Report Says Nonprofits Sold Influence to Abramoff
Five conservative nonprofit organizations, including one run by prominent Republican Grover Norquist, "appear to have perpetrated a fraud" on taxpayers by selling their clout to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Senate investigators said in a report issued yesterday.The report includes previously unreleased e-mails between the now-disgraced lobbyist and officers of the nonprofit groups, showing that Abramoff funneled money from his clients to the groups. In exchange, the groups, among other things, produced ostensibly independent newspaper op-ed columns or news releases that favored the clients' positions.
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The Senate report released yesterday states that the nonprofit groups probably violated their tax-exempt status "by laundering payments and then disbursing funds at Mr. Abramoff's direction; taking payments in exchange for writing newspaper columns or press releases that put Mr. Abramoff's clients in a favorable light; introducing Mr. Abramoff's clients to government officials in exchange for payment; and agreeing to act as a front organization for congressional trips paid for by Mr. Abramoff's clients."
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The groups named in the report are Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform; the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, which was co-founded by Norquist and Gale Norton before she became secretary of the interior; Citizens Against Government Waste; the National Center for Public Policy Research, a spinoff of the Heritage Foundation; and Toward Tradition, a Seattle-based religious group founded by Rabbi Daniel Lapin.
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The e-mails show that Abramoff and Norquist explicitly discussed client donations to Norquist's group in exchange for Norquist's support. The group's advocacy "appears indistinguishable from lobbying undertaken by for-profit, taxable firms," the report said.
I've tried desperately to come up with an appropriate bathroom joke but I got nothin'.
Hat-tip to DemFromCt at Daily Kos.
There really isn't anything much left in the US that you could call a democracy. Every so often we see yet another story on particular stinks being given off by democracy's corpse.
And here? Well, badly sick for sure. And cuddling up to a contagious corpse.
You know what's really bizarre about this?
The circles within circles structure with cutouts appears to quite closely resemble the operation they ran with Chalabi, Curveball, the WHIG and Judy Miller and all the rest of the brass-in-pocket journos in the run up to the nakedly aggressive Iraqi Invasion.
.
Ok, pogge, I shall now attempt a bathroom joke on your behalf....just give me a mo... Ok
You won't be drowning anything in the tub, Grover - your bathroom privileges have been suspended because you kept stealing the towels.
No? Ok, how about this then?
Ha! A woman who knows her bathtubs. Take that, Grover.
This story makes me think about a lot of other op-eds. Even without the blatant fraud, so much of the spinning is looking tired and sleazy. So low the political culture has sunk.
Ahh, bathroom humour, that base, earthy, common denominator of us all.
The repugs appear to be in the early stages of the flush, you know,
that hypnotic shrinking spiral, one of life's little pleasures that many would deny watching.
Round and round they go.
Bye bye my little brown friends, you're better out than in!
All we're waiting for now is that satisfying sucking sound, proof of a job well done.
/Will crawl back in my corner now.
Sorry Grover, but the draino unclogged the tub so you no longer have the water to drown the government with anymore. Don't bother trying to replug the drain, the suction force (investigations into corruption thanks to you and Abramoff) is simply too powerful.
This article is hardly surprising given the history of the tight knit college Republicans that Norquist, Rove, Reed, and other infamous GOP operative names. They made their conspiracy to take power and turn it into a money and power maker for themselves way back then and have continued to follow up on it ever since. Which is why it is so nice to see them falling apart these days and all looking at criminal indictments at worst and political oblivion at best.
Let's not forget btw the connections between certain of these college GOPers and the Harper CPC, especially back when it was the Harper Canadian Alliance prior to the hotile takeover of the PCPC. Ralph Reed in particular is one name I recall being consulted by Harper and company more than once, and I think Grover was consulted at least once as well. That might be worth taking some time to track down, I may do so but anyone else that wants to should do so as well, the more the merrier I'd say
Yo All:
While cruising about the American newspaper world I found this little ditty in kos. (see below) This is the real "elephant in the room" - the reason to question not why we aided the invasion of Afghanistan (which was rather evident) but why we are still there frittering away the lives and bravery of our honestly hard working troops.
It appears that the AP (not some mad leftwing wide-eyed anti-American radical with insane ideas and bad hair) has just now discovered that the President, the Commander in Chief of All American armed forces works on sliding scale of rational; as one justification for invading Iraq is exposed as chemera and seems to lose effectiveness to convince the willing, he switches to another. Wikipedia has this to sat about the AP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_press
Even our Prime Minister, an admitted admirer of the Leader of the Great Democracy to the South, must see some disconnect between reality and justification now that the MSM is picking up upon it.
If Pres. Bush has such a slippery interpretation as to why he has put over 100,000 troops in Iraq, is ther not even greater worry that a rational justification is a sideshow like Afghanistan is lacking?
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/10/14/bush_keeps_revising_war_justification/?rss_id=Boston.com+%2F+News
croghan27
Does this mean we can drown Grover Nordquist in the bathtub? Please?