Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Casino Jack Rolls Snake Eyes

TPM has a clip of the new documentary on Jack Abramoff, Casino Jack.  Judging from the clip, the movie's worth a look.  Here's Ohio's own Bob "Spare Change" Ney describing how he helped his buddy Jack as a lawmaker.


In the clip, Ney aide-turned-Abramoff associate Neil Volz describes breaking the ban against lobbying one's former boss, in this case Ney, who agreed to do favors for an Abramoff client. The client was the Tigua Indian tribe in Texas, which was trying to get its casino, which had been shut down, reopened.

Ney agreed to slip language that would help the tribe into an election reform bill.

"Any lobbyist knows that a member will say, 'I'll do it as long as it doesn't destroy the bill.' Are riders done? They're done all the time," Ney says. "Are extra pieces of information added to bills that have no bearing to the bill? All the time. Was this that case? Yes.
And this happened all the time, and frankly still does.  Everyone was for sale when Casino Jack was the dealer.  And in his case, the House always won.  That is until he got sloppy enough that the people interested in actually catching him finally did.

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