skippy the bush kangaroo

Saturday, January 21, 2006

in case of argument, break (out) facts

some points that deborah howell and jim brady obviously missed in their insistance that dems took money from abramoff (courtesy of bloomberg):

between 2001 and 2004, abramoff gave more than $127,000 to republican candidates and committees and nothing to democrats, federal records show. at the same time, his indian clients were the only ones among the top 10 tribal donors in the u.s. to donate more money to republicans than democrats…

of the top 10 political donors among indian tribes in that period, three are former clients of abramoff and scanlon: the saginaw chippewa tribe of michigan, the mississippi band of choctaw indians, and the agua caliente band of cahuilla indians of california. all three gave most of their donations to republicans -- by margins of 30 percentage points or more -- while the rest favored democrats.

and farhad manjoo at salon does a bang-up job of elucidating the reasons why howell's logic has more holes than bill bennett's backside after a session with his domninatrix:

what howell doesn't address, though, and what many readers have pointed out, is that while it may be true that abramoff told his clients to give money to some democrats, and it may be true that some of these clients did in fact donate to democrats, this chain of events doesn't show that abramoff exerted any influence over these democrats. in fact, other news outlets have reported that after abramoff signed on to lobby for specific tribes, their contributions to democrats fell. at the very least, this indicates that while abramoff's tribes may have given money to democrats, it was republican lawmakers he was pressing them to cultivate.

to begin with, it's not clear the indian tribes donated to democrats just because abramoff told them to -- the tribes may have been meaning to donate to key democrats anyway. for instance, rep. patrick kennedy, a democrat from rhode island, who collected $128,000 from abramoff's tribal clients, maintains that the tribes gave him their money because he's been good to tribes. in 1997, kennedy co-founded the congressional native american caucus, and he has a personal friendship with phillip martin, chief of the mississippi choctaw tribe, as his spokesman told the post in june. in addition, even if abramoff did "direct" this money to democrats, as howell wrote, nobody can say that the democrats who got money from these tribes knew that the money was being orchestrated by the lobbyist. several democrats say they had no idea abramoff was behind the money -- which is plausible, since abramoff was well known in d.c. for being a republican. why would democrats have reason to assume that he was sending money their way?

moreover, as bloomberg news has reported, the share of abramoff's tribal clients' money that went to democrats actually fell after he began working with them. before abramoff began representing the saginaw chippewas, for example, the tribe gave $158,000 to republicans and $279,000 to democrats. but in the abramoff years, the same tribe gave $500,500 to republicans and $277,210 to democrats.

but asked if she'd show readers this "fuller picture," howell says it's not her duty to delve into the substance of the debate over whether abramoff did or did not influence democrats. that's for reporters at the post to do, she says.

yeah, she wouldn't want to dissect the reporting accuracy of her paper. that would make her an ombudsman or something...

posted by skippy at 4:14 PM |