Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Masters of Sleaze” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/opinion/22brooks.html?ex=1269147600&en=79789cfef5ebeee1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland”>The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Masters of Sleaze By DAVID BROOKS

Back in 1995, when Republicans took over Congress, a new cadre of daring and original thinkers arose. These bold innovators had a key insight: that you no longer had to choose between being an activist and a lobbyist. You could be both. You could harness the power of K Street to promote the goals of Goldwater, Reagan and Gingrich. And best of all, you could get rich while doing it! …

Soon the creative revolutionaries were blending the high-toned forms of the think tank with the low-toned scams of the buckraker. …

As time went by, the spectacular devolution of morals accelerated. Many of the young innovators were behaving like people who, having read Barry Goldwater’s “Conscience of a Conservative,” embraced the conservative part while discarding the conscience part. …

The sleazo-cons thought they could take over K Street to advance their agenda. As it transpired, K Street took over them.

Note this is from Brooks, the Liberal’s favorite Conservative. If you’re unfamiliar with Abramoff the Scoundrel, read this and then start researching. Now with Bill Moyers covered this in depth 6 months ago. mjh

Columns: Power abused, democracy corrupted

By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist

The end justifies the means.

When you have enough power, you can tell the courts to get lost, you can overrule the self-government of an entire state, you can obliterate the rule of law.

It does not matter that Florida’s courts ruled that Terri Schiavo expressed the wish not to kept alive artificially. We are entitled to ignore court rulings.

Neither does it matter that the doctors say that her brain has largely turned to fluid. We may dismiss these facts with a wave of the hand, or a sound bite on CNN.

Congress knows all. The federal government knows all. The strutting Tom DeLay and the unctuous Bill Frist know more than all the judges and doctors combined.

They are cynically armed with their internal memo about how many votes they are going to get out of the Christians. Some members of Congress speechified without knowing how to pronounce Terri Schiavo’s name, or the most basic facts.

Tom DeLay’s conduct is odious. He represents everything bad about Congress. His principal pastime is raising large amounts of money from wicked people in return for hurting the public good. …

If you are cheering because Congress acted in the midnight hour to “save” Terri, be sure of what you are cheering for.

You are applauding a Congress for throwing out the rulings of the courts, throwing out the due process of the states, and substituting its own will. …

For the sake of headlines and self-righteousness, the U.S. Congress waited until the final seconds of a years-long, agonizing legal process to say that our law does not count. Many well-meaning people are cheering. And so one more tree falls.

… until Democrats endorsed Civil Rights.

The Writer’s Almanac – MARCH 20, 2005

It was on this day in 1854 that the Republican Party was founded. The name “Republican” was first used many years before, by Thomas Jefferson’s political party, the Democratic Republican Party. That name was shortened to the Democratic Party, which is what we call it today. The present-day Republican Party was formed by opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and by members of other parties, like the Democratic and Whig parties, who disagreed with their parties’ positions on slavery. By 1855, the Republican Party was thriving in the North, while it had almost no following in the South. The Republican Party’s second candidate for President of the United States was Abraham Lincoln, who was elected in 1860.

Propaganda doesn’t help AmericaBy Andres Martinez

[It is] troubling to those of us who have lived in other countries and always admired the distinctive candor of public discourse in this country.

Spin is nothing new in American politics, but the Bush administration has not contented itself with trying to influence the news. It’s in the business of producing the news itself, in the hopes of passing it off as generic, third-party reporting. This is propaganda parading as journalism, in the finest PRI (or Soviet) tradition. …

This clumsy branding of George W. Bush’s vision of America to Americans will not only backfire at home, it invariably subverts efforts to brand America overseas. Public candor and transparency are supposed to be one of the American brand’s distinguishing assets. Because the administration insists on operating in its imagined version of reality, the United States and American credibility begin to look rather commonplace — and unreliable — to the world. You can imagine how many conspiracy theories are fed and validated on the streets of Cairo and Tehran when word gets out that U.S. government agencies produce their own propagandistic “news” reports.

Monday’s naming of Karen Hughes as the State Department’s global spinmeister — the undersecretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs — should make matters worse. She is close to Bush and closely associated with his remarkably evasive communications strategy. This White House stays relentlessly on message, even if the facts mock its discipline. …

It must be tempting for the leader of the sole superpower to imagine that he can define reality and impose it on the rest of world. But it’s a dangerous temptation as the United States, for all its might, depends to an alarming degree on the trust of foreigners — increasingly the trust of a handful of Asian central banks — who are financing the nation’s rising debt. The United States borrows $2 billion a day from overseas to maintain Americans’ lavish lifestyle — a factoid you won’t hear about in any taxpayer-financed fake news report.

Foreign central banks buy U.S. currency, in the form of Treasury notes, the way you buy stock in a company. Trouble is, they also can sell it the way you can dump stock when you lose faith in a company. The plummeting dollar is a global vote of no confidence in Brand U.S.A. and its current management. This decline is likely to accelerate if the administration doesn’t begin to be more candid about the nation’s real problems, such as the government’s budgetary shortfalls, and take them on. Foreign investors don’t want to trust their money to a country governed by propagandists. That’s why they invested in the United States in the first place.

News Hounds: More Fox News Insanity

Fox airs three “business” shows on Saturday morning. I just saw a combined promo for two of tomorrow’s shows. The promo featured a picture of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Ted Kennedy and the caption read: “Are Dems Trying to Destroy the Economy?”

The Money Behind the Debate Over Drilling in ANWR

Oil companies are hoping their considerable political clout, built up over years of generous campaign giving and lobbying, will put drilling in ANWR over the top. The oil and gas industry has contributed $179.7 million since 1989 to federal candidates and political parties, 74 percent to Republicans. …

Exxon Mobil is a member of Arctic Power, which bills itself as a grassroots, non-profit organization endorsed by the Alaska legislature that has been at the forefront of the ANWR drilling issue since 1992. …

Oil and gas companies have contributed $368,000 in individual and PAC contributions to Stevens since 1989, more than any other industry.

Other Alaska officials have struck it big from the industry as well.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R), who won a tight election last year, raised $195,000 from the industry in the 2004 election cycle alone, enough for a No. 10 ranking among all federal candidates. Alaska’s lone representative in the House, Don Young (R), has raised $874,000 from oil and gas interests since 1989, more than from any other industry. Murkowski and Young both support ANWR drilling. …

[Arctic Power] contends on its Web site that drilling could create as many as 736,000 jobs. Artic Power has spent $1.7 million on federal lobbying since 1997. …

The promise of new job creation has brought the International Brotherhood of Teamsters into an unusual alliance with oil companies on the subject of ANWR. The Teamsters, which have openly opposed many of Bush’s policies, broke from the heavily Democratic labor movement to support drilling.

The Teamsters are among the nation’s largest campaign donors, having contributed $21.9 million since 1989 in individual, PAC and soft money donations, 93 percent to Democrats. The union has spent $7.7 million on lobbying since 1997.

Mike Mathis, director of government affairs for the Teamsters, said the union has sent representatives to lobby new GOP members and lawmakers from labor-heavy states such as Pennsylvania. He added that the union is working to “firm up as many Democrats as we can.”

Mathis said the Teamsters have been working with Sen. Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican who has long supported drilling. Teamsters members in Alaska also have been coordinating with Arctic Power. The union has not contributed money to the group, as it did a few years ago, but it would do so if “there was a need,” Mathis said.

[mjh: Number junkies should follow this link] Industry Totals: Oil & Gas Long-Term Contribution Trends

Gallup: Only 37% Approve of Congress, a ‘Surprising Drop’

A new Gallup Poll released today finds what Frank Newport, its director, calls a “surprising drop in Americans’ approval of the way Congress is handling its job.”

A poll completed last week found only 37% of American approve of Congress’ job performance, down from 45% just one month ago, and its lowest rating since 1999. “My guess,” Newport reports, “is that congressional approval is suffering from a generalized reaction to the bickering about Social Security.”

In the same poll, only 42% said they were “satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S.” This is down from 45% in February. A closer look finds a dramatic partisan divide, with 69% of Republicans saying they are satisfied and only 18% of Democrats.

At the same time, President Bush’s approval rating stands at 52%, the same as last month.

Asked to rank the biggest problems facing the country, 28% mentioned various economic problems, 25% the war in Iraq, 12% Social Security, and 9% terrorism or health care. Among the issues mentioned by less than 1%: the energy crisis, gay issues, abortion, racism.