The Question I Wanted to Ask Jack Abramoff

Flopping Aces ^ | 03-13-12 | Brother Bob

[Starman417]

One of the advantages of living in Washington, DC is that a lot of interesting people pass through this town. And thanks to the sheer number of organizations and events that this town attracts if you keep your eyes open you can see some of these interesting people in person. So when a few nights ago I noticed that Jack Abramoff was going to be speaking at the National Press Club, for the price of going to the movies Sister Babe and I got to hear a talk from one of the most fascinating criminals of modern times.

The subject of the talk was Campaign Finance Reform, and who more qualified to talk on the subject than the man who embodied the art of buying and selling our elected leaders for fun and profit? The group whom Abramoff is now affiliated with is The Corporate Reform Coalition, a group whose mission is to pass new legislation to limit campaign finance contributions from businesses in response to the Supreme Court's ruling against Citizen's United. The room was represented by an assortment of supporters. Apparently the coalition includes labor unions, educators, and environmentalists, or as a leftist would view them, the "good" kind of lobbyists.

Abramoff told some good stories about what he did to corrupt our political process, and his cohorts chimed in with a few points of their own. The solutions were nothing surprising, regulate the amounts of money coming in, restrict the actions of former politicos, etc. Although there was some pieces of balance to it (one of the panelists gave a surprisingly accurate of representation of Tea Party philosophy), most of the talk focused on how Big Business is to blame for our current woes, while naturally ignoring Big Labor, Big Green, Big Education, the various members of the NGO-Nonprofit Industrial Complex and any other leftist groups whose lobbying money wreaks havoc from their side of the aisle.

Like any good lecture with a prominent figure, there was a Q&A session afterward. It wasn't pretty. The questions were mainly nasty and accusatory ones thrown out by journalists whose motivation seemed to be hoping to catch Abramoff in some "gotcha" moment and make a name for themselves. One of the pressies managed to monopolize a few minutes with about four follow up questions until she was finally told to surrender the microphone during the ensuing answer. Another one had five pages of a scribbled manifesto that he read off until finally getting to his three questions at the end. On a side note, we almost made Abramoff bust out laughing during this guy's screed. By the third page turn of this guy's rant I was starting to have trouble keeping myself from cracking up, which of course started to have the same effect on Sister Babe. The Ranting Dude was standing directly between us and Abramoff, leaving us straight in his line of sight. According to Sister Babe apparently Abramoff could see us and looked like he was biting back a smile as this guy ranted and ripped on him. Not that I'm saying that Abramoff is some angel who should have been fawned over, but it would have been nice if the journalists there might have respected everyone else's time or maybe asked some question whose purpose was to, as one great journalistic organization would say, lean forward.

[SaraJohnson]

It is unethical for elected officials and their staff to enrich themselves with government power and actions.

They should not take jobs or receive gifts from lobbyists. They should not be using insider information to enhance their investment holdings. Since sunlight is the best disinfectant, their meetings with lobbyists should be recorded and open to public record.

If we handled this from an ethics point of view, we would see less Union and corporate interest in funding the elections and buying of corrupt candidates.

[Auntie Mame]

Good, interesting read.