Corruption at the heart of corporate politics
�CASINO JACK� Abramoff was a legislative hit man.
When a corporation needed a bill killed in the US Congress, they hired
him. He got the job done, even for the most sordid of clients, including
sweatshop owners. From 1995 to 2002, Abramoff was paid $9 million for
successfully lobbying to exclude the Commonwealth of the Northern
Mariana Islands, a US protectorate, from minimum-wage laws, allowing
manufacturers to tag their products �Made in the USA� while paying their
workers $3.05 an hour.
Then in January, the super-lobbyist pled guilty to
defrauding nine Native American tribes of $80 million and conspiring to
bribe public officials. Now Abramoff is at the centre of a government
investigation that could implicate dozens of members of Congress and
government officials in a massive web of corruption. "When this is all
over, this will be bigger than any [government scandal] in the last 50
years, both in the amount of people involved and the breadth to it",
said Stan Brand, a former House of Representatives counsel who
specializes in representing public officials accused of wrongdoing. "It
will include high ranking members of Congress and executive branch
officials". (Bloomberg News, 3 January)
Far from being a case of one bad apple, this scandal
has shed a spotlight on the corrupt relations between corporations,
their hired lobbyists, and elected representatives in the US government.
The Abramoff affair will dramatically reinforce ordinary Americans�
growing distrust of the two corporate-financed parties who hold absolute
control over Washington.
For more than a decade, Abramoff was building an
�empire of influence� throughout Washington DC. He had direct access to
top Republican leaders such as the embattled former Republican Majority
leader in the House of Representatives, Tom �The Hammer� DeLay, whose
former chief-of-staff, Tony Rudy, has been implicated as a
co-conspirator in Abramoff�s guilty plea.
His ties even extended into the White House via Karl
Rove, whose assistant, Susan Ralston, was Abramoff�s former secretary.
When Tyco got into hot water for tax evasion in 2002, it contacted
Abramoff, reportedly because of his White House connections. At least
one lawmaker, Republican representative Bob Ney, has been implicated in
bribery. But facts revealed about Abramoff�s ties and activities suggest
it is likely that many more politicians doled out favors on the basis of
bribes.
Abramoff ran a fake charity called the US Family
Network that he used to channel money from clients to officials. He
hosted lawmakers at his restaurant, Signatures, wined and dined them in
his skybox at Redskins games, and even took some on luxury golfing trips
to Scotland.
Nicknamed Casino Jack for representing a handful of
Native American tribes with casino and gambling interests, Abramoff
convinced them to pay exorbitant fees, ten to 20 times above average. In
one scam, Abramoff waged a successful campaign to shut down a gambling
casino owned by the Tigua tribe in Texas. Afterwards, he turned right
around and convinced the Tiguas that he could get their casino reopened
if they hired him at a hefty price!
Nine tribes were ripped off for more than $82
million by Abramoff and his partner, Michael Scanlon � a former DeLay
staffer. In the process, millions of dollars were channeled to 195
Republicans and 88 Democrats. As part of this scam, Abramoff cultivated
ties with powerful leaders of the Christian Right � avowed opponents of
gambling. In 2001, Abramoff paid Ralph Reed, the former head of the
Christian Coalition, millions of dollars he raised from the Native
American casino owners to mobilize religious conservatives as a
battering ram against legislation that threatened the profits of
Abramoff�s Native American clients. The Louisiana bill would have eased
restrictions on casino boat gambling, creating more competition and
therefore threatening the profits of the tribes Abramoff represented.
Recently released e-mails show that Reed knew some
of the money was coming from the casino-owning tribes. This campaign
also included prominent Religious Right leaders Pat Robertson and Jerry
Fallwell. This scandalous arrangement speaks volumes about the so-called
moral agenda of the leaders of the Religious Right � while they �talk
Jesus�, they �walk corporate�, as Thomas Frank, author of What�s the
Matter With Kansas?, put it.
Abramoff�s activities were mutually beneficial to
himself, his corporate clients and the Republican Party, which was
assured millions of dollars in campaign donations. The seeds of this
particular alliance were planted after the Republicans captured the
House majority in 1994.
Aiming to keep the Republicans in the saddle, DeLay
and the influential, ultra-conservative Grover Norquist launched a
programme they called the �K Street Project� - a plan to stack lobbying
firms (mostly located in Washington�s K Street) with loyal Republicans.
The watchdog group Public Citizen described how the
K Street Project worked: "In this partnership, corporations, trade
associations, and lobbying firms are pressured to hire only Republicans�
Those lobbyists then help the Republican leadership to �whip on the
outside� � to get Republican members of the House to vote for the
leadership�s legislative agenda. The lobbyists also raise enormous sums
of money from their clients to ensure that Republicans remain the
majority in Congress. For this fealty, the leadership grants the
lobbyists access to the decision-makers and provides legislative favors
for their clients".
While it was clear that Abramoff was flagrantly
abusing the political process, buying off politicians is nothing new to
Washington. What Abramoff did was take the normally corrupt system of US
politics to new lows.
The outbreak of this scandal and Abramoff�s
agreement to name conspiring lawmakers have caused panic in Washington.
Lawmakers are making a mad dash to return any money that could be
connected to Abramoff. House and Senate leaders from both parties,
compelled by public outrage, are now calling for some limited lobbying
reforms.
Legislation to close old loopholes merely opens a
whole array of new loopholes to be exploited, as was shown in the
aftermath of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. There have
been many attempts at lobbying regulation and campaign finance reform,
all of which have hardly blunted the power of corporations over the
government.
The truth is that we cannot expect much from either
of the two parties, because both parties depend on financing from big
business. This helps explain why over the past five years there have
been fewer than a dozen investigations by Congressional committees into
the activities of corporate lobbyists. An anonymous congressman told
Newsweek that the Republican and Democrat leaders, in fact, called a
�ceasefire� on such investigations. He said: "If they were going to
investigate us, we were going to investigate them". (16 January)
This scandal is the direct outgrowth of a political
system based on an enormous and ever-growing gap between the
corporations and the super-rich on the one hand, and working people and
the poor on the other hand.
While living standards for workers have fallen or
stagnated over the last period, corporations have been bankrolling
record levels of growth in the lobbying industry. An astounding $2
billion was spent on lobbying in 2004! The number of corporate lobbyists
in Washington has more than doubled in the last five years, to 37,000.
In other words, there are about 70 lobbyists for every elected
Congressional representative!
This army of corporate influence peddlers has become
an enormous pressure on US politics, and will continue buying off the
two parties for Corporate America at the expense of workers and the poor
across the planet.
While the Democratic Party will try to exploit this
scandal for its electoral advantage this fall, it is just as much a part
of this system of corporate money and lobbyists. In 2004, John Kerry and
the Democrats raised almost $2 billion which, of course, came
overwhelmingly from the rich. In fact, the senator who has received more
money from lobbyists than anyone else over the past 15 years is Kerry.
The key to beating back corruption and corporate
control of government is to build a political party that genuinely
represents the millions of ordinary people, not the millionaires � a
party of working people, youth and the oppressed that fights against big
business and the rich.
For a new party to be fundamentally different from
the two big-business parties it would need to be democratically
organized and run, so that its elected officials are held accountable to
the members of the party. As a vital check on corruption and careerism,
all elected officials should be paid only the average wage of the
workers they represent. As a party for working people it could not
accept any money from the big corporations.
Big business has two parties � why shouldn�t we have
one of our own? It�s high time we swept away this rotten system of
corruption and corporate power. Join us!
Patrick Ayers,
Socialist Alternative (CWI USA)
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