When "Fat
Albert" Wynn, the notoriously corrupt congressman of Maryland's
4th district kicked off his re-election campaign seven months ago, he
did what everybody else does. He called in his friends, he
leaned on his network. Wynn brought in his political soul mate,
the corporatist Democratic Leadership Council chairman and Fox
News commentator Harold Ford, Jr., a Memphis politician so craven that in an
appeal for white votes he once denied his own grandmother was Black. But Harold Ford stood with Al Wynn as one of only four African Americans in Congress to vote for the invasion of Iraq. Friends are friends.
Al Wynn's network has done a lot
for him over the years, and the congressman has more than returned
their favors.
When Big Oil,
Giant Coal and the nuclear industry, joined by hedge funds and
speculators demanding repeal of the laws that kept them from buying
utility companies, they showered Congress with $115 million between
2001 and 2005. In return for his share of the loot, Congressman
Al Wynn was one of a minority of Democrats to join Republicans in
passing the 2005
Bush Energy Bill. Wynn voted $6 billion in federal
subsidies to his benefactors in Big Oil; he put $9 billion in the
Christmas stockings of giant coal companies, he bestowed another $12
billion in corporate welfare on the nuclear power industry, and voted
for deregulatory steps that have already cost consumers and utility
ratepayers additional tens of billions more in the short term.
But hey, that's what friends are for.
In 2006 and 2007,
mammoth phone and cable companies like Time-Warner, AT&T and
Verizon invested a few hundred million in congressional campaign
contributions to preserve their right to digitally redline black and
minority communities nationwide. Congressman Wynn showed up for
his cut, and faithfully repaid
his donors by siding with House Republicans to keep broadband scarce
and expensive in urban and rural minority communities.
On the eve of the Iraq war in 2003, a
Gallup poll showed Black America to be the nation's most solidly
antiwar constituency, with opinion running better than 70% opposed to
the coming invasion. But when George Bush needed a large Black
exclamation point for his illegal and immoral aggression, Fat Albert Wynn
was ready to defy the voters of Maryland's 4th district, in the mostly Black suburbs of Washington, DC.
"Wynn voted for Bush's odious 2005
bankruptcy bill, protecting predatory lenders, denying a fresh start
to financially strapped families, and exacerbating the impact of the
current mortgage meltdown."
In return for his share of another
hundred million in campaign cash and favors from the banking and
credit card industries, Al Wynn voted for Bush's odious 2005
bankruptcy bill, protecting predatory lenders, denying a fresh start
to financially strapped families, and exacerbating the impact of the
current mortgage meltdown. Wynn is such a loyal friend to the
wealthy and powerful that he apes the political manners of
Republicans, using staged
interviews by fake reporters to field softball questions.
Fat Albert Wynn has worked to make it
easier for his wealthy friends to dump ever larger sums of money into
the campaign coffers of their favorite politicians. The 527 Reform
Act which he co-sponsored with Republican Mike Pence was
“...designed
to gut any limits on how much any single individual could contribute
to political candidates and parties. As a June 24 Washington Post
editorial noted, 'The Pence-Wynn ‘reform’ would let a single
donor give more than $1 million to a single political party each
election, not including checks to candidates themselves...'”
Wynn's friends nearly cost him the
election in 2006. Since then, he has joined the Congressional Out of
Iraq caucus, though he still votes for every war funding bill, and
has cast a few token votes against atrocities like the Military
Commissions Act. As mydd.com's
Matt Stoller puts it,
“Wynn is pretending to change his
stripes, and a lot of progressives are falling for it. Wynn is
one of the key backers of the removal of the estate tax, and he's a
genuine corporate corrupt Democrat... if you think he's changed, take a look through his FEC filings this year.
"Walmart, AT&T, Bellsouth,
Firstenergy, T-Mobile, Pfizer, Edison Electric, Progress Energy,
Sallie Mae, the US Chamber of Commerce.
"The US
Chamber of Commerce! This is the group that is protesting
dictionary-makers about the word 'McJob', trying
to get them to change the word to "reflect a job that is
stimulating, rewarding ... and offers skills that last a lifetime."
Wynn's challenger Donna Edwards, whom
he edged out by a razor thin margin two years ago, has a very
different set of friends. Edwards is a former head of the Arca
Foundation, the tag line on whose web site reads “creating real
change by empowering people to shape public policy.” True to its
word, under Donna Edwards, Arca funded community and civic
organizations that fought for good
jobs at living wages instead of McJobs. The Arca Foundation
donated money to community and civic groups working for a democratic
and just media rather than a regime in which a handful of
corporations own all our news, entertainment, along with the airwaves
and pipelines that bring them to us. The Arca Foundation has aided
organizations that counseled families facing foreclosure and
eviction, that have fought for fairer credit laws, national health
care and an end to the war. The Arca Foundation has enabled civic
groups to document the amounts and sources of money poured into the
political process by powerful interests that include the good friends
of Fat Albert Wynn.
When you stack the friends of Albert
Wynn up against the friends of Donna Edwards, the differences are
clear and instructive. And in politics, you judge people by their
friends.
"Prior to 2006,
Congressman Wynn scored consistently low in every report card put out
by CBC Monitor."
With his career at stake in the
February 12 primary election, Congressman Wynn filed a specious
complaint against the Edwards campaign, claiming that a “vast left
wing conspiracy” was in motion against him. When the Baltimore
Sun asked an experienced campaign attorney to review Wynn's
complaint, the attorney noted that “...the complainant doesn't
really have a clear understanding of ... federal law." Wynn's complaint was dismissed by the Federal Elections Commission. Maybe
that's not important, though. The congressman knows how to
answer the dog whistle of his benefactors, and so far, that's been
enough to get him over.
And he might be right, at least in
part about that vast left wing conspiracy thing. The forces arrayed
against Fat Albert are the people of his district and their core
values of justice, equality, peace and democracy. They are vast
indeed, and well to his political left. But those values and the
Maryland voters who hold them are no conspiracy. They are the people
and families of the 4th district. Prior to 2006,
Congressman Wynn scored consistently low in every report card put out
by CBC Monitor, the only organization that rates the political
performance of the Congressional Black Caucus, and many of his
constituents know it.
They're ready for a change.
Candidate Donna Edwards didn't approve the above message. But she did approve the one below.
{flv}donna_on_foreclousures{/flv}
BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon can be reached at Bruce.Dixon (at) BlackAgendaReport.com.
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