Postage-Stamp Paulsen Sends Another Mailer

by: TwoPuttTommy

Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 12:47:46 PM CDT

To recap:  Paulsen, last year, spent more dough on mailers, etc, than all but two other CongressCritters.  All but two.  Paulsen spent more dough than 432 CongressCritters.  Paulsen, last year, spent $413,996.12.

Way to go, Erik! You're Number Three!!!

So, how does Postage-Stamp Paulsen react to all the bad press last week, for wasting so much dough?

By - of course - sending out ANOTHER MAILER!!!

Yep - there it was, in the mailbox today:

"Your voice is needed on health care reform"

And - of course - in smaller print:

"This mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense."

But, this one was new:

"The cost of producing, preparing and printing this piece is less than the cost of a postage stamp."

Say, Erik?  Those postage stamps add up; last year you totaled $413,996.12.

And all those postage stamps add up to:

"Postage-Stamp Paulsen"

Did Michele Bachmann violate House ethics rules again?

by: The Big E

Wed Nov 11, 2009 at 20:01:51 PM CST

Did a rally geared at saving government resources actually misuse them?

Could be, at least technically. Rep. Michele Bachmann's House home-page shout-out to tea party types for her Nov. 5 rally on the West Front steps may have violated the letter of the administration committee's rules on the use of official, taxpayer-funded websites.
(Politico)

So we can add misusing her House website to promote a mob rally, to using her House mail account to send mail to people in Colorado (Congresscritters can only use House mail accounts to mail to constituents), to misusing her House website to link to townhall.com (a far right website), to promising to break the law (a violation of House rules) by refusing to participate in the census.

This was mentioned on Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight and hopefully an investigation into her multiple ethics violations will be forthcoming.

^{Although I won't be holding my breathe.}

More on Paulsen's franking/game-playing

by: Joe Bodell

Fri Apr 10, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM CDT

I spoke with a couple of congressional staffers, all of whom noted that Paulsen had to get this piece past the bipartisan Franking Commission, which has oversight power over exactly this sort of literature. That means he had to get it past at least a couple of Democratic members, and it apparently passed muster for "official" use.

As I noted in the previous post, I don't hold any illusions about whether one party is entirely innocent or guilty here. But I think Paulsen's fine example of political hackery provides us an opportunity to discuss what the Franking Commission should be doing, rather than what it is doing.

Is the Commission's responsibility to arbitrate big concepts like "truth"? No, of course not. But it's not their responsibility to play dumb either. Inside the congressional sausage factory, I'm sure there's a lot of pressure for junior members like Paulsen to fall in line and push the party line with their official communications, or else.

But that doesn't necessarily mean using blatantly partisan techniques to push lies into your constituent's heads. Take First district member Tim Walz as an example. With a recent "official business" letter, his staff made it into an open-ended opportunity for constituents to provide feedback and their thoughts. Many will be useless; others may actually be insightful. Walz's office got a fantastic return on that small investment of time, energy, and taxpayer dollars.

Compare that to the blatant play for golden email addresses by Paulsen, conflated with a talking-points-laden attempt to push polls in his favor. There's a better way to do this thing called "American democracy," and it doesn't really seem like Erik Paulsen or his staff understand that.