Discrimination against black congressmen?

Is the fact that black congressmen are being charged with ethical violations evidence of discrimination or something else? The black officials think that the disproportionate rate that they are being charge evidence of discrimination. But they need a lot more evidence than just saying that there are differential rates that they are charged, such as the underlying rate that the black and other congressmen really do commit ethical violations. From The Atlantic:

. . . "I think," Cleaver said, "the facts speak for themselves."

The facts say this: African-Americans make up 10 percent of the House, but as of the end of February, five of the sitting six named lawmakers under review by the House Ethics Committee are black. The pattern isn't new. At one point in late 2009, seven lawmakers were known to be involved in formal House ethics inquiries; all were members of the Congressional Black Caucus. An eighth caucus member, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, had also been under investigation, but his probe was halted temporarily while the Justice Department undertook an inquiry of its own.

All told, about one-third of sitting black lawmakers have been named in an ethics probe during their careers, according to a National Journal review.

Only two members of Congress have been formally charged with ethics violations in recent years and have faced the specter of public trials -- Reps. Charles Rangel of New York (censured) and Maxine Waters of California (investigation ongoing). Both are black. There are no African-Americans in the Senate. Remember the most recent black senator, Roland Burris of Illinois? Reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee in 2009.

Those are the facts, as Cleaver said. The question is why so many African-American members have been in the ethics spotlight.

In interviews with more than a dozen members of the CBC, an unsettling thread emerges: They feel targeted. . . .

"NASA Scientist Accused of Using Celeb Status Among Environmental Groups to Enrich Himself"

The amount of money that Hansen seems to have gotten improperly seems to be quite large

The NASA scientist who once claimed the Bush administration tried to "silence" his global warming claims is now accused of receiving more than $1.2 million from the very environmental organizations whose agenda he advocated.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., a group claims NASA is withholding documents that show James Hansen failed to comply with ethics rules and financial disclosures regarding substantial compensation he earned outside his $180,000 taxpayer-paid position as director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. . . . .
Gifts, speaking fees, prizes and consulting compensation include:
-- A shared $1 million prize from the Dan David Foundation for his "profound contribution to humanity." Hansen's cut ranged from $333,000 to $500,000, Horner said, adding that the precise amount is not known because Hansen's publicly available financial disclosure form only shows the prize was "an amount in excess of $5,000."
-- The 2010 Blue Planet prize worth $550,000 from the Asahi Glass Foundation, which recognizes efforts to solve environmental issues.
-- The Sophie Prize for his "political activism," worth $100,000. The Sophie Prize is meant to "inspire people working towards a sustainable future." . . . .
Federal rules prohibit government employees from receiving certain types of income outside their job. Employees are required to file Form 17-60 in writing before any outside activity. And annually, they're required to submit Form SF 278, after receiving outside compensation. . . . .

David Protess founder of "Innocence Project" removed from teaching and forced to retire because of ethical problems

This is a pretty surprising event for academia: “You have the most lionized member of the faculty suddenly becoming somebody who is summarily removed from teaching with no notice and subjected to a kind of banishment." From the NY Times has this story about David Protess, a renowned journalist and professor:

But in a search of Innocence Project computers, the university turned up an e-mail from Mr. Protess to his assistant in 2006 that indicated the students’ reporting memos had been shared with the defense.

“My position about memos, as you know, is that we share everything with the legal team, and don’t keep copies,” he wrote, referring to Mr. McKinney’s lawyers.

But the copy of the e-mail he provided to university lawyers was altered to read, “My position about memos, as you know, is that we don’t keep copies.”

Mr. Protess said that he altered the e-mail to reflect the actual practice of the Innocence Project as he remembered it.

“Everybody assigns sinister motives to what I did, but my intent was not to mislead; it was precisely the opposite,” he said. “My part was due to memory failure about the extent to which I had shared student memos with the defense, and then I stubbornly stuck to that position when I felt ganged up on by everybody else.”

With the discovery of the e-mail, what had been a publicly united front broke down behind the scenes. At a hastily called faculty meeting at Medill on April 6, Mr. Lavine presented his colleagues with a PowerPoint presentation of statements and actions by Mr. Protess that the dean considered misleading, and asked for opinions. But by the time the faculty members got back to their desks, a press release had already been issued announcing Mr. Protess would not be teaching spring semester and making it clear he would not be welcomed back after that. . . .

Obama attacks Supreme Court Decision

Today in his weekly Saturday radio address, President Obama attacked "special interests" and pointed out how incredibly ethical that he and his administration has been. From the speech:

In my first year in office, we pushed back on that power by implementing historic reforms to get rid of the influence of those special interests. On my first day in office, we closed the revolving door between lobbying firms and the government so that no one in my administration would make decisions based on the interests of former or future employers. . . .

Here are three exceptions that Obama had made by March 17th, 2009.

William Lynn was nominated by Obama to be the deputy secretary for defense; Lynn was a lobbyist for the defense contractor Raytheon.

Jocelyn Frye, who is now director of policy and projects in the Office of the First Lady. She previously lobbied for National Partnership for Women and Families from 2001 to 2008.

Cecilia Muñoz, now director of intergovernmental affairs in the Executive Office of the President, managing the White House’s relationships with state and local governments. She has also been designated the administration's a principal liaison to the Hispanic community. Muñoz formerly lobbied for National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, between 1998 and 2008.

But it turns out that not all former lobbyists need to get a waiver to work in the Obama administration. Some apparently just need "recusals," where the former lobbyist agrees to simply recuse himself or herself from discussions related to former lobbying interests. How many former lobbyists are operating under recusals? We don't know.

Senator Grassley sent a letter to the Administration's Office of Government Ethics on June 19, 2009 asking for a full accounting of waivers and recusals in the Obama administration, but no response has been provided. That is good for both the ethics, transparency, and working across the isle promises.

Of course, Obama's address attacks corporations and "the health insurance industry" without even it also applies to unions or other organizations such as the Sierra Club that would benefit from the ruling.

As to special interests, note how the President just agreed to give the unions $60 billion in the health care takeover.

Ironically, at the same time that Obama is fighting to be able to censor movies and books, Hugo Chavez has gotten the one news station that disagreed with him removed from cable and satellite.

Venezuelan cable-television providers stopped transmitting a channel critical of President Hugo Chávez on Sunday, after the government cited noncompliance with new regulations requiring the socialist leader's speeches be televised on cable.

Radio Caracas Television, an anti-Chávez channel known as RCTV that switched to cable and satellite television in 2007 after the government refused to renew its over-the-air license, disappeared from TV sets shortly after midnight.

RCTV was yanked from cable and satellite programming just hours after Diosdado Cabello, director of Venezuela's state-run telecommunications agency, said several local channels carried by cable television have breached broadcasting laws and should be removed from the airwaves.

Mr. Cabello warned cable operations on Saturday evening that they could find themselves in jeopardy if they keep showing those channels.

"They must comply with the law, and they cannot have a single channel that violates Venezuelan laws as part of their programming," he said. Several channels haven't shown Mr. Chávez's televised speeches when he orders all media to air them--a requirement under new regulations approved last month by the telecommunications agency, Mr. Cabello said. RCTV didn't broadcast a speech by the president to his political supporters during a rally early on Saturday. . . .

Democrats face ethics probes this coming year

Charles Rangel, Bennie Thompson, Pete Visclosky, Max Baucus, and others face ethics investigations.

Ethics problems for two powerful US Senators.

Conrad isn't up for re-election until 2012, but Dodd is up this coming year. From the AP:

Despite their denials, influential Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd were told from the start they were getting VIP mortgage discounts from one of the nation's largest lenders, the official who handled their loans has told Congress in secret testimony.

Both senators have said that at the time the mortgages were being written they didn't know they were getting unique deals from Countrywide Financial Corp., the company that went on to lose billions of dollars on home loans to credit-strapped borrowers. Dodd still maintains he got no preferential treatment.

Dodd got two Countrywide mortgages in 2003, refinancing his home in Connecticut and another residence in Washington. Conrad's two Countrywide mortgages in 2004 were for a beach house in Delaware and an eight-unit apartment building in Bismarck in his home state of North Dakota.

Robert Feinberg, who worked in the Countrywide's VIP section, told congressional investigators last month that the two senators were made aware that "who you know is basically how you're coming in here."

"You don't say 'no' to the VIP," Feinberg told Republican investigators for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, according to a transcript obtained by The Associated Press.

The next day, Feinberg testified before the Senate Ethics Committee, an indication the panel is actively investigating two of the chamber's more powerful members:

—Dodd heads the Banking Committee and is a major player in two big areas: solving the housing foreclosure and financial crises and putting together an overhaul of the U.S. health care system. A five-term senator, he is in a tough fight for re-election in 2010, partly because of the controversy over his mortgages.

_Conrad chairs the Budget Committee. He, too, shares an important role in the health care debate, as well as on legislation to curb global warming.

Both senators were VIP borrowers in the program known as "friends" of Angelo. Angelo Mozilo was chief executive of Countrywide, which played a big part in the foreclosure crisis triggered by defaults on subprime loans. The Calabasas, Calif.-based company was bought last July by Bank of America Corp. for about $2.5 billion. . . .

Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf: It is time that real pressure be put on academics who refuse to share their data

I second Craig Newmark's remarks:

the authors of a massive--42 pages--lead article in one of the economics profession's top two journals--Journal of Political Economy--whose findings have been cited in the "New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, USA Today, Financial Times, Rolling Stone, ABC NIghtline, ABC World News Tonight, CNBC, BBC News, MTV, NPR, and Bloomberg Radio" have an extraordinary amount of responsibility. They should accept the burden of addressing careful, thoughtful criticism. They should, after a reasonable amount of time, freely share their data with other researchers so that their results can be studied, tested, and if need be, questioned.

Unfortunately, Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf, authors of "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis", don't seem to agree. Stan Liebowitz has sharply but carefully and thoughtfully attacked parts of the paper. So far he has had almost no response. And he would like to further examine the paper's main empirical results, but he has not been able, so far, to obtain the data. . . . .

Of course, this adds to others such as Steve Levitt, Ian Ayres, and John Donohue who have been reluctant to share their data either in a timely manner (measured in years after their research gets national attention) or never at all.

The irony is that Ian Ayres has written a book about extolling the value of empirical work when he has done well publicized work where he and his co-authors won't share their own data.