RockThrower

Abramoff to Federici to Norton?

Indian Tribe Funds from Abramoff/Scanlon Lobbying Operation Paid for Public Opinion Survey on Behalf of Interior Secretary Gayle Norton.  Abramoff Calls Federici "Our Access to Norton"

Funds from the Coushatta Indian Tribe paid to the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA) at the suggestion of lobbyist Jack Abramoff appear to have paid for a public opinion survey provided to U.S. Secretary of Interior Gale Norton and others at the Department, according to documents released today by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. The documents are part of an ongoing investigation of the dealings of Abramoff and Michael Scanlon with the Coushatta and other Indian Tribes.  Abramoff, Scanlon and others are under investigation for fraud, tax evasion and other charges related to their billing the Indian Tribes more than $80 million in lobbying fees.

An email exchange between Abramoff colleague Kathryn Van Hoof and  Eric LaRoque of the Coushatta Tribe obtained by the Senate Indian Affairs committee documents a payment of $50,000 to “pay ½ the cost of a poll conducted by the Council for Republican Environmental Advocacy, which is being conducted on behalf of Gayle Norton, Secretary of Interior.” Additional emails document the provision of the check to Jack Abramoff, who passed it on to CREA President Italia Federici.

According to documents obtained from the Justice Department by the National Resources Defense Council, CREA provided the Interior Department with public opinion research (dated 5/16/01) from focus groups in several cities suggesting how to talk about energy issues and emphasizing using rising gas prices to promote increased drilling. The research concludes, "language that . . . emphasizes price increases in gasoline and natural gas and the California situation resonates with voters and makes the case that "Gasoline price stability is the single most potent argument for opening up ANWR." ANWR is the Alaskan National Wilderness Refuge, and opening it to oil drilling has been a priority for the Bush Administration.

The survey was apparently the featured topic of discussion at fund raising dinner hosted by Republican rainmaker Julie Finley on September 24, 2001 and attended by Secretary Norton and other top level officials at Interior, as well as by industry interests and representatives of the Coushetta and other Indian Tribes.  The emails indicate that the tribes paid $50,000 each to participate in dinners set up by CREA.

In todays Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing, Federici denied any wrongdoing.  But the documents released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committe indicate that she intervened on multiple occasions with top level contacts at the Department of Interior at the request of Abramoff on behalf of the interests of his Indian gaming clients.  CREA reportedly received at least $250,000 from Indian gaming interests at Abramoff's behest.  “I am letting EVERYONE know that you are the only reason we have the funding to do this,” said Federici in an email to Abramoff.  The documents also indicate that Abramoff considered Federici as essential to his operation, writing in one email to a colleague “did we not request money for CREA from them? (Indian Tribe), that’s our access to Norton.  We need $ for them more than many of these others.”

Is Karl Rove the New Kevin Bacon?

Six Degrees of Karl Rove -- Can you connect Italia Federici?

No one is going to mistake Karl Rove for a movie star, but lately I have been wondering if maybe Rove hasn’t become the new Kevin Bacon.  Bacon is the icon of popular culture that, so popular theory goes, is no more than six persons removed from anyone else.  In other words, everyone knows someone who knows Bacon.  That’s not quite the case with Rove.  It’s just that lately wherever there is a political scandal, it seems that there is a connection between the people involved and Karl Rove.

Take for instance the little escapade wafting out of Jack Abramoff’s lobby shop and threatening to engulf the Republican Congress. On Thursday, the mystery woman of the Senate Indian Affairs investigation, Italia Federici is scheduled to testify before the Senate Committee regarding her involvement in the Jack Abramoff/Michael Scanlon Indian Tribe rip-off.  Federici it seems cut her political teeth working for Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s U.S. 1996 Senate Campaign.  Take one guess who Norton’s campaign consultant was.  Well, it wasn’t Kevin Bacon

I know, I know, it’s just a coincidence.  As Scott McClellan said about the outing of Joseph Wilson, “Karl Rove was not involved.”  But Rove did work with Federici in the Norton campaign and it was Rove’s pal and confidant Grover Norquist who helped Federici and the future Interior secretary Gale Norton form something called the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), which is going to be the main exhibit in Thursday’s Senate Indian Affairs debacle.

Maybe someone should make up one of those games people are always playing about Kevin Bacon, except if could feature Karl Rove.  It could have a schematic or some kind of visual showing Rove’s connections to all the participants in the Republican scandals threatening to swamp Washington.  We could call it “Six Degrees of Karl Rove.” The way you would play is to link any character in a political scandal to Rove.  For example let’s use Jack Abramoff.  Karl Rove hired Jack Abramoff’s personal assistant, Susan Ralston, to be his executive secretary.  Therefore, Jack Abramoff has a Rove score of 2. (Actually, I think Rove and Abramoff have a direct relationship, so Abramoff has a score of 1, but you get the idea).  This could be a big hit on the Beltway cocktail circuit.

Thursday’s hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee would be a great place to play.  Not only does Rove know Federici, but he is easy to connect with Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon, Stephen Griles and others involved in this sordid mess.  For more advanced players we could try names like Julie Finley and see if players can connect her to Italia Federici and Rove. (read more to get the answer)

On the other hand, Thursday’s hearing might not be the best place to play.  Things might get a little heated and it might be hard to keep your attention on the game.

It should be interesting to hear what Federici has to say.  First off, there is the little matter of explaining what exactly the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA) is and does.  It bills itself as an environmental organization, but it puts out press releases saying things like drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wilderness Area Refuge would be good for the environment.  It also says on its website that it is a non-profit organization and it collects donations, but Bill Brunson, a spokesperson for the IRS, told the Arizona Republic that the IRS has no record that CREA has been granted tax free status as a non-profit corporation. 

One thing is clear though.  Now that it has been alleged that at Jack Abramoff’s instructions the Cushetta Indian tribe paid CREA $250,000 in exchange for assistance in setting up a meeting with Interior Secretary Gale Norton, no one could blame Republicans for doing their best to distance themselves from the organization.  But that may not be so easy. According to a March 2005 article in Roll Call, Norton, who together with Federici and Grover Norquist established CREA, attended a dinner for CREA at the house of Republican rainmaker Julie Finley* in the fall of 2001. The event was attended by 60-70 people including representatives from Indian tribes, such as the Coushatta’s. This was after Norton headlined a gala event launching CREA in Washington D.C.  According to a January 2001 article published in the Washington Post, the guest of honor at the event was Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and the keynote address was delivered by House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The sponsors for the gala included none other than the political consulting firm of Karl Rove. *(Game players, Finley’s bio lists her as having served as co-chair of the Republican National Committee's major fundraising arm, Team 100. She is also the national committee woman for the D.C. Republican Committee, a founding member of the Council for Republicans, chairman and founder of the Republican Primary PAC, and a founding member of the WISH List and, lo and behold, the Council for Republican Environmental Advocacy (CREA). See, it’s easy to play.)

As much as the Republican establishment might wish it wasn’t so, Federici and CREA (not to mention others in the Abramoff/Scanlon scandal) are enmeshed in the Washington establishment and connected to the Bush administration. According to documents obtained from the Justice Department by the National Resources Defense Council, CREA provided the Interior Department with public opinion research (dated 5/16/01) from focus groups in several cities suggesting how to talk about energy issues and emphasizing using rising gas prices to promote increased drilling. The research concludes, "language that . . . emphasizes price increases in gasoline and natural gas and the California situation resonates with voters and makes the case that "Gasoline price stability is the single most potent argument for opening up ANWR." I wonder if those discussions are what Gale Norton was referring to?

As for the game “Six Degrees of Karl Rove,” I’m beginning to wonder if it’s such a good idea.  Given the widespread connections of the Republican establishment in Washington D.C. to the burgeoning Abramoff/Scanlon scandal, I’m going to need a scorecard to keep track.

Scanlon, Abramoff, Rove and the Republican Strategy

“Bring out the Whackos”

"The whacko’s get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees. ... Simply put, we want to bring out the whacko’s to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."

Those are the words of Michael Scanlon, former press secretary to the pious but indicted Congressman Tom Delay and top executive at Capitol Campaign Strategies, a public relations firm in Washington D.C.

Scanlon’s words describe his strategy for protecting and promoting the gambling interests of the Coushatta Indian Tribe of Louisiana. It seems that Scanlon and his lobbyist pal Jack Abramoff cooked up a scheme to siphon millions from the Coushetta and got Ralph Reed of Christian Coalition fame and now head of Century Strategies, a political consulting firm with strong ties to the Bush White House, to help them out.  Together they worked to mobilize anti-gambling Christian evangelical voters against the potential expansion of gambling by other Indian tribes and gaming interests in Louisiana and Texas. Enlisting a virtual who’s who of so called Christian leaders including James Dobson and Pat Robertson, they mounted a grassroots effort to drum up Christian political opposition to gambling and had Christian leaders and voters weigh in with Interior Secretary Gayle Norton to express their opposition to land acquisition deals that would have been favorable to rival tribes. Roll Call, a daily publication covering Congress, reports that Scanlon paid Reed more than $3.8 million during a yearlong period in 2001 and 2002 for his work. Scanlon and Abramoff are reported to have billed the Indian tribes for tens of millions. The sordid little deal is now the subject of an investigative hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, not to mention a matter of interest for the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service.  (Reed has denied knowledge of the fact that the funds were coming from gambling interests, but email correspondence gathered in the Indian affairs investigation shows Abramoff telling Reed the Coushetta were the client.)

The bottom line is that Christian voters got rolled in what amounted to little more than a sophisticated shell game.  They ought to be angry. But then we all ought to be angry.  Reading through the documents related to the Indian Affairs investigation is enough to make one want to take a shower.  As American Enterprise Institute Scholar Norman Ornstein wrote “I don’t think we have had something of this scope, arrogance and sheer venality in our lifetimes. It is building to an explosion, one that could create immense collateral damage within Congress and in coming elections.”  Ornstein is right, the duplicity and hypocrisy of the scheme is a stunning example of the cynical manipulation of Democracy for money. 

But where Ornstein is wrong is that it is not unusual.  In fact, such cynical manipulation of the political process has become the standard operating procedure of the Republican Party.  There is little difference between Michael Scanlon’s strategy of “getting the whacko’s out,” and Karl Roves placement of anti-gay marriage initiatives on ballots in battleground states during the 2004 Presidential election.  The principle is the same, get Christian voters lathered up about some red flag issue, and hope they don’t pay any attention to everything else that is going on –such as the war in Iraq, rising poverty and the fact that Ohio was hemorrhaging jobs. It worked.

The latest example of the Republican’s “bring the whacko’s out” strategy has recently been on display in California’s special election.  There, Gary Marx, a former colleague of Ralph Reed at Century Strategies and Karl Rove’s chief henchman charged with getting out the evangelical vote in Ohio and other key battleground states, could be found organizing Christian Evangelical voters.  The idea was to rally Christian voters in support of Proposition 73, an initiative requiring parental notification of the parents of minors considering an abortion and changing the definition of abortion in the California Constitution. And while they were there, Marx and others were hoping those voters would support a set of other initiatives being pushed by Arnold Schwarzengger, California’s Republican Governor.  It didn’t work, but hey, maybe next time they can get a gay marriage initiative on the ballot.  Meanwhile, beyond making a nice chunk of change, Marx probably picked up a couple of hundred thousand names, addresses and emails of Christian voters that he can add to his database.  Those will come in handy for Republican efforts to generate phone calls, emails, letters and money for conservative causes.  My guess is that Marx will almost immediately put those names to good use in his role as executive director of the Judicial Confirmation Network, which is little more than a front for Campaign Solutions, the public relations firm for Bush-Cheney 04, where he is working to organize grassroots support of the President’s Supreme Court nominees.  And hey, there are always the 06 Congressional elections. 

Has Arnold Sold His Soul to Karl Rove?

California Gets Ohio’d

On the eve of the 2004 presidential election many pundits and pollsters predicted that Ohio would go to John Kerry, sweeping him into the Presidency. But a certain future target of a federal Grand Jury knew better.  Months earlier, Karl Rove and his minions had placed an anti-gay marriage initiative on the Ohio ballot.  It was like hanging out fresh meat for the hungry. Christian evangelical voters in Southern Ohio came out in droves to make sure gay’s couldn’t get married in their state, and while they were there they voted for George W. Bush.  The rest as they say is history.

One year later, desperate to avoid the defeat of his pet-initiatives on California’s special election ballot and perhaps prevent the end of his Governorship, Arnold Schwartzengger is borrowing a page from Rove’s playbook.  The Governor has joined forces with conservative Christian strategist Gary Marx, who worked with Ralph Reed at the Christian Coalition and took his marching orders from Karl Rove as the leader of the get-out-the-evangelical-vote effort for President Bush's re-election campaign. Together they are working to mobilize Christian evangelical voters in support of Proposition 73, an initiative requiring parental notification prior to teens receiving an abortion, and hoping that will also vote for the Governor’s initiatives.  One would think that Karl Rove would have other things to worry about, but opponents of Prop 73 say that Rove and other conservative strategists are supporting the effort and that they expect more than 3,000 Evangelical Christians to arrive in California over the weekend to bolster the Republican mobilization of Christian voters.

But the Governor might want to be careful.  He may be making a bargain with the devil and this isn’t a movie.   After Joe Hardy sold his soul to the devil in “Damn Yankees” to become a great baseball player, he found an escape clause and his wife took him back.  My guess is that deals with Karl Rove don’t have escape clauses, and Maria may not be so forgiving.

RockThrower

With Libby and Rove in Trouble, Are the Republicans about to get Offensive?

With Scooter Libby Indicted and Karl Rove in legal limbo, one wonders when the vaunted Republican attack machine will kick into gear and begin its effort to smear special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.  My guess is soon. Very soon.

An interesting item appears on the pro-Bush website BlogsforBush.com . Posted by Slinon on October 26, 2005 it reads:

Luntz and Melhman have circulated an email telling us what to do: as soon as the indictments come out, we need to immediately start discrediting Patrick Fitzgerald as a party hack.Here are some underreported aspects of his background:

He was once a staff lawyer for the Democratic Party of Arkansas right out of law school where he worked side-by-side with Hillary Clinton. She called him in a speech to donors, "my dear friend Pat."

He also was the personal lawyer for disgraced Whitewater figure Susan McDougal for a time. Sources in Arkansas indicate that he was part of some land deals used to defraud savings and loans.

As US Attorney, he has shown too much sympathy for individuals suspected of terrorist actions. He has personally voided important aspects of the Patriot Act because of his sympathy for terrorists. Abdul la Muhhamad--a Sudanese national--was picked up in Chicago for being part of al-Quaeda and Fitzgerald resisted attempts to transfer him to Guantanamo to make it easier to torture him. He also let Muhhamad have access to his lawyer and other dangerous things to help his defense.

There are also questions about Fitzgerald's personal choices--he was spotted at Chicago's Gay Pride parade on a big float with signs that said "Hey, Hey, Hey, we are gay, stay outta our way." He is also known to frequent certain "massage parlors" in untoward parts of the city. To say that he has been "embraced" by Chicago's rainbow community would be an understatement.

Finally, he has also performed pro bono law work for Planned Parenthood, defending abortion doctors and trying to get protestors--who are simply exerting their first amendment rights--to be thrown in jail.

Given all of these facts, it is clear that Fitzgerald is nothing more than a political hack and opportunist who is looking to create a record for an eventual senate run in ultra-liberal Illinois. It is shameful that he would try and destroy the credibility of the White House to do so. Please spread these facts near and far! Fitzgerald is a partisian hack.

I’m not sure who Slinon is, but it appears that he is using BlogsforBush to spread these talking points to Bush supporters.   If they are not part of this effort, Republican Pollster Frank Luntz and Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman might want to ask BlogsforBush to take down the post.

RockThrower

Libby and Rove are the Least of Their Problems

As America Marks the One-Year Anniversary of Bush's Election, Failure, Incompetence and Corruption Define the Republican Regime

“We’ll borrow it.”

With those three words, retired United States Senator Connie Mack, a Republican from Florida and the current chair of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform summed up the economic policy of the Bush administration.

Senator Mack made his comments in response to questions from New York Times reporter Deborah Solomon about where the government would get the money it needed to “run this country,” in an interview published last week in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

We’ll borrow it?  Well, at least he is honest.  Since President Bush took office in 2001 foreign debt has risen by $985 billion to $1.99 trillion dollars. And on Halloween, the United States Treasury Department announced that it plans to borrow a record $171 billion from the markets in the first quarter of 2006. And we will need to borrow more. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the President’s budget will result in a deficit of $317 billion in fiscal year 2005 and another deficit of $332 is projected for 2006, and that’s before we spend a dime in Iraq or Afghanistan or pay for hurricane clean up and relief. Between now and 2015, the CBO projects that the President’s policies will result in total deficits of $2.6 trillion.  Already under President Bush, the national debt has risen by more than $2 trillion standing today at more than $8 trillion dollars.  That means that every child born in the United States begins life with a debt of more than $26,000. 

Yet in the face of these staggering deficits, the President continues to push tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, including a permanent repeal of the Estate Tax, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates would eliminate a trillion dollars in federal revenues while providing a windfall for the richest one-percent of Americans.  Meanwhile the President’s Republican cronies in Congress are looking for savings by identifying deep cuts in the programs that serve the poorest Americans.

Things are no better on the foreign policy front where last week marked the death of the 2,000 soldier killed in the war in Iraq.  Apparently built on shifting sands, the reasons for the war have changed from the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, to building democracy in the Middle East, to fighting Al Qaeda.  Take your pick.  Things are such a mess that Lawrence Wilkerson, the former deputy secretary of state under Colin Powell, in a speech to the New America Foundation and in a later opinion article recently described the foreign policy of the United States as being run by a “cabal” headed by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.  Wilkerson’s scathing remarks made clear that he believes that the Bush administration has "courted disaster'' in Iraq, Iran and North Korea and has “seriously weakened the nation’s decision making process.”

Wilkerson’s words were no kinder in addressing domestic challenges where he labeled the Bush administration as “so inept that it could not cope with a major domestic disaster, adding “If something comes along that is truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence.'' One only needs to look at the response of the Bush administration to Hurricane Katrina to realize the incompetence of those in charge. But their incompetence is not limited to their inability to respond to emergencies.  Their failures are evident in almost every facet of government that matters to those citizens who don’t happen to be among the nations richest one percent.  Under President Bush, Poverty has increased every year, as has the number of those without health insurance. And according to a recently released report by the Economic Policy Institute, job growth has been anemic, with the United States adding only 1.3% more jobs today than in March 2001. Meanwhile wages and income have fallen for American workers.

The bottom line is that under President Bush and his Republican regime, the citizens of the United States are not better off, and they are not safer.  The policies of this administration have damaged our economy and mortgaged our future.  Their hubris has squandered the good will of our friends and allies and enraged our enemies, making the world a more dangerous place.  Theirs is not a record of accomplishment, but one of incompetence, failure and corruption.  Maybe the Republicans should be glad to have the CIA leak scandal in the headlines, maybe it will keep the American people from seeing what is really happening a little while longer.  But they shouldn’t celebrate too soon.  While Scooter Libby and Karl Rove may yet go to jail for their roles as the chief salesmen of this boondoggle, History, and hopefully voters in the next election, will judge all of those involved harshly.

RockThrower