Did the Russians Help to Put Bush-Cheney and the GOP Into Power?

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There's no question that under Bush-Cheney and the GOP, America is in serious decline. We all know the symptoms, but just for a moment let's consider the possibility that this is no accident, and that the Party in power have been extraordinarily successful in accomplishing exactly what they set out to do when GOP strategist Grover Norquist, who is fond of paraphrasing Lenin, remarked that the Republicans sought not to cripple the U.S. government but to drain the bathtub.

That's a revolutionary, and a subversive, notion. And drained we are. Iraq certainly seems to be America's Afghanistan -- except, Russia's invasion of South Asia didn't cost anywhere near $2 trillion. America's reputation and credibility have suffered a similarly staggering decline in just a few years. The Treasury has been looted, the currency is falling, and the official economists are clearly lying to us.

Replay of the fall of the Soviet Union?

Under the present Republican White House and Congress, America has endured something frighteningly close to the malevolent One Party Dictatorship of the former Soviet Union. The suits worn by our Politburo, in most cases, look better. Our torturers have nicer airplanes. Now, we learn that state surveillance has been nearly universal --something that the KGB could only dream of. All this has led to some speculation around here, most of it pure snark, that the Saudis, the Chinese, the Israelis, take your pick, are behind this. The point is to push the U.S. into imperial overreach as quickly as possible, so that capital and resources tied up here can be released for more productive uses elsewhere. Creative destruction. Based on what happened to the Brits and the Soviets during the 20th Century, this theory seems to have some plausibility.

But, what if there's another, perhaps competing force, that have been subtly and skillfully manipulating American interests from abroad? What if this is good, old-fashioned nationalistic payback?

Either way, ask yourself: who benefits the most from America's decline under Bush-Cheney and the GOP? The first place to look is domestic, of course. There are others who might gain, and the obvious foreign Suspect Number One has to be oil-rich, now hard-currency-rich Russia, the old rival we thought we had buried 15 years ago during Bush 41.

Earlier, I came across these interesting articles about Abramoff's Russian deals, which illustrate how figures in the Russian oil industry tied to the former KGB and Ministry of Defense indeed fed the coffers of GOP funders that fueled the GOP revolution. Anyone who did business with Abramoff and Buckham knew, of course, that they were funneling cash to Tom DeLay and the Republican Party.

The first is by Josh Marshall at The Hill:
http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/JoshMarshall/033006.html

Back in his heyday, Tom DeLay’s political operation was being bankrolled — to a significant degree — by Russian “energy executives” with some murky mix of ex-KGB and Russian mafia ties. The money didn’t come in formal political contributions — it couldn’t have, since it was being paid by foreign nationals. It came funneled through a sham nonprofit that DeLay’s chief political handler set up to take money from now-convicted felon Jack Abramoff.

Buckham’s use of the U.S. Family Network looks like a major violation of U.S. tax law at a minimum. DeLay’s political operation was getting a lot of its funding from foreign interests looking for favors on Capitol Hill. (Most of the rest of the money for the U.S. Family Network came from the Marianas sweatshop owners and one of Abramoff’s Indian tribes — money that manages to seem almost clean in comparison.)

Both facts show that Jack Abramoff — whom DeLay now pretends hardly to know — was a major funder of DeLay’s political activities.

If this isn’t enough to drive DeLay out of Congress, really, what is?

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And this more detailed account from the WaPo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/30/AR2005123001480_pf.html
The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail
Nonprofit Group Linked to Lawmaker Was Funded Mostly by Clients of Lobbyist

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 31, 2005; A01



The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money's origins.

Two former associates of Edwin A. Buckham, the congressman's former chief of staff and the organizer of the U.S. Family Network, said Buckham told them the funds came from Russian oil and gas executives. Abramoff had been working closely with two such Russian energy executives on their Washington agenda, and the lobbyist and Buckham had helped organize a 1997 Moscow visit by DeLay (R-Tex.).The former president of the U.S. Family Network said Buckham told him that Russians contributed $1 million to the group in 1998 specifically to influence DeLay's vote on legislation the International Monetary Fund needed to finance a bailout of the collapsing Russian economy.

SNIP

Whatever the real motive for the contribution of $1 million -- a sum not prohibited by law but extraordinary for a small, nonprofit group -- the steady stream of corporate payments detailed on the donor list makes it clear that Abramoff's long-standing alliance with DeLay was sealed by a much more extensive web of financial ties than previously known. Records and interviews also illuminate the mixture of influence and illusion that surrounded the U.S. Family Network. Despite the group's avowed purpose, records show it did little to promote conservative ideas through grass-roots advocacy. The money it raised came from businesses with no demonstrated interest in the conservative "moral fitness" agenda that was the group's professed aim.

SNIP

The records, other documents and interviews call into question the very purpose of the U.S. Family Network, which functioned mostly by collecting funds from domestic and foreign businesses whose interests coincided with DeLay's activities while he was serving as House majority whip from 1995 to 2002, and as majority leader from 2002 until the end of September. After the group was formed in 1996, its director told the Internal Revenue Service that its goal was to advocate policies favorable for "economic growth and prosperity, social improvement, moral fitness, and the general well-being of the United States." DeLay, in a 1999 fundraising letter, called the group "a powerful nationwide organization dedicated to restoring our government to citizen control" by mobilizing grass-roots citizen support. But the records show that the tiny U.S. Family Network, which never had more than one full-time staff member, spent comparatively little money on public advocacy or education projects. Although established as a nonprofit organization, it paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to Buckham and his lobbying firm, Alexander Strategy Group.

SNIP

Some of the U.S. Family Network's revenue was used to pay for radio ads attacking vulnerable Democratic lawmakers in 1999 ; other funds were used to finance the cash purchase of a townhouse three blocks from DeLay's congressional office. DeLay's associates at the time called it "the Safe House." DeLay made his own fundraising telephone pitches from the townhouse's second-floor master suite every few weeks, according to two former associates. Other rooms in the townhouse were used by Alexander Strategy Group, Buckham's newly formed lobbying firm, and Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), DeLay's leadership committee. They paid modest rent to the U.S. Family Network, which occupied a single small room in the back.

'Red Flags' on Tax Returns

Nine months before the June 25, 1998, payment of $1 million by the London law firm James & Sarch Co., as recorded in the tax forms, Buckham and DeLay were the dinner guests in Moscow of Marina Nevskaya and Alexander Koulakovsky of the oil firm Naftasib, which in promotional literature counted as its principal clients the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior.

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SNIP

Whatever has been done to us surely isn't conservative. I will wager that the American people will come to realize when they look at who fueled the GOP revolution, that it is downright un-American.