It is a rough night.
Once again a battle has been lost. Once again the vast muddy river of corruption, blood and bile flows unabated through our Democracy. It is dispiriting and it is quite rational to be angry.
I’ve been here before. I will be here again.
I think I first felt this over a quarter of a century ago when I woke up to find Ronald Reagan had become President. That was numbing. Soon we were in a series of illegal and covert Wars. The body counts were high—especially for non-Americans. The overlay of the Cold War and an aggressive attack on our liberties led to layer upon layer of lost battles.
It was a rough decade.
We are in another rough decade. The problems created by the Bush Kleptocracy make the Reagan years seem like an age of enlightenment. Again we shed blood (and this time American blood as well) and again an overlay of an existential threat protects insane policy.
Since Bush was installed as President, I have had a lot of bad nights.
There have been more defeats than victories.
And each time, I pick myself up and focus on the next battle.
I focus my energy on the Achilles’ heel of the GOP.
And you can too.
Let’s jump...
The other day, I wrote a Diary: It’s The Corruption, Stupid. It was a follow-up to one discussing the McCain/Bush Corruption Cover-Up.
Over the last three years, I have been writing about the Culture of Corruptionand the Jack Abramoff Scandal. I have been researching this mess since 1999.
That research grew out of another bad day—another defeat.
I work at Co-op America, a nonprofit dedicated to harnessing our collective economic power to build a socially just and environmentally sound planet. Back in 1999, we were working on ways we could use our collective economic power—as consumers, investors, workers and business leaders—to stop sweatshops and end the chronic labor abuse fueling much of Global trade.
In the course of that work I learned about the organized abuse of tens of thousands of Guest Workers on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a US Territory in the Western Pacific some 40 miles North of Guam. It was abuse protected by the Government of the CNMI and the US Congress.
I asked myself how that could happen.
I spent time researching the supply chain, the companies involved, the laws that made it possible and the history of the CNMI.
I was appalled. This was very close to modern slavery.
The workers came from many impoverished countries and they were being used as expendable commodities to increase profits of the greedy. They effectively had no rights. Economic pressure and consumer/shareholder demand for corporate accountability could (and did) help end some sweatshops around the globe, but to solve the abuse on this rogue US Territory it would require action from the Federal government.
It seemed that 1999 would be the year when Congressional action would end the abuse. Bills had passed the Senate and had more than enough sponsors to pass the House. Media reports about sweatshops and the abuse on the Mariana Islands seemed to be everywhere. I felt that a major victory was about to happen.
It didn’t.
The effort died in the House of Representatives. It never came up for a vote.
I wondered why. I wanted to know how this happen. I found out.
I found Jack Abramoff. I found the Republican Culture of Corruption.
They defeated those of us who were working to end sweatshops. They protected the abuse. And that was just one crime. As I dug into the research, more and more crimes oozed to the surface.
The more I learned, the more I knew how many times they had defeated me—how many times they had corrupted the Country I love. The more I learned the more outraged I became.
Then came 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005—the defeats at their hands were coming fast and furious. Today’s vote was a defeat, but there were many other defeats over the last six years that were even worse. Think about it.
We have a big mess to clean up.
We made some progress in 2006. We have started to fight back, but there is a long way to go.
Tonight, it seems that some Democrats still have their moral compass set to auto-capitulation. Worse than them, would be the vast majority of the media that would rather be deadly wrong than change a cherished narrative. Once the self-appointed beltway avatars have ordained a given lie as fact, the press is irrationally wedded to the talking point. And as for the Republicans they lie, steal, and revel in their hypocrisy—it is all they know how to do.
Yep, it has been a bad night. It is easy to be angry.
But I know what to do with that anger. I focus it. I sharpen it. I get to work and aim my research at the Achilles’ heel of the Republican Party. I dig deeper into the Culture of Corruption.
Corruption is their weakness. You can see it. You can feel it sway voters. The evidence is over whelming. It is strong enough to change the narrative if enough of us keep a focus on driving the Culture of Corruption meme.
Abramoff was just a window on a massive scandal. The Bush years are corruption on steroids.
The crimes committed on the CNMI were and are horrible (and they continue), but they are only a side show in a much larger scandal—a massive criminal conspiracy to place "Party" above Country and establish One-Party-Rule in America.
Corruption cuts across every issue. It is almost impossible to explore any story of the Iraq War without getting waist deep in scandal. The same is true of every policy of the Bush Administration. The same is true of the Republican Party.
And sadly, the stench of corruption can be found attached to some Democrats. While others in the Party are just plain scared to embrace reform. They are afraid that it will limit fund raising or (and this is really disappointing) limit their ability to cash out on their Government service.
Today the House passed some lobbying reform Bills. They’re a big improvement, but they were weaker than they should have been. It will be great if they can be improved in Conference with the Senate. Still, they are a step in the right direction. The passage of this long promised reform was a wee bit of good news. It gave me some cause for hope.
I’m also encouraged by the passage of the Minimum Wage, but I’m waiting to find out if this version includes the CNMI in the increase. That was the case in the version Bush vetoed. I hope it is still the case. This would be a very bad night if the Iraq disaster was funded and justice was denied the workers of the CNMI once again.
Regardless, I will get up in the morning and fight on.
Last year, I identified the Abramoff 65 a group of Republican Candidates tied to Jack Abramoff and the Culture of Corruption.
We won 20 of those seats.
I’m working on the list for 2008. This time I know I'll have lot's of help. Many of you are channeling your anger into research. You are honing it, focusing your work on the weakness you see. That is good. Trust me—it is far better than a rant. We will not win without doing the hard work behind every victory.
We need to build a Party that works for people and the planet. We have some dead weight to clear out. We have some passions for justice to reignite. We have a Country to take back and a Planet to save.
We lost a battle today. It hurts. You’ll have to work through the pain.
This is a long struggle. The effort to establish a Republican led and protected Kleptocracy has been active for decades. We will not defeat it in months.
Even when we have victories—and we will—we can not rest. There will be a counter push. We have to be ready.
Corruption is the key to this fight. It is the by-product of the modern Republican Party.
It is their Achilles’ heel.
On every issue we need to aim for the corruption—especially when it comes to this war. Corruption is a cross-cutting tipping point. It turns hearts and minds away from the GOP, DLC and other weasels. It will win us votes if we make it an issue. It will help the Democrats if they can prove they are serious about reform. So far the Congressional Leadership and our Presidential Candidates have been timid on this issue. They need to hear from us.
We need to lead and they will follow us.
We need to expose this Culture of Corruption and demand change.
We need to extract a political price for the crimes past the Statute of Limitations.
We need to speed things up.
2007 is a year for gathering facts and holding feet to the fire (both reluctant Democrats and corrupt Republicans).
2008 is a year to defeat the corrupt at the ballot box. It is a year when we need to put a Democrat (that we can be proud of) in the White House. That will give us a Government that believes in the law again.
We need to remind every Democrat that:
It’s The Corruption, Stupid
It is pressure time.
Demand real lobbying reform. Demand an end to business as usual. The Culture of Corruption is a Republican thing. It has no place among Democrats. Those who seek to protect corruption need to hear from us. They need to feel some heat.
The corruption of politics is at the heart of everything George W. Bush has done. It is why we are in Iraq. It is why Bush is destroying everything he touches. And we will not be able to stop Bush unless we get serious about confronting corruption.
And we need to demand that our Presidential Candidates support reform. They should lead. They should ALL talk about how they will end the corruption and restore honor to our Country once again.
Yes we are angry tonight. We lost an important vote.
So get busy. Focus your rage. Get involved.
- Write letters, contact the press, call talk shows, post comments, and otherwise promote this effort. Demand the release of the 750,000 pages of McCain/Bush Corruption Cover-Up documents held by the Senate. Make it clear that you are concerned about the widespread evidence of criminal activity in the Republican Party and the cover-ups of these crimes.
- Research. Follow the money. Find the quid pro quos. Dig into the ties of the GOP to CNMI and Guam, or to Cunningham, or Rove, or Bush, or Iraq, or to ripping off Native Americans, or to any of the entry points into the web of scandal. Grab a mask and a shovel and start digging into the many aspects of this cesspool of corruption.
- Get out the truth and hold the GOP accountable in 2007 and 2008. Perhaps Republican candidates will want to explain to voters why they wanted to kill the Abramoff and other corruption investigation. We should force the question.
I am angry tonight.
I’ve been here before. I’ll research. I’ll fashion an arrow out of the truth and I’ll aim it at the Achilles’ heel of the Republican Culture of Corruption. And then I will do it again.
You can do this as well. Join me.
Focus your rage into the hard work of building a movement for justice.
It will take time, but we will win.
Let’s get started...