(AMG's Solitary Path posted this gem on The Public Square forum)

“I miss George Bush.”

“What?” Donald Sussman looked up from the financial section of the Wall Street Journal questioningly to make sure he had heard correctly. “Come again?”
“I miss W,” Chellie Pingree said firmly.

“Are you feeling alright,” Sussman asked wiping some bits of jelly donut from the corner of his mouth with a fifty dollar bill and tossing it aside. “During the campaign, you ran against George Bush more than you ran against Charlie Summers. What gives?”

Congresswoman Pingree smiled at the fabulously wealthy hedge-fund manager who also served as her most intimate advisor, prolific campaign donor, and sounding board. “Plus,” she thought to herself, “he looks cute in those luxurious, Egyptian-cotton pajamas.”

“Everything was easier when we had George Bush to kick around,” she said. “I remember fondly bashing Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress from the stump. ‘They deliberately squandered America's economic, military and moral authority. Their vision for America could not be more different from mine,’” she recounted.

Sussman nodded. He had passed around those talking points to his friends at his firm Paloma Partners Management Company during her race against Summers and encouraged them to support this liberal lion from Maine. When the President asks, employees who like their job listen. They contributed more than $40,000 to Pingree for Congress. Sussman gave plenty as well not only to Chellie but to all of the liberal causes and liberal Democrats in the Pine Tree State. Since 2004, he has advanced his leftie agenda in this state to the tune of over $1,000,000. He is used to making investments.

“So?” he asked simply.

“’So’ is that George W. Bush is not in the White House anymore. ‘So’ is that the Republicans are not running Congress anymore. I got a lot of mileage out of demonizing them. We need a new enemy or people are going to start asking us why we haven’t gotten anything accomplished in Washington and Augusta. We need someone to take the blame.”

Sussman thought for a moment. “You need to attack big business. Greedy Wall Street investors are the problem,” he said. “It’s an old game but it always works.”
Chellie liked the idea. “But aren’t you worried that the public won’t like you?”

“I’m fine as long as you like me. Not to mention the $200 million Paloma got during the great government bailout program,” he said with a grin. “I appreciate how generously they like me.”

And so it was decided. Since Pingree could not blame her lack of accomplishment on Republicans, she would have to blame it on those evil fat-cats in the private sector.

The next week, Chellie Pingree held a press conference denouncing the appearance of influence-peddling by big business. “Today, we should be spending our time thinking about people who have lost their jobs, lost their health insurance or lost their homes. And not about where the next campaign contribution is going to come from,” she said during a joint appearance with her daughter Maine House Speaker Hannah Pingree. “If everyone here ran on a system of public finance I don’t think we would be struggling this week to pass health care reform,” she said.

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As the nation begins to open their eyes to the abuses of ACORN, the relationship between 1st CD Congresswoman Chellie Pingree and the notorious nonprofit is starting to raise eyebrows.

Chellie Pingree, as detailed in earlier reports on this blog, has ties with one of the group's major benefactors, Drummond Pike. But perhaps more interesting are the substantial donations for ACORN that came from a small cadre of billionaire activists, including one Donald Sussman.

S. Donald Sussman is a hedge-fund manager. He, along with George Soros, the SEIU, and Hollywood businessman Steve Bing, formed a 527 group called 'Fund for America' in 2008. Sussman donated $1 million to the fund, which in turn, donated $200,000 of that money to ACORN.

NPR reported on the group here, and the Center for Investigative Reporting detailed the contributions here.

Donald Sussman is a name well known in Maine political circles. Besides his extensive support for the CasinosNO! campaign, Mr. Sussman has dabbled in Maine politics through a good friend, Congresswoman Chellie Pingree. Here's how The Bollard's Chris Busby described the financial relationship between Sussman and Pingree last year, when primary candidate Ethan Strimling began complaining about it:

Last month, The Bollard reported that Pingree had raked in nearly $60,000 from people associated with Paloma Partners, a hedge fund headquartered in the Virgin Islands. Further digging by Strimling’s campaign has revealed that Pingree’s haul from Paloma and companies associated with its lead partner, S. Donald Sussman, exceeds $100,000.

Further into the piece, Busby tries to get comment from Team Pingree about the relationship:

Pingree’s communications director, Willy Ritch, said he was unaware that Sussman and his related companies had given Pingree over $100,000. “We don’t know what every donor’s relationship is with other people,” he said. “We don’t track that stuff down.” 
Asked if there was a limit to the amount of money Pingree is willing to accept from Sussman associates, Ritch said, “I don’t know the answer to that.”

Ritch's comments were, of course, ludicrous. Especially in light of some further reporting Busby did, in a piece titled 'Chasing Chellie', where he outlines the strong but unconfirmed rumor that Pingree and Sussman are romantically involved. The idea that Pingree would be unaware that employees of a close friend/possible boyfriend were donating tens of thousands of dollars toward her campaign doesn't pass the straight-face test.

Pingree continues to receive financial support from both Sussman and his hedge-fund employees. In her latest campaign filing, Pingree shows a one-day haul of $43,200 from employees of Sussman's Paloma Partners, on July 29. (This could indicate that Sussman held some kind of fundraiser for Pingree on this day, or it could simply indicate sloppy FEC reporting, a trait Pingree has been known for since her unsuccessful 2002 run against Susan Collins.)

In light of his substantial financial support for ACORN, Sussman's personal and financial ties to Congresswoman Pingree further color the picture of Pingree and ACORN as fellow travelers. The recent scandals make it reasonable to wonder about the specifics of Pingree's relationship with the group. The United States Senate has cut off HUD funding to the group, the Census Bureau has severed ties, the Brooklyn District Attorney has launched an investigation, and House Republicans have introduced legislation to completely cut them off from Federal money. Given the near-certainty that Pingree will be casting votes on further government funding of ACORN, it would not be unreasonable for a member of the Maine press to ask Pingree for a comment on the issue.

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The NY Times reported last year about the relationship between Drummond Pike and ACORN:

When the embezzlement of almost $1 million by the brother of the founder of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known as Acorn, surfaced last month, the organization announced that an anonymous supporter had agreed to make it whole.

That supporter was Drummond Pike, the founder and chief executive of the Tides Foundation, which channels money to what it describes as progressive nonprofits, including some Acorn charitable affiliates. Mr. Pike is a friend of Wade Rathke, the founder of Acorn and its leader until the scandal broke, and he agreed to buy the promissory note that required the Rathke family to repay Acorn the money that Mr. Rathke’s brother, Dale, had stolen.

There are many ties emerging between Pike and Chellie Pingree.

This is from FEC reports:

PIKE, DRUMMOND M
MILL VALLEY, CA 94941
TIDES INC./EXECUTIVE

PINGREE, CHELLIE M
VIA PINGREE FOR CONGRESS
04/02/2007 2300.00

Pingree and Pike were also co-fellows of the Rockwood Leadership Insititute:

We reported last week about Hannah Pingree's association with the currect Executive Director of ACORN Steve Kest. It seems that the ties between the Pingrees and ACORN go a little deeper than simply sitting on the same Board of Directors.

The Pingree- ACORN connection continues to emerge.

After reviewing the video clip of Chellie Pingree on Hardball last night, I think it's pretty clear that she is positioning herself to back away from her demand for a public option. This after she signed a letter telling the President that she would not support a bill unless it had a public option. I wonder how her 'progressive' supporters will feel about that?

The clip, on its surface, seems to show the Congresswoman adamantly in support of a public option. But listen closely to what she says. When asked by Mike Barnacle how she would vote on a bill that didn't include the option, she replies:
"That would be a tough one for me, I've already said I'd vote against a bill that didn't have a public option...{clip}..so I would be concerned if the bill didn't have a public option."
Barnacle then says "So you're not going to tell me how you're going to vote, yes or no?"
Pingree replies - "Today I'd vote no, I mean you never know what the next configuration would be..."

There's no doubt Chellie Pingree is a huge advocate for the public option, but if I were a progressive I'd be concerned that Pingree's line-in-the-sand stance of the July 30 letter is fading rapidly. "I'd be concerned" and "today I'd vote no" are statements that display equivocation and possibly dissemblance, and her response seems to indicate that she is bending under pressure to support a bill that drops the public option.

Here's the text of the July 30 letter >>