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  Kentucky Paper Will Return Funding for McConnell Probe
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Last EditedDFWDem  Oct 16, 2006 10:09am
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News DateMonday, October 16, 2006 04:00:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionLEXINGTON A six-month examination of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell's career by the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, based on thousands of documents and scores of interviews, "shows the nexus between his actions and his donors' agendas," the paper concludes in a major report today. "He pushes the government to help cigarette makers, Las Vegas casinos, the pharmaceutical industry, credit card lenders, coal mine owners and others.

"Critics, including anti-poverty groups and labor unions, complain that McConnell has come to represent his affluent donors at the expense of Kentucky, the relatively poor state he is supposed to represent. They point, for example, to his support last year for a tough bankruptcy law, backed by New York banks that support him."

The massive report is titled "Price Tap Poltics." It features quotes referring to McConnell's allegedly "thuggish" and "shakedown" practices.

In one example, from 1998, it notes that McConnell helped to kill a proposal to curb youth smoking. About four months later, he called lobbyists at R.J. Reynolds Co. and asked for $200,000 in corporate "soft money" that he could pass to Republican senators in elections. In an e-mail exchange, published today, the lobbyists settled on "doing an additional 100,000 to him immediately and then seeing what we have left at end of next week."
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