Book Review excerpt:

When he was younger, George W. Bush wanted to go ice fishing. He'd seen many books on the subject, although he had only looked at the pictures and could not read any of the text, and finally one winter, getting all the necessary tools together, he made for the ice.

After positioning his comfy footstool, he started to make a circular cut in the ice. Suddenly, from the sky, a voice boomed, "THERE ARE NO FISH UNDER THE ICE!"

Startled, Bush moved further down the ice, poured a thermos cup of hot Jim Beam, and began to cut yet another hole. Again from the heavens the voice bellowed, "THERE ARE NO FISH UNDER THE ICE!"

George, now worried, moved away, clear down to the opposite end of the ice. He set up his stool once more and tried again to cut his hole.

The voice came once more, "THERE ARE NO FISH UNDER THE ICE!"

He stopped, looked skyward, and said, "IS THAT YOU LORD?"

The voice replied, "NO, THIS IS THE MANAGER OF THE HOCKEY RINK!"

From the forthcoming book: “Sent by God: George W. Bush - Great American and International Genius!” by Karl Rove.

Mounting evidence proves White House lied about relationship with corrupt lobbyist

January 19, 2006
by Doug Thompson
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue

White House claims that President George W. Bush doesn’t know corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff may soon rank up there with “I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky” as a blatant public lie destroyed by mounting evidence.

Abramoff, the GOP loyalist who White House spokesman Scott McClellan claims Bush doesn’t know, was a key player in Bush’s transition team after the disputed 2000 Presidential election.  Abramoff, working on Interior Department transition issues, attended a number of meetings with Bush during the transition.

“Bush tapped Abramoff as member of his Presidential Transition Team, advising the administration on policy and hiring at the Interior Department, which oversees Native American issues,” writes Richard Wolfe and Holly Baily in Newsweek. “That level of close access to Bush, DeLay and other GOP leaders has been cited by many of the Indian tribes who hired Abramoff with hopes of gaining greater influence with the administration and Congress on gaming issues.”

Although McClellan claims Bush did not meet with Abramoff, another White House spokesman, Erin Healy, said last year that "they may have met on occasion. After the Abramoff scandal broke, Healy amended her statement to add that the President “did not consider him a close friend” and claimed the White House had limited contact with the lobbyist. McClellan Tuesday claimed he could find only two contacts between the White House and Abramoff.

Yet public lobbying records filed by Abramoff’s firm show the lobbyist made 195 lobbying contacts with the administration on issues for the Marianas islands alone during Bush’s first 10 months in office. Abramoff lobbied to preserve the American territorial islands -- notorious for their "Made in the USA" sweatshops -- as exempt from federal minimum wage standards.

Two key players on Abramoff's lobbying team wound up with Bush administration jobs: Patrick Pizzella, named an assistant secretary of labor by Bush; and David Safavian, chosen by Bush to oversee federal procurement policy in the Office of Management and Budget.

In fact, Abramoff’s close ties with Bush go back to 1997 when the then Governor of Texas wrote a letter on the lobbyist’s behalf supporting his Marianas island client’s school choice proposal.

“I hope you will keep my office informed on the progress of this initiative,” Bush said in the July 18, 1997, letter, which included a CC to an Abramoff deputy.

Although they now try to distance themselves from the disgraced lobbyists, key Bush allies once openly embraced Abramoff as one of their own.

“What the Republicans need is 50 Jack Abramoffs," Grover Norquist, another Bush confidant, told The National Journal in 1995.

“I know Jack Abramoff,” admitted former National Republican Committee chairman Ed Gillespie, who adds that lobbyists like Abramoff “are Republicans; they were Republicans before they were lobbyists.”

In April 2002, The National Journal reported: "Last summer, in an effort to raise the visibility of his Indian clients, Abramoff helped arrange a White House get-together on tax issues with President Bush for top Indian leaders, including Lovelin Poncho, the chairman of the Coushattas." Poncho first denied the meeting took place, but later changed his story in an interview with the Texas Observer. He now confirms Abramoff attended the meeting with Bush and says Bush greeted the lobbyist warmly “like an old friend.”

Poncho says his tribe paid Abramoff $25,000 to arrange the May 2002 meeting with Bush.

Abramoff came up through GOP ranks with Norquist and conservative Christian leader Ralph Reed. All enjoyed unfettered access to Bush and worked closely with Bush’s Machiavellian political advisor Karl Rove.

In 2001, Abramoff recommended one of his key assistants, Susan Ralston, to Rove, who was looking for a new key advisor. She is still with Rove.

In 2003, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a Seattle radio host and activist, urged friends and colleagues to send campaign contributions to Bush via Abramoff, often praising the lobbyist on his show as “a good and personal friend of the President.”

“While White House aides now speak privately (and anonymously) about the need to clean up Congress in the wake of lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s guilty pleas in an influence-peddling scandal, there’s no sense of them taking the lead on what used to be a signature issue—before they came to Washington,” writes Wolfe and Bailey. “One reason may be their own reluctance to acknowledge their own ties to Abramoff, the one-time master of the lobbying universe.”

Nobody's laughing now

January 18, 2006
by David Westphal
McClatchy Newspapers

A year ago, the idea that Congress would consider sharp curbs on lobbying would have been laughed off Capitol Hill.

In fact, that's exactly what happened. The man doing the laughing was then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who at a news conference derided the authors of a bipartisan lobbying measure and accused them of working on behalf of "leftist groups."

Nobody's laughing now. The Republican leadership in the House suddenly is leading the charge to write new limitations on the estimated $2 billion-a-year lobbying business in Washington.

The Republican turnaround can be explained by the story of two men _ lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who earlier this month acknowledged a conspiracy to bribe public officials, and DeLay, who was forced to give up his House leadership position after he was indicted on separate money-laundering charges.

But beyond those two men lies a bigger story of the sea change that's occurred in the Washington lobbying world over the last decade.

Growing numbers of top congressional leaders, on both sides of the aisle, have left public life for the lucrative business of lobbying. In the last five years alone, the number of people registered to lobby the federal government has doubled, to more than 34,000. And increasingly, members of Congress have invited lobbyists to become part of their political teams, with some serving as campaign consultants and others heading up fund-raising operations.

According to the watchdog Center for Public Integrity, lobbyists served as treasurer on 79 lawmakers' campaign and leadership funds between 1998 and 2004.

One upshot is that, more than ever, political contributions have become seen as a price of admission for those seeking support for their causes in Congress.

Some members of Congress talk about this transaction in ways that once would have been unheard of. When Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., chairman of the House Resources Committee, told a Sacramento Bee reporter why Indian tribes had been major donors to his campaign, he said, "Obviously, they want to have some access."

Inside the Beltway, some refer to this as "pay to play," and critics say it's gotten out of hand.

"The system of 'pay to play' has become much more blatant and brazen," said Fred Wertheimer, who heads an advocacy group called Democracy 21 that mirrors Wertheimer's decades-long crusade against money abuses in politics.

"What we've been seeing is almost a formalization of the linkage between lobbyists' money and ... political agenda," he said.

Wertheimer is quick to say he doesn't believe lobbyists' cash is making its way into politicians' pockets. The example of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California, who has admitted a conspiracy to accept bribe money from a defense contractor, "will continue to be extremely rare," he said. Yet Wertheimer contends that the effect of today's lobbying-and-money climate is just as corrupting.

Some say the cause for the recent ascension of lobbyists' clout was the Republican takeover of the House in 1994 and DeLay's so-called "K-Street Project," in which he vowed hard-line tactics to increase Republicans' presence in the city's biggest lobbying firms.

Others say an equally large factor has been the rapid rise in federal spending, which has seen the budget grow more than 50 percent in the last eight years.

Whatever the reasons, there's little doubt that the accounts of Abramoff's extravagant lobbying antics are fostering a new look by the public at lobbying's role in federal legislation.

According to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll, two-thirds of Americans would prohibit lobbyists from contributing any campaign money to members of Congress or their political challengers. Almost as many, 58 percent, said the Abramoff investigation suggests "widespread corruption in Washington."

Concerned that the Abramoff case could reflect badly on Republicans in this election year, House Speaker Dennis Hastert last week announced he would support new restrictions on lobbying, and dispatched Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., to draft legislation.

The measure almost certainly will be less drastic than the ban on contributions favored by the public. Early indications are that Dreier will look to greater disclosure requirements _ on the donations lobbyists give lawmakers and the fund raisers they sponsor for candidates, for example.

However, Hastert said he's also looking at a provision with real teeth: a sweeping ban on all non-governmental travel by members.

It's not clear yet where the Republican leadership's newfound interest in lobbying limits will go.

John Samples, who studies money and politics from the libertarian Cato Institute, says that depends on the public's reaction, and he doubts that Americans will really engage on the issue.

"The public may not expect much from politicians in the first place," he said, noting a recent Pew Poll that found 80 percent of Americans believe it's commonplace for lobbyists to bribe members of Congress.

In any case, Samples says regulation is a risky course because new limitations often have unintended consequences.

"Do you really want to limit the ability of interests to advocate their positions in Washington?" he said.

The better option, he said, is to leave the job to American voters, who can simply discard unscrupulous members on Election Day. Samples acknowledged, though, that this part of the political balance has broken down in recent years with the rapid growth of all-but-safe congressional seats for House members.

"Ordinarily you'd think you might pay a political price if you take a lavish golfing trip to Scotland paid for by a lobbyist," he said, referring to a now-famous 2000 trip taken by DeLay and paid for in part by Abramoff. "But when incumbents today presume overwhelming re-election you don't have that worry as much."

Despite new momentum for lobbying limits, some doubt that any new laws will have much affect on the Washington money machine.

"The problems go deeper," said Thomas Mann, a longtime expert on money and politics at the Brookings Institution. "Congress itself needs to recover its comparative advantages as a genuinely deliberative and independent branch of government."