Capitol Crimes

Last night PBS ran Capitol Crimes, a documentary by Bill Moyers about the Abramoff / DeLay lobby scandal. Having followed this story for years, I was thrilled to see it all wrapped up on film, but I still find people in the district who don’t know the story so I’m still trying to spread the word. (does that make me some kind of anti-evangelist?)
This show had it all, and it left me with the feeling that “Congressman Number One”
will end up convicted and jailed like Bob Ney. Moyers got footage from Red Scorpion, the action movie Abramoff produced for “the people who kept Nelson Mandela in prison for 27 years.” There was film of DeLay touring sweatshops on Saipan. After the tour he went to a cockfight with Willie Tan, the Chinese garment mogul who later gave $650,000 to preacher, now convict, Ed Buckham’s U.S. Family Network charity/front. They had the Indian Chiefs who paid Abramoff $25,000 apiece to go to the White House and meet Bush, film from the Scotland golf trips, ($100,000 in green fees for the DeLay party) and the story of how Russian oil gangsters got DeLay to change his position on an IMF bail-out for Russia by giving $1 million to the American Family Network. This last one made the bell ring for me, that sounds like illegal influence peddling if there is such a thing.Moyers called this story the biggest scandal since Watergate. That one probably kept the GOP the minority party for 20 years. I’m hoping it achieves critical mass by November 7th.