DeLay politics may carry heavy price

[UpInArms]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-10-17-delay-politics_x.htm

Over lunch at the Sunset Grove Country Club in Orange, Texas, businessman Pete Cloeren lamented to Rep. Tom DeLay that he couldn't do more to help his friend Brian Babin get elected to Congress. Cloeren had personally given all he was allowed, and the law wouldn't let him donate money from his plastics company.

DeLay had a solution, Cloeren said. "There are ways we get money moved around the system," Cloeren recalls him saying. "He told us at the lunch table that this was done all the time."

The day after the lunch in 1996, Cloeren says, a DeLay aide called with instructions to donate to several out-of-state political committees and candidates. After Cloeren did so, those committees directed like amounts to Babin's campaign.

Cloeren later pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations, but the man he says advised him escaped any consequences. The Federal Election Commission dismissed Cloeren's complaint against DeLay for lack of evidence, and DeLay denied wrongdoing.

But the scenario Cloeren describes bears a striking similarity to transactions that have led to DeLay's indictment by two Texas grand juries in the past three weeks and his removal, at least temporarily, as House majority leader. One of the most effective House Republican leaders is sidelined as the chamber approaches crucial and difficult votes on spending cuts. DeLay is scheduled to make his first court appearance Friday in Austin.

...more...

[Mabus]

1. DeLay and Abramoff connection

"For the convention in Philadelphia in 2000, DeLay took his concierge role to a new level, setting up a fenced-off camp of vintage rail cars loaned by Union Pacific and collecting money from corporate sponsors to lavish food and drinks on House Republicans — and the lobbyists who were picking up the tab. Corporate sponsors included Enron, UPS and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

The Indian tribe's donation is evidence of yet another link in DeLay's network, and one that looms as a major problem: Lobbyists Abramoff and Scanlon are under federal investigation for their activities on behalf of tribes with gambling operations, including the Mississippi Choctaws, for which they billed the tribes $82 million.

DeLay took at least three trips with Abramoff — to play golf in Scotland, to Russia and to the Northern Mariana Islands. There is evidence that lobbyists or foreign interests picked up some or all of the travel costs, which would be a violation of House ethics rules."

Please, please, please let all this come out too.

[MoJoWorkin]

2. A good overall view of DeLay tactics--from USA Today, no less.

[rodeodance]

3. te he-this is a laugh.

....Cloeren later pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations, but the man he says advised him escaped any consequences. The Federal Election Commission dismissed Cloeren's complaint against DeLay for lack of evidence, and DeLay denied wrongdoing.

[cally]

4. If Delay is indicted and convicted on this

then the most of the Repub money machine goes down.

:party:

[ernstbass]

5. My heart soars at the very thought of that!!!