Abramoff for Idiots:

OK, here's the challenge. Explain, in terms as simple, concrete, pithy and brief as possible, just what the Abramoff affair is all about.

I think we need a whole bunch of these ___ for Idiots statements we can draw on so that, whenever the occasion arises, we can lay out the core of any issue for average people without exceeding their typical ten-second attention span. For each issue we maybe also want to have 2 or 2 quick rebuttals, one for each of the most likely Puggy talking points they are likely to fall back on. In addition to using these little packages in conversation, folks who are moved to do so can also rewrite them into LTTE.

Other topics we need:
Plame
The meaning of Downing Street
Diebold
Ohio '04
etc.

The problem with Abramoff is that it isn't 'The Abramoff Affair' it's the 'Abramoff Affairs.

So maybe it's best to start with the ONE affair for which he has been indicted so far. That, I believe, is the Sunkruz fraud case in which he and his partner, Adam Kidan, bought the Casinos from the Greek businessman, Boulis(sp?) and lied and defrauded those who lent them millions of dollars to do so. The lenders have refused to talk about why they lent so much money to a man (Kidan) who was in serious debt at the time. I wonder, were they directed to do so by someone powerful, who had an interest in the gambling business? I don't know, but there's a lot we don't know.

The businessman was murdered in a Mafia hit, which three men have finally been charged with. It has been discovered that Kidan paid large amounts of money to at least one of those accused hitmen at the time of the murder.

In the process of this sale of the Sunkruz Casinos, Rep. Ney Republican of Ohio was solicited to condemn on the floor of Congress, the Greek businessman, so that he would be aware that Abramoff and Kidan had powerful friends in Congress who could cause trouble for him, when he began to complain about the deal. Ney received thousands of dollars from Abramoff, which it is now suspected, may have been a payment for his Congressional statements which went into the record.

Just this story alone, even if Abramoff makes a deal, will probably involve many other politicians, which is why, imo, prosecutors are willing to make a deal with him. To get testimony on 'bigger fish' than Abramoff.

.........

But even if Abramoff gets a lighter sentence in this case, they haven't even started on the Indian Affairs cases yet. He has not been charged in those cases, the ones which will involve Norquist, Reed, and maybe dozens of other politicians.

The Senate Committee has recommended looking into all that came out as a result of their hearings. Gale Norton's Interior Dept., eg, (although not Norton herself so far) has been seriously implicated in Abramoff's dealings. But that hasn't even begun yet.

In childish words, Republicans have been winning because they've been cheating far more than Democrats.

In moral words, Republicans have been winning because they've been far more immoral than Democrats.

In legal words, Republicans have been winning because they've been breaking the law far more than Democrats.

and your post also illustrates why our Dem leaders seem so reluctant to challenge the repukes.

Why are people here so afraid to accept that we kept winning but it keeps getting miscounted?

.

The post FDR dominant Dems probably easily moved in the swim of money and corruption according to their political power over legislation and purse-strings. The GOP fumed in the Minority that they could do that much better and more "businesslike" but that wasn't going to win votes. Out of power, the Dems decided to
seek money the GOP business way. It they didn't understand it then they did after the GOP took down the wannabees, Gingrich the House democratic leader, then Whitewater. Thereby they were limited from being on the take legally or sufficiently and by dint of being out of Congressional control. More rich candidates were chosen ironically with similar results to the GOP selected candidates except for a naive upper class naivete that only the good guys can exhibit to the dismay of the good guys closer to the street.

This forced innocence in the midst of "shrewdly" moving into the money game makes for some cause for relief when Whitewater fell through and the Abramoff scandal(unlike the S&L Crisis) shows Dems out of the real corruption loop from which they are blessedly excluded. However they don't win popular votes from acting and sounding in every other way like the loser GOP of the past, loyal to the nice business model, deferential to the upper crust notions of the national welfare.

To win the GOP cut itself loose from the last vestiges of honest business models and went jugular in every political field, excluding almost all honest benefit to the populace and the national welfare of course. The Dems still dither in the bliss of innocence, wandering through Hell eyes glued to the pages of a book of etiquette, taking focus group polls from the cries of the damned around them. Condemned to do so from linked ideological and campaign finance choices two decades ago. The Dems have to cut loose and go populist from the jugular to win. And Democratic platforms ARE for the good of the nation and the voters.

Abramoff is at the center of at least three major scandals....and a host of minor ones.

1) The juiciest concerns SunCruz lines, a fleet of ships that run casino cruises out of Florida. Abramoff and his partner, Adam Kidan, pressured the owner, a guy named Gus Boulis, to sell SunCruz for $147.5 million to a holding company they formed, mostly by having GOP Congresspersons like Bob Ney and Tom Delay push for a Justice Department investigation and insert statements in the Congressional Record hinting that Boulis was tied to organized crime. When Boulis agreed to sell, Abramoff and his partner gave Boulis a fraudulent wire transfer for $23 million as a down payment. Boulis soon discovered the $23 million didn't exist, and when he started bitching publicly, he ended up shot dead in Fort Lauderdale. The killers were Gambino associates Anthony Moscatiello, Anthony Ferrari and James Fiorillo, who were nabbed recently by the Ft. Lauderdale cops. Moscatiello has testifed that Kidan ordered the hit, and the payment was made with a check from Abramoff and Kidan's company. Kidan has already pleaded guilty on the fraudulent wire transfer. Further legal action is pending.

2) Abramoff and Delay aide Michael Scanlon illegally rigged tribal elections so that Indian tribes would have leaders who threw him exorbitant lobbying contracts. He soaked those tribes for fees many times higher than what a lobbying firm ought to have charged. funnelled that money to politicans unfriendly to the tribes' interests, made no attempt to get legislation in the tribes' interests passed, and traded racist e-mails jeering at his "clients". Scanlon has pled guilty to consipring with Abramoff to bribe Ney and other officials and to defrauding the tribes.

3) Abramoff also paid for overseas trips (a no-no) for Ney, Delay and others. David Safavian, the White House official indicted recently, was part of that group; he lied to investigators and obstructed the investigation.

Among the minor scandals is Abramoff's "charity," the Capital Athletic Foundation, which spent less than 1% of its $6 million in revenue on actual charity. At least $4 million was on the books as paying for the Eshkol Academy, which operated for two years and had Abramoff's two sons as its only students. Another $330,000 in donations reported to the IRS have turned out to be fraudulent.

"The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.
During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money's origins.
Two former associates of Edwin A. Buckham, the congressman's former chief of staff and the organizer of the U.S. Family Network, said Buckham told them the funds came from Russian oil and gas executives. Abramoff had been working closely with two such Russian energy executives on their Washington agenda, and the lobbyist and Buckham had helped organize a 1997 Moscow visit by DeLay (R-Tex.).
The former president of the U.S. Family Network said Buckham told him that Russians contributed $1 million to the group in 1998 specifically to influence DeLay's vote on legislation the International Monetary Fund needed to finance a bailout of the collapsing Russian economy."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/30/AR2005123001480.html?sub=AR

he lobbied against them and told them they needed him to lobby for them because they were being lobbied against and got millions out of them for it. He gave a lot of the money to Republican groups so that they could buy their way into government. All those Republicans used blood money to get into office.

Diebold - When you use the pre-election polls and the post election polls which have been proven over many years too be virtually 100% correct in determining the winner of an election it is statistically impossible for * to have won the election. So the post election polls were changed about 4 hours after they came out so they would jive with the statistics. If every poll said that Kerry won the only way they could explain the * win was to change the exit polls in the middle of the night when most people would not notice.

And you've got a computer. You know how easily people can mess with them. Plus there have been people who testified that they were paid to fix the computers.


Downing Street - the notes from a meeting with Blair and his top officials specifically stated that * wanted to go to war and they needed to make the intelligence look like Saddam was an immanent threat. The notes were never supposed to be seen by the general public but a whistle blower gave them to a newspaper. This explains why they never found WMD. They new from the beginning that there were none so they made it up.


That's my idiot response. I've probably gotten some facts wrong but the gist is right.

the BushCo-NeoCon scandals for idiots. boil them down to their simplest and most truthful essence -- so they byzantine corruptions of Republicans can be grokked.

Thank you. gotta run now === no time to contribute

n/t

vice etc. it would be helpful if you could find a villian in the Bible that could relate. If that doesn't work use fairy tales.

Crony capitalism. A massive failure of the conservative philosophy.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

:hi: Jack.

NGU.

NGU yourself.

to describe the Abramoff business is to see it as a gigantic operation to create fake "charities" and other businesses to rake off donations in order to pour the money into DeLay's pockets, both literally and figuratively. In addition A was able to cozy up to various electeds, such as Ney and finance trips, golf games and other opportunities to discuss the world as the New Repricks wanted to see it.

NGU.

• Jack Abramoff is a Washington lobbyist who got caught ripping off Native American tribes who thought he was on their side, because they were paying him to be.
  
  
• Jack also got caught greasing the palms of many a GOP politician including Bob Ney and Tom DeLay in order to influence them to swing legislation his way. Many, many more GOP'ers are quaking in their boots right now as it's just a matter of time before their quid pro quo deals with him come to light.
  
  
• Jack also ripped off a guy in Florida (Gus Boulis) that he bought a casino cruise ship from, by claiming he had paid him $23 million when he hadn't. After Boulis confronted Jack about it, he was gunned down gangland style by three heavies. Two of the heavies were on one of Jack's business partner's (Adam Kidan) payroll.
  
  
• David Safavian, the guy in the Bush administration whose job it was to set the purchasing policy for the entire government, was arrested for obstructing the federal investigation into Jack's shenanigans, including burying information that he was helping Jack to get his hands on some federally-owned property in D.C.
  
  
• In 2002, Bush quashed a U.S. Grand Jury inquiry out of Guam into Jack Abramoff's thuggery by demoting the federal prosecutor who had launched the inquiry.
  
  
• Looks like Jack will now start singing in a plea deal that will net him reduced jail time. It's quite the "I told you so" moment for his boss at his former law firm who was uncomfortable with his tactics and told Jack when he left the firm: "If you're not careful, you will end up dead, disgraced or in jail."

Also visit:
http://www.jackinthehouse.org

"In 2002, Bush quashed a U.S. Grand Jury inquiry out of Guam into Jack Abramoff's thuggery by demoting the federal prosecutor who had launched the inquiry."

Wonder where that AUSA is now...

Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Couple this with an argument that when one party is in charge of every aspect of government, it leads to more and more corruption. It doesn't matter who's in charge, it affects nearly all of them.

Watch their heads bob up and down when you make the "reasonable" argument that there are no checks and balances when one party is in charge, so there should be "balance" between the parties. I always tell them that we have the best economic times when the president is a dem, and Congress has a slight republican advantage. They ALWAYS tend to agree. Except they talk in terms of having a repub president, and one branch of Congress in the dems hands. Which is fine with me. Remember...baby steps.

The Sun-Sentinel in Miami has an excellent article on Abramoff in today's edition (December 31).
This article has great detail on the entire Abramoff story and it's well worth reading.
Check this out:

"On Feb. 6, 2001, Boulis, 51, was shot to death in his car in Fort Lauderdale. This past September, three men who had worked for Kidan were charged in Boulis' murder. One of them, Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello, a known associate John Gotti, told detectives one of his co-defendant's said Kidan ordered the hit on Boulis. Kidan, whose lawyer denies that allegation, may reply himself from the stand. Two weeks ago he pleaded guilty in the SunCruz case and agreed to become a cooperating witness. It's unknown yet if state prosecutors will use him as a witness in the Boulis murder case. Federal prosecutors plan to have him testify against Abramoff if necessary."

Questions remain to be definitively answered - Who hired Moscatiello to kill Boulis? And why did Kidan and Abramoff pay Big Tony $250,000 at the time of the murder? Kidan and Abramoff claim the money was for "catering", but no food was delivered.

"Abramoff plea deal could expose officials"

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-cabr...

for those who know nothing and for people like me who read a lot, but can't remember everything.

I give this thread 5 stars. :)

Dollars for votes, votes for dollars. He who has the gold makes the rule.

-Hoot