As the race for the 5th Congressional District heats up we will be reporting here on what Virgil Goode has accomplished for the people in the district.

Goode probe requested

A government watchdog group is asking the House ethics committee to investigate the dealings between a corrupt defense contractor and U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode.

Common Cause made the request following an announcement this week that the ethics committee was launching a probe into a bribery scandal that put former California Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham in prison.

"Certainly there appears to be a cloud over his [Goode's] head and that's why we need an ethics committee investigation," Common Cause spokeswoman Mary Boyle said. "If he was an innocent bystander as he says, then he would be cleared."

Goode has received more than $90,000 from Wade, other MZM employees and their family members, and the company's political action committee. Critics say the money influenced Goode to request federal funding that eventually went to an MZM operation in Martinsville.

After MZM crumbled under the weight of a federal investigation last summer, the company was sold. Athena Innovative Solutions is the new owner of the Martinsville facility.

Now, it appears the facility itself is caught up in a federal probe.
Last month, The Roanoke Times made a request under the Freedom of Information Act for records of any audit, inspection or investigation of the facility conducted by the inspector general's office of the Department of Defense.
In a response this week, the Defense Department denied the request because the information sought is part of an open investigation.
"The disclosure of any portion of the investigation at this time could reasonably be expected to interfere with law enforcement proceedings," Darryl Aaron of the department's FOIA office wrote. "We do not have a time frame for the completion of this investigation."

Michael Woods, a spokesman at Athena's headquarters in Washington, D.C., has previously declined to answer any questions about the Martinsville facility. He did not return a call Friday.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Supplier Assessment Center that MZM brought to Martinsville is nearing completion of its second year of operations -- with nowhere near the number of jobs that were promised three years ago.

[click here for full Roanoke Times story]

Voting Report

Goode Voted against protecting family farmers under bankruptcy protection
[S 1920 , Vote #8, 1/28/2004; Failed 158-204; R 0-193; D 157-11; I 1-0]

Goode Voted against continuing payment rates for physician services under Medicare at FY2002 levels and to equalize Medicare base payment rates for rural and urban hospitals.
[HJR 18 , Vote #18, 2/5/2003; Failed 195-215; R 2-215; D 192-0; I 1-0]

Goode Voted To Cut More Than $1 Billion From Education, Health & Job Training Efforts. The vote was for final passage of the Labor, HHS & Education appropriations conference report that cut $1.5 billion from key domestic priorities. The measure cut education programs by $59 million - including a $784 million cut from No Child Left Behind - and cut $437 million from critical services to unemployed and displaced workers. The measure also included a $249 million cut to the Center for Disease Control and deep cuts to programs to improve healthcare access such as Rural Health Outreach grants. (House Appropriations Committee Democratic Staff, "Summary of the Conference Agreement - HR 3010," 11/16/05)
[HR 3010 , Vote #598, 11/17/2005; Failed 209-224; R 209-22; D 0-201; I 0-1]

Goode Opposed Increased Spending On Veterans And Homeland Security. The vote was against an amendment to the 2006 budget resolution to increase spending levels by $15.8 billion. The proposal boosted education, training and social services programs by $8 billion, provided $2.9 billion more veteran's health care and $1.7 billion more for homeland security than the GOP resolution. Furthermore, the amendment would have reduced the deficit by $10 billion and raised $25.8 billion by reducing tax cuts for those earning more than $1 million. The amendment was rejected, 180-242.
[HRS 95 , Vote #82, 3/17/2005; Failed 180-242; R 3-218; D 176-24; I 1-0]

[back to top]

Virgil Goode proposes to limit the Supreme Court’s ability to ensure the separation of church and state.

The radical right’s latest attempt to inject religion into government.

HR 1070, the Constitution Restoration Act of 2005 is yet another smoke and mirror Washington double-speak bill that claims to be one thing and would really do the opposite.

This bill does not restore the US Constitution. What this bill does do is to limit the judiciary’s ability to ensure the separation of church and state as required by the U.S. Constitution. This bill’s title would be more honest if it read the “Constitution Alteration Act of 2005”.

HR 1070 states “the Supreme Court shall not have jurisdiction to review, by appeal, writ of certiorari, or otherwise, any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.'.”

What is the impact of this? Well if any government official (or agent) determines that he or she would like to erect a monument to the 10 commandments on the court house steps, the Supreme Court can’t stop them. The same would be true if a Sung Yung Moon adherent felt it important to declare their version of God has something important to declare on the court house steps.

If some local judge determined that building a memorial to the sun God “pooh” on court property was the way to go – pooh it would be and the Supreme Court and our Constitution be damned.

This bill also looks to strike down any ruling the Supreme Court has made concerning religious pronouncements by government officials in their official conduct.

Finally, this bill threatens the judiciary with impeachment for violating the law this bill would create.

Click here to download the complete bill and cosponsor list in PDF format. [back to top]

Virgil Goode: More Partisan than Statesman

Last week, the U.S. House voted on a perfunctory measure authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to designate the President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home in Hope, Arkansas, as a National Historic Site and unit of the National Park System.

It is notable that, at a time when Republicans are banging away on critics of the Bush administration for not respecting the office of the presidency, the vote was not the unanimous show of approval that might have been expected. Republican members of the House forced a roll-call vote -- extremely rare on such matters -- and a dozen of them then voted against so honoring Clinton's birthplace.

The "no" votes came from Tennessee's Marsha Blackburn, Florida's Ginny Brown-Waite, Utah's Chris Cannon, California's John Doolittle, Virginia's Virgil Goode, Oklahoma's Ernest Istook, Texan Ron Paul, Pennsylvania's Bill Shuster, Georgia's Lynn Westmoreland and North Carolinians Virginia Foxx, Walter Jones and Patrick McHenry. [back to top]

Follow the Money

The Mitchell Wade political corruption scandal has hit full stride. Mitchell Wade has admitted personally handing Virgil Goode thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions on more than one occassion.

The Richmond Times Dispatch quotes Tucker Watkins, 5th District Republican chairman as saying ""He's still got the duct tape on the side of his car, holding the chrome to his car. You don't operate in that manner if you're like Duke Cunningham,".

For the "man in the street" response we went to Greg Kane, Democrat “Virgil will need more than duct tape to hold his story together.” [back to top]

Here are links to just some of the stories published:
Danville Register & Bee

Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. apparently received $46,000 in illegal political donations from a defense contractor ...full story

So far Rep. Goode hasn't been linked to anything bad, but some say it smells
By Laurence Hammack

“Goode and the head of MZM Inc. stood next to each other and posed for photographs during an opening ceremony for the firm's newest information technology venture.

These days, Goode no doubt would like to put some distance between himself and Mitchell Wade.

But that seems all but impossible, now that Wade has pleaded guilty in a bribery and election fraud scandal that threatens to pull Goode into the growing controversy of political corruption in the nation's capital”….

….."Virgil is not ostentatious," said Jim Severt, a political consultant and his former chief of staff. "He doesn't need a mansion or a Cadillac, because his life is politics."

But that doesn't make him immune from temptation, Severt added: "I would think that giving him $90,000 in campaign contributions has as much influence on him as giving him a Rolls Royce or a yacht, because politics is all he has." …full story

[back to top]

House Rules Committee Democratic Staff Report:

America for Sale

"As a member of the Appropriations Committee, Goode inserted language creating or expanding MZM classified defense contracts on spending bills. At one point, Goode added a $23 million dollar classified defense program for MZM that the Pentagon hadn't even requested. In 2003, MZM-connected contributors gave Goode a total of $19,000 in the days surrounding the award of three Pentagon contracts to MZM."

for the full report click here

[back to top]

Would Justice Clean the House?
If Congress doesn't start policing itself more seriously, federal prosecutors say they might step in

There is no indication that Harris or Goode are targets in the investigation, but when asked whether it was safe to presume that Goode's statement confirms that he's one of the unnamed congressmen mentioned in the Wade charges, a Goode aide who furnished the statement said, “I don't feel comfortable answering that.” Neither, it appears to federal prosecutors, is the House ethics committee...full story

[back to top]

Harris, Goode surface in Cunningham case

And Wade admitted to giving money to employees who then donated $80,000 to two members of Congress as a way to skirt campaign finance regulations.

He said the goal was to get the two to earmark funds for his company in various contracts.

The Post has identified the two as Republican House members, Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. of Virginia and former Florida Secretary of State and 2000 state Bush campaign chairwoman, Rep. Katherine Harris. ....full story [back to top]

Two other lawmakers with Wade ties named

In Sacramento, a 2-year-old, nonpartisan campaign watchdog group called TheRestofUs.org, wasn't buying the lawmakers' explanations.

"It is more than a bit disingenuous for Harris and Goode to claim they were completely innocent when they were getting so much money from MZM and Wade and his company," said spokesman Ned Wigglesworth. "Their 'I know nothing' defense might not wash with their constituents."

"Wade targeted these two members of Congress because he believed they had the ability to request appropriations funding that would benefit MZM," U.S. Attorney Ken Wainstein in Washington said after Wade's guilty pleas.

The contributions to Goode were illegal because Wade provided cash to employees of the company he founded in 1993, MZM Inc., or to their spouses, so that they could write $2,000 checks, the maximum amount an individual can donate to a lawmaker each election cycle. The method employed by Wade to raise what are termed "straw contributions" is a violation of federal election law.

The government's case suggests that both lawmakers were then willing to go to bat for MZM with the Pentagon.

Last spring, Wade convinced Goode and his staff to help him secure $9 million to fund a facility that MZM wanted to build in the lawmaker's district and to pay for a defense program that would be based there, Wainstein said.....full story [back to top]

Contractor pleads guilty in Cunningham case
In violation of campaign-finance laws, Wade was found to have reimbursed employees at his company MZM Inc. who made campaign contributions to two other members of Congress.
Campaign-finance records show that those lawmakers were Virginia Republican Rep. Virgil Goode and Florida Republican Rep. Katherine Harris.....full story [back to top]

Virgil Goode votes on Ethics

Virgil Goode votes YES on H RES 5 (Vote to weaken House ethics rules)

Virgil Goode votes YES on H. Res. 241 (Vote to repeal weakened House ethics rules)

Virgil Goode votes YES on RES 153 (Vote to table Democrat solution to strengthen ethics rules)

Virgil Goode votes YES on H RES 213 (Vote to table another Democrat solution to strengthen ethics rules)

[back to top]