About Abramoff
The New York Times has an article by Ana Marie Cox or otherwise known as Wonkette. That puts the Abramoff scandel in perspective.Until Tuesday, Mr. Abramoff's elaborate web of corruption was an inside-the-Beltway story: we were the only ones with the patience for it. But nothing simplifies a scandal like a guilty plea. Now, the queasily intricate dance of payoffs, favors and influence-peddling that seems to implicate people from the White House on down has the nation on edge.
Yet despite predictions that Mr. Abramoff's deal is the beginning and not the end of the story, it's difficult to see if this one will end with the satisfying clink of handcuffs.
True, we are told, repeatedly, that the case has half of Washington's powerbrokers looking over their shoulder and the other half salivating for a parade of perp walks. And in Washington, a high body count gets everyone's attention (except maybe the president's). Mr. Abramoff's connections seem infinite; attempts to follow the money give you something looking less like a flow chart than like spaghetti. Delicious, felonious spaghetti.
But who is actually going to receive Jack Abramoff's Lady-and-the-Tramp-style kiss of death? The only plausible candidate at the moment is Representative Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican who appears to be a rather ham-fisted bungler. Mr. Abramoff had dealings with dozens of Washington bigwigs, yet Representative Ney is the only one to make a (pseudonymous) appearance in the indictment.
What Mr. Ney did was either very bad or very stupid, likely both. But he hardly needed Mr. Abramoff to besmirch his reputation: he has recently drawn scrutiny for the unlikely feat of winning $34,000 on an initial $100 bet during a London casino romp, and on another junket he met with a convicted con artist whom MSNBC reported had "cheated on his taxes and was involved in a deal to swindle Elvis Presley." Mr. Ney refused to discuss these issues with the press because of "national security implications." Well, Richard Nixon did give Elvis a federal drug agent's badge.
Despite the desperate glee of the editorializers and the almost-as-desperate rinsing of Abramoff funds from Republican coffers, the smell in the air is panic, not blood. In order to cast their net beyond Diamond Bob Ney, the feds would have to, as one Republican source told the Times, "pursue a different definition of bribery" - that is, prove that "if somebody were to give a gift or a campaign contribution in the same time period as a member took an official action, that in and of itself would constitute bribery." And you thought Patrick Fitzgerald was criminalizing politics.
Sad to admit it, but most of what Jack Abramoff did with politicians (as opposed to his outright fraud with Indian tribes) wasn't criminal so much as extreme. The Hollywood arc would have a chain-gang of Congressmen breaking rocks by the final reel, but we are unlikely to get such satisfaction outside of celluloid.
...With his casinos, phony charities and Scottish golfing trips, Jack Abramoff has drawn attention to Washington's fascinatingly filthy underbelly. One can only hope that the melodrama will keep people watching. While we should hesitate before defining corruption still further down ("No chiseler left behind!"), we don't need to pause before throwing the bums out. Ask any lawmaker: the harshest penalty one can receive isn't prison; it's losing.
She might be right about no crimes being commited, (or at least provable). It doesn't make it right at all. Those whom we elect should be of the highest moral charactor. Accepting gifts, campaign donations and awards for supporting a lobbyist point of view is wrong. Special interest groups own not only our Congress, but our state of Texas is even more corrupt.Special favors, gifts and campain funds are the lubricants that grease bills to their success or failure. I hope I can prove Rob Booth wrong:
I fear that because the government has grown so large and powerful and can dispense so much graft and so many favors that we may have ratcheted it past the point where people who care about ethics and/or limiting its size can have any influence.
My goal is to not accept any money, gifts or favors from anyone who might expect anything from me and show that it can be done. All I need to do now is to convince the people of District 23 to vote for Raymond Lloyd as their Representative. Its not just a matter of doing whats legal, but of doing what is right.
posted by Liberty @ 9:31 PM
3 Comments:
Liberty, concerning politicians of the usual stripe, take (another?) read of Albert J. Nock's "An Anarchist's Progress" in which he shares with us the observation that he did not truly understand the state until he made the connection between the state and a highly-organized criminal gang.
BTW, I'd like very much to help!
I found it at http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/nock_anarchists_progress.html It's interesting that some things haven't changed. I believe there is hope.
I'm going to take you up on your offer :)
From A. J. Nock, "An Anarchist's Progress", linked above:
"...So flagrant and flagitious, indeed, was the action of the State in all these countries, that its administrative officials, especially its diplomats, would immediately, in any other sphere of action, be put down as a professional-criminal class; just as would the corresponding officials in my own country, as I had already remarked.
It is a noteworthy fact, indeed, concerning all that has happened since then, that if in any given circumstances one went on the assumption that they were a professional-criminal class, one could predict with accuracy what they would do and what would happen; while on any other assumption one could predict almost nothing."
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