Posted: Tuesday, October 18, 2005 7:00 pm
Reports in the Washington Post about the activities of Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff confirm the worst suspicions about what really goes on in the nation’s capital.
The events and characters sound like something out of a clumsily plotted, over-the-top paperback.
The action-packed coverage includes descriptions of Abramoff laundering money through nonprofit organizations — such as Americans for Tax Reform — which sometimes were allowed to skim $10,000 or so off the top.
It has colorful characters, such as “Lucky Louie” and the former head of the misleadingly named Faith and Family Alliance, who is now serving seven years for soliciting sex with minors on the Internet.
The tale drips with deceit and treachery. Abramoff allegedly manipulated some conservative groups and individuals to sabotage a bill intended to crack down on Internet gambling.
The scheme? Portray the bill as a Trojan horse that actually would expand gambling.
The technique? Enlist a few key Republicans, such as Majority Leader Tom DeLay, to spread the false characterization of the bill.
Abramoff rose to prominence in Washington, according to the Post, by helping Republicans wring campaign contributions out of Washington’s lobbying corps.
Abramoff’s name has been in circulation for months now after word leaked out about his role in funding a golfing outing to Scotland for DeLay. Abramoff also has been arrested on fraud charges in connection with the purchase of a Florida casino boat company.
Furnishing the money for the scheme to kill the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act was eLottery, which paid Abramoff’s firm $100,000 a month and funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to various groups. In a telephone interview with the Post, Robin Vanderwall of the Faith and Family Alliance said his organization received a $150,000 check from Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform. Vanderwall deposited the check and wrote one for the same amount to Century Strategies, a lobbying firm founded by Ralph Reed, formerly of the Christian Coalition.
“I was operating as a shell,” Vanderwall told the Post.
The pass-throughs allowed Abramoff to obscure the fact that a gambling company was behind the fight against the gambling bill.
The overall impression left by the reporting — this editorial merely skims the surface — confirms suspicion that the fate of legislation in Washington seems to have only an illusionary connection with its actual merits.
Some of the participants in Abramhoff’s schemes may have been unwitting accomplices. But when it comes to governing, dupes are hardly much of an improvement over crooks and hypocrites.