[Dialogue] Moyers on the threat to American democracy

[KroegerD@aol.com]

Published on Friday, February  24, 2006 by CommonDreams.org 
Saving Democracy 
by Bill Moyers 
I will leave to Jon Stewart the rich threads of humor to pluck from the  
hunting incident in Texas. All of us are relieved that the Vice  President’s 
friend has survived. I can accept Dick Cheney’s word that the  accident was one of 
the worst moments of his life. What intrigues me as a  journalist now is the 
rare glimpse we have serendipitously been offered  into the tightly knit world 
of the elites who govern today.  
The Vice President was hunting on a 50-thousand acre ranch owned by a  
lobbyist friend who is the heiress to a family fortune of land, cattle,  banking and 
oil (ah, yes, the quickest and surest way to the American  dream remains to 
choose your parents well.)  
The circumstances of the hunt and the identity of the hunters provoked  a 
lament from The Economist. The most influential pro-business  magazine in the 
world is concerned that hunting in America is becoming a  matter of class: the 
rich are doing more, the working stiffs, less. The  annual loss of 1.5 millions 
of acres of wildlife habitat and 1 million  acres of farm and ranchland to 
development and sprawl has come “at the  expense of ‘The Deer Hunter’ crowd in 
the small towns of the north-east,  the rednecks of the south and the cowboys 
of the west.” Their places, says  The Economist, are being taken by the 
affluent who pay plenty for  such conveniences as being driven to where the covey 
cooperatively awaits.  The magazine (hardly a Marxist rag, remember) describes 
Mr. Cheney’s own  expedition as “a lot closer to ‘Gosford Park’ than ‘The Deer 
Hunter’ – a  group of fat old toffs waiting for wildlife to be flushed 
towards them at  huge expense.”  
At the heart of this story is a metaphor of power. The Vice President  turned 
his host, the lobbyist who is also the ranch owner, into his de  facto news 
manager. She would disclose the shooting only when Cheney was  ready and only 
on his terms. Sure enough, nothing was made public for  almost 20 hours until 
she finally leaked the authorized version to the  local newspaper. Ms. 
Armstrong suggested the blame lay with the victim,  who, she indicated, had failed to 
inform the Vice President of his  whereabouts and walked into a hail of 
friendly fire. Three days later  Cheney revised the story and apologized. Don’t you 
wonder what went back  and forth with the White House that long night of 
trying to agree on the  official line?  
We do know someone from the hunting party was in touch with Karl Rove  at the 
White House. For certain Rove’s the kind of fellow you want on the  other end 
of the line when great concoctions are being hatched, especially  if you wish 
the victim to hang for the crime committed against him.  
Watching these people work is a study of the inner circle at the top of  
American politics. The journalist Sidney Blumenthal, writing on Salon.com,  
reminds us of the relationship between the Armstrong dynasty and the Bush  family 
and its retainers. Armstrong’s father invested in Rove’s political  consulting 
firm that managed George W. Bush’s election as governor of  Texas and as 
president. Her mother, Anne Armstrong, is a longtime  Republican activist and 
donor. Ronald Reagan appointed her to the Foreign  Intelligence Advisory Board 
after her tenure as Ambassador to the United  Kingdom under President Ford, whose 
chief of staff was a young Dick  Cheney. Anne Armstrong served on the board of 
directors of Halliburton  that hired Cheney to run the company. Her daughter, 
Katherine Armstrong,  host of the hunting party, was once a lobbyist for the 
powerful Houston  law firm founded by the family of James A. Baker III, who 
was chief of  staff to Reagan, Secretary of State under the first George Bush, 
and the  man designated by the Bush family to make sure the younger Bush was 
named  President in 2000 despite having lost the popular vote. According to  
Blumenthal, one of her more recent lobbying jobs was with a large  construction 
firm with contracts in Iraq.  
It is a Dick Cheney world out there – a world where politicians and  
lobbyists hunt together, dine together, drink together, play together,  pray together 
and prey together, all the while carving up the world  according to their own 
interests.  
II  
Two years ago, in a report entitled Democracy in an Age of Rising  
Inequality, the American Political Science Association concluded that  progress toward 
realizing American ideals of democracy “may have stalled,  and even, in some 
areas, reversed.” Privileged Americans “roar with a  clarity and consistency 
that public officials readily hear and routinely  follow” while citizens “with 
lower or moderate incomes are speaking with a  whisper.”  
The following year, on the eve of President George W. Bush’s second  
inauguration, the editors of The Economist, reporting on inequality  in America, 
concluded that the United States “risks calcifying into a  European-style, 
class-based society.”  
As great wealth has accumulated at the top, the rest of society has not  been 
benefiting proportionally. In 1960 the gap between the top 20% and  the 
bottom 20% was thirtyfold. Now it is seventy-five fold. Thirty years  ago the 
average annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives in the  country was 30 
times the pay of the average worker. Today it is 1000 times  the pay of the 
average worker. A recent article in The Financial Times  reports on a study by 
the American economist Robert J. Gordon, who  finds “little long-term change in 
workers’ share of U.S. income over the  past half century.” Middle-ranking 
Americans are being squeezed, he says,  because the top ten percent of earners 
have captured almost half the total  income gains in the past four decades and 
the top one percent have gained  the most of all – “more in fact, than all 
the bottom 50 percent.”  
No wonder working men and women and their families are strained to cope  with 
the rising cost of health care, pharmaceutical drugs, housing, higher  
education, and public transportation – all of which have risen faster in  price than 
typical family incomes. The recent book, Economic Apartheid  in America: A 
Primer on Economic Inequality and Insecurity, describes  how “thirty zipcodes in 
America have become fabulously wealthy” while  “whole urban and rural 
communities are languishing in unemployment,  crumbling infrastructure, growing 
insecurity, and fear.”  
This is a profound transformation in a country whose DNA contains the  
inherent promise of an equal opportunity at “Life, Liberty, and the  pursuit of 
Happiness” and whose collective memory resonates with the  hallowed idea – 
hallowed by blood – of “government of the people, by the  people, and for the 
people.” The great progressive struggles in our  history have been waged to make 
sure ordinary citizens, and not just the  rich, share in the benefits of a free 
society. Yet today the public may  support such broad social goals as 
affordable medical coverage for all,  decent wages for working people, safe working 
conditions, a secure  retirement, and clean air and water, but there is no 
government “of, by,  and for the people” to deliver on those aspirations. Instead, 
our  elections are bought out from under us and our public officials do the  
bidding of mercenaries. Money is choking democracy to death. So powerfully  
has wealth shaped our political agenda that we cannot say America is  working 
for all of America.  
In the words of Louis Brandeis, one of the greatest of our Supreme  Court 
justices: “You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few,  or democracy, 
but you cannot have both.”  
III  
Some simple facts:  
The cost of running for public office is skyrocketing. In 1996, $1.6  billion 
was spent on the Congressional and Presidential elections. Eight  years 
later, that total had more than doubled, to $3.9 billion.  
Thanks to our system of privately financed campaigns, millions of  regular 
Americans are being priced out of any meaningful participation in  democracy. 
Less than one half of one percent of all Americans made a  political 
contribution of $200 or more to a federal candidate in 2004.  When the average cost of 
running and winning a seat in the House of  Representatives has topped one 
million dollars, we can no longer refer to  that August chamber as “The People’s 
House.” If you were thinking of  running for Congress, do you have any idea 
where you would get the money  to be a viable candidate?  
At the same time that the cost of getting elected is exploding beyond  the 
reach of ordinary people, the business of gaining access to and  influence with 
our elected Representatives has become a growth industry.  Six years ago, in 
his first campaign for President, George W. Bush  promised he would “restore 
honor and integrity” to the government.  Repeatedly, during his first campaign 
for President, he would raise his  right hand and, as if taking an oath, tell 
voters that he would change how  things were done in the nation’s capitol. “It’
s time to clean up the toxic  environment in Washington, DC,” he would say. 
His administration would  ask”not only what is legal but what is right, not 
what the lawyers allow  but what the public deserves.”  
Hardly.  
Since Bush was elected the number of lobbyists registered to do  business in 
Washington has more than doubled. That’s 16,342 lobbyists in  2000 to 34,785 
last year. Sixty-five lobbyists for every member of  Congress.  
The amount that lobbyists charge their new clients has increased by  nearly 
one hundred percent in that same period, according to The  Washington Post, 
going up to anything from $20,000 to $40,000 a month.  Starting salaries have 
risen to nearly $300,000 a year for the  best-connected people, those leaving 
Congress or the administration.  
The total spent per month by special interests wining, dining, and  seducing 
federal officials is now nearly $200 million. Per month.  
But numbers don’t tell the whole story. There has been a qualitative  change 
as well. With pro-corporate business officials running both the  executive and 
legislative branches, lobbying that was once reactive has  gone on the 
offense, seeking huge windfalls from public policy and public  monies.  
One example cited by The Washington Post: Hewlett-Packard, the  California 
computer maker. The company nearly doubled its budget for  contract lobbyists in 
2004 and took on an elite lobbying firm as its  Washington arm. Its goal was 
to pass Republican-backed legislation that  would enable the company to bring 
back to the United States, at a  dramatically lowered tax rate, as much as 
$14.5 billion in profit from  foreign subsidiaries. The extra lobbying paid off. 
The legislation passed  and Hewlett Packard can now reduce its share of the 
social contract. The  company’s director of government affairs was quite candid: 
“We’re trying  to take advantage of the fact that Republicans control the 
House, the  Senate, and the White House.” Whatever the company paid for the 
lobbying,  the investment returned enormous dividends.  
I want to point out here that I believe in equal opportunity  muckraking. 
When I left Washington for journalism I did not leave behind  my conviction that 
government should see to it that we have a more level  playing field with one 
set of rules for everyone, but I did leave behind  my partisan affections. 
Anyone who saw the documentary my team and I  produced a few years ago on the 
illegal fund raising for Bill Clinton’s  re-election, knows I am no fan of the 
democratic money machine that helped  tear the party away from whatever roots it 
once had in the daily lives and  struggles of working people, turning it into 
a junior partner of the  Chamber of Commerce. I mean people like California’s 
Congressman Tony  Coelho, who in the 1980s realized that Congressional 
Democrats could milk  the business community for money if they promised to “pay for 
play.” I  mean people like Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National 
Committee  Chairman who gave Bill Clinton the idea of renting the Lincoln bedroom 
out  to donors, and who did such a good job raising big money for the 
Democrats  that by the end of his reign, Democrats had fewer small donors than the  
Republicans and more fat cats writing them million-dollar checks.  
But let’s be realistic here. When the notorious Willie Sutton was asked  why 
he robbed banks, he answered, “Because there is where the money is.”  If I 
seem to be singling out the Republicans, it’s for one reason: that’s  where the 
power is. They own the government lock, stock, and barrel. Once  they gained 
control of the House of Representatives in 1994, their  self-proclaimed 
revolution has gone into overdrive with their taking of  the White House in 2000 and 
the Senate in 2002. Their revolution soon  became a cash cow and Washington a 
one party state ruled by money.  
Look back at the bulk of legislation passed by Congress in the past  decade: 
an energy bill which gave oil companies huge tax breaks at the  same time that 
Exxon Mobil just posted $36 in profits in 2005 and our  gasoline and home 
heating bills are at an all-time high; a bankruptcy  “reform” bill written by 
credit card companies to make it harder for poor  debtors to escape the burdens 
of divorce or medical catastrophe; the  deregulation of the banking, 
securities and insurance sectors which led to  rampant corporate malfeasance and greed 
and the destruction of the  retirement plans of millions of small investors; 
the deregulation of the  telecommunications sector which led to cable industry 
price gouging and an  undermining of news coverage; protection for rampant 
overpricing of  pharmaceutical drugs; and the blocking of even the mildest 
attempt to  prevent American corporations from dodging an estimated $50 billion in  
annual taxes by opening a PO Box in an off-shore tax haven like Bermuda or  
the Cayman islands.  
In every case the pursuit of this legislation was driven by big money.  Our 
public representatives, the holders of our trust, need huge sums to  finance 
their campaigns, especially to pay for television advertising, and  men and 
women who have mastered the money game have taken advantage of  that weakness in 
our democracy to systematically sell it off to the  highest bidders.  
Let’s start with the “K Street Project.” K Street is the Wall Street of  
lobbying, the address of many of Washington’s biggest lobbying firms. The  K 
Street Project was the brainchild of Tom DeLay and Grover Norquist, the  right 
wing strategist who famously said that his goal is to shrink  government so that 
it can be “drowned in a bathtub.” This, of course,  would render it impotent 
to defend ordinary people against the large  economic forces – the so-called 
free market – that Norquist and his pals  believe should be running America.  
Tom DeLay, meanwhile, was a small businessman from Sugar Land, Texas,  who 
ran a pest extermination business before he entered politics. He hated  the 
government regulators who dared to tell him that some of the  pesticides he used 
were dangerous – as, in fact, they were. He got himself  elected to the Texas 
legislature at a time the Republicans were becoming  the majority in the 
once-solid Democratic south, and his reputation for  joining in the wild parties 
around the state capital in Austin earned him  the nickname “Hot Tub Tom.” But 
early in his political career, and with  exquisite timing and the help of some 
videos from the right wing political  evangelist, James Dobson, Tom DeLay 
found Jesus and became a full-fledged  born again Christian. He would later humbly 
acknowledge that God had  chosen him to restore America to its biblical 
worldview. “God,” said Tom  DeLay, “has been walking me through an incredible 
journey…God is using me,  all the time, everywhere…God is training me. God is 
working with me….”  
Yes, indeed: God does work in mysterious ways.  
In addition to finding Jesus, Tom DeLay also discovered a secular ally  to 
serve his ambitions. He found out the power of money to power his  career. “
Money is not the root of all evil in politics,” DeLay once said.  “In fact, money 
is the lifeblood of politics.” By raising more than two  million dollars from 
lobbyists and business groups and distributing the  money to dozens of 
Republican candidates in 1994, the year of the  Republican breakthrough in the 
House, DeLay bought the loyalty of many  freshmen legislators and got himself 
elected Majority Whip, the number  three man in Newt Gingrich’s “Gang of Seven” 
who ran the House.  
Here’s how they ran it: On the day before the Republicans formally took  
control of Congress on January 3, 1995, DeLay met in his office with a  coterie of 
lobbyists from some of the biggest companies in America. The  journalists 
Michael Weisskopf and David Maraniss report that “the session  inaugurated an 
unambiguous collaboration of political and commercial  interests, certainly not 
uncommon in Washington but remarkable this time  for the ease and eagerness 
with which these allies combined.”  
DeLay virtually invited them to write the Republican agenda. What they  
wanted first was “Project Relief” -- a wide-ranging moratorium on  regulations 
that had originally been put into place for the health and  safety of the public. 
For starters, they wanted “relief” from labor  standards that protected 
workers from the physical injuries of repetitive  work. They wanted “relief’ from 
tougher rules on meat inspection. And they  wanted “relief” from effective 
monitoring of hazardous air pollutants.  Scores of companies were soon gorging 
on Tom DeLay’s generosity, adding  one juicy and expensive tid-bit after 
another to the bill. According to  Weisskopf and Maraniss, on the eve of the debate 
20 major corporate groups  advised lawmakers that “this was a key vote, one 
that would be considered  in future campaign contributions.” On the day of the 
vote lobbyists on  Capitol Hill were still writing amendments on their laptops 
and forwarding  them to House leaders.  
The Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, famously told the lobbyists:  “If 
you are going to play in our revolution, you have to live by our  rules.” Tom 
DeLay became his enforcer.  
The rules were simple and blunt. Contribute to Republicans only. Hire  
Republicans only. When the electronics industry ignored the warning and  chose a 
Democratic Member of Congress to run its trade association, DeLay  played so 
rough – pulling from the calendar a bill that the industry had  worked on two 
years, aimed at bringing most of the world in alignment with  U.S. copyright law – 
that even the House Ethics Committee, the watchdog  that seldom barks and 
rarely bites, stirred itself to rebuke him –  privately, of course.  
DeLay wasn’t fazed. Not only did he continue to make sure the lobbying  jobs 
went to Republicans, he also saw to it that his own people got a  lion’s share 
of the best jobs. At least 29 of his former employees landed  major lobbying 
positions – the most of any Congressional office. The  journalist John Judis 
found that together ex-DeLay people represent around  350 firms, including 
thirteen of the biggest trade associations, most of  the energy companies, the 
giants in finance and technology, the airlines,  auto makers, tobacco companies, 
and the largest health care and  pharmaceutical companies. When tobacco 
companies wanted to block the FDA  from regulating cigarettes, they hired DeLay’s 
man. When the  pharmaceutical companies – Big Pharma – wanted to make sure 
companies  wouldn’t be forced to negotiate cheaper prices for drugs, they hired 
six  of Tom DeLay’s team, including his former chief of staff. The machine  
became a blitzkrieg, oiled by campaign contributions that poured in like a  
gusher.  
Watching as DeLay, with the approval of the House leadership, become  the 
virtual dictator of Capitol Hill, , I was reminded of the card shark  in Texas 
who said to his prey, “Now play the cards fair, Reuben, I know  what I dealt you.
” Tom DeLay and his cronies were stacking the deck.  
They centralized in their own hands the power to write legislation.  Drastic 
revisions to major bills were often written at night, with  lobbyists hovering 
over them, then rushed through as “emergency’  measures,” giving members as 
little as half an hour to consider what they  may be voting on.  
The Democratic minority was locked out of conference committees where  the 
House and Senate are supposed to iron out their differences with both  parties 
in the loop. The Republican bosses even took upon themselves the  power to 
rewrite a bill in secrecy and move it directly to a vote without  any other 
hearings or public review.  
Sometimes this meant overruling what the majority of House members  really 
wanted. Consider what happened with the bill to provide Medicare  prescription 
drug coverage, as analyzed by Robert Kuttner in The  American Prospect. As the 
measure was coming to a vote, a majority of  the full House was sympathetic to 
allowing cheaper imports from Canada and  to giving the government the power 
to negotiate wholesale drug prices for  Medicare beneficiaries. But DeLay and 
his cronies were working in behalf  of the big pharmaceutical companies and 
would have none of it. So they  made sure there would be no amendments on the 
floor. They held off the  final roll call a full three hours – well after 
midnight – in order to  strong-arm members who wanted to vote against the bill.  
It was not a pretty sight out there on the floor of the House. At one  point 
DeLay marched over to one reluctant Republican – Representative Nick  Smith – 
who opposed the Medicare bill – and attempted to change his mind.  Smith, who 
was serving his final term in office, later alleged that he was  offered a 
bribe – $100,000 for his son’s campaign to succeed him. When he  subsequently 
retracted his accusation, the House Ethics Committee looked  into the charges 
and countercharges and wound up admonishing both Smith  and DeLay, who admitted 
that he had offered to endorse Smith’s son in  exchange for Smith’s support 
but that no money or bribe were involved.  Timothy Noah of slate.com has mused 
about what DeLay’s endorsement would  nonetheless have meant in later 
campaign contributions if Smith had gone  along. While the report of the ethics 
committee never did find out the  true story, Noah asks: “Who did whisper ‘$100,000
’ in Smith’s ear? The  report is full of plausible suspects, including DeLay 
himself, but it  lacks any evidence on this crucial finding. You get the 
feeling the  authors would prefer to forget this mystery ever existed.”  
There are no victimless crimes in politics. The price of corruption is  
passed on to you. What came of all these shenanigans was a bill that gave  industry 
what it wanted and gave taxpayers the shaft. The bill covers only  a small 
share of drug expenses. It has a major gap in coverage – the  so-called ‘donut 
hole.’ It explicitly forbids beneficiaries from  purchasing private coverage 
to fill in the gap and explicitly forbids the  federal government from 
bargaining for lower drug prices. More than one  consumer organization has estimated 
that most seniors could end up paying  even more for prescription drugs than 
before the bill passed.  
Furthermore, despite these large flaws the cost of the bill is  horrendous – 
between five hundred billion and one trillion dollars in its  first ten years. 
The chief actuary for Medicare calculated a realistic  estimate of what the 
bill would cost, but he later testified before  Congress that he was forbidden 
from releasing the information by his boss,  Thomas Scully, the head of the 
Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services,  who was then negotiating for a 
lucrative job with the health care  industry. Sure enough, hardly had the 
prescription drug bill become law  than Scully went to work for the largest private 
equity investor in health  care and at a powerful law firm focusing on health 
care and regulatory  matters.  
One is reminded of Senator Boies Penrose. Back in the first Gilded Age  
Penrose was a United States senator from Pennsylvania who had been put and  kept in 
office by the railroad tycoons and oil barons. He assured the  moguls: “I 
believe in the division of labor. You send us to Congress; we  pass laws under 
which you make money…and out of your profits you further  contribute to our 
campaign funds to send us back again to pass more laws  to enable you to make more 
money.”  
Gilded Ages – then and now – have one thing in common: Audacious and  
shameless people for whom the very idea of the public trust is a cynical  joke.  
Tom DeLay was elected to Congress by the ordinary people of Sugar Land,  
Texas. They had the right to expect him to represent them. This  expectation is 
the very soul of democracy. We can’t all govern – not even  tiny, homogenous 
Switzerland practices pure democracy. So we Americans  came to believe our best 
chance of responsible government lies in  obtaining the considered judgments 
of those we elect to represent us.  Having cast our ballots in the sanctity of 
the voting booth with its  assurance of political equality, we go about our 
daily lives expecting the  people we put in office to weigh the competing 
interests and decide to the  best of their ability what is right.  
Instead, they have given the American people reason to believe the  
conservative journalist P.J. O’Rourke was right when he described Congress  as “a 
parliament of whores.”  
A recent CBS news/New York Times poll found that 70% of  Americans believe 
lobbyists bribing members of Congress is the way things  work. Fifty seven 
percent thinks at least half of the members of Congress  accept bribes or gifts 
that affect their votes. A Fox News poll reported  that sixty five percent 
believe most elected officials in Washington make  policy decisions or take actions 
on the basis of campaign contributions.  Findings like these underscore the 
fact that ordinary people believe their  bonds with democracy are not only 
stretched but sundered.  
You see the breach clearly with Tom DeLay. As he became the king of  campaign 
fundraising, the Associated Press writes, “He began to  live a lifestyle his 
constituents back in Sugar Land would have a hard  time ever imagining.” Big 
corporation such as R.J. Reynolds, Phillip  Morris, Reliant, El Paso and Dynegy 
provided private jets to take him to  places of luxury most Americans have 
never seen – places with “dazzling  views, warm golden sunsets, golf, 
goose-down comforters, marble bathrooms  and balconies overlooking the ocean.” The AP 
reports that various  organizations – campaign committees, political action 
committees, even a  children’s charity established by DeLay – paid over $1 
million on hotels,  restaurants, golf resorts and corporate jets in DeLay’s behalf: 
at least  48 visits to golf clubs and resorts (the Ritz Carlton in Jamaica, 
the  Prince Hotel in Hawaii, the Michelangelo in new York, the Phoenician in  
Scottsdale, the El Conquistador in Puerto Rico, where villas average  $1,300 a 
night); 100 flights aboard corporate jets arranged by lobbyists;  and 500 
meals at fancy restaurants, some averaging $200 for a dinner for  two. There was 
even a $2,896 shopping spree at a boutique on Florida’s  Amelia Island offering 
“gourmet cookware, sabbatier cutlery and gadgets  for your every need.”  
DeLay was a man on the move and on the take. But he needed help to  sustain 
the cash flow. He found it in a fellow right wing ideologue named  Jack 
Abramoff. Abramoff personifies the Republican money machine of which  DeLay with the 
blessing of the House leadership was the major domo. It was  Abramoff who 
helped DeLay raise those millions of dollars from campaign  donors that bought the 
support of other politicians and became the base  for an empire of 
corruption. DeLay praised Abramoff as “one of my closest  friends.” Abramoff, in turn, 
told a convention of college Republicans,  “Thank God Tom DeLay is majority 
leader of the house. Tom DeLay is who all  of us want to be when we grow up.”  
Just last month Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion, and  
conspiracy to bribe public officials, a spectacular fall for a man whose  rise to 
power began 25 years ago with his election as Chairman of the  College 
Republicans. Despite its innocuous name, the organization became a  political attack 
machine for the Far Right and a launching pad for younger  conservatives on 
the make. “Our job,” Abramoff, then 22 years old, wrote  after his first visit 
to the Reagan White House, “is to remove liberals  from power permanently 
[from] student newspaper and radio stations,  student governments, and academia.” 
Karl Rove had once held the same job  as chairman. So did Grover Norquist, who 
ran Abramoff’s campaign. A  youthful $200-a-month intern named Ralph Reed was 
at their side. These  were the rising young stars of the conservative 
movement who came to town  to lead a revolution and stayed to run a racket.  
They reeked piety. Like DeLay, who had proclaimed himself God’s  messenger, 
Ralph Reed found Jesus, was born again, and wound up running  Pat Robertson’s 
Christian Coalition, landing on the cover of Time as “the  Right Hand of God.” 
Reportedly after seeing “Fiddler on the Roof” Abramoff  became an Orthodox 
religious Jew who finagled fake awards as “Scholar of  Biblical and American 
History,” “Distinguished Bible Scholar” (from an  apparently non-existent 
organization), the “Biblical Mercantile Award”  allegedly from the Cascadian 
Business Institute through which money was  funded for DeLay’s famous visit to a 
plush Scottish golf club, and the  national order of merit from the USA 
Foundation, whose chairman was…Jack  Abramoff.  
It is impossible to treat all the schemes and scams this crowd  concocted to 
subvert democracy in the name of God and greed. But thanks to  some superb 
reporting from, The Associated Press, and  Knight-Ridder, among others, we can 
touch on a few.  
Abramoff made his name, so to speak, representing Indian tribes with  
gambling interests. As his partner he hired a DeLay crony named Michael  Scanlon. 
Together they would bilk half a dozen Indian tribes who hired  them to protect 
their tribal gambling interests from competition. What  they had to offer, of 
course, was their well-known connections to the  Republican power structure, 
including members of Congress, friends at the  White House (Abramoff’s personal 
assistant became Karl Rove’s personal  assistant), Christian Right activists 
like Ralph Reed, and right wing  ideologues like Grover Norquist (according to 
The Texas Observer,  two lobbying clients of Abramoff paid $25,000 to Norquist’
s organization –  Americans for Tax Reform – for a lunch date and meeting 
with President  Bush in May 2001.)  
Abramoff and Scanlon came up with one scheme they called “Gimme Five,”  
Abramoff would refer tribes to Scanlon for grassroots public relations  work, and 
Scanlon would then kick back about 50 percent to Abramoff, all  without the 
tribes’ knowledge. Before it was over the tribes had paid them  $82 million 
dollars, much of it going directly into Abramoff’s and  Scanlon’s pockets. And 
that doesn’t count the thousands more that Abramoff  directed the tribes to pay 
out in campaign contributions.  
Some of the money found its way into an outfit called the Council of  
Republicans for Environment Advocacy (CREA), founded by Gale Norton before  she 
became Interior Secretary, the cabinet position most responsible for  Indian gaming 
rights (as well as oil and gas issues, public lands and  parks, and something 
else we’ll get to in a moment) .  
Some of the money went to so-called charities set up by Abramoff and  DeLay 
that filtered money for lavish trips for members of Congress and  their staff, 
as well as salaries for Congressional family members and  DeLay’s pet 
projects.  
And some of the money found its way to the righteous folks of the  Christian 
Right. One who had his hand out was Ralph Reed, the religious  right’s poster 
boy against gambling. “We believe gambling is a cancer on  the American body 
politic,” Reed had said. “It is stealing food from the  mouths of children… 
(and) turning wives into widows.” When he resigned  from the Christian Coalition 
(just as it was coming under federal  investigation and slipping into 
financial arrears), Reed sought a cut of  the lucre flowing to Abramoff and Scanlon. 
He sent Abramoff an email: “Now  that I am leaving electoral politics, I need 
to start humping in corporate  accounts… I’m counting of you to help me with 
some contacts.”  
Abramoff came through. According to Susan Schmidt and R. Jeffrey Smith,  he 
and Scanlon paid Reed some $4 million to whip up Christian opposition  to 
gambling initiatives that could cut into the profits of Jack Abramoff’s  clients. 
Reed called in some of the brightest stars in the Christian  firmament – Pat 
Robertson, Jerry Fawell, James Dobson, Phyllis Schlafly –  to participate in 
what became a ruse in Abramoff’s behalf: They would  oppose gambling on religious 
and moral grounds in strategic places (Texas,  Louisiana, Alabama) at 
decisive moments when competitive challenges  threatened Abramoff’s . Bogus Christian 
fronts were part of the strategy.  Baptist preachers in Texas rallied to Reed’
s appeals. Unsuspecting folks  in Louisiana heard the voice of God on radio – 
with Jerry Fawell and Pat  Robertson doing the honors – thundering against a 
riverboat gambling  scheme, which one of Abramoff’s clients feared would 
undermine its  advantage. Reed even got James Dobson, whose nationwide radio “
ministry”  reaches millions of people, to deluge phone lines at the Interior  
Department and White House with calls from indignant Christians.  
In 1999 Abramoff arranged for the Mississippi Choctaws, who were trying  to 
stave off competition from other tribes, to contribute over $1 million  to 
Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, which then passed the money along  to the 
Alabama Christian Coalition and to another anti-gambling group Reed  had duped 
into aiding the cause. It is unclear how much these Christian  soldiers, “
marching as to war,” knew about the true purpose of their  crusade, but Ralph Reed 
knew all along that his money was coming from  Abramoff. The emails between the 
two men read like Elmer Gantry.  
It gets worse.  
Some of Abramoff’s money from lobbying went to start a non-profit  
organization called the U.S. Family Network. Nice name, yes? An uplifting  all-American 
name, like so many others that fly the conservative banner in  Washington. Tom 
DeLay wrote a fundraising letter in which he described the  U.S. Family 
Network as “a powerful nationwide organization dedicated to  restoring our 
government to citizen control.” Fund raising appeals warned  that the American family “
is being attacked from all sides: crime, drugs,  pornography…and gambling.” 
So help me, I’m not making this up. You can  read R. Jeffrey’s Smith 
mind-boggling account of it on the Washington  Post website, where he writes that the 
organization did no discernable  grassroots organizing and its money came from 
business groups with no  demonstrated interest in the “moral fitness” agenda 
that was the network’s  professed aim.  
Let’s call it what it was: a scam – one more cog in the  money-laundering 
machine controlled by DeLay and Abramoff. A former top  assistant founded the 
organization. It bought a townhouse just three  blocks from DeLay’s 
Congressional quarters and provided him with fancy  free office space where he would go to 
raise money. DeLay’s wife also got  a sizeable salary. But that’s the least 
of it.  
Working with Abramoff through a now defunct law firm in London and an  
obscure off-shore company in the Bahamas, Russian oil and gas executives  were using 
the U.S. Family Network to funnel money to influence the  majority leader of 
the House of Representatives – yes, that chamber of  American government once 
known as “The People’s House.”  
Our witness for this is the Christian pastor who served as the titular  
president of the U.S. Family Network, the Reverend Christopher Geeslin. He  told 
The Washington Post that the founder of the organization, the  former DeLay 
aide, told him that a million dollars was passed through from  sources in Russia 
who wanted DeLay’s support for legislation enabling the  International Monetary 
fund to bail out the faltering Russian economy  without demanding the country 
raise taxes on its energy industry. As Molly  Ivins pointed out in a recent 
column, right on cue DeLay found his way  onto Fox News Sunday to argue the 
Russian position. That same titular head  of the U.S. Family Network, the 
Christian pastor, said DeLay’s former  chief of staff also told him, “This is the 
way things work in Washington.”   
This is the way things work in Washington.  
Twenty five years ago Grover Norquist had said that “What Republicans  need 
is 50 Jack Abramoffs in Washington. Then this will be a different  town.”  
Well, they got what they needed, and the arc of the conservative  takeover of 
government has now been completed. As Abramoff had once said  his goal was to 
banish liberals from college campuses, and later that “All  of my political 
work is driven by philosophical interests, not by the  desire to gain wealth,” 
now his intentions, as he admitted to Michael  Crowley of The New York Times, 
were “to push the Republicans on K  Street to be more helpful to the 
conservative movement.” Money, politics,  and ideology became one and the same in a 
juggernaut of power that crushed  everything in sight, including core 
conservative principles.  
Here we come to the heart of darkness.  
One of Abramoff’s first big lobbying clients was the Northern Marianas  
Islands in the Pacific. After World War II the Marianas became a  trusteeship of 
the United Nations, administered by the U.S. Government  under the stewardship 
of the Interior Department. We should all remember  that thousands of Marines 
died there, fighting for our way of life and our  freedoms. Today, these 
islands are a haven for tourists – first-class  hotels, beautiful beaches, 
championship golf course. But there is a dark  side. The islands were exempted from 
U.S. labor and immigration laws, and  over the years tens of thousands of people, 
primarily Chinese, mostly  women, were brought there as garment workers. 
These so-called “guest  workers” found themselves living in crowded barracks in 
miserable  conditions. The main island, Saipan, became known as America’s 
biggest  sweatshop.  
In 1998 a government report found workers there living in substandard  
conditions, suffering severe malnutrition and health problems and  subjected to 
unprovoked acts of violence. Many had signed “shadow  contracts” which required 
them to pay up to $7000 just to get the job.  They also had to renounce their 
claim to basic human rights, including  political and religious activities, 
socializing and marrying. If they  protested, they could be summarily deported. 
As Greg Mcdonald wrote in  The Houston Chronicle, the garments produced on 
Saipan were  manufactured for American companies from tariff-free Asian cloth and  
shipped duty- and quota-free – to the United States. Some of the biggest  
names in the retail clothing industry – Levi Strauss, The Gap, J. Crew,  Eddie 
Bauer, Reebok, Polo, Tommy Helfiger, Nordstrom’s, Lord and Taylor,  Jones New 
York, and Liz Claiborne – had been able to slap a “made in the  USA” label on 
the clothes and import them to America, while paying the  workers practically 
nothing.  
When these scandalous conditions began to attract attention, the  sweatshop 
moguls fought all efforts at reform. Knowing that Jack Abramoff  was close to 
Tom DeLay, they hired him to lobby for the islands.  Conservative members of 
Congress lined up as Abramoff’s team arranged for  them to visit the islands on 
carefully guided junkets. Conservative  intellectuals and journalists, for 
hire at rates considerably above what  the women on the islands were making, also 
signed up for expense-free  trips to the Marianas. They flew first-class, 
dined at posh restaurants,  slept in comfort at the beachfront hotel, and 
returned to write and speak  of the islands as “a true free market success story” 
and “a laboratory of  liberty.”  
Abramoff took Tom DeLay and his wife there, too. DeLay practically  swooned. 
He said the Marianas “represented what is best about America.” He  called 
them “my Galapagos” – “a perfect petri dish of capitalism.”  
These fellow travelers – conservative members of Congress, their staffs  and 
their lapdogs in the rightwing press and think tanks – became a solid  phalanx 
against any and all attempts to provide the workers on the islands  with a 
living wage and decent living conditions. For instance, when a  liberal 
California Democrat, George Miller, and a conservative Alaskan  Senator, Frank 
Murkowski, indignant at the “appalling conditions,” wanted  to enact a bill to raise 
minimum wages on the islands and at least prevent  summary deportation of the 
workers, DeLay and Abramoff stopped them cold.  As Representative Miller told 
it, “They killed my reform bill year after  year. And even when an 
immigration reform bill by Senator Frank Murkowski,  a Republican, was approved by the 
full Senate, they blocked it repeatedly  in the House.”  
After the 2000 election, when the spoils of victory were being divided  up, 
Abramoff got himself named to the Bush transition team for the  Interior 
Department. He wanted to make sure the right people wound up  overseeing his 
clients, the Marianas. He enlisted Reed, who said he would  raise the matter with 
Rove, to stop at least one appointment to Interior  that might prove troublesome. 
Small wonder that about this time Reed wrote  an email to Enron’s top 
lobbyist touting his pal Abramoff as “arguably the  most influential and effective 
gop lobbyist in congress. I share several  clients with him and have yet to see 
him lose a battle. He also is very  close to DeLay and could help enormously 
on that front. raised $ for  bush…he [sic] assistant is Susan Ralston [who 
would become Rove’s  assistant.]”  
For his services to the Marianas Jack Abramoff was paid nearly $10  million 
dollars, including the fees he charged for booking his guests on  the golf 
courses and providing them copies of Newt Gingrich’s book. One of  the sweatshop 
moguls with whom Abramoff was particularly close contributed  half a million 
dollars to – you guessed it - the U. S. Family Network that  laundered money 
from Russian oligarchs to Tom DeLay.  
To this day, workers on the Marianas are still denied the federal  minimum 
wage while working long hours for subsistence income in their  little “petri 
dish of capitalism” – “America at its best.”  
Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue were now in sync. George W. Bush had  
created his own version of the K Street Project. Remember how he emerged  from the 
crowded field of Republican candidates in early 1999 and  literally blew 
several of them out of the water? He did so by drowning his  opponents with money. 
In just his first six months of fundraising, Bush  collected some $36 million – 
nine times more than his nearest opponent,  John McCain. The money came from 
the titans of America business and  lobbying who understood their 
contributions would be rewarded. You’ve  heard of the Pioneers and Rangers – people who 
raised at least $100,000  and $200,000 for Bush. Among them were people like 
Tom DeLay’s brother,  also a lobbyist; the CEO of Enron, Kenneth (“Kenny Boy”) 
Lay; and hundreds  of executives from the country’s banks, investment houses, 
oil and gas  companies, electric utilities, and other companies.  
While Tom DeLay kept a ledger on K Street, ranking lobbyists as  friendly and 
unfriendly, the Bush campaign gave every one of his Pioneers  and Rangers a 
tracking number, making sure to know who was bringing in the  bucks and where 
they were coming from. In May of 1999 the trade  association for the electric 
utility industry sent a letter to potential  contributors on Bush campaign 
stationery. He told his colleagues that  Bush’s campaign managers “have stressed 
the importance of having our  industry incorporate the tracking number in your 
fundraising efforts…it  does ensure that our industry is credited and that 
your progress is  listed…”  
The bounty was waiting. A score of Pioneers and Rangers were paid off  with 
ambassadorships. At least 37 were named to post-election transition  teams, 
where they had a major say in selecting political appointees at key  regulatory 
positions across the government. Remember the California energy  crisis, when 
Enron traders boasted of gouging grandmothers to drive up the  prices for 
energy? Well, Enron’s Kenneth Lay had been Bush’s biggest  campaign funder over 
the years and what he asked now as a pay-off was  appointment to the Energy 
Department transition team. This is how Enron’s  boss got to name two of the five 
members of the Federal Energy Regulatory  Commission, who looked the other way 
while Enron rigged California’s  energy prices and looted billions right out 
from the pockets and  pocketbooks of California’s citizens.  
There are, as I said, no victimless crimes in politics. The cost of  
corruption is passed on to you. When the government of the United States  falls under 
the thumb of the powerful and privileged, regular folks get  squashed.  
This week I visited for the first time the Museum of the Presidio in  San 
Francisco. From there American troops shipped out to combat in the  Pacific. Many 
never came back. On the walls of one corridor are  photographs of some of 
those troops, a long way from home. Looking at  them, I wondered: Is this what 
those Marines died for on the Marianas –  for sweatshops, the plunder of our 
public trust, the corruption of  democracy? Government of the Abramoffs, by the 
DeLays, and for the people  who bribe them?  
I don’t think so.  
But this crowd in charge has a vision sharply at odds with the American  
people. They would arrange Washington and the world for the convenience of  
themselves and the transnational corporations that pay for their  elections. In the 
words of Al Meyeroff, the Los Angeles attorney who led a  successful class 
action suit for the workers on Saipan, the people who now  control the U.S. 
Government today want “a society run by the powerful,  oblivious to the weak, free 
of any oversight, enjoying a cozy relationship  with government, and thriving 
on crony capitalism.”  
America as their petri dish – the Marianas, many times over.  
This is an old story and a continuing struggle. A century ago Theodore  
Roosevelt said the central fact of his time was that corporations had  become so 
dominant they would chew up democracy and spit it out. His  cousin Franklin 
Roosevelt warned that a government of money was as much to  be feared as a 
government by mob. One was a progressive Republican, the  other a liberal Democrat. 
Their sentiments were echoed by an icon of the  conservative movement, Barry 
Goldwater, in 1987:  
The fact that liberty depended on honest elections was of the  utmost 
importance to the patriots who founded our nation and wrote the  Constitution. They 
knew that corruption destroyed the prime requisite of  Constitutional liberty, 
an independent legislature free from any  influence other than that of the 
people…representative government  assumes that elections will be controlled by 
the citizenry at large, not  by those who give the most money. Electors must 
believe their vote  counts. Elected officials must owe their allegiance to the 
people, not  to their own wealth or to the wealth of interest groups who speak 
only  for the selfish fringes of the whole community. 

IV  
I have painted a bleak picture of democracy today. I believe it is a  true 
picture. But it is not a hopeless picture. Something can be done  about it. 
Organized people have always had to take on organized money. If  they had not, 
blacks would still be three-fifths of a person, women  wouldn’t have the vote, 
workers couldn’t organize, and children would  still be working in the mines. 
Our democracy today is more real and more  inclusive than existed in the days of 
the Founders because time and again,  the people have organized themselves to 
insist that America become “a more  perfect union.”  
It is time to fight again. These people in Washington have no right to  be 
doing what they are doing. It’s not their government, it’s your  government. 
They work for you. They’re public employees – and if they let  us down and sell 
us out, they should be fired. That goes for the lowliest  bureaucrat in town 
to the senior leaders of Congress on up to the  President of the United 
States.  
They would have you believe this is just “a lobbying scandal.” They  would 
have you think that if they pass a few nominal reforms, put a little  more 
distance between the politician and the lobbyist, you will think  everything is 
okay and they can go back to business as usual.  
They’re trying it now. Just look at Congressman John Boehner, elected  to 
replace Tom DeLay as House Majority Leader. Today he speaks the  language of 
reform, but ten years ago Boehner was handing out checks from  the tobacco 
executives on the floor of the House. He’s been a full player  in the K Street 
Project and DeLay’s money machine, holding weekly meetings  with some of the most 
powerful lobbyists in the Speaker’s suite at the  Capitol. He has thought 
nothing of hopping on corporate jets or cruising  Caribbean during winter breaks 
with high-powered lobbyists. Moreover, the  man Boehner beat to succeed DeLay – 
Congressman Roy Blunt – has been  elected to DeLay’s first job as Majority 
Whip despite being deeply  compromised by millions upon millions of dollars 
raised from the same  interests that bought off DeLay.  
And what now of DeLay? He’s under indictment for money laundering  inTexas 
and had to resign as Majority Leader. But the other day the party  bosses in 
Congress gave him a seat on the powerful House Appropriations  Committee where 
big contributors get their rewards. And – are you ready  for this? – they put 
him on the subcommittee overseeing the Justice  Department which is 
investigating the Abramoff scandal, including  Abramoff’s connections to DeLay.  
Business as usual. The usual rot. The power of arrogance.  
You may say, see? These forces can’t be defeated. They’re too rich,  they’re 
too powerful, they’re too entrenched.  
But look at what has happened in Connecticut, one of the most corrupt  states 
in the union. Rocked by multiple scandals that brought down a state  
treasurer, a state senator, and the governor himself with convictions of  bribery, tax 
evasion, and worse, the people finally had enough. Although  many of the 
parties had to be forced, kicking and screaming to do it, last  December the 
legislature passed clean money reform and the new governor  signed it into law. The 
bill bans campaign contributions from lobbyists  and state contractors and 
makes Connecticut the very first state in the  nation where the legislature and 
governor approved full public funding for  their own races.  
Connecticut isn’t the only place where the link between public  officials and 
private campaign contributions has been broken. Both Arizona  and Maine offer 
full public financing of statewide and legislative races.  New Jersey, New 
Mexico, North Carolina, and Vermont have clean money  systems for some races. 
The cities of Portland, Oregon and Albuquerque,  New Mexico recently approved 
full public financing for citywide races.  
In these places, candidates for public office – executive, legislative,  and 
in some cases judicial – have the option of running on a limited and  equal 
grant of full public funding, provided they take little or no  private 
contributions. To qualify they have to pass a threshold by raising  a large number of 
small contributions from voters in their district. The  system allows 
candidates to run competitive campaigns for office even if  they do not have ties to 
well-heeled donors or big money lobbyists, a near  impossibility when public 
elections are privately funded.  
In places where clean elections are law, we see more competition for  
legislative seats and a more diverse group of people running for office.  In David 
Sirota’s words, they “are encouraged to run on their ideas, their  convictions 
and their integrity instead of on how effectively they can  shake down the big 
money.” And there are policy results as well. In  Arizona, one of the first 
acts of Governor Janet Napolitano, elected under  the state’s public financing 
program, was to institute reforms  establishing low-cost prescription drug 
subsidies for seniors. Compare  that to the Medicare debacle going on at the 
national level. In Maine,  where clean elections has been in place since 2000, 
there have also been  advances in providing low cost pharmaceutical drugs for 
residents, and in  making sure that every state resident has medical coverage.  
Why? Because the politicians can do what’s right, not what they’re paid  to 
do by big donors. They, not the lobbyists, write the legislation. As  one 
blogger put it this past weekend, instead of dialing for dollars, they  might have 
time even to read bills like ‘The Patriot Act’ and find the  small print 
establishing a secret police.  
California may soon follow Connecticut. Calling for the political  equivalent 
of electroshock therapy, the Los Angeles Times recently  urged Californians: “
Forget half-measures. The cure is voluntary public  financing of election 
campaigns.” Already the Clean Money and Fair  Elections Bill has passed the state 
assembly and is headed for the senate.  Check it out at _www.caclean.org_ 
(http://www.caclean.org/) .  
Think about this: Californians could buy back their elected  representatives 
at a cost of about $5 or $6 per California resident.  Nationally we could buy 
back our Congress and the White House with full  public financing for about 
$10 per taxpayer per year. You can check this  out on the website Public 
Campaign. [_www.publicampaign.org_ (http://www.publicampaign.org/) ]  
Public funding won’t solve all the problems. There’s no way to  legislate 
truly immoral people from abusing our trust. But it would go a  long way to 
breaking the link between big donors and public officials and  to restoring 
democracy to the people. Until we offer qualified candidates  a different source of 
funding for their campaigns – “clean,”  disinterested, accountable public 
money – the selling of America will go  on. From scandal to scandal.  
The people out across the country on the front lines of this fight have  
brought the message down to earth, in plain language and clear metaphors.  If a 
player sliding into home plate reached into his pocket and handed the  umpire 
$1000 before he made the call, what would we call that? A bribe.  And if a 
lawyer handed a judge $1000 before he issued a ruling, what do we  call that? A 
bribe. But when a lobbyist or CEO sidles up to a member of  Congress at a 
fundraiser or in a skybox and hands him a check for $1000,  what do we call that? A 
campaign contribution.  
Representative Barney Frank likes to say of Congress: “We are the only  
people in the world required by law to take large amounts of money from  strangers 
and then act as if it has no effect on our behavior.”  
What law is he talking about? The unwritten law that says your  Congressman 
has to raise $2000 per day from the day he or she is sworn in  to the next 
election days – weekdays, Saturdays, Sundays, Christmas Eve  and the Fourth of 
July. As long as elected officials need that constant  stream of cash, someone 
will run our country but it won’t be you.  
Even some business lobbyists are having second thoughts. One of them,  
Stanton Anderson, was recently quoted in Business Week: “As a  conservative, I’ve 
always opposed government involvement. But it seems to  me the real answer is 
federal financing of Congressional elections.”  
Mr. Anderson understand this isn’t about a “few bad apples.” This is  about 
the system. We can change the system. But we have to believe  democracy is 
worth fighting for.  
Listen to what Theodore Roosevelt said one hundred years ago when he  took on 
the political bosses and big money of his time for committing  “treason to 
the people.”  
We are standing for the great fundamental rights upon which all  successful 
free government must be based. We are standing for elementary  decency in 
politics. We are fighting for honesty against naked robbery.  It is not a partisan 
issue; it is more than a political issue; it is a  great moral issue. If we 
condone political theft, if we do not resent  the kinds of wrong and injustice 
that injuriously affect the whole  nation, not merely our democratic form of 
government but our  civilization itself cannot endure. 
We need that fighting spirit today - the tough, outraged and resilient  
spirit that knows we have been delivered a great and precious legacy, you  and I - 
"government of, by and for the people" - and, by God we're going  to pass it 
on.  
Bill Moyers is President of the Schumann Center for Media and  Democracy. 
This is the prepared text of his remarks on an eight-day  speaking trip in 
California on the issue of money and politics.  
(Thanks to my long-time editorial colleague, Rebecca Wharton; my  assistant, 
Karen Kimball; and Public Campaign’s Micah Sifry and Nancy  Watzman for their 
contributions to this speech.)  
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