Category Archives: Presidential campaign

Shadow Lobbying in DC on Policy, it’s Dark

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There is a certain Senator who generated a mission to Make DC Listen, knowing that individual American voices were drowned out by power, money and influence.

Hat tip to the Sunlight Foundation for this summary.

What is shadow lobbying? How influence peddlers shape policy in the dark

Earlier this year, we asked you to help us find out which Democratic superdelegates are also lobbyists. We didn’t want to limit it to just registered lobbyists, because there’s an increasing number of people in Washington who do what most of us would think of as lobbying activity, but avoid registering — known as “shadow lobbyists.” But that left us, and our readers, with some questions: What exactly is a shadow lobbyist? How do they avoid registering? How did we get here?

What is shadow lobbying?

Shadow lobbying refers to someone who performs advocacy to influence public policy, like meeting legislators or their staff, without registering as a lobbyist — and it’s a big problem for anyone who cares about transparency in Washington. (For further reading on this topic, you can’t do better than to read Lee Fang’s 2014 investigation of shadow lobbying at The Nation.)

If you just looked at the number of federal registered lobbyists, you would think lobbying was a dying profession. Since a peak of 14,829 registered lobbyists in 2007, the number has steadily declined; in 2015, it was 11,504. But it’s not that the lobbyists have packed up their offices and left D.C. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the amount of money spent on lobbying has remained near its 2009 peak, even as the number of lobbyists has supposedly decreased: In 2015, $3.21 billion was spent on lobbying, down only slightly from $3.5 billion in 2009. (Some estimate that number, which is based on reported spending on lobbying registrations, is actually up to three times higher; we’ll get to that later.)

Shadow lobbying is also sometimes known as the “Daschle Loophole,” named after Tom Daschle. A former senator from South Dakota, Daschle worked as a “policy adviser” at lobbying shops like Alston and Bird and global firms like DLA Piper after leaving the Senate, but never registered as a lobbyist. As The Huffington Post pointed out, that doesn’t mean his clients didn’t “receive the full benefit of his contacts and expertise, and that those assets can’t be used to influence legislation.” Last month, Daschle unexpectedly registered as a lobbyist; however, there are many who followed his blueprint of behind-the-scenes influence.

After years of lobbying, Daschle finally registers as a lobbyist

The pioneer of shadow influencing has put on paper what many have known for years — that he is, in fact, a lobbyist.

So where did all the lobbyists go?

The simple answer is nowhere. They’re still here — they just stopped registering as lobbyists.

The system of lobbying registration has never been ideal. Lee Fang notes that a General Accounting Office study in 1991 revealed more than 10,000 lobbyists who had failed to register, and of those who did register, “94 percent failed to complete their registration forms as required by law.” The 1995 Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA), while far from perfect, cleaned up the system and clarified the definition of lobbying. In 2007, following the Jack Abramoff scandal, Congress passed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA), which extended the “cooling off” period — the period of time after a lawmaker or their top staff leaves Congress during which they are forbidden from lobbying.

As the law stands now, lobbyists are required to register if they spend at least 20 percent of their time lobbying on behalf of a client, or if they make at least two contacts with covered government officials (members of the House or Senate, their staff and select members of executive agencies). Firms are also exempt from registration if their total income from an individual client is less than $3,000 per quarter.

The problem is that this threshold is reasonably easy to get around. I spoke to James Hickey, the president of the Association of Government Relations Professionals (AGRP), formerly the American League of Lobbyists. (That’s right: Even the people who represent lobbyists no longer call themselves lobbyists.1) He believes the 20-percent threshold doesn’t work as a way to measure lobbying activity: “Personally, and it’s not AGRP’s position, it’s mine, I think anybody who lobbies should register” — whether it makes up 20 percent of their time or not.

Hickey said there should be some exceptions — people “that ask their CEO to come in one day of the year for a fly-in to talk to half a dozen members,” for example, shouldn’t register. But “as long as that 20 percent threshold exists,” he said, “there’s no way those who are in charge of enforcement can keep tabs on what are roughly estimated to be 20,000 lobbyists in Washington, D.C.” (Hickey told me that he registers even though he doesn’t hit the 20 percent threshold because of his position as president of the AGRP.) The Government Affairs Yellow Book, for example, includes information for 23,000 “government affairs professionals” in Washington, more than twice the current number of registered lobbyists.

There’s data to back this up, too. According to a 2012 study by the Center for Responsive Politics:

More than 46 percent of the active 2011 lobbyists who did not report any activity in 2012 are still working for the same employers for whom they lobbied in 2011 — supporting the theory that many previously registered lobbyists are not meeting the technical requirement to report or have altered their activities just enough to escape filing.

American University Professor James Thurber, who’s studied lobbying for more than 30 years and served on the American Bar Association’s Lobbying Task Force when it recommended strengthening lobbying laws, said, “Anyone who is paid to influence public policy, we should know about it” — whether it’s Boeing or the Boy Scouts. Thurber thinks there are around 100,000 people working in lobbying and advocacy in Washington.

Another lobbyist I spoke to, Paul Kanitra, agreed that there are those in D.C. who “take advantage” of the “gray area” created by the lobbying disclosure laws. He runs a firm called LobbyIt that focuses on smaller clients, and its ethos is very different to other lobbying firms. Its website claims, “Large corporations and their high priced representation have a stranglehold on the Capitol,” describing the firm as a “new breed of lobbyists [who] know the United States is supposed to be a government of the people and for the people.” Kanitra argued that the obvious value for a lobbying firm of hiring a former lawmaker is their contacts, saying, “I have to imagine they aren’t sitting the members of Congress down and having them do research and write white papers all day long.”

Why would a lobbyist want to avoid registering?

There are a lot of reasons. It’s certainly possible that lobbyists might not want the public to know that their client is lobbying Congress, or how much they’re spending on it, but that wouldn’t explain the big drop in lobbying registrations after 2007. One big explanation is the passage of HLOGA in 2007, which tightened disclosure and penalties for registered lobbyists, which we wrote about in 2014: “Before these changes in the rules, individuals registered under the LDA just in case. There was no downside. Now, being a registered lobbyist subjects people to additional campaign finance disclosure and gift rules, as well as steep civil and criminal penalties for non-compliance. So, political lawyers simply say don’t register.”

Hickey pointed, as many others have, to the Obama administration’s 2009 decision to bar former lobbyists from working on “regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years” in his White House, saying it had a big effect on lobbyists: “If by being registered I preclude myself from that opportunity, then I think I’m going to have to look carefully at exactly my threshold and how much I lobby, and if I can justify the fact that I don’t do 20 percent or more, then I’m going to go ahead and deregister.” Thurber thinks that while the 2009 rule did have a big impact, along with the 2007 law, shadow lobbying has been a problem since “well before” those changes. “Basically, there has been no serious enforcement for decades,” Thurber said. “That did not change with the 2007 reform, except there was a surge in de-registrations after 2007.”

He’s right: There is very little enforcement of the Lobbying Disclosure Act. The Department of Justice has never brought criminal charges against anyone for failing to register as a lobbyist. According to Fang, “The Justice Department has largely pursued cases in which a registered lobbyist has failed to update a quarterly statement or fallen delinquent, and the House clerk or Senate secretary has spotted the error.” (I reached out to the Department of Justice to check if any cases had been filed since Fang’s article; they told me that their “office is unaware of any criminal cases brought under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has not brought a criminal case under the LDA.”). Kanitra pointed out that those who do register actually put themselves more at risk of investigation than those who just circumvent the system entirely, because they’re then open to being penalized for submitting registrations late or putting something incorrect on their registration forms.

Thurber says we could know a lot more about shadow lobbying than we do. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) does an audit of lobbying disclosure, examining how well lobbyists comply with the registration compliance — but it only looks at those who are registered. The audit doesn’t scrutinize “people who are actually lobbying but are not registered, which is what’s going on mainly in town.” He says the GAO has that authority “to look at all kinds of advocacy” under the existing law, but doesn’t.

What can be done to shine a light on shadow lobbying?

Some, like Thurber, advocate for expanding the definition of lobbying activity to include marketing, public relations and advertising costs. He believes if you include “all the ads, all the shadow lobbyist activities, all the marketing,” the money spent on lobbying is more like $9 billion. Many lobbying firms also have in-house strategic communications arms, and those sorts of services aren’t cheap — and neither are TV ad campaigns. The Glover Park Group, which received $7 million in lobbying income in 2015, boasts about its content creation services on its website:

GPG’s creative group melds left-brain and right-brain thinking to create campaigns that drive conversation, educate, persuade, sell and move to action.

It’s the story that matters, whether we tell it through a new website or blog, traditional ads, such as TV, radio, newspaper and magazine ads, billboards or bus wraps, or interactive and native ads across the social, mobile web. We use every tool available: photos and videos, infographics and sharegraphics, informational one-pagers and brochures, chart packs, slide decks, reports and white papers, and more.

Whether it’s a 30-second spot on national TV or an interactive digital ad on a news site, our creative output is stronger and more effective because it’s built on the input that only GPG’s combination of research and experience can provide.

But other lobbyists I spoke to disagreed with Thurber’s proposal. Hickey said, “Public relations is really a different discipline. Sometimes they overlap and sometimes they coordinate, but your goal for public relations is really company brand or product brand than it is for influencing legislation.” He argues: “If there’s no reference to that legislation, then it’d be hard for anyone to say that clearly falls in the realm of lobbying.”

Paul Kelly, a registered lobbyist and member of AGRP, concurred, saying these activities are protected by the First Amendment right to petition one’s government and that “policymakers ought to be very careful about treading into those waters to regulate those activities.”

Even Kanitra, who describes himself as an advocate for transparency and open government, sees problems with this idea. “The problem is, to find a definition that can’t be worked around is so incredibly difficult. I’m open to somebody telling me a specific threshold or a specific approach that would work that would actually wind up having an effect on the people who are abusing it now as opposed to the little guys.”

It’s certainly likely that some, maybe many, lobbyists would continue to find ways around any new regulation on registration. A good start would be enforcement of the existing law; until someone is held accountable for breaking the rules and circumventing the system, the laws have no weight. It’s also clear that there’s no shortage of informed ideas about reforms that could make the system work better, from the ABA Task Force recommendations to Thurber’s modest suggestion that congressional offices keep records of everyone who contacts them.

There will always be lobbying in Washington, and that’s not a bad thing. But it doesn’t have to stay in the shadows.

al Qaeda in Syria, Heavy Recruiting

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Al Qaeda-linked cleric leads new recruiting campaign for jihadists in Syria

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Screen Shot 2016-04-28 at 7.12.19 PM

LWJ: Sheikh Abdallah Muhammad al Muhaysini, one of the most influential jihadist ideologues in Syria, has launched a new recruiting campaign that aims to indoctrinate thousands of young men. The mobilization effort, named “Take Up Arms, Do Not Sit Still,” began online and throughout Syria on Apr. 20.

One of the first propaganda videos released for the effort shows Muhaysini speaking in front of a large crowd at a refugee camp. The Saudi cleric, who is linked to al Qaeda, is treated like a rock star at the event. The rally was supposedly led to between 200 and 300 new recruits joining the jihadists’ cause.

Muhaysini begins his speech by blasting Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, Iran and Hezbollah. A clip of Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, is played. “If the battle with those terrorists and takfiris needs me and all Hezbollah to go to Syria, we will go to Syria,” Nasrallah promises.

Muhaysini responds, “We say come, and we swear by Allah we will [introduce] you to the dogs of Sham.”

The jihadist cleric continues by saying that the refugees in the camp had their homes destroyed by Assad and suffered from his barrel bombs. Muhaysini points to an empty tent that he says will be filled with the “new mujahideen,” who “will fill the land of Sham with the blood of the Russians” and the Iranians.

16-04-28 Refugee camp where Muhaysini spoke 2

The video, which is just over 10 minutes long and includes English subtitles, is well-choreographed. It appears that a commercial drone was used to shoot footage from overhead. For instance, an aerial shot of the camp (seen on the right) plays as Muhaysini criticizes the youth who live there for failing to join the jihad.

“O you here, know I love you,” Muhaysini says, before imploring the camp’s youth to join the jihadists. He preaches the virtues of martyrdom: “Allah’s religion is awaiting you. What makes you sit? O you hero, are you afraid of martyrdom? Do you know what martyrdom is? It is one bullet in the cause of Allah which makes you leave the life. Then you will become alive in Gardens of Eternity by the Lord of the Worlds.”

Muhaysini calls for all willing males over the age of 15 to make their way to the empty tent. Young men and adolescents then stream in, committing themselves to the jihad against Assad and his allies.

In a second, longer video, Muhaysini is joined by three others and together they explain the purpose of the recruiting drive. The additional men are Abu Namis (a military commander in Liwa al Haq), Sheikh Muslih al Alyani (deputy chair of the Jihad’s Callers Center, which is headed by Muhaysini), and Dr. Ayman Harush (a lecturer at the University of Aleppo).

Muhaysini says the “zeal” of sharia officials in his Jihad’s Callers Center and their comrades in the Scholars League of the Levant, which is another association of sharia officials in Syria, led to the effort. The campaign does not serve any single faction, Muhaysini says, and 200 officials from different groups have spread out across Syria to proselytize.

The Saudi cleric explains how a new recruit is assigned to an organization. Once a young man agrees to join, he is sent to the “central command of the campaign,” which coordinates across the various factions and decides where he goes. They all receive sharia instruction, but only the best are armed. Between 400 and 500 new mujahideen have been selected thus far, according to Muhaysini, who says that they hope to attract 5,000 new jihadists.

Muhaysini says Syrians, including those who fled to Turkey, are being recruited and he hopes that the ideology of jihad takes root throughout the Levant, beyond the immediate call to arms. He adds that the campaign is a response to the Iranian-backed popular mobilization forces fighting in Iraq and Syria, as well as the Shiites’ mobilization throughout the region. Muhaysini criticizes the Sunni scholars who refuse to mobilize the Sunni youth to counter their Shiite adversaries in Iran and Hezbollah.

Harush, the lecturer in Aleppo, justifies the jihad as a defensive one, saying that Iran has brought in fighters from throughout the Middle East to attack the Sunnis. And Abu Namis, the Liwa al Haq official, says that the Sunni factions do not have a surplus of fighters, as some claim. Abu Namis calls on foreign fighters to join their Syrian counterparts.

Muhaysini wears multiple hats inside Syria. In addition to being the chairman of the Jihad’s Callers Center, he is a senior judge in Jaysh al Fath, a rebel coalition that overran the Idlib province in 2015. Jaysh al Fath was co-founded by Al Nusrah Front, which is al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, and another al Qaeda-linked group, Ahrar al Sham.

Muhaysini and some of his supporters online refer to him as an “independent” jihadist. The Long War Journal assesses that this is unlikely and he is probably a senior al Qaeda sharia official. He has numerous connections to al Qaeda’s international network.

He was a student of Sulayman Al Alwan, a jihadist cleric responsible for indoctrinating some key figures within al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission found that al Alwan even instructed one of the 9/11 hijackers. Muhaysini has defended and spoken fondly of al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri. In 2014, Muhaysini even issued a proposal for jihadist reconciliation that was timed to coincide with Zawahiri’s own. The initiative was intended to reconcile the Islamic State with its jihadist rivals in the Al Nusrah Front and Ahrar al Sham. While the latter parties agreed to the plan, the Islamic State rejected it.

Muhaysini works closely with Al Nusrah Front and other al Qaeda groups in Syria, such as the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) and similar ethnic jihadist brigades. His work has been featured in Al Masra, an al Qaeda newsletter launched earlier this year, as well as in the Taliban’s literature. Muhaysini’s popular social media sites are regularly littered with references to al Qaeda, including eulogies for senior al Qaeda operatives killed in American airstrikes.

Numerous al Qaeda-affiliated social media accounts are promoting Muhaysini’s new recruiting campaign.

Images and advertisements from the “Take Up Arms, Do Not Sit Still” campaign

The youth answer Muhaysini’s call to arms:

16-04-27 Attendees say they will answer Muhaysini's call to arms

16-04-27 Attendees say they will answer Muhaysini's call to arms 2

Men and youth enter the recruiting tent set up at a refugee camp:

16-04-27 Youth entering the recruiting tent 1

16-04-27 Youth entering the recruiting tent 2

16-04-27 Youth entering the recruiting tent 3

Another overhead shot, perhaps recorded by drone, from the event at a refugee camp:

16-04-27 Overhead shot of recruiting event at refugee camp

New recruits watching an Al Nusrah Front video:

16-04-22 Photos from recruiting campaign 7 (watching Nusra video)

Some of the campaign’s new recruits:

16-04-25 Photo of recruits

A banner calling for donations:

16-04-24 Banner calling for donations w:number

An attendee at one of the events records Muhaysini on his phone:

16-04-25 Photo from campaign w Muhaysini in phone

Clintons Paying Legal Fees for email Server Agent

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In 2014, the Hillary server domain registration was changed to Perfect Privacy, a proxy company that allows domain users to shield their identities. It’s a common practice among domain owners who don’t want their personal information listed on a public database.

Per Gawker: A source says at least two top Clinton aides used her private email accounts to conduct government business, putting their official communications outside the control of federal record-keeping regulations.

The source named Philippe Reines and Abedin as the employees who used Clinton’s private email addresses in the course of their agency duties.

Reines served as deputy assistant secretary of state, and Abedin as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff. They are two of Clinton’s most loyal confidantes in and out of the State Department, Gawker reported. More here.

Related: Lawyers for Hillary’s team

Report: Clintons Are Paying Legal Bills For Aide Who Registered Private Email Address

DailyCaller: The Clintons have paid “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to cover the legal bills for a Bill Clinton aide who sits at the center of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

That’s according to Washington Times opinion editor Monica Crowley who reports in a new column that a knowledgeable source tells her that the Clintons are covering legal expenses for Justin Cooper, a longtime aide to the former president.

Such an arrangement would raise questions over whether the Clintons are paying Cooper’s bills in order to ensure that they have some oversight of his interactions with federal investigators. It would also raise questions about whether the Clintons are paying other aides’ legal costs.

Cooper registered clintonemail.com in his own name on Jan. 13, 2009. That email domain is the same one Hillary Clinton exclusively used to send work-related emails as secretary of state. Emails sent on that account were stored on a server that the Clintons kept at their personal residence in New York.

According to Crowley, Cooper’s role in helping set up Clinton’s mysterious email arrangement has put him in the FBI’s cross hairs. She reports:

A source familiar with Mr. Cooper’s arrangement with the Clintons tells me that they have paid his legal fees associated with the FBI investigation, amounting to “hundreds of thousands of dollars.” They aren’t paying those costs out of a sense of decency. They’re paying them because he knows the “why” of the server, which may very well have been to make it easier for the foundation to hustle big donations.

One wonders what, if anything, Mr. Cooper is telling the FBI —and whether the whole sordid Clinton house of cards will be left standing.

The FBI seized Clinton’s server last year after it was determined that some of her emails contained classified information. And now, investigators are reportedly poised to interview aides who have knowledge about the system.

And according to a Fox News report from earlier this year, the FBI’s investigation has expanded to a public corruption probe which centers on the intersection of the Clinton Foundation and State Department.

Cooper could also be embroiled in that aspect of the investigation, according to Crowley, who also works as a Fox News analyst.

The little-known Cooper has worked for the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a consulting firm with close ties to the Clintons. Along with Doug Band — Bill Clinton’s former “body man,” a former counselor to the Clinton Foundation, and a co-founder of Teneo — Cooper kept in contact with Clinton’s State Department aides, emails from Clinton’s account show. One of those aides is Huma Abedin, who served as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff while also working for Teneo.

The overlap has raised questions over whether the Clinton Foundation and Teneo were using access to the State Department to help raise money and attract clients.

The possibility that the Clintons are paying legal bills for aides embroiled in the FBI investigation has already been broached by Congress.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley has asked lawyers for the Clintons and Abedin — as well as for former Clinton aides Cheryl Mills, Philippe Reines, and Jake Sullivan — if they have entered any “joint defense agreements.”

The Iowa Republican has asserted that such arrangements could pose conflicts of interest because they would help ensure that the Clinton insiders refrained from providing evidence that could be detrimental to the Clintons.

The lawyers have refused to say if those arrangements have been made.

Grassley has also asked whether the Clintons are covering legal costs for Bryan Pagliano, the former information technology specialist who set up and managed Clinton’s private email server. But Pagliano’s lawyer, Mark MacDougall of the Clinton-connected law firm Akin Gump, has also refused to say if such an arrangement is in place. Pagliano has since entered an immunity deal with the FBI in exchange for his cooperation in the investigation.

Some evidence has emerged suggesting that the Clintons are paying legal bills for those embroiled in the email fiasco.

In October it was reported that the Denver-based IT company that handled Clinton’s server after she left the State Department had submitted an invoice to Clinton seeking payment for legal and public relations expenses.

The company, Platte River Networks, had control of Clinton’s server when it was turned over to the FBI. It billed Clinton’s accountant, Marcum LLP., nearly $50,000 for legal and PR expenses.

The Clinton campaign and the Clinton Foundation did not respond to The Daily Caller’s requests for comment.

 

 

 

Congress to Bailout Puerto Rico

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Puerto Rico is a Commonwealth and is a U.S. territory. With a population of 3.5 million people the country is deeply in debt. Congress has been in discussions for months to draft a resolution as it has a debt payment due May 1 of $422 million. Worse, there is a debt payment due July 1 of $2 billion. The island Constitution requires the payments to be made over those bills for infrastructure including drinking water, police, and other public services. The bondholders have a have control of the credit unions where normal citizens have a major risk of losing their wealth.

Related: Washington Debate on Puerto Rico Bailout

If Congress Is to Rescue Puerto Rico, Key Conservative Has These Conditions

DailySignal: As the House struggles to find consensus on a plan to rescue Puerto Rico from its debt crisis, an influential conservative lawmaker today laid out his expectations for what legislation should look like.

Rep. Raúl Labrador, who is Puerto Rican, has been quiet about the plan being crafted by the Natural Resources Committee since he is a member of the panel and a direct participant in the negotiations.

But Labrador broke his silence before Capitol Hill reporters at the monthly Conversations with Conservatives event, declaring that any solution to Puerto Rico’s fiscal problems “cannot affect our states.”

“To me it’s pretty simple: Whatever we do on Puerto Rico cannot affect our states and cannot affect the way we are going to respond to any fiscal crisis in the future for any of the states,” said Labrador, R-Idaho, a founding member of a group of conservatives called the House Freedom Caucus

Before he can endorse the bill, Labrador said, he wants assurances that it treats different classes of creditors fairly and doesn’t open the door for Congress to give authority to struggling states to restructure their debts.

Earlier this month, the Natural Resources Committee released a draft bill that would create an outside fiscal oversight board to manage a process by which Puerto Rico could restructure its $72 billion debt load

The committee is revising the bill due to opposition from Republicans, the Treasury Department, and Democrats, and the legislation is not expected to be ready before May 1, when a $422 million debt payment by Puerto Rico is due. House leaders hope to act before a $2 billion payment comes due July 1.

Some holders of general obligation bonds whose debt payments are guaranteed by the Puerto Rican constitution have said they want to be exempted from the restructuring process facilitated by the proposed seven-member board.

Labrador said he doesn’t believe it’s “right” for those bondholders to get that exemption, but he also thinks pensioners should not be given higher priority than bondholders.

The Treasury Department, at one point, was planning to put pension payments to retired public employees in Puerto Rico ahead of payments to bondholders, according to The New York Times. Labrador said he wants the committee’s bill to include language ensuring that “pensions are not getting any priority over the secure debt

“I have spent a lot of time talking to a bit more objective bond companies that don’t have debt in Puerto Rico, and that’s their main concern,” Labrador said, adding that their “main concern” was that when Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013, it gave priority to pensions. He added:

That was an anomaly, so the bond market was not affected in any way. If we do that with Puerto Rico [give pensioners priority], what’s going to happen in the bond market is they will see a pattern and when they see that pattern, they are going to be concerned the same thing is going to happen in Illinois, the same thing is going to happen in California. And when they see that, all of a sudden the bond markets are going to react and that is going to affect every one of our states’ bonds. And it will affect the interest we pay on our bonds.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has promised to act on a solution for Puerto Rico and its 3.5 million American citizens, with the hope he would be supported by a majority of Republicans.

Labrador’s endorsement would go a long way to ensuring that, considering his sway in the Freedom Caucus.

The Idaho Republican said he can get there, and that “conservatives can support a bill that gives debt restructuring to Puerto Rico,” but only under certain conditions:

The fight I am having right now with the people who drafted this bill is that they want language to be loose enough that can get votes from the Democrats. Well, guess what, if the language is loose enough, then you are going to be able to get around the language. So what we have to do is be explicit in deciding what this oversight board should be doing and what the parameters are for judging the debt in Puerto Rico. Unless we do that, I think we are doing a disservice to the people in the United States.

A major question is whether the writers of the bill can satisfy enough conservatives without scaring away too many Democrats.

Rep. Jim Jordan, the Freedom Caucus chairman, told reporters today that it shouldn’t matter which party carries the legislation to passage, as long as lawmakers work together to solve a problem.

“We should do the right thing,” said Jordan, R-Ohio. “Whether that means you will have Democrats who vote for it, I don’t know. I think if you do the right thing, then people will vote for it. So that’s what should drive this—that you are doing the right thing.”

 

Who Wins, Biden, Iran or al Sadr?

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Do you wonder if Vice President Biden is meeting with al Sadr? Biden would never make a surprise visit to Iraq unless something quite serious was at issue.

   

NYT: After arriving at the American embassy by helicopter, Mr. Biden was driven to the nearby Government Palace to meet Mr. Abadi.

Mr. Biden last visited Iraq in November 2011, just weeks before the last American troops in Iraq were scheduled to leave. In a solemn ceremony, Mr. Biden saluted Iraqi troops, trained and equipped with billions of dollars from the United States, saying he hoped they would safeguard the country. More here.

US Vice President Biden in Iraq ‘to resolve political crisis’

DW: US Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq on a surprise visit aimed at helping Iraqi leaders resolve a political crisis. It is hindering the country’s efforts to defeat the self-declared ‘Islamic State.’

Who is Muqtada al Sadr? Muqtada al-Sadr is of Iraqi and Iranian ancestry. After the fall of the Saddam government in 2003, Muqtada al-Sadr organized thousands of his supporters into a political movement, which includes a military wing known as the Jaysh al-Mahdi or Mahdi Army). The name refers to the Mahdi, a long-since disappeared Imam who is believed by Shi’a Muslims to be due to reappear when the end of time approaches. This group has periodically engaged in violent conflict with the United States and other Coalition forces.

Related: Mahdi Army

Barack Obama ordered all U.S. military presence out of Iraq and it was completed in 2011. Obama stated the country was sovereign and stable and for this reason there was no reason to maintain a ‘leave-behind’ force. All the while from 2010 forward and known full well by the Obama National Security Council:

CTC: On a more significant level, the revival of al-Sadr’s political fortunes are less about Iranian influence and more about his followers’ ability to cleverly exploit electoral politics to their advantage. The latest parliamentary elections provided such an opportunity, placing al-Sadr in the center of the political map. The key to the Sadrists’ electoral success was how they applied systematic polling methods such as databases with information on voters in all provinces and a cunning campaign strategy to win voters in the south.[16] Along with anti-establishment and populist tactics, such as the staged referendum as a way to discredit al-Maliki’s authority in the Shi`a urban centers, al-Sadr was able to present himself and his followers as the primary political force to defend the Shi`a population. Also, it is possible that al-Sadr exploited his close ties with General Qasim Soleimani of the IRGC, who also played a part in lobbying the Iraqi National Alliance to merge with the State of Law coalition to boost his political fortunes within the Shi`a bloc. This political move took away the chance for Iyad Allawi’s secular-Sunni front to form a government, which would have considerably diminished al-Sadr’s role as a key political figure.

In the aftermath of the elections, al-Sadr’s public call for the return of JAM reveals a sense of confidence with the backing of not only Iran, but also a large Shi`a electorate. For now, the Sadrists also have the respect of al-Maliki, who was forced to make considerable concessions with al-Sadr to remain in power. In this light, al-Sadr may now feel he has the political capital to legitimize the full restoration of JAM as part of Iraq’s security institutions, which could be controlled by Sadrists in the next government.

Al-Sadr appeals for solution to Iraq’s political crisis

BAGHDAD (AP) — An influential Iraqi Shiite cleric on Wednesday called on the United Nations and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to help find a solution to the country’s simmering political crisis “even through holding early elections.”

Muqtada al-Sadr’s statement came a day after lawmakers failed to hold a session to vote on whether to keep or oust the parliament speaker, Salim al-Jabouri, threatening to prolong Iraq’s paralyzing political crisis amid the fight against Islamic State group that controls key areas in country’s north and west.

Al-Sadr ordered Sadrist lawmakers to withdraw from a parliament sit-in that demands the country’s top leadership — parliament speaker, prime minister and president — step down. But al-Sadr called on his followers to continue rallying in Bagdad’s Tahrir Square to pressure the parliament to vote on a new government after a recent Cabinet reshuffle.

“We call upon the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the United Nations to interfere to get the Iraqi people out of their ordeal and to correct the political process even through holding early elections,” al-Sadr said in a handwritten statement issued online.

It is still unclear how the withdrawal of Sadrist lawmakers will affect the parliament sit-in which was started last week by dozens of lawmakers following delay on the vote on the Cabinet reshuffle. On Thursday, they chose eldest lawmaker, Adnan al-Janabi, as an interim speaker, but the move was rejected by the other camp, which argues the move was illegal because the needed quorum was not achieved.

Tuesday’s session was supposed to vote on whether or not to remove al-Jabouri, but it was adjourned when major political blocks walked away because they objected to al-Janabi presiding over the session.

Iraq is weathering its worst crisis in years with the Sunni extremist IS group still controlling key areas in the country’s north and west, including the second-largest city of Mosul. The country is also undergoing an acute economic crisis due to plummeting oil prices on the international market.