Oh Fossella better be worried. We'll make sure that everyone remembers this event, who the host and hostess were (polluters)and Dick Cheney's endorsement.

On April 21, 2008 Congressman Vito Fossella (R-NY 13th District) with the help of Dick Cheney (VP) has tapped into some of the dirtiest money available in his desperate bid for reelection for the 13th Congressional District (Bay Ridge Brooklyn and Staten Island) via a fundraiser arranged by David H. Koch, owner of Koch Industries, which is the largest privately-held company in the United States, with annual sales of $90 billion as an oil industry monster and with a very serious civil and criminal record as a major polluter responsible for more than 315 oil spills in five states, prompting a landmark EPA penalty of $35 million against them during the Clinton administration. They were also fined an additional $8 million for discharging oil into streams of the state of Minnesota. Just before the 2000 presidential election, a 97- count federal indictment was brought against them for concealing illegal releases of 91 metric tons of benzene, a carcinogen, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. If fully prosecuted the fines would have been up to $352 million, plus possible 35-year prison terms for company executives.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (oil industry moguls themselves) were elected, loaded the cabinet with more oil industry captains such as boards of directors for the Chevron Corporation alumnus Condoleezza Rice, and appointed John Ashcroft, as U.S. Attorney General and head of the Justice Department, who then, just two days before Koch Industries’ trail, in a sweetheart plea bargaining deal, where Koch pled guilty to falsifying documents, 88 of the major charges were dropped, and Koch and Ashcroft settled the lawsuit for a $20 million fraction of the called for $352 million in fines amount and criminal charges against executives were dropped. Koch contributed $800,000 to the Bush 2000 election campaign and other Republican candidates. Koch Industries gave $948,000 to federal candidates in the 05/06- election cycle through its political action committee (PAC) - 17% to Democrats, 82% to Republicans.

In 1989, a U.S. Senate Committee on Investigations stated that, “Koch Oil, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, is the most dramatic example of an oil company stealing by deliberate mis-measurement and fraudulent reporting.” A Washington, DC based newspaper, the Hill, in a February 2005 issue reported that, "Top White House official Matt Schlapp is joining the Washington office of oil-and gas conglomerate Koch Industries, the latest example of high-level administration and congressional staffers making post-election leaps to the lobbying world." Schlapp previously headed the White House’s Office of Political Affairs. The company spent $3,528,750 for lobbying in 2006. Alex Beehler, appointed by the Bush White House as EPA Inspector General, had previously served at Koch as their director of environmental and regulatory affairs and VP for environmental projects at Charles G. Koch Foundation. Elizabeth Stolpe, previously a Koch Industries lobbyist, is now Associate Director For Toxics & Environmental Protection at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Not long after the 2000 election there was a great deal of controversy over VP
Cheney’s extra-constitutional claims of “executive privilege” to stonewall Congress’ questioning of his secretive meetings with oil industry moguls. What could they have been discussing? We, as with our Congress, can only guess.

Veto Fessella, has been a loyal, unquestioning and rubberstamping minion for the Bush/Cheney administration and not the called for check on the Executive Branch by the constitutional separation of powers we expect from Congress. He supports huge no-bid government contracts, entitlements and tax exemptions for multi-bullion dollar polluters like Koch Industries but destruction of and withholding of entitlements to individuals like Social Security and Medicaid or even meaningful relief for sub prime victims, he supports deregulation to hinder and prevent enforcement of the law and imposition of fines or accountability of polluters and facilitates closing of hospitals in breach of federal covenant in his own district; and, he supports numerous other Bush/Cheney administration indicatives that favor the big contributor special interests of conglomerates such as Koch Industries over the safety, health and well-being of the people. The list goes on… What else can the people expect from someone so beholding to those interests?