How would or could the USDA or FDA find bad tomatoes, peppers, or

Homeland Security find terrorists coming across our borders? They

can't get the job done in the states even when a taxpayer reports it &

then the  same taxpayer is fired for reporting it. The same crooked

representatives taking $ from agri-corruption not only allow this but

promote it! The only way our representatives could find any of the

above would be if it were handed over through campaign finance with

a dollar attached. That's how cheap & easy America is bought & sold!

 

 

 

 

Abramoff! Have any of our representatives NOT taken money from

Abramoff in return for favors? Russian oil barons had more access

& influence than American taxpayers. The following from the BBC

& Slate clears it up a little.

 

The Bush Administration is up to their neck in this & cover up with

executive privilege! America, the most corrupt game in the world! I

don't care if it's the environment, human rights, or murder, the United

States is worse than any of the countries or people our representatives

point the finger & attack through the same crooked representation.

Hypocritical? No doubt a compliment  in DC. Self incrimination, the

obvious road block to justice among our lawmakers.

 

Where is Carl Rove Mr. Bush? Hiding behind executive privileged?  What

would do more damage to the office of the President, Congress, &

America? The lies or the lie it's all become?

 

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Last Updated: Wednesday, 4 January 2006, 15:23 GMT E-mail this to a friend Printable version The hum you hear is from lobbyists By Paul Reynolds World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website   Abramoff could spill more beans US lobbyist Jack Abramoff has pleaded guilty to fraud, paving the way for him to co-operate in an inquiry into corruption in Congress. But what are the ramifications of the affair? Washington is like a giant beehive in which the buzz comes from lobbyists seeking access to the queen bee - the US Congress and government. The business of Washington is government. You either work in it or around it. And Washington's business is the world's business. Everyone does it Everybody - businesses, industries, professions, trade associations, environmentalists, human rights activists, political parties, citizens groups, the media, the lot - has an interest in Washington, which is where the lobbyists come in. There are now some 35,000 of them, all supposedly doing their diligent work arguing for their clients or organisations to members of Congress and to officials in the administration. There is nothing corrupt in lobbying in itself, of course. It is a necessary part of the formation of laws. Interested parties have to have a say. It is practised all over the world. (One reader suggests that lobbyists should however have no better access than ordinary citizens and certainly those with more money might get more access). The European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg has for example experienced a huge increase in lobbying in recent years as the powers of the parliament have grown to the point where its agreement is now required before an EU law can be made. And some forms of lobbying are more elegant than others. Embassies as lobbies For example, some lobbyists go by other names - they call themselves embassies. Some of the finest lobbying in Washington is done at plush dinners at places like the British Embassy where senators and representatives, secretaries of government departments and key opinion makers from the media are gently buttered up, so that when an issue arises that needs their attention, they will take the call. One of the most interesting, if less titillating, parts of the recent book on Washington by the former British Ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer is where he stressed how important an embassy is. He was himself extremely good in the art of lobbying dressed up as dining and it would indeed be short-termism of an extreme kind for any government to give up or downscale such a well-oiled machine in a city where influence is everything. Not long ago, for example, when one of those transatlantic trade wars was looming (over bananas, I think) the US government selected cashmere sweaters from Scotland as one of its targets for punitive import duties. The British embassy machine was discreetly mobilised and lo and behold, after a few visits, chats and contacts, the sweaters were removed from the list. The case of Jack Abramoff It is not all so discreet, as the current scandal in Washington over the activities of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, reveals. The house that Jack built took lobbying beyond argument into corruption. Mr Abramoff reached a plea bargain with federal prosecutors - and added his own courtroom repentance, in which he asked for "forgiveness and redemption from the Almighty". He pleaded guilty to a number of selected corruption charges, promised to repay purloined money and pay evaded taxes and, significantly, help further investigations into members of Congress and their staff - all in exchange for a much lighter sentence than the 30 years he could have faced. The two scams The court documents showed two of Mr Abramoff's operations. The first was to take millions of dollars off Native American tribes seeking to further their casino interests (casinos on reservation land being absolute gold mines these days) by recommending a lobbying company run by his partner, Michael Scanlon. Mr Scanlon charged the innocent tribes - which wanted help in navigating the choppy congressional waters - vastly inflated sums and paid Mr Abramoff 50% of the gains. The tribes paid out $53m in fees, of which, the documents say, some $20m went to Jack Abramoff. The second was bribery of a classical kind. The court papers say that Mr Abramoff and Mr Scanlon "offered and provided a stream of things of value to public officials in exchange for a series of official acts and influence and agreements to provide official acts and influence. These things of value included but are not limited to, foreign and domestic travel, golf fees, frequent meals, entertainment, election support for candidates for government office, employment for relatives of officials and campaign contributions". What the congressman did The plea bargain mentions that "Representative #1" - said by the US media to be Republican Congressman Bob Ney from Ohio - was taken to the Marianas Islands, to the Super Bowl in Florida and to Scotland for a golf trip. In return Representative #1, it is said, supported bills, met clients of Mr Abramoff, backed one client who was after a telephone contract and made a public statement in support of another. Congressman Ney's office said that what he did was "because of his understanding of the merits and facts of the situation and not because of any improper influence". The role of golf in lobbying It is interesting how susceptible middle-aged members of Congress can be to golf trips. Other media reports say that one of Mr Abramoff's guests on the Scottish trip (to the home of golf, St Andrews, no less) was Tom DeLay, the Texas congressman who has had to step down as House majority leader to defend himself against his own corruption charges. The Washington Post reported that Mr DeLay's airfare was charged to Mr Abramoff's credit card. It is illegal for a lobbyist to pay for travel by a member of Congress. Mr Abramoff was closely linked to the Republican Party but his clients included Democrats as well. The whole political establishment is therefore under a cloud. No wonder Washington is now keenly awaiting the results of the further investigations now under way with Jack Abramoff's help. Lobbyists multiply The growth of lobbyists has been huge over recent years and so have their fees. A recent Washington Post survey showed that a well-connected lobbyist (perhaps someone who had been in the administration or Congress) could command a starting salary of $300,000 a year. Retainers run to about $20,000 a month per client and more. The growth was attributed in the survey to a combination of an expansion of government, the control of the White House and Congress by Republicans keen to develop this part of the governmental process, and the increasing realisation by companies they needed help in securing benefits and preventing damage to their interests. According to veteran journalist Elizabeth Drew, who wrote about lobbying in the New York Review of Books in 2005: "Corruption has always been present in Washington, but in recent years it has become more sophisticated, pervasive, and blatant than ever." Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET

The following from Slate mentions our friends, Russian oil barons?

When I read this stuff it makes me realize the real story would be in finding

any of our representatives NOT involved in corruption.

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Jack AbramoffThe friend Tom DeLay

can't shake.

By James Harding
Posted Thursday, April 7, 2005, at 6:36 PM ET

Bad company
 

Where to begin examining the extraordinary career of Jack Abramoff? His work try

ing to secure a visa for the great Zairian kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko, perhaps, or

the bilking of an estimated $66 million out of Native American tribes, clients he

described as "monkeys," "troglodytes," and "idiots"? Or his leadership of a 1980s

think tank financed, unbeknownst to him apparently, by the intelligence arm of

South Africa's apartheid regime?

 

No, the chapter of our man's story that matters most at the moment begins with

a toast given by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay during a New Year's trip they

both took to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands in 1997. "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 the progress and reform you have made," DeLay said before

an audience of Abramoff's clients in the islands' garment industry—whom, upon

his return to Washington, he helped win an extended exemption from federal

immigration and labor laws.

 

The most salient fact about Abramoff these days is that he may prove DeLay's

undoing. The House majority leader has so far commanded extraordinary, tight-

lipped loyalty from the Republican ranks in Congress in the face of scandals

detailed here. But precedent is not on his side. Newt Gingrich's political demise

was a slow death by a thousand cuts. Today there is already plenty of speculation

in Washington that the White House is wavering about DeLay: As much as the

president prizes loyalty, he is intolerant of sleaze and impatient with damaging

distractions from his agenda. "Within six months, Karl will force him out," a senior

 administration official from the first term says, speaking, of course, of Karl Rove.

At least one conservative redoubt, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, has

already thrown open the door. Mr. DeLay has "an unsavory whiff that could have

GOP loyalists reaching for the political Glade if it gets any worse," the paper wrote

 last week.

---

---

That whiff can be traced to the pungent Jack Abramoff. As a high-school student

in Beverly Hills, Calif., Abramoff was a square-jawed, broad-shouldered

weightlifting champion.* He went to college at Brandeis and to law school at

Georgetown. Like Rove and Lee Atwater before him, it was in his college days that

 he first garnered attention. He became chairman of the College Republicans in

1981. Even then, Abramoff was a fragrant figure: While running the College

Republicans, he also chaired the USA Foundation, a group that enjoyed tax-

exempt status because it purported to be nonpartisan. In October 1984, the USA

Foundation staged anniversary celebrations marking the first anniversary of

Reagan's invasion of Grenada—jamborees that the group insisted had nothing to

do with Reagan's re-election campaign. A spokesman explained Abramoff's dual

role to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post: "When he has his College

Republican hat on, he's partisan. When he has his U.S.A. hat on, he's nonpartisan."

After a stint in the movie business as president of Regency Entertainment Group

(most notable for the making of the Commie-bashing Dolph Lundgren flick Red

Scorpion), Abramoff went on to become a major Washington macher. He signed

up as a lobbyist in 1994, catching the Gingrich wave. He started at Preston Gates

Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, which boasted of his connections to the Hill's conservative

leadership. Later Greenberg Traurig poached him, let him loose to trawl for

millions, and then, after his troubles began to unfold, let him go.

 

Abramoff's defining innovation on K Street—the Avenue of the Lobbyists—has

been to wear his political and business hats at the same time. He is an operator

and also an ideologue. Take, for example, his success in getting part of the

fortune he siphoned off the Indian gambling interests into conservative coffers.

This is how the game worked: Abramoff's biggest client was the Coushatta Nation

of Louisiana. The deal he delivered for the tribe was congressional support for tax

exemptions and opposition to efforts by other tribes to set up rival casinos. In

return, Abramoff got an estimated $32 million, a chunk of the $66 million he

made all together from Indian gaming clients. The money was paid in lobbying

fees and contributions to Abramoff-selected charitable organizations and nonprofit

groups with strong Republican ties. For example, Abramoff helped get the chief

of the Coushatta invited to a meeting with President George W. Bush in early

2001, set up by Grover Norquist, once Abramoff's executive director at the College

Republicans and now Washington's pre-eminent conservative lobbyist. It was

suggested that a donation to Norquist's think tank, Americans for Tax Reform,

might be appreciated. Abramoff pressed the Coushattas. The $25,000 check was

sent to ATR.

 

Now this and much more is fodder for reporters. The details of the Coushatta

payment to Americans for Tax Reform was reported in the Texas Observer and the

Lake Charles American Press. The Knight Ridder and Gannett papers have been

falling over each other to trace the huge donations made to the Capital Athletic

Foundation, a charity set up by Abramoff, and to Eshkol Academy, the Jewish

prep school he and his wife established in Maryland. (When I met Abramoff two

years ago for lunch—a second sitting at Signatures, a restaurant that he owns on

Pennsylvania Avenue—he did not want to reveal much about his clients, but he