http://mydd.com/story/2006/2/9/163540/9804 Checking the latest headlines at Yahoo! News a few minutes ago, I was shocked to read that "Reid Aided Abramoff Clients, Records Show." Immediately, I clicked on it to get the story. My first impression was that, unless I wanted to be a complete and total hypocrite, I'd better post a criticism of Harry Reid, and fast. After all, if the leader of the Senate Democrats was indeed caught red-handed doing Jack Abramoff's bidding, we'd need to immediately marginalize him so as to not lose the upper hand in a debate about lobbying, ethics, and bribery. But as I started to read the article, I smelled a smear.
The first clue was that Senator Reid has a long history of protecting gambling in Nevada from outside competition. He does, after all, represent Las Vegas. So the fact that he sought to keep Indian casinos from expanding off of their reservations, while I may not necessarily agree, makes sense. He didn't need lobbyists telling him what to do on the issue, as he'd held that position long before they'd ever come knocking. But still... the article's a long one. I wasn't quite ready to dismiss it.
The story totally lost credibility for me when it got to mentioning the Marianas Islands. By now, you're probably aware of the fact that one of Abramoff's pet projects was maintaining a low minimum wage in U.S. territories not subject to the federal minimum wage. This was of interest to the Republicans because manufacturers could exploit the territories' low wages to essentially create a sweatshop environment without completely having to leave America. This AP story tries to imply that Reid was complicit in this plot.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/abramoff_reidThe kicker, of course, is that for all of their effort, Reid never supported the Abramoff position. The very definition of "quid pro quo" is "this for that." In politics, this means something valuable like money or gifts for a politician's votes or some other form of official support. In this case, though Reid or his staffers may have taken meetings on the subject, it never amounted to anything. In other words, there may have been quid, but there was no quo. So this convoluted story is just that -- a convoluted story. No climax, no punchline, and most importantly, no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Reid.
more at link...
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