Laundered Casino Money Enters Spin Cycle by dreamtrove

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Laundered Casino Money Enters Spin Cycle

POSTED BY: DREAMTROVE
UPDATED: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 15:05
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Tuesday, January 10, 2006 7:00 PM

Okay. Now I need to know. Did democrats or did they not get contributions from this money laundering operation?

Here's what I have:
If it was a republican, Jack Abramoff's name was on the donation. If it was a democrat, the name may not have been, unless someone has a case, but it was the same people giving the money, in the same or similar amounts. It's logical to assume that if Abramoff money was of a specified amount and went to X republicans, and then the same contributor sent the same amount to Y democrats through a different money laundering operative, that it was part of the same money laundering scheme.

Republicans have responded by giving the money to charity, and now democrats say they should be allowed to keep the money because of the following reasons:

1. Jack Abramoff's name wasn't on the check.
2. They did no favors for indians in spite of requests (I didn't honor the deal, so it was okay to accept the bribe?)

Is this the political suicide it looks like? Or do the democrats think, 'oh, people are dumb, this abramoff thing won't affect us in '06, just the gop.'? Or are the democrats really not mixed up in the whole indian casino thing?

Please, this is partisan bickering, or rhetorical questions. Does anyone has info on the level of democrat involvement?

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Tuesday, January 10, 2006 10:11 PM

FLETCH2

So let's get this straight, you assume that just because some Reps took some money some Dems must have done also. Why? That makes little or no sense.

There is nothing illegal about lobbying, there is nothing illegal about properly accounted political contributions. What *is* illegal are bribes and services outside of the formal structure aimed at buying influence. Now the operative word here is "influence." How much influence does your average Joe Schmo congressman have? Not a great deal. If he's on a commitee, especially one able to make appropriations or pass commerce effecting laws he has more influence, chairmen of these commitees even more and influential party officials even more.

There was an article in the Times back just after the Gingridge "revolution" happened. The House had just gone Republican for the first time in an age and the paper compared political contribution per party the year before and the year after this sea change. The year before, guess what? most contributions went to Democrats (2/3s if I recall) afterwards 3/4 to the Republicans. Why? because no matter what anyone says contributing to a political party is about buying favors, and you pay your money to the people able to do that for you, not to the minority party.

If we assume that the out and out bribes flow in equal proportion to the legal contributions then most of the money would go Abramoff's way because he was the guy with the ears of folks in power.

These Indian casino's were politically naive, as can be seen by some of the things Abramoff pulled on them. They went to him because he was once part of the Republican machine, had access to Republican politicians and thus access to teh people with power. If you want to find the dirty democrat checks I think you need to go back to 1992 or so when they had the power to influence events.

On the subject of DeLay, he had quite a money making machine here in Texas, one that he could direct to pass money on to needy Republicans in states that were not so wealthy. This bought him influence with any Republican's that won office with this help. There are people in the party that were more likely to take DeLay's calls than ones from Bush --- you remember who helped get you elected. THAT was what Abramoff was selling. The idea that if you influence DeLay he could get x number of other Reps to back him who had never taken a payoff, just because they owed him favors.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 6:30 AM

DREAMTROVE

I know they took the money. It was in the news, they admitted to taking the money. They made public statements about not giving the money back. The question remains if any one has information as to the connection of democratic money to the operation, or information justifying that the democratic contributions were somehow separate.

If joe gives $20 to the guard on the left, as a bribe, and then the same joe gives another $20 to the guard on the right, it would take a solid argument to convince me that that was not also a bribe. But I was really looking for info from either side.

Anyway, I agree that corruption follows power. Also there is a historical Republicanism to indians which came from the 19th century behavior of the democrats and the fact that the initial dispute by which the democrats split off from the DRP was the issue of indian removal, Jackson, the Democrat, then ran on a platform of indian removal, and signed the indian removal act once he got into power. This was a demon not thoroughly burried until the end of the century, so it's bound to have harbored some resentment, so indians would be more likely to have ties to republicans. But corruption also favors any port in a storm.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 7:37 AM

FLETCH2

I don't see that. In more recent times most of the civil rights legisation that also favoured Indians came from the Dems. This is purely a question of power. Back before 1994 (or whenever) almost all lobbists were Dems because Dems held the reigns of power. I have no doubt that just as many dirty little deals, kickbacks and bribes happened. In fact weren't some high ranking Dems convicted for that?

Anyway, none of these folks are being noble. Chances are that if you received a check from Abramoff and it's been accounted for then it was "legal" at least under the current laws. The folks giving the money to charity aren't doing it because they think they did anything wrong by accepting it, if you asked them truthfully they probably don't view it as tainted. What they don't want is any association with Abramoff even if it's above board. If you were a Rep and you got Indian Casino money from Fred Smith and he has nothing to do with Abramoff chances are you will hang on to it, just like the Dems do.

Now the smart Republican would be looking for the bent Democrat lobbyist. There's bound to be at least one even if they have little real power these days. Getting him on the news means you can claim the system is bad (which it is) rather than one party is bent.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 11:20 AM

DREAMTROVE

I basically agree. I didn't mean that because of the Democrat's 19th century anti-indian position, the indians would say 'oh we won't deal with them.' I just meant because of the past stance, indians are more likely to have more republican contacts. I don't think indians care at all about civil rights legislation, since they have little interest in integrating into western society, especially lately. Recent movement has been completely in the opposite direction, they seem to be interested in becoming more independent of the US.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 1:47 PM

FLETCH2

I think that you are making 2 mistakes that are equally interesting. One is assuming that these folks will know or care the exact politics and motivation of one US President over 100 years ago and use that as the sole basis for how they vote. It's like saying that no Japanese American will ever vote Democrat again because FDR interned them. By that reasoning no african American would ever vote anything but Republican, after all Lincoln freed the slaves. In practice if you feel you are an oppressed minority there is enough blame to spread around.

Yes right now the Casino business, smoke shops and liqour stores mean they can go their own way but go back 30 years or so and they benefited from civil rights legislation just the same as anyone else.

They went to Abramoff because he could get thing done. In a Dem congress they would have found a Dem lobbiest. They are not going to align their business interests with any one political party on the basis of actions over a century old.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 3:05 PM

DREAMTROVE

Actually, as the founding platform point of the party, it was party policy for some time. This would give the republican and right leaning politicians a head start on ties. But again. I wasn't saying it was the only, or even the major factor, just that I would not be surprised, or think it was indicative of anything, if an indian tribe had more connections within the gop and within the democrats. Just a thought.

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