The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail

December 31, 2005 12:46 PM

The DeLay-Abramoff Money TrailThe U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.
posted by Postroad (33 comments total)

drip
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 12:48 PM on December 31, 2005

Is there anything in Texas that is authentic?
posted by stbalbach at 12:51 PM on December 31, 2005

One of my conspiracy theories involves the Russian Mafia laying the trap that led the US to war in Iraq and the eventual collapse of the US economy.

I see that Abramoff was presumably paid quite handsomely by the Russians.
posted by five fresh fish at 1:36 PM on December 31, 2005

Related item, in graphical form.
posted by ilsa at 1:39 PM on December 31, 2005

Buuurrrrrnnnnn TThhhheeee Wwwwwiiitttttcccchhhhhh ! ! !

Bbbbbbbbbbbuuuurrrrrrrrnnnnnnn ! ! ! !
posted by mk1gti at 1:53 PM on December 31, 2005

Fascinating. Thanks for the link.

This is all beginning to make me feel the truth of what organized crime kingpin Meyer Lansky said before he died: "The history of the United States is very different from what most people believe."
posted by digaman at 1:58 PM on December 31, 2005

I daresay. Perhaps American politics is simply the continuing story of crime families jostling for positions of power.
posted by five fresh fish at 2:04 PM on December 31, 2005

digiman, I first started thinking that as a boy of 12 when Nixon and Watergate happened. My worst fears were realized when Reagan got into the White House. Notice I didn't say 'elected president'. I don't believe that man got in any more legitimately than any other republican president since Eisenhower. . .
posted by mk1gti at 2:11 PM on December 31, 2005

Ya'll are sounding like a bunch of conspiracy theorists. All this guy did was make it easier for indian casinos to operate. Ohh, scary!!!!
posted by delmoi at 2:58 PM on December 31, 2005

mk1gti: don't be an idiot. democracy isn't a scientific exercise of picking the most able candidate (or finding able candidates for that matter); even with Reagan's "historic landslide" of 1984 he only got 60% of the vote of people who bothered to go to the polls.

1980 saw Reagan score 8M votes than Carter. Politics in a democracy is the art of bullshitting the people, and the Republicans are masters at this.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:38 PM on December 31, 2005

Oh gee, pardon me Heywood, I forgot we live in the freest and most responsible nation on the planet, where everything is perfect, just like in Leave It To Beaver.
posted by mk1gti at 3:40 PM on December 31, 2005

Even one Leave it to Beaver, Whitey was regularly beaten by his father and Lumpy terrorized people weaker than him, which was pretty much everyone.

You may be thinking of Father Knows Best. Everything was so freakin' perfect on that show.
posted by maxsparber at 3:48 PM on December 31, 2005

This is the ultimate dilemma for American progressives - the further one delves into the true sordid history of America, the more one finds out what utter horseshit one's belief in the "American Dream" is predicated on.

You have to learn to love and strive for the ideal of America, while recognizing that in many ways, that ideal has never been close to the reality of America.
posted by stenseng at 3:51 PM on December 31, 2005

"It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it." - George Carlin
posted by edverb at 4:39 PM on December 31, 2005

I daresay. Perhaps American politics is simply the continuing story of crime families jostling for positions of power.
posted by five fresh fish


thats what i have felt for years. it makes it hard to take anything about our government seriously.
not to mention the weird looks you get from people , when you tell them thats what you think of american politics.
posted by nola at 4:49 PM on December 31, 2005

or put another way , its hard to believe the high minded rhetoric of any era.
posted by nola at 4:51 PM on December 31, 2005

So which Presidents have been suspected of connections to the underworld? Kennedys I know fersure, any others? Bush is connected to the Nazis and the Sauds, but I don't recall hearing of Mob connections. Clintons and some sort of Arkansas nastiness. Reagan? Nixon? Surely ol' Jimmy Carter was an innocent man!
posted by five fresh fish at 5:00 PM on December 31, 2005

here are some of Jacks criminal links
posted by hortense at 5:22 PM on December 31, 2005

Jack's
posted by hortense at 5:24 PM on December 31, 2005

i don't know about jimmy carter . no i don't think he has ties to the underworld :)

as for the clinton, nixon, or lbj for that matter , i think they all have some unanswered questions.

but yeah , i was mostly thinking of the kennedys, and the bushes.
posted by nola at 6:08 PM on December 31, 2005

Well, this is what I picked up when I did a bit o' googlin and reading a while back.

Opium financing Yale and possibly Harvard back in the late 1800's. Now we have Yale and Harvard and Skull and Bones picking who gets into CIA/NSA and moving back and forth to Wall street in between.

Then we have opium in Vietnam during the Vietnam war being controlled or overseen by the CIA. CIA/FBI connections to the mob in the time of Kennedy. If it was with one president, it probably wasn't the first, or the last.

Clinton and Mena, Arkansa and cocaine smuggling. Possibly overseen by the Bush family, who are perhaps the american cocaine cartel extraordinaire. The governor of Florida, Jeb, married to a mexican who's family has a history of cocaine trafficking.

Reagan and financing of Iran/Contra with cocaine smuggling in Columbia (and who knows where else, and what other illicit narcotics?).

Johnson's presidency while all this was going on with the opium smuggling in Vietnam. Nixon's later.

Carter looking the other way during the genocide of East Timor, and selling the murderers the arms to do their dirty deed.

Truman's administration pressuring Chiang Kai Shek to 'go easy' on the communists taking over mainland China during and after WWII. Eventually Mao went on the murder up to 70 million people, becoming the greatest mass murderer in human history.

Yes, the sordid underbelly of the United States (now very much the divided cities and rural areas) runs long and deep. The more you look, the deeper the shit.

And of course, I've only touched the surface of all this. 'Murica's hands are deeply mired in the innocent blood of millions, if not billions all over the world due to it's sociopathic, corporate profiteering, powermongering ways.

The nazis during WWII are infants compared to the shit the U.S. has pulled in the name of 'freedom and democracy' over the past 200 + years either directly or indirectly.
posted by mk1gti at 6:09 PM on December 31, 2005

Wow. Struck a nerve, eh?
posted by five fresh fish at 6:56 PM on December 31, 2005

The nazis during WWII are infants compared to the shit the U.S. has pulled in the name of 'freedom and democracy' over the past 200 + years either directly or indirectly.
posted by mk1gti

Ann Coulter sock puppet or real hater-of-our-freedoms? You decide.
posted by longsleeves at 6:58 PM on December 31, 2005

I dunno....reading mkgti's screed, all I could think was "smallpox blankets."
posted by alumshubby at 7:09 PM on December 31, 2005

fff said: So which Presidents have been suspected of connections to the underworld? Kennedys I know fersure, any others? Bush is connected to the Nazis and the Sauds, but I don't recall hearing of Mob connections.

Check your local library for a copy of The Mafia, CIA and George Bush, 1992 (that's George Bush the Elder, btw). The book's introduction and cast of characters are posted in an old Free Republic forum:

Something very significant happened during our country's savings-and-loan crisis, the greatest financial disaster since the Great Depression. It happened quietly, secretly, without any fanfare and attention. It happened before our very eyes, yet we knew it not.

What we all missed was the massive transfer of wealth from the American taxpayers to a select group of extremely rich, powerful people. What these people had in common -- unknown to the American public -- were their symbiotic relationships to the Mafia and the CIA, and to the two most prominent, powerful politicians from Texas, President George Bush and Senator Lloyd Bentsen.

This small cabal of businessmen realized that the S&Ls were going the way of the dinosaurs. They recognized that S&Ls couldn't survive under rapid inflation and high interest rates. So they decided to exploit the situation for their own purposes, with help from, and rewards for, the Mafia, the CIA and their favorite politicians. They probably figured that the insulation and protection these powerful institutions and individuals conferred upon them, in addition to all the endemic protections with the financial, judicial, political and journalistic systems, made them invulnerable. They were probably right.

For unlike Watergate and Iran-Contra, this was a bipartisan scandal. There was no opposition party to push for an independent investigation. In fact, the same group of wealthy, powerful businessmen, centered in Houston, that encircle Republicans like George Bush and James A. Baker III, also encircle Democrats like Jim Wright and Lloyd Bentsen.

Talk about a labyrinth, this one was (is?) four-dimensional.

Considering that Joseph Patrick Kennedy (b. 1888), Prescott Sheldon Bush (b. 1895), and their offspring have been contemporaries, you'd think they've crossed paths once in a while...
posted by cenoxo at 7:18 PM on December 31, 2005

some people's screeds are other people's food for thought. If I have helped to enrich the discussion and expand it then I've suceeded.
I encourage all of you to dig deep. There is more here than a simple 'conspiracy theory'.
As an example this administration's grab at the middle east and asia originated with Carter's Zbignew Brezinksi and his book 'The Grand Chessboard'.
Please don't think this is just republicans and conservatives against democrats and liberals. The truth is much, much greater than that. The 'conservative against liberal' game is nothing but a diversion. Don't allow yourself to be divereted by cheap cinematic tricks.
posted by mk1gti at 7:40 PM on December 31, 2005

Beware numerology; false patterns exist in everything.
posted by aramaic at 9:29 PM on December 31, 2005

Gore Vidal: I've always found the people who most dislike conspiracy theories are conspirators.
posted by craniac at 7:12 AM on January 1, 2006

Jeff Wells motto "what you don't know can't hurt them"
posted by hortense at 11:00 AM on January 1, 2006

Organized crime may well be, then, the only real moneymaker left in America that is not outsourced or globalized.
posted by Postroad at 11:14 AM on January 1, 2006

Religion, too.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:02 PM on January 1, 2006

Ya'll are sounding like a bunch of conspiracy theorists. All this guy did was make it easier for indian casinos to operate. Ohh, scary!!!!
posted by delmoi at 2:58 PM PST on December 31 [!]

All this guy did was make it easier for indian casinos to operate.

Really?

How much are you being paid as a poster of spin on the Internet?

If all Mr. Abramoff was just doing 'legit business' - why have some of the pols of Washington send back the money he was handing out? The trial will be interesting, but I'm not hopeful for a full reveling of the truth.


Surely ol' Jimmy Carter was an innocent man!

These people don't think Carter is w/o blame.
posted by rough ashlar at 4:26 PM on January 1, 2006

More on the case. The shit blows closer and closer towards hitting the fan. . .
posted by mk1gti at 6:20 PM on January 1, 2006