Republican Gold-Diggers Hit the Wall

[seafan]

Republican Gold-Diggers Hit the Wall
By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Thursday 12 January 2005

Believe it or not, the looting of a continent and its people that began with Columbus more than 500 years ago is not done yet. Today's gold-seekers may look different from Spain's conquistadors, but they are of the same breed.

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff likes to quote characters from the Godfather. At his recent court appearance in New York, he wore a black trench coat and hat, and at his Florida indictment he wore a gangsta-style baseball cap. This choice of attire started a media buzz that he was paying homage to his gangster heroes, though others say the hats are part of a religious observance.

House Resources Committee Chair Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) wears a cowboy hat and snakeskin boots. He is unambiguously proud of his ranching heritage - those wranglers who turned endless herds of hooved locusts loose upon a verdant West, transforming it into the dry, impoverished landscape we see today.

And then there is Italia Federici, a bit player but an important one. This young woman with her long, blond hippie hair, a zaftig Ann Coulter, impersonates an environmentalist. She is the executive director of a putative environmental organization - Coalition of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA). CREA was founded in 1997 by a group that included Republican operative Grover Norquist and the current Secretary of Interior, Gale Norton. Federici worked on Norton's 1996 Senate campaign.

CREA is funded primarily by huge donations from Native American tribes, yet it does no environmental work related to tribal concerns.

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011206A.shtml