Bush Assistant Labor Secretary worked on troubled Abramoff accounts

[stop the bleeding]

A onetime member of Jack Abramoff's lobbying team who romanced Congress and opinion leaders for lobbying accounts valued at more than $11 million and shuttled members of Congress to the Northern Marianas Islands remains an Assistant Secretary in the Department of Labor, RAW STORY has found.

Patrick Pizzella, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Administration and Management, worked with Abramoff to lobby on behalf of dozens of clients—among them the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, eLottery and the Saginaw Chippewa. Lobbying work Abramoff did on these accounts is under investigation by a Senate Committee, the IRS and the Department of Justice.



<snip>

As an Abramoff staffer, Pizzella attracted attention for ferrying members of Congress and prominent Republicans to the string of islands north of Australia. According to a 2001 New Republic report, Pizzella extended personal invitations to at least 11 members of Congress; the Wall Street Journal estimated that 100 representatives visited the islands during Pizzella's tenure.

Pizzella also brought prominent Republican intellectuals to the islands—including the Institute for Justice's Clint Bolick, the Heritage Foundation's John Mitchell and the Wall Street Journal's John Fund. According to the New Republic, guests flew first-class, dined at posh restaurants and slept at the beachfront Hyatt Regency. The trips paid off: Bolick and Mitchell returned to write pro-Marianas articles for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times.



Read more here….

01/04/06 Bush Assistant Labor Secretary worked on troubled Abramoff accounts worth millions of dollars - Rawstory

[SharonRB]

1. I just read this and was getting ready to post

You beat me to it! I wonder how much longer he'll remain in his job.

This goes so deep, it's amazing. Something new everyday (or every hour). Franken was just talking about the sweatshops in the Marianas and how they forced the women into prostitution and then when they got pregnant, they forced them to have abortions. Nothing is too low for these guys.

[wordpix]

3. Repukes "forced women into prostitution &...forced them to have abortions

M$M should hear this so the Ralph Reed crowd gets the story.

The whole group is a bunch of low lifes

[HuffleClaw]

5. they'll HAVE to get rid of him

so the media reports will all read 'FORMER bush official'

[Lorien]

2. A slight non sequiter; lobbying on behalf of the Saginaw Chippewa?

My dear cousin is a member of that tribe and is very involved with her reservation, which got it's first casino several years ago. I don't have much familiarity with this scandal yet-how are the SC tied to Abramoff?

[baby_bear]

4. Start here, Lorien

http://www.indianz.com/News/2005/009077.asp

and

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2005/12/17/build/state/25-burns.inc

b_b

[Lorien]

10. Thanks for the links, Baby_bear!

There's a lot to read there to get up to speed on the situation, and I'll have to do so before calling my cousin. It's amazing to be that Abramoff had enough hours in the day to devote to the amount of corruption that he's involved in!

[Yavin4]

6. "troubled accounts"?! "troubled"?! Try ILLEGAL ACCOUNTS!!!

These were ILLEGAL accounts that BROKE THE LAW.

[stop the bleeding]

7. this is the phrase that got my attention...

"Though he is not accused of breaking any laws, scrutiny of Pizzella's lobbying work may bring unwelcome light to Bush as Washington scrambles to distance itself from the embattled lobbyist. RAW STORY, along with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking any information about contacts between Pizzella and any members of Abramoff's staff."



and here is a thread that I posted today 2x and it fell like a stone, now people don't think that I am that crazy hmmm, crazy at least about my point in the thread.

there many many lobbyists out there on "k street" outside of the WH that we have yet to hear about......

[stop the bleeding]

12. this is my favorite quote..

it is listed in the post that I replied to.

[UpInArms]

8. more info on Pizzella

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-06-abramoff-bush_x.htm

excerpt:

In all, the records show at least 195 contacts between Abramoff's Marianas lobbying team and the Bush administration from February through November 2001.

At least two people who worked on Abramoff's team at Preston Gates wound up with Bush administration jobs: Patrick Pizzella, named an assistant secretary of labor by Bush; and David Safavian, chosen by Bush to oversee federal procurement policy in the Office of Management and Budget.

"We have worked with WH Office of Presidential Personnel to ensure that CNMI-relevant positions at various agencies are not awarded to enemies of CNMI," Abramoff's team wrote the Marianas in an October 2001 report on its work for the year.

Abramoff's team didn't neglect party politics either: There were at least two meetings with Republican National Committee officials, including then-finance chief Jack Oliver, as well as attendance at GOP fundraisers.

...more...

[stop the bleeding]

9. Good work - see above post #7

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=48301&mesg_id=48301

[LSK]

11. K&R