18 March 2005
Root and Branch
Oh Dear. The wind blowing off Cold Mountain has upset Anonymous (whose overblown rhetoric gives him away as one B.Shuai, former editor of the Beijing based Non Union News and a dangerous, low-rent, Hunter Thmpson and savage lefty ideologue). Anon just loves the UN. Speaking of which, it was with a note of great delight that I watched Nanny Helen's love affair with the UN and all its works come to an end last week. How dare those cheeky bureaucrats-of-colour criticise Her government!? After years of slavishly bowing to the prevailing multi-lateral myths, she had to send Michael "Cannon Fodder" Cullen out to tell the UN to piss off. Great stuff.
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Mr Firmin has it wrong. It was not the wind blowing down from the lofty heights of Cold Mountain that upset anyone. Nay, those winds are brisk, refreshing, ocassionally capricious, but always welcome. Nay, it was the stink of mendacity and self-delusion infecting the unworthy denezins of the lower slopes of that noble peak that were impossible to ignore.
It seems that to point out a fault with the current American administration is, to these partisans, tantamount to loving not one's country but rather to love a bloated international bureaucracy that serves American interests as much as it serves anyone else's. Still, the ad hominem attack is all the ammunition available to such types and we should not despair that such silliness extends to all the way to that frigid Olympus we all admire.
What I wonder is, why is Mr Firmin so quiet as his beloved Republican party continues to repudiate its "principles" by its actions?
Too bad that Republicans no longer listen to David Brooks, now that he writes for the Times rather than the Weekly Standard...
March 22, 2005 NYT
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Masters of Sleaze
By DAVID BROOKS
Down in the depths of the netherworld, where Tammany Hall grafters and Chicago ward heelers gather amid spittoons and brass railings, a reverential silence now spreads across the communion. The sleazemasters of old look back into the land of the mortals and they see greatness in the form of Jack Abramoff.
Only a genius like Abramoff could make money lobbying against an Indian tribe's casino and then turn around and make money defending that tribe against himself. Only a giant like Abramoff would have the guts to use one tribe's casino money to finance a Focus on the Family crusade against gambling in order to shut down a rival tribe's casino.
Only an artist like Abramoff could suggest to a tribe that it pay him by taking out life insurance policies on its eldest members. Then when the elders dropped off they could funnel the insurance money through a private school and into his pockets.
This is sleaze of a high order. And yet according to reports in The Washington Post and elsewhere, Abramoff accomplished it all.
Yet it's important to remember this: A genius like Abramoff doesn't spring fully formed on his own. Just as Michelangelo emerged in the ferment of Renaissance Italy, so did Abramoff emerge from his own circle of creativity and encouragement.
Back in 1995, when Republicans took over Congress, a new cadre of daring and original thinkers arose. These bold innovators had a key insight: that you no longer had to choose between being an activist and a lobbyist. You could be both. You could harness the power of K Street to promote the goals of Goldwater, Reagan and Gingrich. And best of all, you could get rich while doing it!
Before long, ringleader Grover Norquist and his buddies were signing lobbying deals with the Seychelles and the Northern Mariana Islands and talking up their interests at weekly conservative strategy sessions - what could be more vital to the future of freedom than the commercial interests of these two fine locales?
Before long, folks like Norquist and Abramoff were talking up the virtues of international sons of liberty like Angola's Jonas Savimbi and Congo's dictator Mobutu Sese Seko - all while receiving compensation from these upstanding gentlemen, according to The Legal Times. Only a reactionary could have been so discomfited by Savimbi's little cannibalism problem as to think this was not a daring contribution to the cause of Reaganism.
Soon the creative revolutionaries were blending the high-toned forms of the think tank with the low-toned scams of the buckraker. Ed Buckham, Tom DeLay's former chief of staff, helped run the U.S. Family Network, which supported the American family by accepting large donations and leasing skyboxes at the MCI Center, according to Roll Call. Michael Scanlon, DeLay's former spokesman, organized a think tank called the American International Center, located in a house in Rehoboth Beach, Del., which was occupied, according to Andrew Ferguson's devastating compendium in The Weekly Standard, by a former "lifeguard of the year" and a former yoga instructor.
Ralph Reed, meanwhile, smashed the tired old categories that used to separate social conservatives from corporate consultants. Reed signed on with Channel One, Verizon, Enron and Microsoft to shore up the moral foundations of our great nation. Reed so strongly opposes gambling as a matter of principle that he bravely accepted $4 million through Abramoff from casino-rich Indian tribes to gin up a grass-roots campaign.
As time went by, the spectacular devolution of morals accelerated. Many of the young innovators were behaving like people who, having read Barry Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative," embraced the conservative part while discarding the conscience part.
Abramoff's and Scanlon's Indian-gaming scandal will go down as the movement's crowning achievement, more shameless than anything the others would do, but still the culmination of the trends building since 1995. It perfectly embodied their creed and philosophy: "I'd love us to get our mitts on that moolah!!" as Abramoff wrote to Reed.
They made at least $66 million.
This is a major accomplishment. And remember: Abramoff didn't do it on his own.
It took a village. The sleazo-cons thought they could take over K Street to advance their agenda. As it transpired, K Street took over them.
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