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http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/001062.html

 

Perversion of Morality

 

Posted by jesselee

 

Sunday, September 12, 2004 at 5:01 PM

 

We hear a lot about values from the GOP - compassion, the culture war,

etc. But while the administration and Tom DeLay will go to extreme

lengths to ensure that their massive corporate donors get what they

want (think Medicare bill), in truth we see much less political

capital spent on those values questions. A gay marriage ban that will

never get a real vote, an anti-choice bill passed knowing that it will

be deemed unconstitutional. All in all, it's pretty clear which are

the real priorities, and which are just a smokescreen to distract

trusting GOP voters from the fact that they are looting the treasury

on behalf of the super-rich. This is a long tradition that dates back

to Strom and the Dixiecrats who became the backbone of the modern-day

GOP when they joined during the Civil Rights era.

 

One investigation swirling around DeLay, which has yet to implicate

him directly but could be as dangerous as any, is the investigation

into two former aides, Jack Abramoff and Mike Scanlon. Together, they

funneled about $45 million from Indian tribes in various lobbying

scemes, a figure that McCain (on the Indian Affairs Committee) has

rightly described as " disgraceful " :

 

" Money is washing up all over the place, " McCain said. " This thing

has tentacles that reach everywhere. " Some of the money paid to

Abramoff and Scanlon came from the tribe's health and education funds,

McCain said. Scanlon was the former spokesman for U.S. House majority

leader, Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas. Abramoff, a Republican fund-raiser,

has touted his ties to DeLay to help get business, according to

published reports.

 

The question, of course, is what they could have possibly provided

worth that amount of money, and naturally an eye turns towards DeLay

as perhaps the only person in Washington outside of the White House

who could make such payments worthwhile. Today, via Taking on Tom

DeLay, we have an update on the Scanlon/Abramoff (/Ralph Reed) case

that crystalizes the perversion above as well as anything you could

imagine:

 

The Choctaws, who run the Silver Star and Golden Moon casinos in

Neshoba County, have paid Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff nearly $11

million since 1998. The Choctaws and three other tribes with gambling

interests also paid about $45 million to one of Abramoff's associates,

Michael Scanlon, who heads a public relations firm.

 

The relationship between the tribes and Abramoff and Scanlon is

being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Internal

Revenue Service and the Interior Department's inspector general as

well as the Senate. The Senate Indian Affairs Committee has scheduled

its first hearing on the matter on Sept. 29. The focus of the

investigation appears to be on Abramoff and Scanlon and not the tribes.

 

Abramoff used some of the millions of dollars he received from

tribes to pay Ralph Reed, chairman of President Bush's re-election

campaign in the Southeast, to help keep other tribes from opening

competing casinos.

 

Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition,

confirmed recently that Abramoff had paid him between $1 million and

$4 million to form a coalition of churches and other anti-gambling

groups called the Committee Against Gambling Expansion.

 

Did you catch that? You can just imagine Ralph Reed (Bush-Cheney's

chief Southern strategist) screaming from the pulpit about the vices

of gambling, no doubt tying them to the Democratic Party as the party

of moral decadence (dutifully overlooking Bill Bennett of course),

collecting money from thousands of evangelicals who have trusted him

for decades, and all the while just hustling for one casino over another.

 

A sad state of affairs.

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