

Deeds is in serious trouble.

Whoa. Normally, I've gotta get a bit of animal protein somewhere in my food, but tonight's dinner just worked out to be a very granola-Birkenstock-earther sort of thing. But, it was very good (for a first try), and that's all that really matters to me. I don't know what I'm...

It seems Steve Shannon's aimless and anemic campaign for attorney general continues to get mired down in low energy and blantant lies that aren't even clever.  They are lies that anyone who draws breath knows are lies.  Anyways, this new one comes from Shannon's supposed backyard, the Commonwealth's Attorney Service Council.  Shannon now claims he supports the special session to fix the Melendez-Diaz aftermath (previously derided as a "political stunt" before he was bitch-slapped by his own governor), and said Cuccinelli had previously not supported a bill to hire more lab techs.  Another lie.  But maybe poor Smilin' Steve  is thinking about some House bill that Ken didn't vote on because, you know, he serves in the Senate.  It happens, Steve.  It happens.  

Do you want to know how bad Steve Shannon is as a candidate?  Only a Democrat this bad could allow Ken Cuccinelli to put out a statement like this and it be the truth.

Senator Cuccinelli stated: "After initially calling my proposal a 'political stunt,' it is good to see that my opponent has reversed course and endorsed the proposal that I and Governor Tim Kaine bipartisanly agreed would be the best way to proceed in addressing the Melendez issue. It's too bad that he didn't show the leadership to initially stand with me and call for a special session.

Steve Shannon:  So Bad Ken Cuccinelli and Tim Kaine Agree!

Shocking news from Charlottesville today as the Daily Progress breaks that a DC lobbying firm forged letters claiming to be from Virginian community groups.

Bonner & Associates dispatched at least six letters to Congressman Perriello's office using the logo and name of Creciendo Juntos, a local Hispanic outreach group and the Albemarle-Charlottesville chapter of the NAACP voicing supposed opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act. Both groups supported the legislation, and Tom Perriello boldly voted in favor of the crucial measure that passed the House of Representatives by a 7-vote margin.

So to recap: polluters, desperate to stop clean energy legislation, pay a DC lobbying firm to libel two Virginia community groups, all the while claiming the letters (all six of them, which were coordinated using a logo and name) were a "mistake." Their efforts fail, as "Patriot Perriello" (as we like to call him around here... at my house...) does the right thing and votes for national security and a clean future.

read more

H/T to Vivian Paige on alerting me to this.

Aug. 2nd at 4 PM and 7 PM at Cinema Cafe in Virginia Beach. See “Dirty Dancing” and help fight Pancreatic Cancer.

More info here.

P R E S S * R E L E A S E
Southern Environmental Law Center
July 31, 2009

DOMINION'S WISE COUNTY COAL PLANT VIOLATES FEDERAL LAW, CLEAN ENERGY ADVOCATES TELL COURT

Contact: Cale Jaffe, SELC Senior Attorney, Cat McCue, SELC Communications Manager, Kathy Selvage, Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards

(Richmond, VA) Lawyers for the Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition told a state judge today that Dominion Power's 585-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Wise County violates the Clean Air Act on several grounds, and asked the court to invalidate the environmental permits.

During the four-hour hearing before Judge Margaret Spencer in the Virginia Circuit Court for the City of Richmond, Cale Jaffe and John Suttles, attorneys with the Charlottesville-based Southern Environmental Law Center, presented a detailed  explanation on how the permits fail to adequately limit emissions of (1) carbon dioxide, a chief contributor to climate change, (2) small particles of soot, which has been linked to lung cancer, heart disease, increased asthma rates, and premature death, and (3) mercury, which can cause severe neurological deficits in infants, fetuses and young children.

The State Air Control Board issued two permits to Dominion in June, 2008, one for hazardous pollutants including mercury and approximately 60 other toxics, and one for other emissions such as particulate matter. SELC, on behalf of the Wise County-based Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, Appalachian Voices, Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Sierra Club, challenged both permits.

Several residents of Wise County traveled to Richmond to attend the hearing, including Kathy Selvage, a coal-miner's daughter who has been the public face for the statewide effort to stop the coal plant, end the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining that is ravaging Appalachia, and compel Virginia to embrace clean energy sources, including efficiency and renewables.

"It seems no coincidence that Wise County was all over the news recently for the free medical clinic that drew thousands of people from my part of the state, many of them with breathing disorders. Coal dust from mountaintop removal mining operations hangs in the air every day, as does pollution from one of the oldest coal-fired plants in the state. Now Dominion is building another polluting power plant in our community. That's why we are in court today - to fight for the right to breath clean air, as well as to drink clean water and to keep our mountains whole,  as God made them."

Over the last several years, the Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition has raised a host of concerns about the Wise County coal plant, including air pollution and the health of the local community, water quality, mountaintop removal coal-mining, and the impacts of global warming. They were joined by 42,500 Virginians from across the state who signed petitions and sent letters and comments to state and company officials opposing the project.  

Have a good one, enjoy Friday:

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This Politico article about Democratic congressmen going home to angry constituents and they don't seem to understand the legitimate outrage.  Instead, they see them as unruly protesters that don't allow real dialogue.  Its a sign of good things for Republicans, because these congressmen aren't listening to this, they are shrugging it off.  Its a classic example of politicians putting the ideology of their president over the wishes of their voters.  Look at this choice quote from New York Rep. Tim Bishop.

“I had felt they would be pointless,” Rep.Tim Bishop(D-N.Y.) told POLITICO, referring to his recent decision to temporarily suspend the events in his Long Island district. “There is no point in meeting with my constituents and [to] listen to them and have them listen to you if what is basically an unruly mob prevents you from having an intelligent conversation.”

So "unruly mob" today stands for pissed off constituents not liking where the country is going and trying to hold their representatives accountable.  A congressman's job isn't to do the bidding of the Speaker, the majority leader, or the president.  They are there to represent their constituents, not talk down to them.  Last time I checked, the House was the people's house, not the president's.  The good news is hell's coming in 2010, the voters who work hard every day only to see their tax money thrown down the drain in car-for-clunkers schemes, trillions in "stimulus," and whatever else is being spent that does nothing to help anyone.  

On today’s show, Rush Limbaugh picked up on the argument that Andrew McCarthy made in his National Review column, which I responded to yesterday, and continued his not-very-subtle effort to give credence to birther paranoia:

Transcript:

RUSH: Oh, that birther thing, you know, the birth certificate thing. Andy McCarthy wrote a brilliant piece on this whole birth certificate controversy at National Review Online. Really, he says, it’s not about the birth certificate. It’s about Obama’s honesty. He hasn’t released his law school records, his law review records, his Columbia records, his university records. He hasn’t released a lot of things. This thing could easily be shut down if Obama would just release the birth certificate. You remember the Drive-By Media and the Dan Rather business? Dan Rather, faked documents. Mary Mapes and Dan Rather faked documents to show that Bush skipped out of National Guard service, and they ended up giving Daniel Rather an award! They circled the wagons. Peter Jennings and Brokaw, they gave him an award for great work. They circled the wagons.

They made it up, and now, “This is just a bunch of kooks. The birthers are just a bunch of kooks” and so forth, and everybody being told to avoid them and so forth. Obama could shut it down. There has to be some reason he doesn’t want people to see that birth certificate. Maybe it’s dual citizenship, who knows. But, as McCarthy points out: The birth certificate is not the point here. The point is we have a president of the United States who will not tell us who he is. He spends 20 years in an insane pastor’s church who practices black liberation theology, which is basically African socialism, and says he didn’t hear what I said. We have a president who doesn’t want people to know him. We have a president who wants people to know only the public vision or version that we get when he goes out and makes these speeches with the god reverb and echo behind him.

Limbaugh’s arguments are, of course, nonsense, but it’s becoming plain that this paean to “transparency” is the method by which certain conservatives are trying to make it respectable to indulge in birther fantasies.

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Well, I must say that this is a good sign:

Mr. Dobbs’ first began reporting on Obama birth certificate conspiracy theories on the night of Wednesday, July 15. In the roughly two weeks since then, from July 15 through July 28, Mr. Dobbs’ 7 p.m. show on CNN has averaged 653,000 total viewers and 157,000 in the 25-54 demo.

By contrast, during the first two weeks of the month (July 1 to July 14) Mr. Dobbs averaged 771,000 total viewers and 218,000 in the 25-54 demo. In other words, Mr. Dobbs’ audience has decreased 15 percent in total viewers and 27 percent in the demo since the start of the controversy.

Arguably, interest in cable news has slumped across the board since early July when attention over Michael Jackson’s death was still at a fever pitch.

But, that said, Mr. Dobbs’ ratings over the past two weeks, during the height of the “birthers” controversy, are also down significantly compared to his overall numbers during the second quarter of 2009 when he averaged 769,000 total viewers and 222,000 in the 25-54 demo.

Apparently, paranoid ranting doesn’t play well on television.

H/T: Donklephant

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