DELAY'S MACHINE
If You Don’t Know About
the K Street Project,
You Don’t Know Jack

From Think Progress courtesy of BuzzFlash:

In 1994, the right wing gained control over the House of Representatives on the strength of a series of reforms embodied in the so-called “Contract with America.” The contract ostensibly “aimed to restore the faith and trust of the American people in their government” and end the “cycle of scandal and disgrace” in government. A year later, then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX) was already plotting to breach that contract by undertaking a project to develop cozier relations with Washington, D.C. lobbyists.

High-minded policy goals would take a backseat in DeLay’s pay-to-play system where the success of lobbyists would be dictated not by how compelling a case they could make, but rather by how willing they would be to line the pockets of DeLay and his colleagues. Conceptualized as a tool for the right-wing preservation of power, the “K Street Strategy,” as it became known, created the culture in which Jack Abramoff’s criminal activity was encouraged and rewarded.

Click here for the rest.

This brief essay is must reading if you want the context for all these DeLay and Abramoff scandals. I first read about the K Street Project back in 2003 and was pretty amazed by what was going on. My first thought was that the whole scheme was more complicated than I was willing to write about, so I just let it lie for a few years, but now that crooked lobbying has taken center stage in the mainstream media, it's probably time for me to comment on it. The reality is that the essence of the scam isn't so complicated: Tom DeLay managed to turn lobbyists into fundraisers by way of extortion. That is, under his leadership, Republicans in Congress refused to even talk to lobbyists who didn't fork over tons of cash to their campaign coffers and provide lucrative jobs for Congressional cronies--insisting that lobbying firms hire only Republicans served to shore up the system over the long term. In return, GOP Congressmen passed the laws the lobbyists wanted, making the whole thing, ultimately, a mutually beneficial bribery machine.

Anyway, it's all explained much better, with lots of links to evidence, by the essay excerpted above. Go check it out.

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