Thom Hartmann: And greetings my friends, patriots, lovers of democracy, truth and justice, believers in peace, freedom and the American way, Thom Hartmann here with you. And boy there’s a lot actually going on in the news today and we are going to be discussing much of it as we go through the, in fact as much of it as possible as we go through the day. The tobacco companies are up to some new tricks. Seton Motley is going to drop by in our second hour to debate that with us. Cliff Schecter is going to come by in our third hour to talk about the evolution of the GOP from Reagan to Bush to Perry? Oh my. Perry, by the way, some breaking news. An investor in porn? We’ll get to that.

But first, Lee Fang is with us. He is one of the best investigative reporters in the country, works for the Center for American Progress’ blog, ThinkProgress.org, a reporter and blogger over there. And he has a story out, which I think is a big deal. It has to do with the confessed small time criminal and now richest man in the United States House of Representatives. And one of the larger outsourcer, probably the largest outsourcer of jobs in the United States House of Representatives, Darrell Issa. So Lee Fang, welcome to the program.

Lee Fang: Hey Thom, it’s great to be here, thanks for having me.

Thom Hartmann: Thank you for joining us. What’s the story with Darrell Issa, here? What’s going on? First of all, for our listeners who may not be familiar with this name, I’m guessing anybody in California immediately knows, but around the country he might not be such a household name. Who is Darrell Issa?

Lee Fang: Well Darrell Issa is a long time republican member of congress known for his partisanship. But he’s taken the gavel of the house oversights committee since republicans took over congress last year. So he basically has the power to subpoena or investigate anyone in the country.

Thom Hartmann: For anything he wants, basically.

Lee Fang: Pretty much. The oversight committee has a very large jurisdiction. They can investigate the government, the white house, corporations, other major scandals.

Thom Hartmann: Wasn’t this the committee where all the Clinton investigations originated, or many of them?

Lee Fang: Right. You know you had, I believe it was congressman Danny Burton, shooting a watermelon in the head to demonstrate, he was the old oversight committee head, to demonstrate how Clinton had killed his own employees. I mean that really turned into a wild witch hunt against Clinton. But the oversight committee, under Darrell Issa, has certainly pursued his own many witch hunts against the Obama administration. But perhaps what’s more interesting about now versus what happened in the ‘90s. In the ‘90s it was just a partisan witch hunt, 100%. Now Darrell Issa is spending almost half of this time for his committee basically working for corporate lobbyists. When he began his tenure as the chairman he invited corporate lobbyists to actually come in and tell him which regulations to eliminate and many of them complied and started sending letters in which Darrell Issa hasn’t fully released to the public.

Thom Hartmann: Right. I mean he literally reached out to corporations and said what can we do for you as, you know, what can I do for you as a big shot with a lot of power in the House of Representatives, which is now controlled by the republicans. And this most recent and most egregious piece of this whole thing has to do with Goldman Sachs. Tell us about this.

Lee Fang: Here’s the other interesting thing. As Issa was inviting lobbyists to help him guide his investigative agenda, mostly against government regulators, he actually started hiring lobbyists to do his work for him. And we did a series of stories on some of the different corporate lobbyists that took pay cuts and then started working for Issa to pursue that same lobbying agenda under Issa. But we found actually one of the biggest scoops that we published today. And that’s about a guy named Peter Holler. He was a, he’s actually a shiny example of the revolving door. Because he used to work at several government regulators including the Securities and Exchange Commission and then he went to work for Goldman Sachs towards the end of 2008. He left Goldman Sachs, went to a lobbying firm, then he went, as Darrell Issa came in in January, was hired for Issa. Now it appears that he’s actually helping draft letters on behalf of Issa against bank regulators on issues that are of the utmost importance to Goldman Sachs. Namely the new Dodd Frank rules on derivatives reform, making sure banks have enough margin requirements to deal in this sort of business. And he…

Thom Hartmann: Right. To prevent another bank meltdown basically.

Lee Fang: Basically, yeah. Just to prevent systemic risk in the derivatives market. And Goldman doesn’t like these new regulations. In fact they’re one of the biggest banks that are upset about it. They spent several million this year just hiring lobbyists to defeat these regulations. So…

Thom Hartmann: Right. Because when they actually, they can make a fortune off them when they’re going up and when they’re going down they get bailed out by the government.

Lee Fang: Well the interesting thing here is that, you know, for all the lobbying Goldman has done, perhaps the most important thing and most helpful thing for them is that Darrell Issa is now trying to push and hint that he’s trying to investigate the regulators that are charged with implementing this new rule. And you have to look, if you look at the actual letter that’s written to these regulators on behalf of Issa, signed with his name, it says that the person working on this issue for Issa is this guy Peter Holler. And it’s interesting because only two years ago he had a different name. He changed his name from Peter Simoni to Peter Holler, went to work for Issa and is now drafting these letters. Basically making official demands on regulators for his former employer, Goldman Sachs.

Thom Hartmann: And was his name, wait a minute here. This guy was working for Goldman Sachs, under his birth name presumably.

Lee Fang: Right.

Thom Hartmann: And then he goes to work for Darrell Issa to do Goldman Sachs bidding and I think it would be naïve to assume, although I’m not asserting and I doubt you would either because we just don’t know, but it might be naïve to assume that there won’t be a very large golden parachute waiting for this guy at the end of his career or at the end of his couple year stint here. He actually legally changed his name when he went to work for Darrell Issa?

Lee Fang: Yeah. He kind of oddly, he’s in his mid 30s, he decided to change his last name to his mother’s maiden last name. Now I’ve never heard of this happening to someone at this point in their life. I’ve heard of people changing their name when they’re teenagers because of some type of issue with their family.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah or divorce or something like that, they pick one name or the other.

Lee Fang: Yeah, sure. And you know, I’ve contacted Peter Holler and I haven’t heard back so we don’t have that full story and if he does get back to me we’ll absolutely post that on the website. But that other point that you made about the golden parachute is absolutely pivotal. The Hill Magazine, the Hill Newspaper actually did a big story two months ago that didn’t get much attention. That the top staffers running all the most important house committees in congress are almost all lobbyists. Almost every single one of them took huge pay cuts to go into congress. And as we reported as a follow-up to that great piece from The Hill, some of these staffers actually have contracts with their old lobbying firms or got bonuses to leave their lobbying firm to go into, you know, working for the public, working for congress. And I think it’s likely that in these contracts they actually stipulate that they’ll get bonuses once they leave congress again and go back to their lobbying firm.

Thom Hartmann: Are we talking about bonuses like five thousand bucks?

Lee Fang: No. More like a hundred thousand to two hundred thousand dollars. Some of these guys, one lobbyists was making a million dollars a year, got a pay increase then went to work for I believe the house energy and commerce committee.

Thom Hartmann: Where he was paid like a hundred thousand bucks a year. So when he goes back into the private sector he will have a big pile of money waiting for him.

Lee Fang: Exactly. I mean none there call this bribery or official corruption but I’m having a lot of trouble distinguishing between the two.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Although I doubt the supreme court would have a problem with it, which is a problem for itself, because the supreme court itself is pretty corrupt. Anyhow, Lee Fang, some brilliant reporting. You can read all about it at ThinkProgress.org. Lee, thank you so much for the great work you’re doing and for sharing it with us and our listeners and viewers.

Lee Fang: Thanks for having me Thom, take care.

Thom Hartmann: Always good talking with you.

Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.