Saturday, September 15, 2007

Is Barbour profiting from Katrina?

Opinion - Vicksburg Post

Type:  Essay
Author:  Charlie Mitchell
Publisher:  Sun Herald

Remember Foghorn Leghorn, that big cartoon rooster with an overdeveloped sense of self-righteousness?

While reading about the Bloomberg News vs. Haley Barbour situation, I could almost hear Foghorn saying, “Why, suh, ah say, you know that down in Mississippi, we have a certified, bona fide ethics commission.”

A logical question would follow, “What does it do?” And the riposte from Foghorn would be, “Well, of course, ah can’t tell you that. Secret, you know. Very secret.”

In a nutshell, the Bloomberg-Barbour situation is this: The financial news service reported in August that Barbour was still an owner of the lobbying firm he created in 1991 in Washington, D.C., when he became governor here in 2004 and that he now receives $25,000 a month from it via a “blind trust” of which the Mississippi Ethics Commission is aware and has given its blessing.

The nature of the income is significant because the firm, which still operates under the name Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, represented clients in 2006 who were lobbying in Mississippi for Hurricane Katrina recovery contracts. If payments to Barbour were part of a fixed pension plan, that would be one thing. If the payments were related to how well the firm was doing or were profit-sharing, then that would put the governor in the position of receiving, in a roundabout way, personal wealth as a consequence of the devastating storm.

Read more by clicking on Sun Herald link above.

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