October 01, 2005
It appears to have been a rough week for the Republican Party, with DeLay's indictment, Miller talking, Larry Franklin's plea bargain, the forcing of the release of the worst of the Abu Ghraib photos, more revelations on the Abramoff and Safavian
scandals, continued fallout from the debacle of the non-response to
Katrina, more problems in Iraq, and on and on. People are starting to
notice a pattern. From Sam Smith: "WITH
the indictment of Tom DeLay there can no longer be any doubt that with
the Bush regime we are observing not a variation on politics but
chronically criminal and corrupt behavior parading as ideology. This is
not a movement but a mob and a disservice as much to conservatives as
to progressives and moderates. The whole purpose of the Bush machine is
to line its own pockets, increase its own power, and suppress any who
would complain about it. For the media to treat what is happening as
just another political discussion merely makes it a tool of the biggest
fraud ever perpetrated on the American public. It is time the press
learned to distinguish clearly between a con and a concept."
and Josh Marshall (there are links in the original text):"On
paper, Jack Abramoff was a lobbyist. And he made a great deal of money
for himself. But if you think of Jack Abramoff as just a crooked
lobbyist most of the facts coming out about what he did don't make a
great deal of sense. He was a key player in a very big political
machine and he was managing a slush fund.
Look at the pattern.
Notice
how all Abramoff's clients seemed to get 'bilked' out of large sums of
money that ended up going to other conservative foundations, consulting
firms, Ralph Reed, lobby shops, Grover Norquist, astroturf organizers,
politicians, etc.? All of them part of Washington's Republican
infrastructure?
In the case of Abramoff's work for Flanigan and
Tyco, Abramoff ended up sending the greater part of their $2 million
lobbying fee to an astroturf outfit called Grassroots Interactive - an
outfit allegedly controlled by Abramoff and run by a guy who now works
as the Deputy Chief of Staff to the Governor of Maryland.
The
money ended up diverted to other purposes beside the honorable task of
whipping up populist enthusiasm on behalf of corporations that relocate
to PO boxes in Bermuda to avoid paying taxes. Tyco lawyer George
Terwilliger claims the firm 'was a victim of a rip-off.'
So is
that it? Another rip-off? Another corporation which hires a lawyer out
of the White House only to get taken in by Jack Abramoff's wiles?
Please. How many times can one operator pull off the same stunt? How
many times do big chunks of these pay days get passed on to other
operators and organizations without the operators and organizations
getting wise to the game?
These odd diversions aren't the exception but the rule.
The
Republican machine built by DeLay, Norquist, Abramoff, et al. and
pulled into high gear after 2001, is a pay-for-play political machine.
This is just another part of the operation, like the diktat for trade
associations to hire only Republicans. Big political machines need
their soldiers taken care of - jobs on K Street which also discipline
the trade associations under Hill leadership. Just so, they need big
sums of money to move around off the books. How does Rove keep the
millions moving to Norquist? To Reed? To all the other operatives whose
names you don't know about?
Indian tribes bursting with millions
who need very focused sorts of legislative intervention - that's one
good source of money. Corrupt Pacific Island governments who need
similar help - another good source.
If Tyco wanted help, they
had to pay in. That's what the $2 million was. Of course it got passed
on to some other GOP outfit with Abramoff connections. That was the
point!"
The Republicans like to talk about how the Bush
Administration brought MBA management techniques to the American
government, but what they really did was discover the method of
applying the most advanced management techniques to using the
government as a source of personal wealth. The Katrina reconstruction,
where they salivated like a wolf watching a lamb as they awarded huge
no-bid, no-limit contracts to the usual select group of cronies, just
provided the final proof of what they are really up to. The only
difference between this American government, and corrupt governments at
other times or in other countries, is that the current Republicans are
better at it. Strangely enough, the Republican Party reminds me most of
old revolutionary organizations, like the IRA or the Palestinian
Authority, or even the original mafia itself, that start out with
ideological purpose and descend into groups which use their power as
the monopolists of violence to live off the avails of organized crime.
Dick Cheney is just like Tony Soprano with an MBA.
As the
American public s-l-o-w-l-y wakes up to the fact that their government
is being run solely for the purposes of thievery, there is not a damn
thing they can do about it. That's because the first thing the
Republicans stole was the voting system itself. It's telling that the
only resistance to the thievery - not the media, not the 'moderate'
Republicans, and certainly not the Democrats - is coming from what is
left of the judicial system, and Bush is in the final stages of
permanently fixing that final problem. Why do the Democrats not take
the obvious anti-war stance supported by the majority of Americans?
Because they know they can't possibly win an election on the basis of
their policies, so they might as well continue to line their pockets
with the money from the same military lobbyists who are paying the
Republicans. The entire adversarial nature of the voting system has
been toppled by the fact that only one party has any chance to win. The
Republicans may act a little contrite about the most blatant
corruption, but as long as Diebold and similar Republican cronies are
running the computer voting system, there is no chance that the
Republicans will lose control of Congress or the White House, no matter
how much they steal, and no matter how much they are caught. As the
legal system is slowly worn down, there will be absolutely no checks on
the thievery whatsoever.
|
