PAID off

The Washington Post has a front-page story on how Rep. John Murtha uses a non-profit agency to funnel money into his favorite lobbying shops while its directors “have kept Murtha’s campaigns flush with cash.” The non-profit is known, appropriately enough, as PAID (Pennsylvania Association for Individuals with Disabilities). There’s nothing surprising about the story (we wrote about related machinations on Murtha’s part months ago), but I didn’t expect to see it on the front-page of the Post.
Murtha’s scam, which one Democratic-leaning watchdog group director compares to “DeLay Inc.,” extends beyond the Abscam unindicted co-conspirator himself. One of the director’s of PAID is a central figure in an investigation of Murtha’s crony Rep. Alan Mollohan. And Speaker Pelosi, who pushed so hard for Murtha to become House Majority Leader, is also connected to the Murtha machine. Last year, Murtha reportedly leaned on U.S. Navy officials to sign a contract to transfer the Hunters Point Shipyard to the city of San Francisco. Pelosi’s nephew, Laurence Pelosi, was an executive of the company that owned the rights to the land.
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