Bush Obstructed Justice in early Abramoff Investigation?

Once again I've been derelict in the blogging world. Holidays often do that to me. But I've climbed slowly back on the work wagon, and as I've been looking over recent news I found a piece that certainly warrants further awareness (if posting on this out of the way blog has that effect!).

It was reported way back in August of this year by the LATimes, but since Abramoff has now plead guilty and seems to be clearing out his singing voice to take down some friends along the way, it seems worth advertising more that Bush made a very suspicious move back in 2002 when a federal prosecutor was trying to look into shady dealings of Abramoff's in Guam.

Think Progress has the blurb that I ran across (the article referenced is here):

GUAM — BUSH REMOVES FEDERAL PROSECUTOR INVESTIGATING
ABRAMOFF: In 2002, Abramoff was the target of a grand jury
investigation in Guam. On November 18, 2002, U.S. Atty. Frederick A. Black issued a grand jury subpoena issued seeking records involving a highly unusual contract between Abramoff and the Superior Court in Guam. Apparently, Superior Court officials in Guam paid Abramoff over $324,000 — funneled through a Laguna Beach attorney Howard Hills — to lobby against a bill in Congress that gave the Guam Supreme Court authority over the Superior Court. The Los Angeles Times reported this August that the day after Black issued the subpeona, “President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor [Black] and the inquiry ended soon after.” Black had “served as acting U.S. attorney for Guam and the Northern Mariana islands since 1991.” He was replaced by Leonardo Rapadas, the man that the Guam Republican Party recommended to Karl Rove be given the job. [Los Angeles Times, 8/7/05]

Wow! Sounds like somebody should be calling up Mr. Black and see if he has any comments on this matter. Can anybody say conspiracy to obstruct justice?

When is "Bribe" a Euphemism?

When it is used to describe the shady dealings that led Representative "Duke" Cunningham to resign in disgrace from his congressional seat.

If I am the inside man in congress who can write into law millions of dollars of defense contracts for my friends' phony companies, then they turn around and share this ill-gotten taxpayer money with me, is that what we mean by a "bribe"?

Cunningham has admitted to receiving $2.4 million or so in such "bribes." But where did this money come from? Was it private-sector wealth generated legitimately by those who "bribed" him with it?

Not really. This was cash that came straight out of the Treasury--coffers filled by the income taxes of you and I and your mother's mother--through appropriations to the Pentagon to flimsy "consulting" and "software" companies which appear to be little more than the private estates of those involved--which includes the congresspersons who were in on this scheme.

Again, is this "bribery" as we usually mean the term? Or has bribery, amazingly, become a media euphemism for grand public larceny on a massive scale?

Why Time's Tim Padgett doesn't get a free pass for the day

Here is how Time’s Latin America bureau chief Tim Padgett concludes his article “Why Latin America Bashes Bush” on Bush and Latin America today:

“For the resurgent governing Left in Latin America, however, the reality is that
the summit's goal of eliminating poverty by creating jobs can't be achieved
without a certain level of economic globalization, especially in the form of
prodigious U.S. investment. Before the gap between Latin America's rich and poor
can be narrowed, the gap between Washington and Latin America has to be bridged
as well.”

Here’s where Tim Padgett is wrong. His equation that achieving social goals like creating jobs that will keep people from starving to death is only possible through the globalization model of foreign investment of capital buys into the prevailing free-market dogmas that the new Latin Leftists themselves repudiate. And justifiably so. Padgett himself refers to the systemic critique, though apparently is not interested in delving into its rationale.

“Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and other Latin nations banded together to nudge
Washington's Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) proposal off the agenda. The move, which has angered the Bush Administration, reflects growing skepticism in Latin America over the virtues of free-market reforms, which many believe have
simply widened the chasm between rich and poor in a region that already displays
the world's worst disparities in wealth.”

Contrary to Padgett’s “the reality is…can’t be achieved” dogmatism, Chavez and other progressive leaders in the South have said wait, why not? Why can't we protect local economies from the neocolonial encroachments of global capital and still achieve prosperity for our citizens? Why can’t we have our own citizens steward, and profit from, the riches of their environment, rather than let foreign investors take control and plunder environments they have no local domestic interest in protecting for the long term? Etc.

In other words, contrary to the capitalist dogmatism of Padgett, which he imbibes as the common air of North American economic thinking, the debate over capitalism and socialism is not yet dead in Latin America. The U.S. is still riding a triumphalist airship of capitalist millenarianism after the fall of the USSR and Eastern Bloc, but it is not a ride that the billions around the world still living in under-a-dollar-a-day poverty conditions have the liberty to take. Nor are they willing to accept its lofty perspective of “development” so easily and on faith.

Why should they, anyway? It is not like the “skepticism…over the virtues of free-market reforms” are unwarranted. Christ-sakes, read John Perkin’s Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. There’s a book that will confirm every leftist liberal progressives worst-case-scenario suspicions about the deliberateness of the hostile US Govt-Corporate takeover of foreign countries in the name of exploitative, extractive, degradative—in other words unutterably heartless—“free market” capitalism.

Padgett’s conclusion is a non-conclusion and a non sequitur. It doesn’t even try to engage in the serious debates of political philosophy. It simply tries to put an end to a column of daily copy by spitting out the party line that his bosses and presumably dozing audience wants to hear.