Say, has Sheldon Whitesonlyclub -- er, Whitehouse -- figured out what 'boof' actually means yet? Or is he still deep in his investigation into Brett Kavanaugh's high-school yearbooks to find out? Maybe we should ask Mark Judge ...

In the meantime, a watchdog group has a few questions for the senator from Rhode Island. The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) has discovered that his wife Sandra Whitesonlyclub -- er, Whitehouse -- has had an interesting income stream while the Boof Truther has served in the Senate. And by "interesting," FACT means "actionable":

The Democratic senator and climate hawk voted for key laws that provided funding for grants to the environmental non-profit group that works with his wife, Sandra Whitehouse, and pays her through a consulting firm.  ...

Whitehouse's wife, Sandra, is employed as president of consulting firm Ocean Wonks LLC and has been since 2017, per her LinkedIn page. Before that, she was a direct employee of Ocean Conservancy, serving as Senior Policy Adviser beginning in 2008. 

Ocean Conservancy has received more than $14.2 million in federal grants since 2008, per USASpending.gov. During 2024 alone, it was given two sizable grants, one for $5.2 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for marine debris cleanup in September and another for $1.7 million from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), again to assist with marine debris cleanup. 

The former was funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) championed by the Biden administration and voted for by Sen. Whitehouse. The latter was funded through the EPA’s annual appropriations bill, which Whitehouse also voted for.

The letter from FACT has more details that link Old Sheldon's voting record to his wife's banking records:

While these two grants alone appear to be a conflict of interest, it is even more egregious in the context of Senator Whitehouse’s long history of working on legislation being lobbied for by organizations tied to his wife. Altogether, Ocean Conservancy has spent millions on federal lobbying expenses over the years on issues relating to oceans, climate change, and environmental cleanup—issues directly championed by Senator Whitehouse, a longtime member (and current Ranking Member) of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee and the co-founder of the Senate’s so-called “Oceans Caucus.” For instance, Ocean Conservancy urged Congress to pass the International Maritime Pollution Accountability Act—legislation first introduced by Senator Whitehouse in 2023. Ocean Conservancy also advocated and secured billions in funding for coastal restoration projects in the Inflation Reduction Act. Senator Whitehouse not only voted for that legislation, but touted $3 billion in grant funding for ports and coastal restoration among the “Whitehouse-backed measures in the bill.” In addition to Ocean Conservancy, Sandra Whitehouse has been paid by other organizations that have lobbied the Senate on legislation connected to her husband and received government contracts or federal funds. ...

Senator Whitehouse directly voted for legislation that recently led to $6.9 million of taxpayer funds being paid to an organization for which his wife works and receives an income from. This circular relationship appears to be directly contrary to the Senate rules that broadly prohibit Senators from using the power of their office to benefit or appear to benefit themselves or their spouses. 

How much have the Whitehouses netted through these federal grants to Sandra's clients? Fox News notes that Ocean Conservancy has paid Sandra $2.6 million over 14 years. That's an average of $185K per year and some change, more than Sheldon's annual salary of $174,000 as a US Senator. And those lines are a lot clearer than those Senator Boof Truther tried to draw from Kavanaugh's teen-age calender from a lot longer ago, too.

FACT wants Whitehouse referred to the Senate Ethics Committee. They refer to Rule 37, which is perhaps a bit ambiguous on this point. Emphasis mine:

No Member, officer, or employee shall knowingly use his official position to introduce or aid the progress or passage of legislation, a principal purpose of which is to further only his pecuniary interest, only the pecuniary interest of his immediate family, or only the pecuniary interest of a limited class of persons or enterprises, when he, or his immediate family, or enterprises controlled by them, are members of the affected class.

The defense to this will be that the bill covered a wide range of interests, not just the "pecuniary interests" of the Whitehouses. "Principal" and "only" are the active qualifiers in this language, and they act to shield Whitehouse in this instance. Rule 37 seems more aimed at earmarking, a more common practice in years past, where spending direction was more narrow and much less aimed at broad interests. Even then, Rule 37 rarely if ever was enforced for this type of issue. 

The larger issue is the use of federal funding for NGOs like Ocean Conservancy, and the tendency of DC Inc to find ways to direct it back to their benefit. This may be far less egregious than the $2 billion that went to Stacey Abrams from Joe Biden's Green New Deal slush funds, but only in scale. It's still an American Adscam that provides circular funding for the already rich and powerful, with the purpose of perpetuating progressive control over federal policies while showering allies with cash to keep them on mission. 

And there are lots of these slush funds operating, just off of Joe Biden's "Inflation Reduction Act" alone. We need to follow that money, cut it off, and make the recipients and their connected family members notorious. Of course, with Senator Boof Truther, we're already most of the way there.