Inspired by Demophoenix, I decided to do a little more rummaging through the list of contributors to the various city campaigns. But where to begin? Big contributors obviously are of interest: why are they giving so much money? Money coming from out of the Panhandle area might also be interesting: why are they concerned with city politics in li’l ole Amarillo? And it also seems like overtly political contributors should be looked at; if you’re in the political game you probably have some agenda.
Bearing in mind those three criteria, one name leaps off Hodger the Dodger’s list: Duncan Hunter/Hunter for Congress of LaMesa, Calif., $1,000.
Hm. Who is this Duncan Hunter from California that’s suddenly developed a $1,000 Panhandle habit? The basic bio: he has been a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 1981, representing the 52nd Congressional District of California which covers northern and eastern San Diego County. He's the chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services. Well, okay. Not really my type of guy, but someone has to do those dirty jobs.
Unfortunately, the deeds get dirtier. And it doesn’t really look like Hunter is doing them dirt cheap, either, but we’ll get to that. Rep. Hunter has been described as “a loyal member of Team DeLay” who supported torture by refusing to hold hearings on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. All right, he did hold one hearing; he described that one as
an appropriate amount of time,saying his main job was to take care of troops.
In fact, Hunter doesn’t seem to have met an important recent investigation he couldn’t stonewall. He was the very first chairman of a congressional oversight committee to oppose the sweeping reform recommendations made by the Sept. 11 commission in its final report in July of 2004. At the time, he said
We are not going to be steamrollered in the Armed Services Committee.Then when even the Emperor W and House Speaker Hastert supported a compromise bill last November to overhaul intelligence gathering in the wake of the commission's findings, he lined up with radical regressives who torpedoed the bill because they wanted it amended to deny drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants.
Some cynics argued that much of Hunter’s stonewalling was directly tied to his own contributors—including Titan Corporation of San Diego, whose translators have been implicated in prisoner abuse. Titan did give Hunter $18,000, but surely that wasn’t enough to turn him to the dark side, not when Hunter was getting money from all over the place—including $5,000 from one Jerry Hodge of Maxor National Pharmacy Services of Amarillo, Texas.
No worries. I’m sure our local investigative journalists at the Amarillo Globe-Republican will dig and dig and dig and dig until they uncover the connection between Hodger the Dodger and Rep. Duncan Hunter.
SPACEDARK
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