“Them who pay the piper call the tune.”
Who does Representative Patrick Tiberi represent? Well, who’s paying the piper? The most frequent source of contributions to Pat Tiberi in the 2009-2010 election cycle is an energy corporation called American Electric Power. 48 contributions by the AEP political action committee and AEP employees have been registered with the Federal Election Commission through June 30, 2010.
If you live in Ohio, you may be asking whether these 48 contributions mean something significant or are just a matter of chance. After all, the most noticeable building in downtown Columbus (just south of Tiberi’s district) is the American Electric Power Building, which at night changes the color of its lighting from red to green to blue. Apart from the AEP PAC contributions, couldn’t these just be the random contributions of AEP employees? Is this really a coordinated effort?
Look at the following three graphs and answer that question for yourself.
The contributions of AEP and AEP employees are heavily clustered by date.
Only two AEP contributors to Pat Tiberi are regular employees. The remainder are AEP executives or the AEP Political Action Committee.
The amount of the checks written to the Tiberi campaign is abnormally uniform. The chance of so many contributors just randomly writing checks for $150 is remote, suggesting some sort of coordination.
American Electric Power is playing the piper. And Pat Tiberi is playing the tune:
In fact, within that budget is something called “cap-and-trade.” It is an energy issue to deal with the issue of global warming. But in Ohio, what it will do is devastate our already ailing economy. It will cause people to leave and businesses to leave. In fact, within my district, there is a municipal power company…
