so many quotes so little time. tick tick
“On his first night on the island, DeLay was invited to a reception at the posh, beachfront Pacific Islands Club hosted by Will Tan, the powerful garment factory king. ‘When one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your most able representative in Washington, D.C., invited me to the islands, I wanted to see firsthand the free-market success and progress and reform you have made,” DeLay said. Even though I have been here for only 24 hours, I have witnessed the economic success… (But) You are up against the forces of big labor and the radical left. Dick Armey and I made a promise to defend the island’s present system. Stand firm. Resist evil. Remember that all truth and blessings emanate from our Creator.”(Dallas Observer)
“Thanks to past trips the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas has many friends on the Appropriations Committees in Congress,” Abramoff wrote to Hong Kong sweatshop mogul Willie Tan. The Tan-controlled newspaper, Saipan Tribune, responded with an article lauding Abramoff:
“If [Abramoff’s] past success in defending our interests is not enough reason to lock him into a long-term deal, the fact that George W. Bush is now the new President is yet another reason. [Abramoff] was able to defend us by educating powerful Members of Congress and arranging a trip to these islands by the most powerful member, Congressman Tom DeLay. Mr. Abramoff and his team have racked up win after win for these islands. (Saipan Tribune 2001 Editorial)
Posted by: annie | Jan 12 2006 2:20 utc | 1
It doesn’t matter what we do, until there is public financing of campaigns on a perfectly level basis, the US government will be corrupted and sold to the highest bidder.
Posted by: jdp | Jan 12 2006 2:30 utc | 2
“Bipartisan scandal” = “liberal media.” Smoke screen.
The Decline of the Delayian Empire….turn, turn, turn.
Posted by: catlady | Jan 12 2006 3:22 utc | 3
Go billmon and annie – these quotes are golden resources. It’s this kind of knowledge that makes Dean or many of us capable of embarrassing Blitzer and the rest of the disinformation crowd.
Posted by: citizen | Jan 12 2006 4:41 utc | 4
I just don’t understand why you are bothering to defend the dems. Firstly their lack of access/power was the determinant of how much they got and not any particular ethical superiority.
But importantly this is a ploy by the conservatives to get everyone out punching at mist trying to catch rainbows on an issue that will destroy any leftish individual’s credibility.
Just tire you out and make you look foolish. Defending the indefendible as in ‘my daughter’s only a little bit pregnant’.
Let the facists stomp on the dem hacks until they bleed to death. The dems are the pawl (see excellent ractchet effect link) which is ensuring the US’s move to the right.
Now is the time to clean the stables otherwise the US will be back on the conveyor belt to inevitable self-destruction.
C’mon MoA people you’re better than that. These are the people that voted for the war in Iraq, are too gutless to stand up and be counted when one of their own finally calls time on the slaughter.
These rotten lumps of decayed flesh in a suit give off a putrid smell as soon as you get near them. They will infect anyone who gets too close. Spit on their foulness as you walk past. Give em nothing and take them nowhere.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 12 2006 6:33 utc | 5
Debs is dead,
I don’t think anyone here believes that the democrats are pure as the driven snow. Of course they will get less money because they are not in power.
But, this is the Republican’s scandal and I can see no reason not to pile on and rub their smarmy faces in it for as long and as hard as possible.
While this issue is hot we should be looking to get laws proposed to make campaigning fully funded by the government, that would take a lot of wind out of the sails of the lobbyists who would then have to resort to old fashioned bribing which is somewhat easier to detect.
Scorn is applicable to most of our rulers but if we have any desire to determine our own lives we must work with those rulers to make it happen. They are not going to figure it out by themselves, no matter how much we spit on them.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 12 2006 9:32 utc | 6
At the end of the day one has to give the Republicans credit for their ruthlessness and their ability to create such individuals like Abramoff, Norquist, Reed and Rove. They have won absolute political power, control all the loot of taxpayer funds and have their agenda ensconced with corporate America particularly the media. They have got things done for themselves and lined many pockets.
Just wish they had shown similar aptitude and grit running the nations business. Oh! thats for sissies like the Dems.
Posted by: Bob | Jan 12 2006 9:34 utc | 7
If the Dems had any sense of spin, they would stress the fact that the Abramoff scandal is so big that even they have been brushed by it. Besides, I thought “bipartisanship” was supposed to be a good & welcome thing in politics.
It is nonetheless impressive to see that the Republicans are no longer trying to duck the inevitable, they are just trying to deflect a greater share of the flying feces in the Democrats’ direction.
Still, I have great faith in the Democrats’ ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and cannot imagine that they weill benefit greatly from the situation.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Jan 12 2006 10:34 utc | 8
@dan Of Steele Why even bother what the rethugs say or do about the dems because if you seriously imagine that anything the dems can/will do would be sufficiently different from the rethugs you’re not facing reality.
Letting the dems sink now would be by far the best thing that could happen.
BushCo and the rethugs need the dems much more than any non-elite amerikan does.
All the dems appear capable of being is the scapegoat for rethug fuck-ups and the whipping boy for fundie looneys.
Without the dems to kick around those lowlifes will have nobody to blame but themselves.
I realise it can seeem scary for the political process which had been seemingly ‘stable’ for so long to change so dramatically. All thinking amerikans are going to lose is someone to be dis-satisfied with on the few occasions every 50 years that the rethugs lose power. The dems never gain it, under the current model the rethugs lose it when they become too corrupt or self-serbing eg read my lips BushCo 1.
If the dems implode it will be scary for lefties for about 5 minutes until they realise that the change is exhilerating, a challenge where individual citizens can have meaningful input.
The hacks from the dems will bolt over to the rethugs in the hope of selling their ‘skills’ (ie asses) over there.
For the first time most of the people in positions of power in organisations left of centre won’t be looking at polls before deciding an issue.
The battle will become asymmetric with rethugs a huge and obvious target and their opposition too diverse to concentrate their huge centralised machine on.
It will be tough but a myriad of small groups whose chief commanality is they aren’t rethugs will achieve regional prominence and has that translates into national representation they will have the chance of melding their positions in a far more democratic way than currently occurs.
Candidates will be selected locally with no central committee of faceless apparatniks ensuring that predominence was given to the status quo ie white middle-aged male and’proven dealmakers’ aka ‘sell their soul for sixpence’.
We’ve all heard that nature abhors a vacuum. The altenative to the rethugs would be up and running very quickly and whilst there would still be some main-chancers hanging around like spare pricks at a wedding, they wouldn’t have access to the over-arching power they need to truly sell out their voters.
What had gone before would fresh in everyone else’s memory so they wouldn’t just ‘go with the flow’ ie the least worst when one of these assholes tried to puch through a piece of corporate chicanery disguised as a “compromise we can all live with”.
I say this for two reasons I’ve been in other nations where the alleged leftist party got the old heave ho and it has played just as I have described and secondly as someone who has lived outside the US and had to suffer the destruction of local beliefs and values because of US government bullying the dems are the worst.
Until W came around the corner most of the rest of the world could heave a sigh of relief. Yep rethug policies were abhorrent but they didn’t seek to impose them on everyone else.
The dems were always behind some nasty little invasion, police action or assassination.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 12 2006 11:08 utc | 9
Debs,
Show me a democratically-elected nation, [or indeed any nation], where its leaders are NOT corruptible; where under the table fees and campaign payments are not the [unwritten] rule of getting business done.
The corruption will continue regardless of which party Dem or Repub attains power. The fact remains that the Repubs are more theocratic and more authoritarian than the Dems. So if a scandal can result in the Dems regaining power, that is better for us in the United States.
Those who prevent peaceful change guarantee violent change. Now if you want a revolution, [which doesn’t always work out for the best], things would have to get much much worse for the average American. Speaking as an average American, I would prefer not to go down that path.
Posted by: gylangirl | Jan 12 2006 16:23 utc | 10
@gylangirl
I don’t like to say this because it sounds smug and I know that the politicians here are corruptible, but NZ is pretty clean at the moment.
The largest contribution anyone (person or corporation) can make to a political party $1000. Public funds pay for TV advertising on the basis of what the party got the election before. It isn’t perfect because it makes it hard for a new party to ‘grow overnight’ however it is better than the alternatives which always seemed to involve the politicians getting into bed with corporations or foreign governments.
Some people still remember 1975 where the cartoons for the conservatives made at Hanna Barbera studios and paid for by god knows who but someone in the US, featured rioting blacks. They weren’t pacific people though. The consultants figured that making them African-American lookalikes would be good enough. Which gave us an indication of how much the people behind the commercials cared about NZ life and culture.
Everynow and again a politician or a public servant will be caught ‘at it’. However for the last few years Transperancy International, an organisation dedicated to ridding corruption, has voted NZ in the top of the cleanest countries.
That wasn’t always the case in fact the great privatisation scam in which all the assets of a semi-socialist economy were sold off at a song caused a lot of problems.
Other reforms to the public sector which involved a tightening of individual responsibilty were praised as a model to work from but the World Bank bureaucrats who were sent to measure their efficacy were hesitant about the good of spreading the word. Funny that.
In fact the changes to the electoral system and funding only came about after mass action by the people who were appalled at the privatisation corruption. The corporations poured millions into fighting the reform but the government had been trapped into calling a referendum on this issue, which they thought they could win by lying to the sheeple. They didn’t and what we now have is far from perfect but it keeps the bastards reasonably honest.
The push came from none of the established political parties, in fact the Labour Party which was NZ’s alleged left of centre mob were the initial big time losers. A party made up of diverse indigenous, red (in the left sense not the US sense) and green groupings hammered them in the first poll. But it played out pretty much as I spelt out above. The assholes in the labour party jumped ship to the tories and what was left merged with a lot of the rest except the Greens who now hold their own, and buying what you want has become much harder.
The change was made by ordinary people pissed off at what both established parties had become. The established left fought harder against change than the right which was split between the pragmatists who wanted to maintain the status quo and the libertarians who felt it was right up their alley. Consequently the money to fight the people was there, but badly co-ordinated.
This is why I maintain that to achieve any sort of meaningful change without citizens going for their ‘equalisers’ means that the movement pushing for change has to be broad spectrum. Us against them means the people against the politicians, not left v right. Let the rethugs kick the shit outta the dems. They are only accelerating their own demise.
People only vote if it is worthwhile for them, about 50% of the US population has found it isn’t worthwhile.
Most of those people are more likely to vote if it means voting for a government which cares about people more than corporations.
If they start voting again, and it is likely that at least some will when the system is straightened out they are more likely to support issues that people here on the MoA board consider important than those that Haliburton and Co believe vital.
Religion in politics is a passing phase, by now ordinary citizens are starting to see that their church leaders are being corrupted by repug handouts. Given a decent alternative most will go with that.
I could go on and on saying that all the major positions of power here are now held by women, we don’t get caught in wars anymore, gay people have exactly the same rights and responsibilities as everyone, else blah blah blah but it’s really a case of suck it and see.
There is absolutely no incentive for incumbant dems to change anything even their shorts, if that is what got them into the comfortable little nest they are in already.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 12 2006 21:12 utc | 11