Publish to Newswire
Add an EventFrom the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature
Today's GOP: Home Of Crony Capitalism And Corruption
DUMMERSTON, Vt. — Few tears are being shed for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who was deservedly indicted in Texas for money laundering and conspiring to violate campaign finance laws.
The arrogance of DeLay, who earned his nickname "The Hammer" for his aggressiveness in shaking down lobbyists and donors, is well known to those who follow politics. But he's not the only Republican looking at jail time right now.
The investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Blame is starting to heat up. As we suspected all along, the trail is leading right up to the doorstep of the White House. President Bush and Vice President Cheney appear to have been involved in the whole affair, a crude payback mission against Plame’s husband Joseph Wilson, for daring to question the validity of the invasion of Iraq.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist faces an Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into charges that he profited from a stock sale based on insider information. The stock was HCA Inc., a company his family founded. The value of the stock dropped 9 percent after Frist sold his holdings.
Martha Stewart did prison time for a comparatively modest incident of insider trading. Frist may not see the inside of a prison cell, but he can probably forget his dream of running for president in 2008.
Then there's Jack Abramoff, a well-connected Republican lobbyist and fund-raiser. Abramoff has ties with DeLay and other top GOP operators such as Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist and Karl Rove. Abramoff is under congressional and FBI investigation and has been indicted on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy.
The White House's top procurement officer, David Safavian, was recently arrested for lying and obstructing the investigation of Abramoff. He resigned on the day he was arrested, sparing President Bush the sight of one of his top aides being handcuffed and frog-marched out of the White House.
Safavian was working on Hurricane Katrina relief efforts before he resigned. Here's where the real GOP corruption can be seen.
About 80 percent of the $1.5 billion contracts handed out by the federal government by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were handed with little or no competitive bidding. Much of the work has gone to companies with close ties to the Republican Party, such as Haliburton and Bechtel, companies that are currently under federal investigation for overbilling and shoddy work in Iraq.
What we are seeing now is crony capitalism, and what happens when one party uses its near-complete domination of the federal government to enrich its friends. The Bush administration and the Republican Party think that government exists as a spoils-distribution system. Ideology and party loyalty are more important than serving the American people.
This is how $300 billion budget surplus got turned into a $550 billion (and rising) budget deficit. This is how al-Qaida was ignored until two jets flew into the World Trade Center. This is how the invasion of Iraq turned into a disaster. This is how people died in the streets of New Orleans waiting for help that never arrived.
Corruption and incompetence are the values that the current Republican Party epitomizes. Budget deficits. Shoveling money at friends. Inaction on important problems. Wars based on lies and wishful thinking.
All this is why this nation is in deep trouble.
The investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Blame is starting to heat up. As we suspected all along, the trail is leading right up to the doorstep of the White House. President Bush and Vice President Cheney appear to have been involved in the whole affair, a crude payback mission against Plame’s husband Joseph Wilson, for daring to question the validity of the invasion of Iraq.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist faces an Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into charges that he profited from a stock sale based on insider information. The stock was HCA Inc., a company his family founded. The value of the stock dropped 9 percent after Frist sold his holdings.
Martha Stewart did prison time for a comparatively modest incident of insider trading. Frist may not see the inside of a prison cell, but he can probably forget his dream of running for president in 2008.
Then there's Jack Abramoff, a well-connected Republican lobbyist and fund-raiser. Abramoff has ties with DeLay and other top GOP operators such as Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist and Karl Rove. Abramoff is under congressional and FBI investigation and has been indicted on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy.
The White House's top procurement officer, David Safavian, was recently arrested for lying and obstructing the investigation of Abramoff. He resigned on the day he was arrested, sparing President Bush the sight of one of his top aides being handcuffed and frog-marched out of the White House.
Safavian was working on Hurricane Katrina relief efforts before he resigned. Here's where the real GOP corruption can be seen.
About 80 percent of the $1.5 billion contracts handed out by the federal government by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were handed with little or no competitive bidding. Much of the work has gone to companies with close ties to the Republican Party, such as Haliburton and Bechtel, companies that are currently under federal investigation for overbilling and shoddy work in Iraq.
What we are seeing now is crony capitalism, and what happens when one party uses its near-complete domination of the federal government to enrich its friends. The Bush administration and the Republican Party think that government exists as a spoils-distribution system. Ideology and party loyalty are more important than serving the American people.
This is how $300 billion budget surplus got turned into a $550 billion (and rising) budget deficit. This is how al-Qaida was ignored until two jets flew into the World Trade Center. This is how the invasion of Iraq turned into a disaster. This is how people died in the streets of New Orleans waiting for help that never arrived.
Corruption and incompetence are the values that the current Republican Party epitomizes. Budget deficits. Shoveling money at friends. Inaction on important problems. Wars based on lies and wishful thinking.
All this is why this nation is in deep trouble.
For more information:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ra...
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!
Donate
$55.00 donated
in the past month
Get Involved
If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.
Publish
Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.
Topics
More
Search Indybay's Archives
Advanced Search
►
▼
IMC Network
In the weeks ahead, a dangerous eruption is again threatening to shake the Bush family’s image of legitimacy, as the pressure from intersecting scandals builds.
So far, the mainstream news media has focused mostly on the white-collar abuses of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for allegedly laundering corporate donations to help Republicans gain control of the Texas legislature, or on deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove for disclosing the identity of a covert CIA officer to undercut her husband’s criticism of George W. Bush’s case for war in Iraq.
Both offenses represent potential felonies, but they pale beside new allegations linking business associates of star GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff – an ally of both DeLay and Rove – to the gangland-style murder of casino owner Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 2001.
These criminal cases also are reminders of George H.W. Bush’s long record of unsavory associations, including with a Nicaraguan contra network permeated by cocaine traffickers, Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s multi-million-dollar money-laundering operations, and anti-communist Cuban extremists tied to acts of international terrorism.
Read More
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/100405.html
--
AUSTIN, Texas -- Sometimes it helps to draw back from what's going on, to see if any patterns emerge from the chaos of daily events. In the news biz, attempts to see the Big Picture are known as thumbsuckers and regarded with appropriate contempt.
On the famous other hand, it's also sometimes the only way to see the much bigger stories that seep and creep all around us without anyone ever calling a press conference, or issuing talking points, or having gong-show debate over them.
Everybody and his dog in the political commentating trade now agrees the Bush administration is experiencing hard times -- the going is getting tough, and Bush is getting testy. Bush always gets testy under stress. This is not news.
It seems to me what we are looking at was put best by noted journalist Billy Don Moyers, formerly of Marshall, Texas, who was home last week and observed that the Republican right came to Washington to start a revolution and stayed to run a racket. It has become a game of ideological flim-flam, a scam in which all manner of distracting hoo-hah -- abortion, judicial activism, even "the war on terra" -- is used to obscure the fact that the government has been taken over by people who are using it to make money for themselves and their friends.
In the business world, this is called "control fraud," and it refers to an organization, like Enron or Tyco, that is rotten at the head. One of the key figures in this web of malfeasance is Jack Abramoff, the super-lobbyist, top fund-raiser for Bush's re-election and close buddy of Rep. Tom DeLay, himself the architect of the "K Street Strategy" to convert the entire business lobby into the fund-raising arm of the Republican Party in return for whatever legislative favors the major donors want.
Abramoff is also the close ally and former college roommate of Grover Norquist, a key right-wing political activist and major leader of the "movement conservatives" in Washington. Abramoff has also bragged that he contacted Karl Rove on behalf of Tyco.
Tim Flanigan, Bush's nominee to be deputy attorney general, left the White House Office of Legal Counsel in December 2002 to become the top lawyer for Tyco. Flanigan hired Abramoff to lobby for Tyco. He was to work against proposed legislation that would take away tax breaks from "Benedict Arnold" corporations that locate in tax havens outside the United States in order to get out of paying corporate taxes. Tyco is based in Bermuda.
Abramoff told Flanigan he would use his contacts with both DeLay and Karl Rove, "Bush's Brain," to lobby for keeping the tax breaks for Tyco.
Think about it. Bush now proposes to put in as second in command of the Justice Department, which is investigating this whole mess, the man who is Tyco's lawyer and who hired Abramoff. If Flanigan is confirmed, that will mean the five top appointees at Justice have zero prosecutorial experience among them. But Flanigan does have the only quality that truly matters in a Bush appointee: absolute loyalty to the administration.
Washington, D.C., is theoretically covered by the largest concentration of journalistic talent anywhere in the world. This is just a straight, old-fashioned corruption story of the sort theoretically uncovered by many Washington reporters earlier in their lives at various city halls. Did everyone forget how it's done?
Equally, the arrest of David Safavian, former head of procurement at the White House Office of Management and Budget, for having impeded justice by lying or covering up material facts opens up all kinds of lines of inquiry. Safavian was previously a partner in Norquist's consulting firm Janus-Merritt. Safavian also worked with Abramoff at another law-lobbying firm.
One definition of Establishment journalism is relying solely on press conferences held by people with public office and power. With the exception of The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, the Washington press corps appears to be standing around waiting for word from the official investigation. Why aren't they ahead of the official investigators?
Seems to me we have all mourned the descent of politics from the noble (if messy and comically picturesque) doings of democracy into a system of legalized bribery. Taking huge campaign contributions from special interests and doing legislative favors in return is so common one barely blinks at it.
Rep. Roy Blunt, the man Republicans chose to temporarily replace DeLay while he's under indictment, tried to alter a Homeland Security bill in 2003 with a last-minute provision to benefit the cigarette company Philip Morris. Philip Morris had not only contributed heavily to Blunt's campaign, it also employed both Blunt's girlfriend and his son. DeLay gets indicted, and the Republicans replace him with another DeLay.
The executive branch scandals seem to me to be a new and more sinister level of corruption. I can't wait to have Tim Flanigan investigate them.
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=19710