All The Way to the Top

This Jack Abramoff scandal, as we know, is a Republican scandal. And it wouldn't be a complete Republican scandal without implicating the guy at the top of the ticket:

In President Bush's first 10 months, GOP fundraiser Jack Abramoff and his lobbying team logged nearly 200 contacts with the new administration as they pressed for friendly hires at federal agencies and sought to keep the Northern Mariana Islands exempt from the minimum wage and other laws, records show.

The meetings between Abramoff's lobbying team and the administration ranged from Attorney General John Ashcroft to policy advisers in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, according to his lobbying firm billing records.

Abramoff, a $100,000-plus fundraiser for Bush, is now under criminal investigation for some of his lobbying work. His firm boasted its lobbying team helped revise a section of the Republican Party's 2000 platform to make it favorable to its island client.

I thought this was an interesting tidbit to throw back at the "This is a bipartisan scandal, everybody does it" crowd:

The reception Abramoff's team received from the Bush administration was in stark contrast to the chilly relations of the Clinton years. Abramoff, then at the Preston Gates firm, scored few meetings with Clinton aides and the lobbyist and the islands vehemently opposed White House attempts to extend U.S. labor laws to the territory's clothing factories.

By the way, Bush returned exactly $6,000 of that $100,000-plus he received as a result of Abramoff's efforts. Even though he received at least $8,000 from Abramoff's parents, sister and brother-in-law, all on the same day in June 2003.

Apparently these ties between Bush and the admitted felon go back to the Texas governor days. And they bore fruit: $36,000 in the President's campaign war chest from the Marianas Islands. By the way, the Marianas Islands are a US commonwealth that, through lobbying efforts, are immune from federal minimum wage laws. In addition, they have been accused of running sweatshops:

The Pacific commonwealth serves as a haven for garment sweatshops that evade U.S. labor and immigration laws while legally labeling their products "Made in the U.S.A." Nearly every big name in the American rag trade has dealt with factories there.

Several years ago, the gross abuse of the laborers in the islands—mostly young women imported from China and Thailand—drew unwanted attention from the federal government. When Clinton administration officials proposed to crack down on the Marianas sweatshops and labor contractors, the commonwealth’s ruling elite hired Mr. Abramoff to protect them. He sponsored dozens of luxury junkets to the islands for Republican politicians and commentators, spread around plenty of campaign money, and soon had Mr. DeLay pledging to defend the Marianas factories from modern labor standards.

The conditions endured by the women workers in the islands ought to have shocked any religious conscience. Swindled, starved and overworked, many of them were ultimately forced into prostitution—and when they got pregnant, they were forced to endure abortions. Young women who arrived expecting to work in restaurants found themselves suddenly hustled into topless bars, where they were coerced into drinking and having sex with customers. And they often were deprived of the money paid by the johns.

Promoted by Mr. DeLay and Mr. Abramoff as a libertarian utopia, the islands were actually a sinkhole of indentured slavery and sex tourism. Enchanted by all the easy money and free vacations, however, those Washington worthies and their friends disregarded the suffering.

This is basically why my textile industry dad has no business anymore; it's impossible for American manufacturers to compete on prices with countries that enslave their own workers. And people buy these clothes with "Made in the USA" on them, thinking they're doing something honorable by buying American. It's about the most disgusting story I've heard in my recent memory, and it's actually affected me and my family, personally.

This scandal isn't just about public officials taking dirty money and doing the bidding of corporate lobbyists (although that's part of it). There are real-world consequences here. There are impoverished, desperate girls that have been forced into the sex trade, forced to get abortions, forced into slavery, basically. And one man lobbied to keep this odious status quo. And he lobbied everyone in the Republican Party to do it. Including the President, who took nearly $40,000 from these Marianas Island warlords for his re-election campaign.

And he met with Abramoff clients in the White House:

Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.

Abramoff’s White House guests were the chiefs of two of the six casino-rich Indian tribes he and his partner Mike Scanlon ultimately billed $82 million for services tribal leaders now claim were never performed or were improperly performed. Together the six tribes would make $10 million in political contributions, at Abramoff’s direction, almost all of it to Republican campaigns of his choosing...

Abramoff brought the Coushatta and Choctaw chiefs to Washington at the request of Grover Norquist. Norquist is founder and director of Americans for Tax Reform, the advocacy group committed to slashing taxes until the federal government is so small you “can drown it in the bathtub.” Norquist started ATR in 1985. His power increased exponentially in 1994, when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and he collaborated with then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay to launch the “K Street Project”—a coordinated campaign to compel lobbyists to contribute only to Republican candidates and ultimately to hire only Republicans. Like Abramoff and Rove, Norquist considered George Bush’s victory over Al Gore the culmination of a project the three Washington insiders started 30 years ago as national leaders of the College Republicans.

You have to read that whole story, by the great Lou DuBose. He lays out exactly who Jack Abramoff is and what he was up to. This is not "more of the same" in Washington. This is a Republican-owned, Republican-operated, Republican-manufactured system of kickbacks, bribes, bilking clients, trading favors. And before the Justice Department called it illegal, to a man the GOP would have called it "getting things done."

UPDATE: Worry warts in the White House:

Bracing for the worst, Administration officials obtained from the Secret Service a list of all the times Abramoff entered the White House complex, and they scrambled to determine the reason for each visit. Bush aides are also trying to identify all the photos that may exist of the two men together. Abramoff attended Hanukkah and holiday events at the White House, according to an aide who has seen the list. Press secretary Scott McClellan said Abramoff might have attended large gatherings with Bush but added, "The President does not know him, nor does the President recall ever meeting him."