So today, Tom has made the front page of the Washington Post and the NY Times. Both stories had bombshells and now
Bloomberg News is adding another log to the fire:
One of the surest paths to riches in Washington is to have these five words on a resume: ``Office of Representative Tom DeLay.''
Eleven lobbyists who once worked for the Texas Republican and House majority leader helped bring in at least $45 million in fees for their firms in the past two years. By comparison, former aides of House Speaker Dennis Hastert lobbying during that period helped bring in about $2.1 million.
If they went back ten years the money brought in would be in the neighborhood of $250,000. And then there are the millions from Jack Abramoff.
There is another GOP scandal behind every dollar Jack raised. So far only a handful (connected mostly to DeLay) have been reported. The Abramoff drip will continue for some time because the story is becoming way to juicy and the reporting is becoming competitive.
The Post has had several reporters working the money behind Jack for over a year. Same thing with the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal. The NY Times is playing catch-up. The Hill, the Texas Observer, Salon, Raw Story and others are finding new Abramoff dollar scandals on an almost daily basis. Even the AP is beginning to follow the drip. And then there are smaller papers and blogs who are driving certain aspect behind the hundreds of millions of dollars Jack raised for the GOP since 1980. Soon radio and TV will pile on.
What we need to do is to help keep the drip going. Find an aspect of the Abramoff story and dig. Here are just a few:
- Jack was a player in the Iran-Contra scandal.
- Jack is one of the four horsemen of the GOP. Karl did politics, Grover did think tanks, Ralph did religion and Jack raised money.
- Jack helped Delay raise $700,000 for competitive GOP races in 1994. This allowed Tom to beat Nwet's candidate for Whip.
- Jack was the point of the spear for the K Street project. Most of DeLay's former staff went to work for him (as did many other GOP Hill staffers).
- Jack and sweatshops (there is a rich scandal vein connected to Saipan and Jack's work for the Chinese corporation behind the sweatshops on the island).
- Jack was a member of the 2000-2001 Bush-Cheney Transition Team for the Interior Department (recently he has been scrubbed from the lists of members).
- And there is so much more. Grab a shovel and dig.