Informed Speculation

Newsweek has an interesting, if disgusting, look inside the Abramoff scandal that I recommend to you. Certainly, on the basis of this article, it appears to be a good thing indeed that Tom Delay gave up his bid to regain the status of majority leader:

First came the dinner invitations, then the tickets. Staffers in the office of former House Majority leader Tom DeLay could dine—usually, free of charge—at Signatures, the expense-account restaurant conveniently owned by lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Then they could sit in his skybox at Washington’s MCI Center, home of the NBA Wizards and NHL Capitals. Before too long, recalled a former GOP leadership aide—who, like almost anyone on Capitol Hill these days, declines to be identified talking about his relationship with Abramoff—the DeLay staffers began to think that Abramoff’s box at the arena was their box, and, in the cozy way of Washington, it might as well have been. “Jack was sort of like a drug dealer,” said the former staffer. “He’d give them [DeLay's staffers] a little taste and then get them hooked.”

Then there’s this bit of nausea-inducing dialog:

“Guess what I just scored?” he e-mailed his old friend, former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed, celebrating the Gulfstream jet that he had arranged to fly their party (including Congressman Robert Ney) to Scotland for a weeklong golf junket. “Fire-up the jet baby, we’re going to El Paso!!” he wrote his partner—and former DeLay press aide—Michael Scanlon, announcing the acquisition of a Texas Indian tribe, the Tiguas, as a lobbying client. “I want all their MONEY!!!” replied Scanlon. “Yawzah!” chimed in Abramoff.

(Robert Ney is apparently in deep, deep…um, doodoo).

Interestingly, the Newsweek piece says the worst part of the scandal is not Congressmen who are for sale; the authors seem to think our ‘public servants’ would have voted they way they voted without the dough. Instead, the real scandal is that people actually think lobbyists are doing them any good:

It’s doubtful that congressmen sold their votes any more or less than before. Most lawmakers who take money from lobbyists would vote that way regardless. The GOP tax cuts for the rich were not cooked up behind closed doors; they were a George W. Bush campaign promise. But the lobbying “profession” grew like Topsy. Between 1998 and 2004, the Washington lobbying industry nearly doubled its spending from $1.42 billion to $2.1 billion. There are now 37,000 registered lobbyists in Washington, roughly double the number reported back in 2000, when DeLay kicked off the K Street Project. About half of them worked on the Hill or for the federal government. Since 1998, 198 members of Congress have retired. A little less than half have become lobbyists.

The real scandal may be how lobbyists fleece their clients, conning them into believing that campaign contributions are essential to protecting their interests in Congress. Abramoff and his cronies played the game with exceptional cynicism. Hired by the Coushatta Indian tribe in Louisiana, Abramoff worked with Ralph Reed to wage a grass-roots campaign to shut down a gambling casino run by the Tigua tribe in Texas. Then Abramoff turned right around and offered his services to the Tigua Indians to lobby to get Congress to open the casino back up. “I wish those moronic Tiguas were smarter in their political contributions,” Abramoff e-mailed Reed. “I’d love us to get our mitts on that moolah!! Oh well, stupid folks get wiped out.” Ultimately, Abramoff persuaded the Tiguas to pay $4.2 million to try to get Congress to reopen the casino. Congress never did—but the two men raked in hundreds of thousands in fees.

Read it all…but be prepared to take a shower afterwards…

UPDATE 7:14 p.m.: Here’s a little something for those who think this is only a Republican scandal (hat tip to Eric of Viking Pundit fame)…