Posted on 05/25/2005 4:13:03 PM PDT by Conservative Firster
Story ties Abramoff to Norquist -- scandal expanding toward White House?
|
In a very positive step in the right direction, the New York Times ran a front page story yesterday ("Link to Lobbyist Brings Scrutiny to G.O.P. Figure," May 23, 2005) tying indicted lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, to non-indicted lobbyist, Grover Norquist. They are quite the pair of influence peddlers. Norquist is the man people are thinking about when they say they feel like they need to shower after a visit to Washington. Abramoff was so clever at facilitating the selling off of our democracy, and steering the bigger cut to the Republicans, that the Wall Street Journal ran a glowing front page article about him, even calling him a "GOP stalwart." Norquist is a long-time enemy of immigration moderates; he and his stable of lesser stars have lobbied for and with the American Immigration Lawyers Association, American Businesses for Legal Immigration, and for the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. On May 02, 2004, Norquist wrote a dishonest article for FoxNews.com attacking Matt Hayes of Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement after FoxNews.com ran a piece by Matt detailing the negative impact on working Americans of the immigration policies pushed by Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah. By the sheerest of coincidences, in the last election cycle, Chris Cannon's campaign paid Janus Merritt Strategies, the firm Grover Norquist started with David Safavian, Cannon's chief of staff in 2001, $5,960 for "Campaign Consulting & Fundraising Exp." Also during the 2004 cycle, Cannon's campaign paid $5,614 for fundraising expenses to Williams Mullen, the influence-peddling company that was in the process of buying Norquist's influence-peddling company.
Matt had a crushing response to Norquist ready to submit (crushing responses to immigration extremists, forced as they are to rely on dishonesty in order to be convincing, are very easy to write), when he got word that word had come from higher up not to print any more articles by him that mentioned Chris Cannon. I don't know what it is about me and corporations, but, as it turns out, News Corp, the foreign corporation that owns Fox News, has a political action committee, too. Just like Viacom! News Corp's vehicle for pooling its employees' political views is called News America Holdings.
In the 2004 cycle, News America Holdings gave $5,000 to Cannon for Congress. Undoubtedly, the money this particular foreign multinational gave to this particular American legislator was given out of love for democracy, and a desire to see higher quality political advertising. I know you are as confident as I am that there was no relation whatsoever between the investment the corporation had in Chris Cannon and the multimedia megacorporation using its power to squelch our rebuttal, but allow Norquist to publish lies (which Cannon, of course, distributed throughout his district, maybe using the money News America Holdings had given him, and possibly throwing the election--we were on a roll just then).
It was all a matter of pure coincidence, and not the sickening perversion of our democracy that it seems.
Just yesterday, on the day the New York Times connected a few dots on a truly dangerous and huge rogue element in our society, I heard a self-congratulating Senator speaking rapturously over having saved the filibuster. The Senator, one of the most irresponsible of an irresponsible bunch, repeated the familiar story of Ben Franklin saying, in answer to the old woman who approached him asking what the Founders had given the people, "A Republic, madam, if you can keep it."
I've heard that story many times, but only as interesting history. I never before thought it would be our generation that failed. |
From 6/15/04:
CANNON URGES ILLEGALS TO DONATE ILLEGALLY
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1153862/posts
"non-indicted lobbyist, Grover Norquist"
When will we see the NYT call Hillary
"non-indicted Senator"?
... or is this scandal-mongering just more-of-the-same spin-cycle respone team (keep em focussed on the other guys, pay no attention to the campaign financial law violations behind the curtain).
Weird article bump
Grover Norquist has been a lobbyist for muslims with very close ties to Islamic terrorism. He recently married a Muslim woman. Given the nature of serious Islam, a Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man, so it is likely he converted. (There is no object to Muslim men marrying Christian women.)
Criticism of the President's immigration policy is also unacceptable. The President knows that unfettered immigration is one of the best ways to weaken unions, while helping business owners, who benefit from low-cost labor.
I am annnoyed this left-wing article appears on FreeRepublic
you dont know what you are talking about.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.