Looks like there is plenty of scandals to go around:
Unlike many in her party, 2008 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has been silent about the influence peddling scandal erupting around lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose plea bargain with the Justice Department is said to have more than a few on Capitol Hill quaking in their boots.
Now we know why.
Turns out, Mrs. Clinton is among the dozens of Democrats who accepted Mr. Abramoff's tainted contributions.
Clinton spokeswoman Ann Lewis told The Buffalo News on Thursday that "after examining our records we found two contributions for $1,000 from tribes which have been clients of Jack Abramoff in the past."
"To ensure that there is no question of any connection with Mr. Abramoff, Friends of Hillary will contribute the total of $2,000 to a New York charity," Lewis said.
News of Mrs. Clinton's Abramoff connection comes the same day that her 2000 Senate campaign acknowledged it violated Federal Election Commission regulations by hiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash given by Hollywood mogul Peter Paul.
All this transpires against the backdrop of the Clinton campaign finance scandal of the late 1990s, where millions of dollars of illegal Chinese campaign cash found its way into Democratic Party and Clinton legal defense fund coffers.
The consequences of those transactions dwarf anything expected to emerge from the Abramoff imbroglio.
After Chinese intelligence and U.S. aerospace mogul Bernie Schwartz plied the DNC with donations, the Clinton Commerce Department permitted Schwartz's company, Loral, to share missile guidance technology with Beijing.
And the Loral missle guidance issue brings into play Linda Daschle:
But there was nothing illegal, even during that "cooling off period," in her lobbying for Loral before the House, after she, as deputy FAA administrator, was involved in the decision to give the company a $955 million air traffic control contract in May 1995. Mrs. Daschle left the FAA at the end of January 1997. Her firm's midyear 2000 lobbying report, filed Aug. 14, 2000, listing Loral as a client, is signed by Mrs. Daschle. In the section of the report where the firm was instructed to name "each individual who acted as a lobbyist" for Loral, the firm listed Mrs. Daschle and three others. It says that the firm contacted both the House and Senate on Loral's behalf, but notes that Mrs. Daschle voluntarily refrains from lobbying the Senate.
And here is more on that:
In one of those corporate-coddling moves for which the Clinton administration became infamous, President Bubba appointed Linda Daschle deputy administrator of the FAA, putting her in charge of regulating her once-and-future clients; and she wound up running the agency as acting administrator. This, of course, significantly boosted the Daschle family income by hyping the amount Linda could charge her clients when she left government service. She didn’t wait long to cash in. Example: While running the FAA, she awarded Loral Space Technologies (a major Democratic contributor that figured in the ’96 campaign-finance scandals) a nearly $1 billion contract from the federal government; after Linda passed through the revolving door to Baker, Donelson, Loral paid the lobby shop $740,000 in 2000-2001 for Linda’s services. When the FAA was pondering making mandatory a criminal-background check for all airport employees, Linda, who was then running the agency, vigorously opposed this common-sense move — echoing the position of the airline-industry lobby that had previously employed her.
And lets not forget that now Tom Daschle has entered the lobbyist field. With all that lobbying money finding its way into Tom and Linda’s pocketbook, the least Tom Daschle can do is join Hillary and donate the tainted Abramoff money. But pulling a John Thune by donating to a domestic abuse shelter in Mission was described by Steve Hildebrand as "a big slap in the face to Native Americans across the country". Of course that is obvious spin. The Daschle gang has other plans for that money:
Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle is hoping to save incumbent Democrats from his own fate, giving away $230,000 in campaign cash to vulnerable members of his party.
He may also be thinking about his own future.
A spokesman said Thursday that Daschle, who lost a 2004 bid for re-election in South Dakota but has not ruled out a run for president in 2008, raised the money last year for Democrats in Congress.
Instead of helping out Native Americans with tainted Abramoff money, the Daschle gang instead wants to use it for their own selfish reasons. And after 26 years of Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Native Americans are among the poorest in the country. Perhaps they should wake up and realize that Daschle only wants them for political purposes.
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