The Fall of the Republican Empire,...
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A Scoff For Abramoff
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The Republicans who swept into Congress after the 1994 elections promised to restore morality and integrity to government after decades of corruption by the Democrats that had ruled that institution for 60 years. But the Republican Party that gave us Crédit Moblier under Ulysses S. Grant, Teapot Dome under Warren Harding and Watergate under Richard Nixon -- three of the biggest corruption scandals of the past 125 years -- could not be expected to behave differently once it got to power. It managed to do in a decade what it took Democrats 50 years to accomplish. Top Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff is about to bring the whole Republican Party crashing down. He accepted a plea bargain on Tuesday, pleading guilty to felony counts of mail fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy in exchange for detailing to the Justice Department the intricate and massive web of corruption and influence peddling in Washington that he has been at the center of. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that as many as 60 lawmakers, almost all of them Republicans, may be implicated in what could become the biggest government scandal in decades. Some have called this case, "the Enron of lobbying." That would not be an exaggeration. Abramoff has had close ties with the Republican Party ever since his days as national chairman of the College Republicans in the early 1980s, when his closest friends were Ralph Reed, who later became the leader of the Christian Coalition, and Grover Norquist, who now runs Americans for Tax Reform and is the top political strategist in the conservative movement. This troika of young conservative guns came to Washington in the 1980s and became kingmakers when Newt Gingrich's Republican revolution took control of Congress in 1994. While Reed and Norquist focused on political strategy, Abramoff went into lobbying and bankrolling the conservative movement. Abramoff literally had his fingers in just about every pie in Washington. He doled out trips and gifts and contributions to special interest groups linked to lawmakers and offered jobs and other favors to congressional staffers. Abramoff commanded huge fees for his work because of his connections with the Republican leadership in the House. Speaker Dennis Hastert and former Majority Leader Tom DeLay were among his closest friends. And for his clients, Abramoff got results. Abramoff helped keep the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth seized from Japan during World War II, free from U.S. labor regulations. He recruited Republican lawmakers, took them on junkets and got legislation that effectively allowed Chinese manufacturers to set up sweatshops and labor camps on the island to make "Made in the USA" labeled clothing for companies like The Gap, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Abercrombie & Fitch. Together with his business partner Michael Scanlon (also under indictment), Abramoff is accused of charging more than $82 million for lobbying services from American Indian tribes, and pocketing roughly $20 million. Scanlon and Abramoff played one tribe off another in the legal machinations over casino rights. These two cases just skim the surface of the cesspool of corruption Abramoff is part of. From taking money from Russian energy moguls to get favorable treatment from the International Monetary Fund, to doing business with underworld leaders to buy casinos in Florida, to taking the money he made off the Indians to fund a sniper school for Israelis in the West Bank, Abramoff was brazen in the way he used money and power to influence government in a way that dwarfs the standard sleaze that permeates Washington politics. Many people in Washington, all the way up to the White House, have associations with Abramoff. And despite the spin we've been hearing, virtually all of the money has gone to Republicans and conservative causes. As more of the details come out about Abramoff and his dealings, we think that Americans of all political stripes will be shocked and disgusted by what they hear. Quite simply, it's our government being sold to the highest bidder. And since they are the party in charge in Washington, the Republicans will likely pay a heavy price for being associated with a man like Abramoff. © 2006 New England Newspapers, Inc.
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