The GOP's Spreading Plague

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[Zepps_News] The GOP's Spreading Plague

 

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/100105D.shtml

 

 

 

*The GOP's Spreading Plague*

By Joe Conason

Salon.com

 

Friday 30 September 2005

 

*/Voters are notoriously slow in voting out politicians accused of

corruption, but they may reach the tipping point with the latest

revelations./*

 

To be an honest Republican these days must be to wonder what awful

revelation is coming next - and how the Grand Old Party, which once

claimed to represent political reform, became a front for sleaze,

corruption and cynical criminality. Across the country, from the Capitol

to statehouses, Republican officials are under indictment, under

investigation or under suspicion.

 

This week's headlines featured the indictment of Rep. Tom DeLay and

the probe of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, but the infection of

venality among their fellow partisans is now reaching epidemic

proportions. So widespread is the plague that keeping track of all the

individual cases, and their increasingly baroque variations, has become

a distinct challenge.

 

Consider Jack Abramoff, once the prince of K Street lobbyists and a

dedicated right-wing ideologue who boasted of his powerful connections

to DeLay, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and the entire Republican apparatus

in Washington. Already under investigation by the Justice Department for

his influence peddling among House members, including DeLay, and his

swindling of Indian tribes, Abramoff was indicted last month for bank

fraud in a separate South Florida case involving a casino boat company

that he partly owned.

 

The fraud allegedly committed by Abramoff and his business partner

Adam Kidan involved a phony wire transfer they used to purchase a

controlling interest in SunCruz from the company's founder, Konstantinos

" Gus " Boulis, in 2001.

 

Abramoff and Kidan later fell out with Boulis in a bitter business

dispute that turned violent. In February 2001, gunmen ambushed Boulis on

a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., highway and shot him repeatedly. On Tuesday,

Florida authorities arrested three New York men with mob connections for

the Boulis killing. Two of the men - Anthony Moscatiello and Ferrari - had received payments totaling more than $240,000 from Kidan

and Abramoff. Moscatiello, a longtime associate of the Gambino Mafia

family, and Ferrari were supposedly providing food and consulting

services to SunCruz - or so Kidan claimed when questioned by

prosecutors. There is no evidence, however, that Moscatiello and Ferrari

provided any services to the company.

 

Connecting the dots isn't difficult here: Kidan and Abramoff want to

get rid of Boulis, who won't go away. Kidan and Abramoff hire

Moscatiello and Ferrari with SunCruz money. Moscatiello and Ferrari

allegedly whack Boulis, without any motive of their own. If the Broward

County state's attorney has sufficient evidence to win convictions for a

capital crime, some people will probably be talking soon in hope of

avoiding the hot shot.

 

The stunning fall of Abramoff, who has yet to hit bottom, is

certainly the most colorful tale of Republican depravity. The corporate

money laundering to Texas politicians that led to DeLay's conspiracy

indictment, and the suspicious insider stock transaction that spurred

investigations of Frist by the Justice Department and the Securities and

Exchange Commission, seem mundane by comparison. Outrage will be

warranted if their misconduct is proved, but everyone sadly knows that

these felonies are now common practice in our political and corporate

culture.

 

Corporate misbehavior has also brought down right-wing publisher

Conrad Black, neoconservative strategist and former Bush advisor Richard

Perle and the entire corporate board of Hollinger Inc., the

Republican-friendly media conglomerate formerly controlled by Lord Black

- and that he and others are plausibly accused of illicitly looting for

their own benefit. Furious shareholders forced Black to relinquish

control of the company and are suing him, as well as Perle and former

Black deputy David Radler, for $500 million. The SEC is also suing Black

and Radler, and the Justice Department is investigating the former

Hollinger directors.

 

Last month, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who also happens to be

the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case, accepted Radler's

guilty plea to mail fraud and wire fraud. Radler is now believed to be

cooperating in the prosecution of what former SEC chairman Richard

Breeden, a Republican who investigated Hollinger on behalf of

shareholders, termed a " corporate kleptocracy. "

 

Kleptocratic morality evidently ruled at least two Republican

statehouses in the Midwest as well. Currently under indictment are

former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, whose trial on bribery charges

began last week, and Gov. Robert Taft of Ohio, who pleaded no contest

last month to charges of accepting illegal gifts from a state contractor.

 

That contractor is Thomas Noe, a coin dealer who received lucrative

investment deals with the state's Workers Compensation Fund and is now

at the center of a gigantic scandal known as " Coingate. " More than $12

million has disappeared from the fund, and former GOP official Noe

stands accused of laundering money to various Republican politicians,

including the Bush-Cheney campaign. Like Abramoff, Noe is a Bush

" Pioneer, " responsible for raising at least $100,000 for the president

last year.

 

Still another Pioneer is currently under criminal investigation in a

celebrated corruption case involving Randy " Duke " Cunningham, a

prominent Republican representative from San Diego with a senior

position on the House defense appropriations subcommittee. On Aug. 18,

FBI and IRS agents raided the offices of defense contractor and Bush

fundraiser Brent Wilkes.

 

Wilkes is reportedly a former business associate of Mitchell J.

Wade, the head of a defense contracting firm called MZM Inc. who is

under investigation in San Diego for alleged bribery of Cunningham.

According to newspaper reports, Wade purchased a home owned by

Cunningham at a price inflated by at least $700,000, and also permitted

the congressman to use his 42-foot yacht free of charge. Federal agents

searched Wade's offices in July.

 

Although prosecutors have brought no criminal charges in the case

yet, they have filed civil court documents describing the home sale as a

violation of federal bribery laws - and Cunningham, who has served in

Congress for decades, has already announced that he will not seek

another term next year.

 

The Republican National Committee's new treasurer, Robert

Kjellander, is under investigation too. (Naturally, he is also a Bush

Pioneer.) Not long after he assumed his new post at the party's

Washington headquarters, Kjellander received a federal subpoena for

records of his dealings with the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System, a

state pension fund, and the Carlyle Group. Federal prosecutors are

reportedly looking into alleged corruption at the fund, and have asked

Kjellander to provide information about a $4.5 million fee he received

from Carlyle for his role in arranging investments by the fund with the

huge private equity fund. Carlyle, of course, is closely connected to

the Bush administration, including the president's father, George H.W.

Bush, who has worked for the firm as a rainmaker and advisor.

 

In fairness, it should be said that all these pols and parasites may

be innocent (except for those already convicted), or at least not guilty

beyond a reasonable doubt. It is also true that voters have historically

been slow to evict politicians from office because of corruption charges.

 

But public opinion of congressional Republicans is hitting new lows,

and Americans are growing furious about the war in Iraq, the government

response to Hurricane Katrina and rising energy prices. The natural

impulse to throw the rascals out can only be encouraged by the Gilded

Age spectacles now unfolding in Washington and in cities across the

country as the indictments continue to come down between now and

November 2006.

 

------

/Joe Conason writes a weekly column for Salon and the New York

Observer./

 

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