Bob Johnson for Congress - Let's Try FREEDOM!
Sam Johnson's DeLay/Abramoff/Indian Casino Scandal
Boy, a lot changes in less than 14 months. On November 19, 2004, Sam Johnson had the brass to defend DeLay and claim that Cong. Chris Bell should "take responsibility for actions." Sam's Congressional site still has his own hypocritical and at this point ludicrously idiotic letter attacking Bell and defending DeLay. You may read it for yourself but the following is a summary:
“Today’s announcement from the House Ethics Committee proves that Tom DeLay was not in the wrong. Chris Bell was in the wrong,” said Johnson. “The House Ethics Committee has proven that this was nothing more than a self-centered complaint from a sour-grapes, lame-duck Texas Democrat freshman who lost his primary. Chris Bell should pay back the taxpayers for the time, effort and energy spent to investigate this crack-pot claim.”
“Tom DeLay remains one of the most visionary Republican leaders of our time. It’s a shame Chris Bell forced Tom DeLay, his family, his staff, and the Congress to go through this entire partisan ordeal.”
“Chris Bell should apologize to Tom DeLay, to the House Ethics Committee and to the Congress for forcing us to go down this random rabbit trail,” Johnson continued. “Chris Bell has a lot of explaining to do.”
Well, it actually looks like Chris Bell and the Democrats, sadly, were on the right track. Sadly, it appears that it is not only DeLay, but Sam Johnson, who needs to do the explaining to taxpayers as we'll see below.
It was announced in early January of 2006 that Sam Johnson had to return $2000 that he'd taken from two Indian gambling casinos that were trying to prevent another competing Indian casino from operating. A local professor thinks this story has legs: "McConachie said the biggest impact could be that the GOP lose control of Congress in this year's midterm elections." Apparently, in addition to taking the money from the Choctaws and Tiguas to harm the Coushetta/Alabamas, Sam gave the money to the USO but the Tiguas want the money back. I agree that the USO is a good organization, and if Sam wants to give $2000 of his OWN money, that's fine, but perhaps he should give the tribes their money back. Better still, he should never have taken the money in the first place. I don't like to quote from the Democrats, but here's their analysis of it. As you'll see, Sam has spent $6000 helping defend DeLay but only got $2000 out of the deal. I don't think you have to have gone to Princeton or The University of Chicago on the one hand or be a bone-daddy roughneck street kid on the other to figure out that if someone is spending $6000 to cover up $2000, something else is probably going on and will come up on the campaign trail. It's also pretty obvious that if the Republican Party is stupid enough to nominate Sam again instead of yours truly, that Dan Dodd will be onto this story like white on rice. Unfortunately, the Democrat story from which I quoted is quite outdated. A thorough research of Sam Johnson's FEC filings shows that he gave $16,000 to defend Delay and another $1000 for Delay's campaign fund. Now you really have to be pretty stupid to figure that you give $17,000 to someone who only gave you $2000. Apparently, the point is that if Tom Delay goes down, that would be worth (in a negative sense) far more than $2000 or even $17,000. On 07/24/2001 Delay's defense fund got $1000, then in 07/21/2004 Delay got $5000 for his defense fund, then on 06/17/2005 Delay got a $1000 contribution, on 09/30/2005 Delay got another $5000 for his defense fund and finally, in filings that just appeared well after mid-February of 2006, on 01/31/2006 Delay's defense fund got yet another $5000.
More recently, on Feb. 27, 2006, the Washington Post printed a story pointing out that Sam Johnson had used his House Ways and Means Committee assignment to get the IRS to attack a group opposing Tom Delay.
When you figure out that there is something being covered up, and that Sam Johnson is going through power-broker (using the IRS from Ways and Means) and financial ($17,000?) hoops to nail Delay's enemies and you begin to understand the answer to something: Why would Sam have decided to run beyond his own personal 12 year limit, why would he want to deal with jerks in DC rather than play with his 10 grandchildren and have long philosophical conversations with his three children as he approaches the twilight of his life. Basically, and this not only applies to Sam and other politicos who hang on to power but also folks in the CIA, Mafia, and drug rackets, you can get in but you can't get out. If he stays, he can help manage the mess he's in corruption-wise because he has power to intimidate with the IRS etc. If he leaves, he loses that power and may have a higher probability of getting indicted.
Elsewhere in this website it is shown rigorously that Sam Johnson's alleged Conservatism on the budget is highly dubious. Citizens Against Government Waste give him and other Texans MUCH lower ratings than ACU and ATR. The CONNECTIONS between the DeLay scandal and the actual increasingly whorish spending patterns of ALL (but especially Texas) Republican Congressmen is most interesting. Democrats are pointing out how it is TRUE Conservatives who are outing DeLay and were his biggest whipping boys. Thus, ironically, for once in her life, Hilary Clinton was right - DeLay DID run Congress like a plantation, but it was the TRULY CONSERVATIVE Republicans who were the worst-treated field hands, while fake Conservative Republicans like Sam Johnson and of course cooperative Democrats who were the house servants. In other words, the DeLay scandal is not merely some dirt for the Air America types to throw, but a symptom of why the Bush Administration is NOT fiscally conservative. For example, why IS it that four out of five of Joel Hefley's bills (Roll Call 398, Roll Call 428, Roll Call 360, Roll Call 455) used as litmus tests by Citizens Against Government Waste were voted down by Sam Johnson when all they tried to do in one case was cut 1% of the budget? You'd think Sam Johnson would go for that! Sadly, he USED to go for that. His rating in 2003 by CAGW was an 89, and voted for Hefley's bills with great frequency. But this changes in 2004. You can almost see where "the divorce" happened. You see, the problem is that Hefley was one of the first Republicans to question DeLay on ethics. Indeed, the lack of ethics and the fiscal spendthrift ways of the Bush Republicans are connected since formerly conservative Contract with America advocate of Americans for Tax Reform fame Grover Norquist was mentored by Abramoff so that ATR's high ratings to Sam Johnson and others despite provable fiscal sleaziness is perhaps not surprising.