Centerfield

Serious Question:

What exactly is the crime Abramoff is involved in? Taking money from Abramoff's clients isn't THE crim or A crime at. I've never quite understood how politicians are involved in Abramoff' crime. Can someone please explain.

But I thought it was a Republican scandal? That's what Senator Reid told me!

Well, I don't think that I've every said ANY member of congress had integrity. On the other hand yelling, “They did it to”, doesn't seem like much of a defense.

Yes, the SYSTEM needs to be changed. But let's remember who has the power to effect the change: the current ruling party. When power shifts -- as it will eventually -- then it will be the responsibility of the new majority.

The only group that can weild power is the group that has it. Focus there. The excuse that everyone would do it if they could is truly: lame.

Mathew,

I certainly do not abide under the illusion that the Democrats are somehow clean and pure when it comes to lobbyists and ethics violations. I suspect that most Americans are equally enlightened. The fact is though, this Abramoff scandal will still do more damage to Republicans, because a) Abramoff has DIRECTLY lobbied for Republicans, and b)it just looks like there's more on this on the Republican side.

Maybe it's not fair, but that's how it goes. I do agree though, for the sake of decency, both parties ought to just recognize this as a bipartisan problem, and work on this seriously.

Laugh hysterically, if you must.

Feel free to flame me via email. I'm not afraid.

When Mathew posts, this blog is ridiculous. It claims to be centrist, yet plays right into right-wing thought-speak. Didn't someone post some Cox and Forkum yesterday? How is that centrist? I don't see anyone else posting dailykos and pretending that "we're still centrist."

Every accusation shows that Reid and other Dems took money from Indian tribes. That are also Abramoff clients. It is NOT the same as having Abramoff himself directing money tribal into your campaign.

It is distasteful, granted. Then again, all monetary gifts from lobbyists should be banned, according to this centrist Dem. No trips, no donations, nothing. Make your case to the Rep or Senator and get the hell out.

Laugh hysterically if you must Mathew, but believe me, I'm laughing at you harder.

Sorry, centrist viewpoint and all, but the Rs are a big loser when this scandal works it's way out of investigations.

You can't know one way or another. You see an avalanche of news articles emphasizing that some republican or some democrat had big ties to abramoff, that could be dire or it could be nothing.

Was there a quid pro quo, agree to vote this way and you'll get lots of money? That would be a high crime, but you can't assume yet a particular case was any crime at all and smear someone unfairly. We don't know, we have to wait to sort out which connections are seedy or innocuous, and no one wants to wait.

The Democrats are making this corruption theme their major campaign issue, I'm not criticising that, but in that context it's going to make a sober objective analysis of the facts rare and difficult.

Hey, eric--news flash! Centrism is NOT reflexive middle-ism.

Every accusation shows that Reid and other Dems took money from Indian tribes. That are also Abramoff clients. It is NOT the same as having Abramoff himself directing money tribal into your campaign.

"Bovine scatology." Better go read that article. One of Reid's top aides solicited numerous donations out of the Abramoff group into Reid's campaign coffers. Then that aide (Edward Ayoob) went to work for Abramoff, and concentrated on lobbying Reid and other Dems on behalf of the Abramoff group. Of the top half-dozen politicans being scrutinized in the investigation, half are Dems. Reid, Dorgan, and Baucus. The donations at issue in the investigation are ALL out of the Abramoff group list, not Abramoff's personal donations.

Abramoff's personal donations totalled under a quarter of a million in five years. The Abramoff group donations totalled well over four million, almost twenty times as much. They cast a very wide net indeed, splitting the money about 60/40 GOP/Dem.

This is why you've seen a lot of lip service but not much active Congressional investigation. Roughly half of Congress are on the Abramoff lists. BOTH parties. The GOP got more (as majorities usually do) but everybody got something. And if you run the records of any major K-Street lobbying firm, you'll see remarkably similar lists.

What Susan said. Unless the donations can be hooked to a quid pro quo of some kind, as with Ney, this is business as usual on the Hill.

Eric,

For the record I am a center-right, moderate if you will, Republican... Never claimed anything different. That been said, how is the following right wing?

Self righteous ideologues, who claim moral superiority on either side, conveniently forget or outright ignore historical precedence. Furthermore, they are part of the problem because they blatantly disregard what is a systemic issue that is caused by not one, but both sides.

Furthermore:

When Mathew posts, this blog is ridiculous.

Yeah, my goal has been at least three posts a week, but for you I think I am going to ramp it up to about a post a day. You can thank yourself.

Laugh all you want, trust me, I am losing sleep over it, but I stand by my statement. The argument that one party is more corrupt than the other is laughable, and anyone who makes that statement is doing so, more than likely for political purposes. In other words, they care more about partisanship than they do about the truth. Both parties are corrupted. Both are at fault. Both are to blame. Both are responsible. There would be nothing different if party control were to change hands. History proves it. Were you born in 1995? Dan Rostenkowski, Jim Wright, anyone?

The fact is though, this Abramoff scandal will still do more damage to Republicans, because a) Abramoff has DIRECTLY lobbied for Republicans, and b)it just looks like there's more on this on the Republican side.

Maybe or maybe not, Rafique. I will give you this, maybe Abramoff is more of a Republican scandal, maybe they deserve to lose the majority over this. That isn't the point. The point is that it isn't about one party or one lobbyist, it is about a consistent problem with this nation's leaders that was going on before there was television. It isn't the politicians fault completely, it is our fault or those of us who continually use scandal and corruption, and/or blatant character assasination, as a means to gain power for either side instead of admitting that both sides are not all good and not all bad. People like John McCain, Evan Bayh, and Mark Warner are right when they say that we have got to stop tearing each other down, because it clouds the reality that we all have something to contribute to the public policy process, and at times we have all, yes, been part of the problem. I am not saying I am more guilty or innocent than anyone else.

Well, I don't think that I've every said ANY member of congress had integrity. On the other hand yelling, “They did it to”, doesn't seem like much of a defense.

Did I defend Republicans? Has there been anyone on this sight more critical of Tom Delay than I? My intent is not to say choose Republicans because Democrats are less dirty, but rather to point out that it is in fact the reality.

Answer to John's opening comment (if you are really serious about seriousness of the question) can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff

Key paragraphs are "Summary of investigations and scandals".

Yeah, both parties can be corrupt, but the thing is that the party in power has more opportunities, and grows more and more careless and arrogant as time in power goes on.

Turning enough rascals out to change who's in has always worked to reset the clock to some extent.

Please read TPM for the real story. Mathew seems content with spouting right wing wing-nuttery.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007647.php

I rung up Reid spokesman Jim Manley. He said Reid was a "cosponsor of Sen. Kennedy's bill; he spoke in favor of the bill on the Senate; he was a strong supporter of the bill." When I pressed Manley on whether Sen. Reid took any action adverse to the bill or made changes in timing that lead to the bill's demise, he said, "No."

Then I got hold of Ron Platt, the lobbyist referenced in the passage above, on his cell phone while he was down at a conference in Florida. I asked him whether, to the best of his recollection, Reid had taken any action against the Kennedy bill. "I'm sure he didn't," Platt told me.

What was it I was saying the other day? Something about how democrats who validate voters and provide their own positive vision can win elections, and those whose main focus is the flaws of the GOP shouldn't expect to gain all that much traction.
Whatever it was, it applies here.

Here's the thing: polls may show general public disapproval of congress and/or congressional republicans. But these sentiments don't usually manifest themselves in individual contests. Some congressmen running for re-election this year who look especially sleazy in light of this scandal may pay an individual price. But democrats choosing to adopt "we'll be more honest than the GOP and clean up congress" as a national theme are fooling themselves if they think that'll create a rising tide to lift all democratic boats.

Americans are far too smart (or perhaps too cynical, take your pick) to accept democratic claims of superior ethics at face value. It's not going to happen.

It's the congresscritters who aren't running for re-election and support a bi-partisan formulation of the strictest standards that will rise in stature.

Reid was voting against the tribes to begin with. How is this influence peddling or pay to play? I'm not saying the Democrats are clean or the Republicans are the only ones, I am not looking for the hysterical laughter promised in the post!

There are some important cultural differences as well when we're "in".

We're better at at least remembering appearances: nothing like the K Street Project for a long, long time.

We're better at remembering that we'll be in the minority some day. How many (D)s have you heard talking about exterminating the filibuster?

We cost less! (D) patterns of patronage involve excess post offices, schools, and police rather than excess/overdone defense programs, space programs, and highways.

But I think that it's true that we'll have to have a positive message to get there. Our congressional leadership isn't likely to be up to it. Dean COULD do it - I bet he's at least thinking about it - but I doubt he has the self-control to do it well.

Gee, rob, is that the same Senator Kennedy whose son Patrick (D-RI) is up towards the top of the Abramoff group's donations list? :-) What an easy game to play!

What Jon Kay said. Any demonstrated corruption will hurt Republicans more because they're the majority party. Any systemic scandal always hurts the majority more than the minority. In the House banking scandals it wasn't that the Republicans were less "guilty" as a group, but that there were fewer of them there to be hurt.

But if criminality can't be shown, then it's all "guilt by association." At least in the banking scandals we knew who was taking out "personal loans" by writing hot checks. In this case, we have lobbyists donating money to politicians, which is what lobbyists do. Business as usual on The Hill. Without that quid pro quo it's a villagers-with-torches show.

I once shook Richard Nixon's hand. Am I a Watergate conspirator? IIRC, that was also the day I met Wernher von Braun. Am I a Nazi?

Tell me Matthew, have the Democrats ever done anything remotely resembling the K Street Project?

Scott,

I am not exactly sure, fully, what you mean by the K-Street project, but if you mean the push to hire Republican lobbyists, I would argue, yes they have. There was a day in Washington not so long ago where there was not a lobbyist who wasn't a Democrat. In fact, I would argue that the push to hire Republicans is a good thing for government, because it diversifies what was left over from a Democratic controlled town pre-1994.

Scott, much the same thing went on for forty years under the Dem dominance of Washington. And should the Dems regain prominence, much the same thing will go on again, running the other direction. Nature of the Beast.

For those unaware, the K-Street project was an attempt by the GOP under Grover Norquist (fairly successful) to swing lobbying firms over to the Dark Side, er, I mean GOP support. At the time of the '94 "Gingrich revolution," after forty years of Dem dominance of Congress, the top K Street lobbying firms were staffed almost entirely by former Democratic congressional staffers and aides. The goal of the K-Street project was to reverse that. It has had some serious success.

When the "natural state" of K Street was almost entirely Dem, it was just fine with the Dems. The way to defuse K Street influence is to reduce the influence of lobbyists--slaying the Beast, or at least binding and bleeding it. All the best of luck there. But it didn't become a goal of the Democrats until the Beast started turning somewhat Republican to follow the practical power. And it would take some more years of facilitation and GOP majorities to get the GOP influence even with what the Dem influence was in, say, 1993.

We're better at remembering that we'll be in the minority some day. How many (D)s have you heard talking about exterminating the filibuster?

John, democrats don't have to remember about someday. For them, someday is TODAY. :-) If they have an ounce of perception, they're either reminded daily or constantly aware of how it sucks to be the minority.

Robert Byrd often denounced the filibuster and proposed getting rid of it... but only back when his party had the majority.

And Conservatives will more than likely attempt to filibuster the next Democratic President's judicial nominees...

Pat,

It wasn't just Byrd, either. Last May, AOL listed more than a dozen "change of hearts" on their website. Among them:

Sen Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
In 1997, she said the Senate should provide advice and consent, not block lots of nominees.
From 2001-04, she joined in successfully filibustering 10 of Bush's appeals court picks.

Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn.
In the mid-1990s, he opposed a Democratic effort to make it harder to filibuster.
Now, as the Senate majority leader, he's the point man in the GOP effort to ban judicial filibusters.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa
In the mid-1990s, he tried to change the rules, calling the filibuster "a relic of the ancient past."
Now? "Senator Harkin's position has changed since then," a spokeswoman said.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah
In the 1990s, he played a key role in blocking more than 60 of President Clinton's nominees.
Now he is adamant about getting picks to the Senate floor. "Give them a vote," he said recently.

Both sides are absolute hypocrites on these issues...

Hypocrites in Congress? Say it ain't so!

Bobby, when these things happen, do their pants literally catch on fire? :-)

It' s not a matter of saying that Democrats are righteous and Republicans aren't. But not all scandals are equally attributable to both sides. Even if, in general, both parties are corrupt, that doesn't mean that particular scandals can't be attributed to one side more than the other. And I think when one party has control over the levers of government--which is the GOP now--they deserve a larger share of the blame for corruption. Let's face it, why bribe a Democrat who has no power to do anything?

I don't have a problem at all with Mathew's posts because I recognize that he is a Republican I think Eric's statement in that regard was out of line. But, by the same token, why is it that no one has a good word to say about Democrats? How fair is it to blame Democrats for current problems when they don't control any branch of government? It's not a matter of them being more virtuous, which is obviously ridiculous. As Jon said, it's a matter of opportunity.

But, by the same token, why is it that no one has a good word to say about Democrats?

That simply isn't the case... I can think of several posts off the top of my head that I have written in favor of Democrats. Several on Mark Warner and his great job as the Governor of Virginia and his chances in 2008, which BTW I am seriously considering actively supporting. I endorsed Tim Kaine's candidacy for Governer of Virginia. I have written many times on Joe Lieberman... A few on John Kerry's positions that I liked in his run for President, like reducing the China trade deficit or increasing student loans. I have wrote a number of times in a positive manner about Hillary "frigging" Clinton for crying out loud.... And two specific postitive outlooks on John Edward's current work battling poverty.

How fair is it to blame Democrats for current problems when they don't control any branch of government?

Who is doing that? The REPUBLICANS HAVE DONE WRONG IN THEIR ROLL AS LEADERS OF THE CONGRESS... Never once did I mean to say that wasn't the case, but THE DEMOCRATS AREN'T EXACTLY DOING A BANG UP JOB IN THE MINORITY, WHY PROMOTE THEM? I didn't even blame Reid for his actions, just pointed out they are in question. The Democrats are in the minority, but they can write bills, they can advocate for change, where are they doing that? Is the central theme of their message elect us because we will proactively change things, or elect us because Republicans are bad? And again, this goes beyond the current Abramoff scandal... Why is it safe to assume, considering history, that the Democrats would be any better?

Not meant for Marc, but for the record, for those of you who love to pass off what I say as right-wing hackery, the campaign sign in my window at home says, Re-Elect Norm Dicks, DEMOCRAT FOR CONGRESS. This isn't about either/or.

Whoops! Guess I shoulda googled before making prim statements about filibusters.

Are the people of Rock Ridge coming out against your candidate, Mathew? ;-)

Returning to the subject of filibusters, when Republicans blocked Clinton's nominees, they had a majority in the Senate. They never tried to filibuster judicial nominees when they were in the minority (no, Abe Fortas doesn't count). And when Senator Frist offered a compromise to the Democrats to avoid the Byrd option (as Republicans took to calling the "nuclear option"), he offered a rule change which would guarantee all nominees a floor vote within a specified time frame, even when the non-Presidential party was in control of the Senate. In other words, he was willing to guarantee that Republicans could not use the same method used during the Clinton years to stop Hillary nominees even if she captured the White House and the Republicans held onto the Senate. Senator Reid wanted no part of it, so we wound up with the Gang of 14.