Feeney Doesn't Get It

Tom Feeney is getting justifyably crucified for excepting a $5,000 donation to his defense fund from Tyng-Lin Yang. The latter runs Yang Enterprises. Feeney was a former lobbyist for YEI. State law allowed him to lobby while he was Speaker of the Florida House. (Yes, you did read that last sentence correctly.)

Yang Enterprises has a contract with NASA. Feeney is the ranking Republican on the House Science Space Subcommittee. It isn't a stretch to think a former lobbyist with the company would look favorably after a donor's best interest. To say Feeney has a public ethics perception problem is an understatement. Feeney started his legal defense fund because of his illegal golfing trip with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

It doesn't help matters that Clint Curtis accused Feeney and Yang Enterprises of attempting to talk him into making a computer program that could change voting machine counts.

During a meeting in late September or October of 2000 at YEI, there were four people present, including myself, Tom Feeney, Mike Cohen, Mrs. Yang and to the best of my recollection, two other YEI employees came in and out of the room during the meeting. Mr. Feeney said that he wanted to know if YEI could develop a prototype of a voting program that could alter the vote tabulation in an election and be undetectable. He was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program. He detailed, in his own words, that; {a} the program needed to be touch-screen capable, {b} the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment, {c} the programming to accomplish this remain hidden even if the source code was inspected.

I'm not sure if what Curtis is saying is true or not. Feeney knows these allegations are public. That doesn't stop him from taking Yang's money. He was still eating at Abramoff's restaurant Signatures after other lawmakers had the sense to stay away. It's almost as if Feeney enjoys being embroiled in scandal.