"They may have met on occasion, but the president does not know him,"

[mopaul]

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

WASHINGTON (AP) — In President Bush's first 10 months, GOP fundraiser Jack Abramoff and his lobbying team logged nearly 200 contacts with the new administration as they pressed for friendly hires at federal agencies and sought to keep the Northern Mariana Islands exempt from the minimum wage and other laws, records show.

The meetings between Abramoff's lobbying team and the administration ranged from Attorney General John Ashcroft to policy advisers in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, according to his lobbying firm billing records.

Abramoff, a $100,000-plus fundraiser for Bush, is now under criminal investigation for some of his lobbying work. His firm boasted its lobbying team helped revise a section of the Republican Party's 2000 platform to make it favorable to its island client.

[rodeodance]

1. the Headline says it all.

old headline but good.

Posted 5/6/2005 8:35 AM Updated 5/7/2005 8:19 AM




Controversial lobbyist had close contact with Bush team

[mopaul]

2. let's ask w directly: do you know or have you ever met jack abramoff?

surely he can answer that---or would he bow out because 'it's an ongoing investigation'?

[txindy]

9. He'd say, "It depends on the definition of 'know'."

:eyes: After all, Junior doesn't 'know' Kenny Boy, either. Yeah. Right.

[EFerrari]

3. So, what's the deal with Jack being on the Dept of Interior

transition team? Is that just a rumor?

[harlinchi]

8. It seems the Dept of the Interior has always been, really, the...

Department For Ripping Off Subjugated Peoples. Land Management, Fish and Wildlife, Indian Affairs, Surface Mining, Geological Survey, National Parks and Minerals Management are all areas where very bad things are being done in our name. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has always been a place where bad intentions followed by bad decisions and bad planning, added to bad implementations resulted in awful outcomes. Mission accomplished.

Bogus regional pay rate arguments aside, how could any decent person assert, along with the wealthy of the island, that it would be better to maintain lower rates of pay? Oh yeah, this is Delay and Abramoff, et al. Decency cannot be mentioned in the same sentence with them. If the decision-makers were acting in concert with anyone investing in the islands manufacturing, then a conflict of interest existed, if not actual collusion.




http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/09/real.delay/

"...Moved by the sworn testimony of U.S. officials and human-rights advocates that the 91 percent of the workforce who were immigrants -- from China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh -- were being paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage and were forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing, work 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, without any of the legal protections U.S. workers are guaranteed, Murkowski wrote a bill to extend the protection of U.S. labor and minimum-wage laws to the workers in the U.S. territory of the Northern Marianas.

So compelling was the case for change the Alaska Republican marshaled that in early 2000, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Murkowski worker reform bill.

But one man primarily stopped the U.S. House from even considering that worker-reform bill: then-House Republican Whip Tom DeLay."


There is no such thing as 'piling on' with these folk. These are people who wish only to exploit the world for their benefit. I think we have to always connect even those dots which obviously are related.

[EFerrari]

11. Yes, I have the information on Delay and you are right about

that department in general. I was wondering if anyone has verified that Abramoof was on the transition team.

[Divernan]

4. It depends on the meaning of "know". . .

In Scotty's "mind", he means Bush didn't "know" Abramhoff in the Biblical sense.

[mopaul]

5. he accepted huge amounts of cash from him, but doesn't remember it

'i can't recall-ism' inherited from uncle ronnie

[izzie]

6. And we have not even hit on the money to Churches and iraq

Iraq should really be fun. Looks like trunk loads of money went to the GOP for that mother lode. These guys may not be crooks when they go to DC but they sure are when they leave. So much money it must be hard to keep your hands off the stuff.

[Zenlitened]

7. Translation: "It was just a quickie"

:yoiks:

[Marleyb]

10. lol

:rofl:

and afterward a little favor...
Bush’s personal favor for Abramoff: demoted Investigator, halted probe
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x178717