CHELLIE PINGREE: BUSTED Maine Congresswoman Caught Red-Handed In Act of Pure Hypocrisy

AUGUSTA - Congresswoman Chellie Pingree built her career on her professed mission to keep money out of politics. Today, she has been unmasked as a Washington elitist and an unmitigated hypocrite.

The website Maine.Watchdog.org is reporting today that Chellie Pingree has been traveling on the private jet of hedge fund billionaire Donald Sussman, despite previous denials from Pingree's spokesman. A video taken at the Portland Jetport last week shows Pingree stepping off the lavish plane, reportedly worth $25 million.

In testimony before Congress in 2006, Pingree had this to say about House members flying on private aircraft:

"Most Americans never have and never will fly on a chartered jet, much less a fancy corporate jet complete with wet bar and leather couches. So when members of Congress constantly fly around on corporate jets and pay only the cost of a commercial ticket, it contributes to the corrosive public perception that members of Congress are more like the fat cats of Wall Street than they are like the rest of us."

Sussman's jet is estimated to cost nearly $5,000 an hour to operate. Maine.Watchdog.org is also reporting that flight logs show Pingree may be using the jet to commute between Maine and Washington, DC regularly, and gives plausible evidence that Pingree may be using the plane to travel to campaign fundraisers.

"Chellie Pingree's hypocrisy is simply stunning," said Maine GOP Executive Director Christie-Lee McNally. "She has made herself out to be a champion of the underclass, but now we see she's turned into the same 'Wall Street Fat Cat' she railed against."

Pingree's activity opens up a whole host of ethical and legal questions. House Ethics Rules specifically forbid House members from flying on private aircraft for House or campaign business:

"A flight may not be accepted on the basis of personal friendship when the primary purpose of the trip is either to conduct House business or engage in campaign activity."

Federal Election law would require Pingree to report the trips as in-kind donations from Sussman's company, or reimburse the company for the cost of the trip. Review of Pingree's FEC reports so far show no record of such reporting, or reimbursement for the alleged flights.

"There are so many unanswered questions here," continued McNally. "Chellie Pingree needs to come forward and explain to the people of Maine why it's ok for her to fly around in luxury while her constituents struggle to make ends meet."

the old excuse:
"no taxpayer money was used"..
FOX local would run it..good!
It's only unethical if you use taxpayer money?
March 15, 2005..House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, on Tuesday categorically denied allegations that two of his overseas trips were paid for by special interest groups
JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill takes it from there.
GWEN IFILL: All eyes on Tom Delay.
Joining us to talk about the ethics questions swirling around the House Majority Leader are Chellie Pingree of Common Cause, a 'bipartisan public watchdog group'; and Stephen Moore, president of the Free Enterprise Fund, a Republican lobbying firm. Chellie Pingree, with all these mounting questions rising that are swirling around about Tom Delay, what bothers you most?
CHELLIE PINGREE: Well, I think it's the whole picture that we are looking at here. You have a member of Congress in a position of leadership who clearly has been pushing a lot of ethics questions right to the edge. He was admonished, as you saw, by the committee itself.
And then it looked like Republican leadership decided things had gotten a little bit out of control. They removed Congressman Hefley as the chair of the committee; they also took out two other Republican members and got rid of two senior staffers who had been there for a very long time and at the same time they propose the changes to the rules so the Ethics Committee would have less teeth than before.
Now you have coming to light a variety of new accusations about ethics violations, yet there is no committee to enforce them. I think the questions that it raises is do we have here a fox guarding the hen house in the sense where a very powerful member of leadership can actually dismantle the committee, take away the rules.
And in a kind of ironic way, today he is now saying "Well, I wouldn't mind discussing these trips that I've taken in front of the Ethics Committee. They can feel free to look into them." But we don't have an Ethics Committee. It refused to constitute itself. The process is basically broken, gone. And the irony is where does he even go if he wants to get some discussion of what is going on?
GWEN IFILL: Let's go over some of the questions which have been raised. Does it not bother you at all about who paid for the trips to Britain, who paid for the trips to South Korea, whether a foreign government underwrote them?
CHELLIE PINGREE: One of the challenges, is now whether you say, "the Democrats do it, why worry about it," is that that's the point of having an ethics process. The reason we need a very strong Ethics Committee with teeth who's willing to take on these very difficult challenges is so that we can always make sure that the public has confidence in the body and that the members of Congress don't do anything that would shame or embarrass the body.
That's the whole point here. Now the fact is, the original admonishments to Tom Delay came from a bipartisan vote of a bipartisan Ethics Committee. It was a very unusual move from a committee that had a seven-year truce. Nothing was going to happen.
They finally came out and they said something about its original violations. So you have to look at this as someone who has already come under question and the truth is on these particular trips or these questions, there is now no functioning body with anyone able to decide. ..This is, you know, the most important decision-making body in our country deciding not to police itself. And that is very serious.
I actually think that increasingly you are starting to feel that this is getting closer to the tipping point, that the Republicans are starting to feel the heat, that this is making their party look bad and not having a strong ethics process, making it even worse.
PBS audio/video with real player

"there is now no functioning body with anyone able to decide"

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