ATS: GOP Lobbyist: diverts $6M from charity

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!!



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]

People often ask me how can I possibly be an "Independent"?! I now have something I can point them to.

Being a "businessman", everyone assumes me a Republican. While I am quite conservative on the fiscal side of issues I am pretty liberal on the social side.

My reality is that the parties are the SAME. I vote for the PERSON I beleive will best serve the task required of the office.

This type of blatant corruption/fraud is what has driven me from the parties and into the waiting arms of self reliant thought, research and LOGIC...

m...

JUST ANOTHER SIGN THAT THE PEOPLE FEAR THE GOVERNMENT NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND...
HENCE... WE HAVE TYRANNY NOT LIBERTY...
NOTHING TO SEE HERE... MOVE ALONG... MOVE ALONG...
STATUS QUO.... BAAAAA BAAAAA
ROUND UP THE SHEEPLES...

with money being the key behind all this, maybe the best way to show the light is by having an army of accountants be the watchguards... journalists know the best scoops are in the numbers, but they also require the best research.

I started out a Reagan Republican.
But, the objectivity is inescapably not there in our two party system format. Who's the best person for the job in a party politics format, gets supplanted with How can our team win? . We've had the seemingly unimaginable concurrence of an administration that has not admitted to doing anything wrong with a media that makes limp wristed attempts at spanking them for it.
The other huge and equal turnoff? Let's protect our guy, he's one of ours. Nobody in the Republican party with any honor should be lifting a finger for Tom DeLay - he is corrupt to his very core. The man has done more dirty work in the name of God that can be rationalized; and it's usually in that format since he too bring religion to the forefront with all he does. No one in the Dem party should have done the same for Bob Torricelli. It is equal and universally our loss.

Criminals. All of them.

Top to bottom. And this is a key observation BT:

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'm sure if the Democrats or Libertarians or the Silly Hat Party ran everything they'd be corrupt too, but they don't. Checks and balances people. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. There are no watchdogs in a one party monarchy. And NO... voting Badnarik or Nader or Cobb doesn't solve anything, unless at least 55 million of you plan to do it so think about that vote carefully.

Anyway, relevant to the criminal elements, secrecy and cover ups we're discussing, I just wanted to bring this back up.

I couldn't pick a single link about insiders saying "Bush worse than Nixon" so here's all 126,000 of them.

It's becoming impossible to laugh this stuff off anymore.

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]

The only checks to be found made out to the "RNC" or "Bush/Cheney 2004" will surely be within the legal limit. But, the projects championed by DeLay et al sure did benefit, as did the initatives in front of those same lawmakers?
Eye catching subject, to be sure, but not out of context, given the man's stated profession as a GOP Lobbyist.

Abramoff is a GOP lobbyist, and at least a couple of Republican congressmen took advantage of the golf trip to Scotland. Every other expense detailed in the article appears to have been for Abramoff himself. Heck, just the little bit I copied into my previous note accounted for nearly $5 mill!

Criminal? You bet. But not at all the same as diverting "$6M from charity to the GOP".

A casual reader will take it out of context. The subject line is changed.

The change fits the story better. I hope Abramoff spends a long time behind bars.