Guest guest Posted September 14, 2004 Report Share Posted September 14, 2004 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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