>>> Looks like someone must have made a phone call to Texas Republican Rep. Kenny Marchant.
The Hill:
Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas) this week withdrew his support for legislation to prevent paid medical debts from affecting consumers' credit scores.
Sponsored by Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio), the proposal would prohibit credit-rating agencies from considering paid medical debts when calculating those scores.
"People shouldn’t have their credit worthiness suffer because they got sick or injured,” Kilroy said in introducing the bill last year....
Where does Marchant get a lot of his campaign contributions? According to OpenSecrets, Republican Marchant has received contributions from Finance/Insur/RealEst in the amount of $126,050 just for the 2010 election cycle.
*** Ohioans know that Republican John Kasich, a candidate for governor, was an investment banker for Lehman Brothers. While at Lehman, Kasich opened doors for Lehman to help them do business with the Ohio pension funds. The Ohio pension funds lost hundreds of millions of dollars with their investments with Lehman when it collapsed. The Ohio pension funds and many retired people, lost their money when Lehman went bankrupt. Even though Lehman knew that their company was failing, they continued to try to sell off toxic assets to private citizens and pension funds up to the final days of operating their business.
Has anyone found out how much of a bonus Kasich made when the pension funds invested with Lehman? Has Kasich released those past income tax returns yet?
The Ohio Republican Party, mostly Kevin DeWine, are trying to equate political donations to the Strickland campaign with Kasich's work on Wall Street. DeWine is really, really stretching it.
"We don't know what's more amusing, that Ohio Republicans want to inject Lehman Brothers into the governor's race once again or that they are equating circuit-board producers in Canton with Wall Street tycoons like (former Lehman Chairman) Dick Fuld," Strickland campaign manager Aaron Pickrell said....
....But the Strickland campaign said it has focused its criticism on Wall Street banks "and the reckless practices on Wall Street, not the homegrown Ohio banks who are working with the governor to provide access to capital for small businesses."
The liberal group ProgressOhio has done an analysis of Kasich's contributions and determined that $998,000 came from investment banks, hedge funds and related entities, while $437,000 came from the insurance and real-estate sectors.
>>> Trouble for Republican leader John Boehner's caucus? Salon has word that some Republican members of Congress have been involved in inappropriate relationships.
...Lobbyist Glenn LeMunyon, a former Tom DeLay appropriations staffer, holds well-attended fundraisers and "after-hours parties" at his Capitol Hill row house. Missouri Republican Sam Graves was photographed dining at D.C.'s finest beer bar, Brickskeller, with a blond woman who turned out to be a lobbyist for the Patriot Group, where she "represents health care systems, financial institutions, utilities, technologists, tort reform coalitions, oil and gas interests, and human rights causes at the state and federal level."
...Being a congressman is like being in college, basically -- you're far from home with no parents, and a lot of free time -- so obviously members enjoy going out and getting drunk and "hooking up," like the kids do.
Boehner is amazing. By the way, did you know that if Boehner is elected Speaker of the House, he wants to adopt the same political agenda of the failed Bush administration? Some people never learn.