Corruption That Shook Capitol Isn't Rattling Elections
Sen. Conrad Burns gazed at a debate audience and asked if anyone could guess who was blocking efforts in Washington to control health-care costs.
"Abramoff?" shouted a heckler. The crowd at a packed high school auditorium here in Montana's Bitterroot Valley erupted in hoots and jeers.
There's a couple of points here. First the article that the Abramoff issue isn't effecting the race. If Burns loses this race,the main reason will be corruption. If the voter has a choice between Burns and Tester, then they'll say "about the same, but Burns is dirty." It's the kicker. That's why they have to go negative against Tester.
The second point is that the raucous Hamilton debate has reached conventional wisdom. Note the words heckler, jeers, and hoots. Negative words. It's a marginalization of the grassroots. It completly misses the point that Tester supporters outnumbered Burns supporters 3-1.
Posted by admin at 06:51 AM | Comments (0)
In a story in the Great Falls TribuneRacicot charges
"I think the matter is concluded," he said, now that Burns, as well as Democratic Sen. Max Baucus and Republican U.S. Rep. Dennis Rehberg, have vowed to return the donations.
The story is really about this:
Talking Points Memo
It's like we've been telling you for months. This is a slush fund. Lots of secret money, often from overseas, that can get spread around off the books in DC. That's how this sort of political machine works.
Posted by admin at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)
The Fast Rise and Steep Fall of Jack Abramoff
Alan K. Simpson (R), the former Wyoming senator who was in Washington during the last big congressional scandal -- the Abscam FBI sting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in which six House members and one senator were convicted -- said the Abramoff case looks bigger. Simpson said he recently rode in a plane with one of Abramoff's attorneys, who told him: "There are going to be guys in your former line of work who are going to be taken down."
More perspective:
Talking Points Memo
...the authors do too little to place Abramoff's ascent into the context of the consolidation of Republican control over K Street and the operation of the DeLay Machine in the House of Representatives. I don't think the one can be properly understood without the other.
A tongue in cheek(we think!)letter on our esteemed Senator
Billings Outpost
The Burns’ Unit
Our senator said, “I can think of no better use of Mr. Abramoff’s contributions than to assist a charity that serves the very folks he wronged.” Montanans know when two wrongs make a right.
Posted by admin at 06:33 AM | Comments (0)
So in the Bozeman Chronicle Conrad Says
"I wouldn't know Jack Abramoff if he walked in the room," Burns told reporters after Friday's field hearing.
Now in the Washington Post it turns out that
Records Show Burns' Abramoff Meetings
Sen. Conrad Burns and his staff met Jack Abramoff's lobbying team on at least eight occasions and collected $12,000 in donations around the time that the lawmaker took legislative action favorable to Abramoff's clients in the Northern Mariana Islands, records show.
Technically it could be true, Jack Abramoff might have not attended any of these eight meetings.
Doesn't it seem like Conrad is working for the Washington lobbyists and not the Montanans that hired him?
Posted by admin at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)