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Like arsenic in the water supply, lobbyists have poisoned Washington
Both Democrats and Republicans have got rich off the millions that
flow to those in power, leaving the poor sidelined
By Gary Younge
01/09/06 "The
Guardian" -- -- The US Congress stands at the pinnacle
of American democracy, which the nation is proud - on occasion - to
export at the barrel of a gun. Inside, 100 senators and 435 members
of the House of Representatives balance the interests of the nation
and their constituents with their consciences and party allegiances.
Their boss is the American people. Their election campaigns - one
huge interview.
This is the basic civics lesson on which every American child is
raised and which few adults seriously question. Politicians
themselves are held in low esteem - a CNN/USA Today poll last week
showed 49% of Americans think their legislators are corrupt. This is
generally regarded as the product of individual venality rather than
an institutional virus. But if Americans still believe that after
last week, then they don't know Jack.
Jack Abramoff, that is. Last Tuesday Abramoff, a high-powered
corporate lobbyist, pleaded guilty in a federal courtroom in
Washington to bribery, fraud and tax evasion. He has admitted
"providing a stream of things of value to public officials" in
return for favours, including agreements to back particular laws and
put statements in the Congressional Record.
Court papers reveal that this key financier of the Bush
administration's high-minded agenda of moral piety is a
foul-mouthed, greedy bigot. In intercepted emails, he refers to his
Native American clients - whom he played off against each other for
millions of dollars which he then used to pamper politicians - as
"morons", "monkeys", "fucking troglodytes" and "losers". He did the
nation's business not through persuasive debate but with golfing
trips to Scotland, junkets to the Pacific, corporate boxes at the
Superbowl, and expensive meals at fancy restaurants.
So Abramoff is going down. The only question, now that he has agreed
to cooperate with investigators, is how many politicians he will
take with him and how far up the food chain prosecutors are prepared
to follow the money.
So far only one legislator, Bob Ney from Ohio, has been directly
implicated. But these are early days. Like arsenic in the water
supply of the nation's political culture, Abramoff's filthy money
sloshed around Capitol Hill and flowed freely wherever there was
power. Those who fear contamination are now rushing to give the
money he gave them to charity. The wall of shame reads like a Who's
Who of American politics, including President George Bush, Hillary
Clinton, the Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, the former House
leader Tom DeLay, and the speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. DeLay,
who stood down after he was recently indicted for money-laundering,
once described Abramoff as "one of my closest and dearest friends".
This weekend, under pressure from colleagues, these ties forced
DeLay to abandon any hope of returning to the helm.
Abramoff is looking at 10 years in prison and has agreed to repay
$26.7m to those he defrauded. Washington is looking at several
months of scandal that could exact a far higher price. For a man
like Abramoff does not get that kind of Rolodex by accident. It
takes an entire system to support and indulge him. His actions were
not aberrant but consistent with an incestuous world in which you
had to "pay to play".
"Lawful lobbying does not include paying a public official a
personal benefit with the understanding, explicit or implicit, that
a certain official act will occur," explained assistant attorney
general Alice Fisher last week. "That's not lobbying. That's a
crime." If she's true to her word, the entire political class will
soon be in the dock.
Lobbyists spend about $25m per politician each year trying to gain
political advantage. In the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski in 2002:
"We have created a culture in which there's no distinction between
what is illegal and what is unethical."
Just two months ago Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a Republican
congressman from San Diego, confessed to accepting $2.4m in bribes
and evading more than $1m in taxes. The former navy pilot, whose
exploits in Vietnam formed the basis for the film Top Gun, was given
a Rolls-Royce, Persian carpets and use of a yacht.
Democrats are eager to exploit yet another impending crisis. "This
kind of politics," said Democrat Jon Tester, "doesn't really
represent the rank-and-file folks that are out there every day
trying to make ends meet." Tester is challenging Montana's
Republican senator, Conrad Burns, who had close ties to Abramoff.
He has a point. But it may not do him any good. The Bush
administration did not invent this system - remember all those
corporate visitors who stayed over in the White House during
Clinton's time? But the problem has certainly got much worse under
its tenure, which has seen the number of registered lobbyists in
Washington more than double to nearly 35,000. Meanwhile, since 1998
more than 40% of politicians leaving Congress have gained jobs
lobbying their former colleagues.
This whiff of sleaze has certainly clung to Republicans. After the
indictment of vice-presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby,
Americans believed that Bill Clinton ran a more ethical
administration, even after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, than Bush
does now. Abramoff's woes will hardly improve matters.
So the Democrats are pushing at an open door. The trouble is that
they are on the same side of it as the Republicans, and the public
are left out in the cold. Almost a third of Abramoff's money went to
Democrats. In a poll for NBC and the Wall Street Journal, 79% of
Americans believe corruption is "equally a problem among both
parties".
The Democrats stand for office, but little in the way of substantive
change. This just leads to growing cynicism among their core base.
So long as big money has bought up both sides of the aisle, the poor
will never get a fair deal. Never mind the red and blue states:
whoever you vote for, the green always wins.
Those who wield these huge sums to lure politicians are apt to act
against the interests of those who have barely any money. One of
Abramoff's most successful projects was when he represented
officials from the Northern Mariana islands. The islands, seized by
the US from Japan after the second world war, operate under a
special covenant that allows for a lower minimum wage, making it a
haven for sweatshops. "We have evidence that at least some of the
Chinese workers, when they become pregnant, are given a three-way
choice," the interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, testified to the
Senate in 1998. "Go back to China, have a back-alley abortion ... or
be fired." Abramoff lobbied hard to ensure the islands maintained
their special status, flying politicians there to play golf on
"fact-finding missions". He succeeded. DeLay later hailed the
Northern Marianas as a "free-market success".
Corporate lobbyists are why one in six Americans has no health
insurance even though almost two-thirds want a universal government
healthcare system that would provide coverage to everyone. Corporate
lobbyists are why the minimum wage has not been increased for the
past nine years, even though 86% of Americans support a substantial
hike. They pimp the principle of democracy in pursuit of profit -
they are the cancer within a body politic that continually boasts a
clean bill of health.
g.younge@guardian.co.uk
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
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