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“I’m on the right as a spectator at this point. But we on the right are not beholden to corporate interests. You have to understand that there is a difference between free market conservatives and Republicans. Free market conservatives are not in favor of corporate welfare and crony capitalism. They are just not.”
“With these reforms that I propose, I find that the establishment Republicans, the corporate Republicans are vehemently opposed. They don’t want to ban the corporations from giving any money of any kind. They want them to be able to play in the process.”
“Whereas free market conservatives, traditional conservatives, are 100 percent in favor of this. I’ve been on more than 100 talk radio shows since this started a few weeks ago. And there is not one example of somebody supporting the corporate types.”
“One of the most effective ways for us to control a Congressional office is to offer the chief of staff a job when they decide to leave Capitol Hill. And for the time they remained as the chief of staff, we were in control of that office. He or she wasn’t going to allow anything to happen that wouldn’t featherbed where they were going later.
They went out of their way. They over-performed in many cases. It is really an incredibly corrupt aspect of what goes on out there. There are a lot of reasons why the revolving door has to be slammed shut. But that alone is a good enough reason.”
“Ninety percent of the people I encountered up there had that in mind.”
And you told Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes that maybe you had control of 100 members’ offices through that kind of corrupt arrangement?
“Yes, that and other things.
Before he was indicted, when he was whipping boy number one in DC, he was called before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
He repeatedly took the Fifth Amendment as Senators he had attended fundraisers with and dished out cash to, lashed him in front of the television cameras.
“As I sat in the witness chair, the senators fired question after question at me. Actually, few were real questions. Most were just insults. ‘How could you, as a Jewish American, do these things?’ ‘Don’t you have any shame?’ ‘This is the worst abuse of Native Americans since Custer.’”
“The worst part for me was the hypocrisy of the whole thing. Most of these Senators had taken boatloads of cash and prizes from my team and our clients. I stared stonefaced at (Senator Ben Nighthorse) Campbell as he hurled invectives at me. I wondered how he’d react if I reminded him about the twenty-five thousand dollars in campaign checks I delivered to him during our breakfast meeting at the posh Capitol Hill eatery La Colline the morning of April 23, 2002. I’ll never forget that breakfast. After I handed him the envelope full of campaign contributions, he let me know that my clients would be treated well by his Indian Affairs Committee. That’s what I wanted to hear. We left arm in arm. . .Each member of that panel had the same skeletons in their closet I did or worse. But no one was grilling them.”
Jack Abramoff
from http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/...-whipping-boy/
“With these reforms that I propose, I find that the establishment Republicans, the corporate Republicans are vehemently opposed. They don’t want to ban the corporations from giving any money of any kind. They want them to be able to play in the process.”
“Whereas free market conservatives, traditional conservatives, are 100 percent in favor of this. I’ve been on more than 100 talk radio shows since this started a few weeks ago. And there is not one example of somebody supporting the corporate types.”
“One of the most effective ways for us to control a Congressional office is to offer the chief of staff a job when they decide to leave Capitol Hill. And for the time they remained as the chief of staff, we were in control of that office. He or she wasn’t going to allow anything to happen that wouldn’t featherbed where they were going later.
They went out of their way. They over-performed in many cases. It is really an incredibly corrupt aspect of what goes on out there. There are a lot of reasons why the revolving door has to be slammed shut. But that alone is a good enough reason.”
“Ninety percent of the people I encountered up there had that in mind.”
And you told Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes that maybe you had control of 100 members’ offices through that kind of corrupt arrangement?
“Yes, that and other things.
Before he was indicted, when he was whipping boy number one in DC, he was called before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
He repeatedly took the Fifth Amendment as Senators he had attended fundraisers with and dished out cash to, lashed him in front of the television cameras.
“As I sat in the witness chair, the senators fired question after question at me. Actually, few were real questions. Most were just insults. ‘How could you, as a Jewish American, do these things?’ ‘Don’t you have any shame?’ ‘This is the worst abuse of Native Americans since Custer.’”
“The worst part for me was the hypocrisy of the whole thing. Most of these Senators had taken boatloads of cash and prizes from my team and our clients. I stared stonefaced at (Senator Ben Nighthorse) Campbell as he hurled invectives at me. I wondered how he’d react if I reminded him about the twenty-five thousand dollars in campaign checks I delivered to him during our breakfast meeting at the posh Capitol Hill eatery La Colline the morning of April 23, 2002. I’ll never forget that breakfast. After I handed him the envelope full of campaign contributions, he let me know that my clients would be treated well by his Indian Affairs Committee. That’s what I wanted to hear. We left arm in arm. . .Each member of that panel had the same skeletons in their closet I did or worse. But no one was grilling them.”
Jack Abramoff
from http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/...-whipping-boy/