The fast rise and steep fall of Jack Abramoff

This lengthy WaPo article details Abramoff’s life of fixing and sleaze quite admirably. A few tidbits:

The nonprofit Capital Athletic Foundation, for example, allowed him to schmooze with Washington’s movers and shakers at charity affairs.

The foundation was ostensibly created to help inner-city children through organized sports. There is no evidence money went to city kids, but the foundation did fund some of Abramoff’s pet projects: a sniper school for Israelis in the West Bank, a golf trip to Scotland for Ohio congressman Ney and others, and a Jewish religious academy in Columbia that Abramoff founded and where he sent his children to be educated.

Even more serious, Abramoff and Kidan were targets of a Florida federal grand jury investigating the SunCruz wire transfer. And local authorities were probing the gangland-style slaying of the man who had sold them the cruise line, Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis.

Two things. First, if mainstream media is running stories like this, Abramoff is dead meat. He’s going down. Good, may he take the rest of the corrupt DC establishment with him. 2) Much of what Abramoff did concerned creating a string of casinos. Was he an independent or are there organized crime ties, was he just the hired help?

After John Giotti was convicted, I recall reading a NYC newspaper article saying Giotti’s real mistake was being so public, so blatant. The article then mentioned the name of the boss of bosses in NYC, the head of the families, saying he lived quietly and stayed out of the headlines, and that you’d probably never heard of his name, right? He, as I recall, has never even been arrested.

Maybe the neocon sleaze in DC thought they had it all wired and they couldn’t fall. They were wrong. Wrapped in patriotism and religiosity, at heart they’re greedy, not too bright thugs. And about to take a fall.