Fullest context on donations: Abramoff "and associates and tribal clients"

[Pirate Smile]

Thanks to a comment by 2lucky on Daily Kos:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aBTFEkGJUbSI&refer=us">Bloomberg
is the only agency I've seen that placed the contributions in an appropriate context:

Between 2001 and 2004, Abramoff gave more than $127,000 to Republican candidates and committees and nothing to Democrats, federal records show.

At the same time, his Indian clients were the only ones among the top 10 tribal donors in the U.S. to donate more money to Republicans than Democrats.

Abramoff's tribal clients continued to give money to Democrats even after he began representing them, although in smaller percentages than in the past.

The Saginaw Chippewas gave $500,500 to Republicans between 2001 and 2004 and $277,210 to Democrats, according to a review of data compiled by Dwight L. Morris & Associates, a Bristow, Virginia-based company that tracks campaign-finance reports. Between 1997 and 2000, the tribe gave just $158,000 to Republicans and $279,000 to Democrats.

What Abramoff did was succeed in getting the tribes he represented to give more $ to Republicans than they previously had.

Who knew?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/4/202554/8537

and here is more from the Hotline blog. It has already been posted but adds more "context" to the spin swirling around the Abramoff scandal.

Abramoff Money and Dems

An earlier post took the NRSC to task for claiming on their website that ""Forty of forty five members of the Democrat Senate Caucus took money from Jack Abramoff."

Not true; Abramoff personally gave money to GOPers only.

NRSC spokesman Brian Nick calls it a typo and correctly points out that other pages on the site add thge words "and associates and tribal clients" when writing of Abramoffian contributions to Dems.

Still, is it really fair to say that "40 of the 45 members of the Senate Democrat Caucus have taken money from Abramoff, his associates, and Indian tribe clients."

Abramoff AND the others? No -- just the others. Not Abramoff.

Abramoff himself did not donate a penny of his personal money to Democrats, so far as we can tell. So it'd be accurate to say that "Abramoff's associates and tribal clients" gave to Dems.

Some of the "Abramoff-related" money linked to Dems comes from Greenberg Traurig's political action committee. Greenberg is a huge bipartisan legal/lobby firm. It regularly gives money to members of both parties.

Abramoff had no hand in the PAC's donation distribution, according to Greenberg. So is Greenberg money really Abramoff money?

http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2006/01/abramoff_money.html

[Justitia]

1. Thank you! We have to keep fighting these blatant lies & smear attempts.

"Everybody is doing it" is not only not a valid defense, it is an OUTRIGHT FALSEHOOD.

These rat bastard media whores are making this happen by reading whatever fucking talking points are being handed to them by the RNC.

[Pirate Smile]

2. This was the first thing I read that added any analysis. The Indian

Tribes have always contributed to Democrats - if they have anything to contribute.

They ARE Democrats.

In South Dakota, there has been an ongoing battle between the Republicans trying to suppress the Native American vote and Democrats trying to increase their turnout.

Of course Native Americans give to Democrats.

The New Poll Tax
Republican-sponsored ballot-security measures are being used to keep minorities from voting.

By Laughlin McDonald
Issue Date: 12.30.02
Print Friendly | Email Article

One of the recurring scandals in American politics since passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is the discriminatory use of so-called "ballot security" programs. These programs are invariably presented as good government measures necessary to prevent voter fraud, but far too often they are actually designed to suppress minority voting -- and for nakedly partisan purposes. Take, for example, the last election.

Shortly before this November's balloting, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a "Voting Integrity Initiative" to deal with voter fraud. Civil-rights groups raised concerns that the new federal initiative -- like so many local anti-fraud programs -- would unfairly target minority voters. As if to confirm that fear, the new program opened with a joint federal and state investigation of alleged voter fraud in South Dakota counties with significant American-Indian populations. The allegations and the probe, led by the state's Republican attorney general, Mark Barnett, came on the heels of a registration and get-out-the-vote campaign launched by the Democratic Party on South Dakota's reservations, where voters tend to be Democrats and registration has historically been depressed.

Barnett, working with the FBI, announced plans to send state and federal agents to question almost 2,000 new Native-American registrants, many of whom were participating in the political process for the first time. County auditors cooperated by subjecting American-Indian registration to a special level of scrutiny. No similar effort was made to investigate new registrations in South Dakota's other counties, which had few American-Indian residents, even though those counties contained most of the new registrations in the state.

If Republicans meant this investigation to suppress Native-American -- and thus Democratic -- turnout in the U.S. Senate race between Republican challenger John Thune and Democratic incumbent Tim Johnson, they must have been sorely disappointed. It seems instead to have energized American-Indian voters. In Shannon County, for example, which is more than 95 percent Native American, turnout in the 2000 presidential election was 38 percent of registered voters. In the 2002 election, it jumped to 45 percent. Moreover, the increased American-Indian/Democratic vote proved to be decisive for the senatorial election, which Johnson won by just 524 votes.

http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/23/mcdonald-l.html

[Pirate Smile]

3. kick

[Pirate Smile]

4. kick

[KittyWampus]

5. K&R. This is the SPECIFIC info I was looking for.

Remember, lobbying and accepting donations are largely legal.

It's the money laundering and bribery and extortion that is at issue here.

[Pirate Smile]

6. I know. I keep kicking it myself because I think people need to see it.

[Pirate Smile]

7. I posted a new thread on this info with a thread title that may get more

attention and is in the slower moving GD: P.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2350592