“We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm…Corruption…is why we win.”
Those are lines by the Texan oilman character in the movie Syriana. The movie tells the intriguing story about corruption in the global oil industry and its major players including the CIA and the U.S. government.
With a few changes in names and agencies, you could easily have the Jack Abramoff-Tom Delay Story. As the movie portrays, pretending to show due diligence in the fight against corruption, there are sacrificial lambs. I think that’s what Abramoff and DeLay represent.
Jack Abramoff, top Republican lobbyist, has already pleaded guilty to felony counts of conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion. He is not going down by himself, and I’m sure some nail-biting is going on in the Capitol City when Abramoff starts to sing during his plea bargaining.
Space does not allow me to chronicle his vile and crafty deeds, but I can’t help but feel for my Native American brothers and sisters who got played. They obviously forgot their own history lessons as to what happens when you trust the men with “forked tongues.”
Abramoff was sucking millions from the Choctaw Indians gambling enterprises. That wasn’t bad enough. He used the old divide-and-conquer tactic on the Choctaw and Poarch Creek Indians.
The Poarch Creek are the only federally recognized tribe in Alabama. When the Poarch Creek tried to flex their muscles in the gambling area, Abramoff considered them a threat to his market. He used his fake organization, the US Family Network, to send out mailings to Alabama residents urging them to prevent the corruption of family values by stopping the building of casinos by the Poarch Creek Indians. He was the master of talking out of both sides of his neck, since the Network received funds from the Choctaw’s casino operations.
The US Family Network was the laundering entity for all kinds of illegal and unethical funds that could then fund Abramoff’s other scams or seemingly legit projects. It was been exposed as the slush fund for Abramoff, DeLay and others using the cover of conservative morality as its slick appeal.
The investigation into this deep cesspool can never be thorough or final. The web is so entangled and so broad that it is already being coined as the biggest government corruption scandal in 50 years. The net is predicted to include the highest offices of government.
You can bet those involved are already cutting deals and paying bribes to have their identities minimized or completely erased. Those without the money or connections will be left standing – or crawling.
This is a government that had told us to tighten our belts, to make sacrifices for freedom. As we pay that heating bill doubled from last year or fill our gas tanks halfway because that’s what our budgets will allow, these greedy scumbags have no limit to their spending. As we are told to obey our laws that help define our democracy, these corrupt cronies make the rules up as they go along.
It is the people who make a democracy work, and democracy is a work in progress. I am going to keep reminding you that it is more of us than them. We have allowed these blood-suckers to redefine our world and we, the people, must draw a line in the sand. But first, we must get our heads out of the sand.