More ramblings, clearing out the backblog:
- Howard Dean <a
href=”http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/01/08.html#a6627″>states
unequivocally that no Democrat took money from Jack Abramoff —
Wolf Blitzer stunned by someone actually telling the simple truth.
That’s all that needed to be said. So enough of the nonsense that it’s
a bipartisan scandal; Abramoff waspart of— Hell,
he was the K Street Project, Tom Delay’s hustle to put the
Republican Party totally at the disposal of business lobbyists. Dems
just need to assert the simple truth.The problem is that A. They’re afraid to do so, I guess just out of
habit, and B. The Dems, led by Pelosi, have never gotten out of the rut
of forty years in power; after ten years out of power they still don’t
understand that they have to reform themselves first. That means at
least adopting Barney Frank’s Delay-cleansing <a
href=”http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=4630″>proposed
rule changes, and Marty Meehan’s <a
href=”http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/010406/web.html”>lobbyist
disclosure requirements. - Do check out the <a
href=”http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/01/08/priced_out/”>article
in the Globe by Michael Jonas of MassINC, referring to the new <a
href=”http://bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1152″>report
about zoning and housing prices. And to anyone who thinks that this
report was “pro-sprawl”… look, what would you call mandatory
two-acre lots? “Sprawling”, perhaps? - <a
href=”http://www.hcfama.org/blog/2006/01/health-reform-primer-i-when-is.html”>Yes,
the legislature is playing chicken with the January 15th
federal deadline for the health care bill. A “soft” deadline, perhaps,
but this may be a situation where there are no rules until they’re
broken… - Welcome <a
href=”http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/articles/2006/01/08/watch_man_loretta_hopes_06_is_right_time”>Mark
Loretta. Stay healthy and sane. This <a
href=”http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2006/01/08/baseball_issues_tabled”>Theo
thing just gets weirder. - The Grassroots Demand Better Hacks, continued: At <a
href=”http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/1/7/182356/2752″>MyDD, Matt
talks about how the Dem Party works in a non-transparent, undemocratic
way with its volunteers, as opposed to the open and trusting
relationship the Republicans have. Now, that may have something to with
the institutional cultures of the party establishments, or perhaps…
the grassroots cultures themselves. In other words, do the Republicans
have good reason to trust their volunteers more than the Dems?The other thing of interest is this quote from Ken Mehlman, from Hugh
Hewitt’s show:Because in 1990, Bill Weld ran as a reformer, and got
elected as a
Republican. In ’94, he ran a different kind of campaign. He said I’ve
done some reforms. Here’s my new model. Four years later, a guy named
Paul Celucci came in and offered another vision. Then came in Mitt
Romney. Everyone of those Republicans replaced an existing Republican,
yet every one of them was seen as a reformer, not a status quo guy.That’s an important message for all the Dem candidates for Governor,
LG, AG, and Sec. of the Commonwealth, especially with regard to taxes
and how revenue is spent. I tend to think that people don’t mind paying
taxes so much for things that work — It’s the corruption and graft
that pisses us off. Duh. - Washington state tries to <a
href=”http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/253517_health27.html”>save
money on health care. These are good ideas:- “[WA Gov. Christine] Gregoire wants the “evidence-based”
system to assess health care and
eliminate ineffective treatments that can be more costly or unsafe.
Using this approach, Gregoire wants to establish a “high-value” health
plan that will provide education and incentives to encourage people to
choose the plans tied to science-based standards. - She also wants to weed out health care providers who
overprescribe
prescription drugs, which contributes to high health care costs. - Prevention will figure prominently in Gregoire’s new agenda.”
Say, do we have an Office
of Financial Management like theirs? You know, legislative research
and whatnot? - “[WA Gov. Christine] Gregoire wants the “evidence-based”
- I agree with <a
href=”http://leftcenterleft.typepad.com/blog/2006/01/massachusetts_i.html”>Chris
and Steve Bailey. The cause of high insturance rates is our
crappy driving in MA. We’ve got to do something to stop deserving the
Masshole label.
Its becoming clear from my posts here that “reform” is my favor word. Probably because everybody agrees its a good thing (I mean who’s going to argue that we don’t need lobbying reform?) and when you can start from consensus, you’re more likely to arrive at consensus.
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The reform message is one that I hope to see Reilly and Patrick take up more explicitly in the primary and in the general. Talking about reform, of anything, pits them as separate from “politics as usual” at the State House. Creating that distance is 100% key to victory.
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As for the reform message on the federal level … well, I don’t think thats a tough sell.
Talking Points Memo linked to this chart; not sure what Dean means.
I was wondering about that too. Is the WaPo’s information wrong? Is Dean wrong? Is he getting out of it on a technicality, because there’s something different about, say, Harry Reid’s situation vis-a-vis Abramoff than about, say, Conrad Burns’s?
there is a difference between money that came from Abramoff himself and Abramoff’s clients (mostly Indian tribes). Some Dems got money from Indian tribes, and maybe because Abramoff directed that money that way. But no Dems got money directly from Abramoff; that particular indignity is limited to the GOP. That’s what Dean is talking about, and the WaPo chart, fancy as it is, unfortunately doesn’t make it possible to tell who got how much of which kind of money.
Abramoff did not give a single dime of his own money — money that he earned by defrauding Indian tribes — to Democrats. The Indian tribes themselves may have given money to Democrats, but there is no evidence of any kind of quid pro quo in those transactions.
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In any event, the scandal here is not just who got money from whom, but who was sent on golfing trips, had their meals comped, went on ‘fact finding’ trips, etc etc. There is no evidence right now that any Democrat was in that sort of arrangement with Abramoff.
Thanks! (And thanks equally to David.) That’s exactly the kind of clarification I was looking for, and it’s a shame the WaPo didn’t make that clearer. Wonder if that’s where Wolf got his information that Dems took money from Abramoff? đŸ™‚
Well, Abramoff did a lot of laundering, through fake charities or other sorts of third parties. If you declare a strong distinction between Abramoff himself giving someone money, versus Abramoff directing a third party to do so, then I think you’ll have to drop a lot of your complaints against the GOP as well. And the amount of money involved will be less.
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I think what counts is who got to make the decision about where the money went. That’s harder to find, but it’s what really matters. If Abramoff directed money to a Dem, then that’s Abramoff’s money.
He specifically asked Blitzer if he meant that the tribes’ money could be attributed to Abramoff — and Blitzer backed off a little bit. But sure, it’s an important question.
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The WaPo chart details “1999-2004 contributions by Abramoff, his tribal clients and the lobbyists that make up Team Abramoff.” So the WaPo chart doesn’t make that distinction.
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I would say that it’s easier for me to believe that an Indian tribe in the Northeast would support Patrick Kennedy, than that Jack Abramoff would directly support Patrick Kennedy… but that’s just a hunch.