John in DC of AMERICAblog has a list of 299 donations Jack Abramoff made to Republicans and conservative special interest groups.
Scroll all the way down and next to the bottom you'll find an interesting name: Oliver North.
Birds of a feather, I guess.
Dad (retired Army) always said no Lt. (lite) Col. had the pull to do the things Ollie North took the fall for; someone higher up had to authorize him, officially or otherwise.
ReplyDeleteScott,
ReplyDeleteI don't care what flavor of politician took what color of money. But I also think it's fairly obvious that Abramoff was mainly a GOP thing.
Jeff,
That was what I thought at the time too. An O-5 pulling shenanigans like that on his own say so? I doubt it.
I'm not sure how I give Democrats a "pass." I'm concerned with abuse of power, and as you said, the Dems aren't in power.
ReplyDeleteI don't trust politicians of any flavor. But I don't trust the party in power the most, and right now, that's the GOP.
Bi-partisan? Hmmmmmm, let's see . . .
ReplyDelete1. Jacky Boy, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist take over the College Republicans (not the College Dems) Back in the Day and use it as a test bed for how to buy a political party;
2. K Street Project;
3. Jacky Boy a "Pioneer", i.e., gave at least $100k of his own money to Dear Leader's campaign;
4. Jacky Boy gives $172K of his own money to Repubs and to Dems he gives . . . nada.
"Bi-partisan"? only if you get fooled by Jacky Boy throwing some money to the other side so the Repubs are ready with their "bi-partisan" talking points when the Whip Comes Down.
Oh, and nobody's letting anybody off. If Dems get caught up in this, so be it.
Yeah, 1st thing I do when any politician, from any party, starts speaking: grab my wallet. And then ask "what's it gonna cost me?"
ReplyDeleteAnd/or "why do you think this will get you my vote?"
Power corrupts. Political parties are more or less the same, since they're all made up of us weak human beings.
You'll get no argument from me on that score, Jeff
ReplyDeleteTake the same pile of rotten carcasses - grab 2, and you have the 2 major political parties.
ReplyDeleteHowever, where the true corruption comes in, is from the lobbies, and their influence peddling. Those who are most greedy, fall hardest. Hence, republicans.
This is why I generally side with Democratic candidates, but in truth I am Independent.
BD,
ReplyDeleteThese days, that's more or less how I see it. The reason I'm not blasting too many Democrats these days is that they're not in power, haven't been for some time, and aren't the ones responsible for most of what's wrong right now.