ATS: GOP Lobbyist: diverts $6M from charity, page 1
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Topic started on 29-9-2004 @ 09:39 AM by Bout Time
Republican Uber-Lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, has pulled off a theft, $6 million dollars worth, by utilizing a tried and true method employed by every Televangelist out there: "It's for the children, and we all know.....Children are our future". The clearest path to a moral & compassionate person's wallet is to present your solicitation as promoting morality & compassion!!



www.washingtonpost.com
In its first four years of operation, the charity has collected nearly $6 million. A gala fundraiser last year at the International Spy Museum at one point attracted the Washington Redskins' owner as its chairman and was to honor the co-founder of America Online.
But tax and spending records of the Capital Athletic Foundation obtained by The Washington Post show that less than 1 percent of its revenue has been spent on sports-related programs for youths.
Instead, the documents show that Jack Abramoff, one of Washington's high-powered Republican lobbyists, has repeatedly channeled money from corporate clients into the foundation and spent the overwhelming portion of its money on pet projects having little to do with the advertised sportsmanship programs, including political causes, a short-lived religious school and an overseas golf trip.


Please visit the link provided for the complete story.


The question has often come up as to "How do they get away with it?", particularly from our international members, when these things keep popping up in the US over the last 4 years. While of course it's not new, it has reached it's nadir under single party control of all three branches of the US government and a complicit corporate media....all spinning furiously in support of this administration. I've never seen, in my 20 years of voting, from Reagan to today, an administration that has never admitted to a mistake. So, they're either a bunch of Popes, or just too detached from our reality of culpability to care.

This individual has had extensive partnerings with Tom DeLay, the Republican Majority leader in Congress. DeLay has, surprise surprise!, escaped the ethics probe, lead by Republicans, over his "charity"...but nothing tied into this.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant - that still holds true, but what happens when the government doing the self policing is in the grip of majority hubris and the corporate media subjugates investigative reporting to stock price or market share? Really big BEACH UMBRELLAS, I guess?

We have two recent yardsticks to measure the aforementioned complicity by: the belated disclosure that the Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, has a potential cool $million invested in the very same companies that solicit his office ( and have won $billions of contracts from said office) and Tom DeLay's gliding past an Ethics "probe" orchestrated and chaired by his own party faithful. Let's track those two in the American media to proof out the above assertion. I couldn't find anything so far .....still looking for sunlight.


Related News Links:
www.hillnews.com
www.washingtonpost.com
www.dccc.org
www.citizensforethics.org
ATS: Ridge's Investments? Homeland Security Contractors

[edit on 29-9-2004 by Bout Time]

[edit on 29-9-2004 by Bout Time]


reply posted on 29-9-2004 @ 10:54 AM by MrOtis
It does not say Abramoff diverted $6M to the GOP:

Internal records state, for example, that Abramoff and his wife, Pam -- who are listed as the foundation's sole directors -- spent more than 70 percent of its revenue from 2001 to 2003, or $4.03 million, on a Jewish school that Abramoff founded in Columbia. The Eshkol Academy operated for two years and schooled two of his sons before closing this spring with unpaid bills, faculty members said.

The records also state that $248,742 of the foundation's income went toward buying a house near Abramoff's in Silver Spring, titled in the name of a company directed by Abramoff and fellow lobbyists from Greenberg Traurig, the Washington law firm where he worked until March. It was initially a school dormitory but is now slated to be sold, with proceeds benefiting the company.

Other recorded expenditures include $500 to help finance a memorial dinner two years ago in honor of the Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi, and $150,225 for a golf trip to Scotland aboard a private jet. Abramoff's guests on the August 2002 trip included two fellow lobbyists, the Republican chairman of the House Administration Committee and a senior official at the General Services Administration.

(snip)

Travel was another major foundation expense, totaling $240,416 in 2001 and 2002, records show. More than half of that was spent in August 2002 on the chartered jet that flew at least six people -- including Abramoff, House Administration Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), lobbyist and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, and then-General Services Administration chief of staff David Safavian -- to St. Andrews, Scotland, with a stopover in London on the way back.


The article doesn't say anywhere that money went to the GOP, although it appears at least a couple of GOP politicians have some 'splainin' to do. In fact, it looks like most of the money went to feather Abramoff's own nest.

Abramoff deserves to go to jail, and his ties to Tom DeLay must be investigated. But unless you want to be accused of Ratherizing, stick to the facts.

[edit on 9/29/2004 by MrOtis]
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