Let Kentucky’s Unemployed Eat Cake, but Save Ethiopian Wolves. Hal Rogers’ Friends and Family Plan Strikes Again.

For a chilling account of what our country is facing, read last night’s transcript from Dateline NBC reporting from the foothills of Appalachia. One in four Americans today live below the poverty line. And in Kentucky’s Fifth Congressional District, that number is far higher. That district is represented by Republican Hal Rogers, who knows how to take care of his friends and family, even if his district is starving.

Jim Holbert is challenging Rogers this year. Hillbilly Report put a nice post up on his candidacy. And on his web site, Holbert states:

It’s a fact: For the last thirty years, America’s economic, energy, and foreign policies have been systematically rigged to benefit a privileged few, at the expense of working people.

Those words were posted long before yesterday’s article on Rogers’ latest public payday for friends and family by John Cheves in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Turns out that people starving or running out of unemployment must be paid for by other cuts in the budget. But $5 million for a grant that is administered by his daughter to save cheetahs? Those rules just don’t apply:

U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Somerset, is sponsoring a bill to give $5 million a year to conservation groups that work overseas on behalf of endangered “great cats and rare canids,” such as cheetahs, lions and Ethiopian wolves.
One group interested in applying, should Rogers’ bill become law, is the Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund.
Its grants administrator, Allison Rogers, is the congressman’s daughter.
“Obviously, I’m waiting with bated breath,” said Allison Rogers, who lives in Versailles. “It would help us a lot because the Cheetah Conservation Fund does not have a very big budget.”
She and her father say there is no conflict of interest. The congressman from Southeast Kentucky long has been a champion of wildlife, she said.
“Dad is, I think, very involved in the environment, both in his district and on a global level,” Allison Rogers said. “Neither his or my involvement in this is cheating the public or taking advantage of my dad’s position.”
In a prepared statement, a spokeswoman for Hal Rogers listed more than two dozen conservation groups other than the Cheetah Conservation Fund that could ask for the money, including the Jane Goodall Institute, the Humane Society of the United States and the Sierra Club.
“A wealth of organizations would benefit from these grants, and all would be able to apply without any congressional influence over the selection process,” spokeswoman Stefani Zimmerman said.
“While the congressman’s daughter is equally passionate about conservation, her recent work on behalf of the Cheetah Conservation Fund would never be a factor in the allocation of this funding,” Zimmerman said. “To suggest otherwise is unfounded and completely false.”
But a conservative budget watchdog said Hal Rogers should be more prudent.
“Who’s against helping cheetahs? Nobody. But c’mon, this reeks of nepotism,” said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste in Washington. “This is the kind of thing that gets taxpayers so frustrated with Congress.”
This isn’t the first time Hal Rogers has steered money in the direction of his family.
In 2004, Senture, a call-services center in London, hired one of Rogers’ sons as a computer systems administrator just after the lawmaker helped it win a $4 million homeland security contract. Father and son said there was no connection between the contract and the job.
“There needs to be much more of a fire wall with things like this,” Williams said. “It isn’t difficult. You just don’t allocate money to projects where your children are employed. The problem with Congressman Rogers is, he thinks there’s nothing wrong with it.”

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