US Diary: Republican corruption and salivating Democrats

A leading Republican lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, has just pleaded guilty to three counts of felony. Worse, he's promised to sing like a canary, which might get a lot of his Republican friends into deep doodoo. Naturally the Democrats are waiting for the mighty to fall, and they hope to win back Congress in November by running against the "Republican culture of corruption." Here are some articles about the coming fun and games. It's funny how political cycles go: it's not that one party fights and wins against the other; the ruling party simply collapses under its own weight, making a hand-over easy.


1. Abramoff, The GOP Corruption Machine & What Dems Need to Do -- by Katrina vanden Heuvel

It didn't take Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff's guilty plea to three felony counts of conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion to understand that the scale of corruption in the GOP-dominated Congress had risen to obscene heights. But it sure helps expose the cesspool of corruption in that GOP-dominated Congress.

"When this is all over, this will be bigger than [any government scandal] in the last 50 years, both in the amount of people involved and the breadth to it," Stan Brand, a former U.S. House counsel who specializes in representing public officials accused of wrongdoing, told Bloomberg News. "It will include high-ranking members of Congress and executive branch officials."

But what is to be done? Take a lesson from the good Senator from Wisconsin, Russ Feingold who, last July, launched a crackdown on government corruption.

In July, the tough-minded reformer, who with John McCain led the fight for passage of campaign finance reform, introduced the Lobbying and Ethics Reform Act in the Senate (Representative Martin Meehan (D, MA) has similar legislation pending in the House).

The bill's key provisions are designed to reduce the power of special interests by forcing lobbyists to file disclosure reports quarterly instead of twice a year, prohibiting lobbyists from taking trips with members of Congress and their staffs, and requiring former members of Congress and some senior executive branch officials to wait two years after leaving government service before working as a lobbyist. And, as Feingold told The Hill, the bill would prohibit "lobbyists from giving gifts to members" or staff and require "members and campaigns to reimburse the owners of corporate jets at the charter rate when they use those planes for their official or political travel."

Such a law--and even hardcore DC cynics may want to give it a better chance of passage after the Abramoff scandal winds its way through DC---would arrive just barely in the nick of time. The Center for Public Integrity published a must-read study last April showing that lobbyists have spent almost $13 billion since 1998 seeking to influence federal legislation and federal regulations. "Our report reveals that each year since 1998 the amount spent to influence federal lawmakers is double the amount of money spent to elect them," the Center's executive director, Roberta Baskin, pointed out.

Other findings are equally heart-stopping. More than 2,000 lobbyists in Washington had previously held senior government jobs, and in the past six years, "49 out of the 50 top lobbying firms failed to file one or more required forms." According to other reports that the Center recently put out, some 650 foreign companies are lobbying the federal government on issues important to them, and spent more than an estimated $3 billion to influence decision-making at the federal level in 2004.

But we need to look beyond the numbers, and understand what happened in 1995 when the GOP launched its infamous K Street Project, to really understand why the corruption has metastasized with such velocity. That was the beginning of the push to put "conservative activist Republicans on K Street," as Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist told journalist Elizabeth Drew--a concerted effort to install ideological comrades-in-arms who could steer money to the GOP, promote conservative causes in Washington and keep Republicans in power for years to come.

By 2003, the Republicans had achieved the goal of seizing control of K Street. That year, the Washington Post reported that the GOP had seized "a significant number of the most influential positions at trade associations and government affairs offices and reap[ed] big financial rewards." The Post added that "several top officials at trade associations and corporate offices said privately that Republicans have created a culture in Washington in which companies fear hiring Democrats for top jobs, even if they are the most qualified."

In recent months, Abramoff and now- indicted House Leader Tom DeLay have grabbed the headlines--Abramoff, in part, because he paid for Tom DeLay's trip to London and Scotland in 2000 and stole millions of dollars in fees from his clients; and DeLay, in part, because he repeatedly violated House ethics rules. (In fact, from April 1 to June 30, DeLay accepted almost $800,000 in contributions from corporate lobbies like the telecommunications and real estate industries--a sure sign that the corruption continues unchecked, as the progressive group The Campaign for America's Future has argued.)

And, in one more link in the growing Abramoff-DeLay money trail, a recent Washington Post story documented how Abramoff funneled some of the money he had skimmed from Indian casino operators through the Orwellian-named U.S. Family Network--a shell organization with a multi-million dollar budget which was termed by some of DeLay's staffers--Delay's "safe house." (If one needs another reason as to why DeLay must immediately step down as House Majority leader, the Post story also reveals that this organization, organized by DeLay associates, has been largely financed by Russian energy interests.)

But it's equally important to remember that the corruption comes not only from DeLay, Abramoff and cronies but also at virtually every level of the Republican-dominated Congress. The Hill, for example, reported last year that congressional staff have become so brazen that they "actively solicit lunches, drinks and other favors from K Street"--acting as if lobbyists are providing them with "their personal expense account." When one Senate aide ran into a lobbyist at the Capital Grille restaurant, he asked the lobbyist to foot the bill.

"The arrogance that brought Republicans into power is arrogance that will take them out of power, and that's what you see more of on the Hill," a Republican corporate lobbyist told The Hill.

Democrats are likely to pick up seats just by continuing to hammer at GOP failures and corruption, and exposing the DeLay-Abramoff-K Street triangle for the corrupting force it truly is. But to engineer a landmark, "change election" that dislodges incumbents and marks a real shift, they will have to make themselves the party of change, championing a genuine crack down on corruption.

As our Washington correspondent John Nichols wrote yesterday in The Online Beat, "Only by being genuine in their commitment to clean up Congress will Democrats turn the Abramoff scandal fully to their advantage." Feingold's legislation is an essential step in reclaiming our democracy from these pay- to-play, immoral scam artists.

(Katrina vanden Heuvel is Editor of The Nation.)


2.  Incoming -- by William Rivers Pitt

"It is not our job to seek peaceful coexistence with the Left. Our job is to remove them from power permanently." -- Jack A. Abramoff

All of official Washington is at this moment waiting with bated breath for the avalanche. Jack Abramoff, the disgraced super-lobbyist, has made a plea agreement in the massive prosecution against him and his cronies. Every talking head who has spoken on the subject has stated bluntly that the fallout from this plea deal will almost certainly result in the largest scandal to hit the capital in decades.

The questions, of course, are straightforward: Who is involved? Who took money from this guy? Who is on his pad? Most significantly, who did Abramoff name when he decided to sing to the prosecutors?

Republicans, nervous about the bad noise to come, have attempted to paint this as an equal-opportunity crime. To wit, the Democrats are into Abramoff as deeply as the GOP. The facts, however, do not bear this out. According to campaign donation information gathered by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, the following officeholders and candidates have received political donations from Abramoff since 2000:

Tom DeLay (R-Texas). John Ashcroft (R-Mo.). Frank A. LoBiondo (R-NJ). Eric Cantor (R-Va.). Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). John Ensign (R-Nev.). Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). Charles H. Taylor (R-NC). Chris Cannon (R-Utah). Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Mark Foley (R-Fla.). Richard Pombo (R-Calif.). Christopher S. "Kit" Bond (R-Mo.). Curt Weldon (R-Pa.). Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.). Doug Ose (R-Calif.). Ernest J. Istook (R-Okla.). George R. Nethercutt Jr. (R-Wash.). Jim Bunning (R-Ky.). Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.). Tom Feeney (R-Fla.). Dan Burton (R-Ind.). Eric Cantor (R-Va.). Suzanne Terrell (R-La.). Rob Simmons (R-Conn.). Charles W. "Chip" Pickering Jr. (R-Miss.). Connie Morella (R-Md.). Gordon H. Smith (R-Ore.). James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.). James M. Talent (R-Mo.). John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.). John Thune (R-SD). Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.). Bob Smith (R-Fla.). Bob Ney (R-Ohio). CL. "Butch" Otter (R-Idaho). Carolyn W. Grant (R-NC). Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.). Elizabeth Dole (R-NC). Heather Wilson (R-NM). J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.). Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). James V. Hansen (R-Utah). John Cornyn (R-Texas). Kimo Kaloi (R-Hawaii). Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.). Mike Ferguson (R-NJ). Mike Simpson (R-Idaho). Ralph Regula (R-Ohio). Ric Keller (R-Fla.). Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.). Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). Thad Cochran (R-Miss.). Dave Camp (R-Mich.). Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.). Tom Young (R-Ala.). Bill Janklow (R-SD). Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.). Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.). William L. Gormley (R-NJ). Bill McCollum (R-Fla.). Bill Redmond (R-NM). Bob Riley (R-Ala.). Claude B. Hutchison Jr. (R-Calif.). Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.). Francis E. Flotron (R-Mo.). George Allen (R-Va.). Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.). Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-NC). Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Bob Smith (R-Fla.). Joe Pitts (R-PA). Charles H. Taylor (R-NC). Bob Ehrlich (R-Md.). Charles R. Gerow (R-Pa.). Ed Royce (R-Calif.). Elia Vincent Pirozzi (R-Calif.). Jerry Weller (R-Ill.). Mark Emerson (R-Utah). Tom Davis (R-Va.). Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.).

Also:

Americans for a Republican Majority, Leadership PAC of Tom DeLay (R-Texas). Republican Majority Fund, Leadership PAC of Don Nickles (R-Okla.). Keep Our Majority PAC, Leadership PAC of Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Leadership PAC, Leadership PAC of Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio). Rely on Your Beliefs, Leadership PAC of Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). Friends of the Big Sky, Leadership PAC of Conrad Burns (R-Mont.). Senate Victory Fund, Leadership PAC of Thad Cochran (R-Miss.). American Liberty PAC, Leadership PAC of Bob Ney (R-Ohio). Battle Born PAC, Leadership PAC of John Ensign (R-Nev.). Fund for a Free Market America, Leadership PAC of Phil Crane (R-Ill.). Team PAC, Leadership PAC of J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.). The Republican Party of New Jersey.

Also:

George W. Bush (R).

Notice anything similar? Each and every name listed, each and every PAC, has an (R) after it. The Center for Responsive Politics does not have one Democrat - not one - listed as having received a donation from Jack Abramoff. The amounts given to the Republicans listed above amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In extremis, Republicans have taken to bandying about the name of Byron Dorgan, Democratic Senator from North Dakota, as evidence that this Abramoff thing is a two-party scandal. Dorgan received $67,000 from Native American tribes represented by Abramoff - not from Abramoff himself - and has since returned the money. Furthermore, he got the money before the tribes had any dealings with Abramoff. In short, Dorgan's so-called involvement in the matter is a red herring.

As for Mr. Bush, he has given the Abramoff money he received to charity, according to the White House. DNC Chairman Howard Dean pegged the total amount Bush received from Abramoff at $100,000. Abramoff attended three Hannukah receptions at the Bush White House - Hannukah? What happened to fighting the War on Christmas? - but Bush denies knowing him. "The president does not know him and does not recall meeting him," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "It is possible that he could have met him at a holiday reception or some other widely attended event."

Heh. Sounds like what we heard from Bush about Kenny "Boy" Lay.

It is going to be an interesting year.

(William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.)


3. On the Verge of Political Reform: Getting Caught vs. Coming Clean -- by David Sirota

Can you hear that sound coming from Washington? It is the Democrats licking their chops as Republicans seem to collapse under the weight of corruption scandals. With the indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, on money-laundering charges, the salivating began. Then there was the guilty plea by Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Del Mar (San Diego County), on bribery charges. Now, with indicted Republican Jack Abramoff signing a plea agreement that could bring down other lawmakers, we detect a hungry growl from the minority party.

The Democrats' excitement is understandable: Republicans as a whole have clearly embarrassed themselves, with California Republicans leading the charge in making their party a national joke. First there was Cunningham. Then came Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands (San Bernardino County), who was exposed for using his powerful positions on the House Appropriations Committee to lavish taxpayer-funded contracts on lobbying clients of his close friend, lobbyist and former California Rep. Bill Lowery. Now, two more California congressmen, Rep. John Doolittle, R-Rocklin (Placer County), and Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, are implicated in the Abramoff scandal, having taken large campaign contributions from Abramoff's clients.

In short, the GOP has humiliated itself in a way that only reinforces an image of the party that the public already holds: too beholden to big-money interests.

But underneath all the Democratic Party excitement about the GOP's corrupt missteps, a question still lingers: Is it enough for national Democratic Party leaders to simply point out their opponents' flaws?

The answer is likely no, especially if the flaws are related to corruption. The fact is the public has long believed politicians of both parties are bought and paid for by special interests. And, by and large, the public is right.

Industries now regularly spend millions of dollars underwriting political campaigns. Californians got a bitter taste of this most recently with Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's special-election campaign, funded with huge amounts of corporate cash. These contributions were called donations, but the public knows that's just a euphemism for what it really is: legalized bribery.

Then there is lobbying -- that synonym for selling insider access and connections to big-money interests, and then converting that access into congressional votes. Once a small specialty field, lobbying has become a billion-dollar bipartisan industry, with the revolving door between business and government spinning faster than an industrial strength fan.

This not-so-hidden system of money for votes means that congressional Democrats have to do more than just complain about Republicans so-called "culture of corruption." They must actually get up the courage to start advocating for fundamental reforms -- reforms that are already being pushed in states across the country.

Governors in Montana and New Hampshire, for instance, have pushed a slate of serious reforms that would, among other things, prevent lawmakers from immediately cashing in and becoming lobbyists, and would stop gifts from lobbyists to government officials. In Colorado, lawmakers last year pushed legislation to force companies seeking contracts with the government to publicly disclose their efforts to lobby state officials.

Perhaps most important are the successful efforts in Connecticut and Arizona to once and for all eliminate the system of legalized bribery and replace it with publicly financed elections, whereby qualifying candidates receive a certain amount of public money to compete in campaigns. Instead of a political process that favors candidates who can best shake down big-money donors, these states now have a publicly financed system that allows candidates to run on their ideas, their convictions and their integrity.

These states' efforts are clearly motivating others. As just one example, Assembly member Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, is leading a group of Democratic legislators pushing a bill in the upcoming session that would create a public-financing system for legislative and gubernatorial campaigns.

America is clearly sick of pay-to-play politics. But the public knows that corruption is a disease that afflicts the entire political process. It is why a Wall Street Journal poll showed that the public views both parties negatively at the same time -- the first such double-negative ratings in the poll's 15-year history.

Unless national Democratic Party leaders follow the lead of states pushing reform and fully embrace plans to seriously clean up our country's corrupt political system, Americans will likely fault the scandal-plagued Republicans only for getting caught, not for committing a sin worthy of being tossed out of office.

(David Sirota is the author of the upcoming "Hostile Takeover", due in April, which analyzes how corporate interests have bought America's political system. He is co-chair of the Progressive Legislative Action Network and served as an aide to Montana's Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer's successful campaign in 2004.)


4. Here's a slightly different take: this Washington insider thinks it won't be easy to convict anyone else besides Abramoff.

Political Theater of the Absurd -- by ANA MARIE COX (the blogger Wonkette)

THE bad guy with a fondness for quoting the most extortionary lines of "The Godfather" walks out of the courtroom dressed like a film noir villain. He was there because his pretty-boy partner had already dropped a dime on him. Lying, cheating, stealing, gambling ... and Indians. By Washington standards, the Jack Abramoff scandal is about as theatrical as you can get without having sex in the headline. (The last scandal here to involve costumes was Abscam: we were due for something that would offer better material for fancy-dress parties than blue dresses and scooters.)

Until Tuesday, Mr. Abramoff's elaborate web of corruption was an inside-the-Beltway story: we were the only ones with the patience for it. But nothing simplifies a scandal like a guilty plea. Now, the queasily intricate dance of payoffs, favors and influence-peddling that seems to implicate people from the White House on down has the nation on edge.

Yet despite predictions that Mr. Abramoff's deal is the beginning and not the end of the story, it's difficult to see if this one will end with the satisfying clink of handcuffs.

True, we are told, repeatedly, that the case has half of Washington's powerbrokers looking over their shoulder and the other half salivating for a parade of perp walks. And in Washington, a high body count gets everyone's attention (except maybe the president's). Mr. Abramoff's connections seem infinite; attempts to follow the money give you something looking less like a flow chart than like spaghetti. Delicious, felonious spaghetti.

But who is actually going to receive Jack Abramoff's Lady-and-the-Tramp-style kiss of death? The only plausible candidate at the moment is Representative Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican who appears to be a rather ham-fisted bungler. Mr. Abramoff had dealings with dozens of Washington bigwigs, yet Representative Ney is the only one to make a (pseudonymous) appearance in the indictment.

What Mr. Ney did was either very bad or very stupid, likely both. But he hardly needed Mr. Abramoff to besmirch his reputation: he has recently drawn scrutiny for the unlikely feat of winning $34,000 on an initial $100 bet during a London casino romp, and on another junket he met with a convicted con artist whom MSNBC reported had "cheated on his taxes and was involved in a deal to swindle Elvis Presley." Mr. Ney refused to discuss these issues with the press because of "national security implications." Well, Richard Nixon did give Elvis a federal drug agent's badge.

Despite the desperate glee of the editorializers and the almost-as-desperate rinsing of Abramoff funds from Republican coffers, the smell in the air is panic, not blood. In order to cast their net beyond Diamond Bob Ney, the feds would have to, as one Republican source told the Times, "pursue a different definition of bribery" - that is, prove that "if somebody were to give a gift or a campaign contribution in the same time period as a member took an official action, that in and of itself would constitute bribery." And you thought Patrick Fitzgerald was criminalizing politics.

Sad to admit it, but most of what Jack Abramoff did with politicians (as opposed to his outright fraud with Indian tribes) wasn't criminal so much as extreme. The Hollywood arc would have a chain-gang of Congressmen breaking rocks by the final reel, but we are unlikely to get such satisfaction outside of celluloid.

The best we can do is hope that the lack of so cinematic a finish will not mean that the Abramoff affair will be irrelevant or even forgettable. For one thing, Mr. Abramoff may go down as the first man in American history too corrupt to be a lobbyist. Poor Paul Miller, who as president of the American League of Lobbyists (that's the one with the designated-hitter rule) has the thankless task of defending his trade, told reporters he was reluctant to say that Mr. Abramoff even deserved to be called a member of the profession. O.K., but he deserves to be called other things. Some of them unprintable in family newspapers.

Other modern Congressional kerfuffles have not been as flashy. Neither the Congressional check-kiting scandal, the Keating Five imbroglio nor Dan Rostenkowski's thrilling run-in over postal franking privileges are likely to be made into a mini-series any time soon. But these past episodes did have the advantage of being prosecutable.

With his casinos, phony charities and Scottish golfing trips, Jack Abramoff has drawn attention to Washington's fascinatingly filthy underbelly. One can only hope that the melodrama will keep people watching. While we should hesitate before defining corruption still further down ("No chiseler left behind!"), we don't need to pause before throwing the bums out. Ask any lawmaker: the harshest penalty one can receive isn't prison; it's losing.

(Ana Marie Cox is the editor of the Wonkette blog and author of the novel "Dog Days.")