Senate Whistle-Blower

By today's standards, Chuck Grassley is right out of a Frank Capra movie.

This summer the Republican Senator from Iowa got the Department of Agriculture to admit it had been sending subsidy checks to dead farmers, $1.1 billion over seven years.

This fall he voted to override President Bush's veto of the SCHIP bill and worked hard to persuade House Republicans to do the same and expand health insurance coverage for poor children.

Now he is pressing televangelists to explain how and why they drive Bentleys, fly in private jets and buy $23,000 commodes. Tomorrow is the deadline for six ministries to answer Grassley's questions about compensation, housing allowances, personal use of assets and unreported income.

"If tax-exempt organizations, including media-based ministries, thumb their noses at the laws governing their preferential tax treatment, the American public, their contributors, and the Internal Revenue Service have a right to know," says Grassley, the top minority member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Even Robin Hood has not escaped the Iowan's beady eye. A prestigious New York foundation of that name had to reexamine practices that led to employees of hedge funds run by board members collecting 2% of the assets and 20% of the profits, adding up to $14 million a year in management fees.

"I don't remember Robin Hood keeping 2 and 20 as his cut," Grassley said. "I'm worried that more and more, it seems some hedge fund and private equity managers see charitable donations as a chance to do well for themselves."

In the past five years, the Christian Science Monitor reports, "Grassley has led probes of nonprofits that unearthed lavish perks at the Smithsonian Institution, conflicts of interest at the Nature Conservancy, and mismanagement at the American Red Cross."

He has also sponsored legislation to protect whistle-blowers. Frank Capra would have loved him.

Why Can't Kucinich Catch On?

On the two key issues for 2008, Denis Kucinich seems to be in tune with Democratic voters. He wants to get us out of Iraq, and he favors a single-payer not-for-profit health care plan.

But his campaign is stuck in the second tier of candidates in single digits. Why? Is he too short? Is his name too hard to pronounce and spell? Does he make voters uneasy by unconventional moves such as his recent visit to Syria? Do they tune out because his solemn air makes them uncomfortable?

Amid all the talk about a woman or African-American in the White House, there seems to be a resistance to taking Kucinich seriously because, in some way, he is not stereotypically presidential--too ethnic, too working-class, too head-on in confronting issues without softening the edges.

He voted against the Iraq war and, in 2004, paid his dues by earning double-digit percentages of the vote in the Maine, Minnesota, Hawaii and Oregon primaries. But this time, he comes off as a “tweener,” not as slick as John Edwards or eccentric enough like Mike Gravel to show up on a Bill Maher panel.

If we were living in a Frank Capra movie, he might have a chance. Growing up so poor that his family was often homeless, fighting his way up in Cleveland politics and slipping back so far that in 1982 he reported $38 on his tax return, coming back to win a seat in Congress and the heart of a beautiful, idealistic young woman, Dennis Kucinich is an exemplar of what used to be the American Dream.

But these days, Frank Capra movies seem to be appropriate only for Christmas, not Election Day.