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| Tom DeLay's righteous prosecutor |
| 2005-10-06 |
| Thereâs no doubt that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) would rather not be the target of zealous prosecutor. But if he must be such a target, DeLay is probably lucky that the prosecutor in question is Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle. In the case so far â the latest news came Monday, when Earle got a grand jury, on its first day, before it had a chance to get a cup of coffee, to indict DeLay on money-laundering charges â Earle has shown a strange enthusiasm in pursuing his case. More than anything else, Earle seems motivated by a desire to educate the country about his belief that corporate campaign contributions constitute an evil influence in American politics. Just look at what DeLay defenders call the âdollars for dismissalsâ scheme. As part of the DeLay investigation, in September 2004 Earle indicted eight corporations on charges of making illegal political contributions. But then he approached several of them with a deal. According to a source close to one of those companies, Sears, Earle offered to drop the charges if Sears agreed to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University for the purpose of producing a program designed to educate the public on the evils of corporate contributions. âThey asked for an outrageous amount of money,â one Sears source said last summer â especially since the maximum penalty Sears would have faced had it lost the case would have been $20,000. But Earle wanted to get his message to the American public. âMy concern has been that there needed to be a conversation about the role of corporations in American democracy,â he said a few months ago. âHow do you do that? I think it is vitally important to the future of the country that there be a discussion of this concept.â Sears refused to give money to Stanford, suggesting an alternative program â the same sort of thing â at the University of Texas in Austin. Earle agreed, and Sears turned over $100,000. The agreement between Sears and Earle says, âThe defendant, after discussions with the district attorney, has decided to financially support a nonpartisan, balanced and publicly informative program or series of programs relating to the role of corporations in American democracy.â Sears also acknowledged that corporate contributions âconstitute a genuine threat to democracy.â Three other companies â Cracker Barrel, Questerra and Diversified Collection Services â made similar deals with Earle. That was then. Now, thereâs even more evidence that Earle is using the DeLay investigation as part of an educational crusade. For the past two years, Earle has allowed two Texas filmmakers to follow him around as he conducted the investigation that led to the recent indictments. The resulting film, âThe Big Buy,â features long interviews with Earle â DeLay did not cooperate â and, once more, Earle focuses on his pet cause. âThe root of the evil of the corporate and large-monied-interest domination of politics is money,â Earle says in the film. âThis is in the Bible. This isnât rocket science. The root of all evil truly is money, especially in politics. People talk about how money is the motherâs milk of politics. Well, itâs the devilâs brew. And what weâve got to do, weâve got to turn off the tap.â And just to make it completely clear that Earle considers corporate money in politics a very, very, bad thing, at another point in the movie he calls it âevery bit as insidious as terrorism.â Now, perhaps you, too, believe that Searsâs (probably legal) $25,000 contribution to a DeLay-related political action committee was as bad as Sept. 11. Or perhaps you donât. But in Earleâs mind, apparently, itâs all connected. âWhatâs funny is, the regular run-of-the-mill work of a prosecutorâs office,â he says in the film, âwhich sounds like a horror story â murder, rape, robbery, burglary, theft, child abuse, these horrible things people do to each other â itâs hard to see the connection between the abuse of the democratic process and dealing crack, for example, or robbing a 7-Eleven, but there is a connection.â It would be nice if Earle would explain what that is, but he doesnât. And his words become even more inexplicable when one considers that Texas is one of just 18 states that bar corporate contributions to campaigns (although corporations can contribute to the administration expenses of political action committees). That means 32 states do not have such a ban. So is that a crime as serious as murder? Rape? Robbery? Donât say that to Earle. His performance in âThe Big Buyâ sends an ominous warning to anyone who might disagree with his particular vision. âItâs important that we forgive those who come to us in a spirit of contrition and the desire for forgiveness,â Earle says. âBut if they donât, then God help them.â |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #8 It's all greek to me. |
| Posted by: Aris the K 2005-10-06 19:19 |
| #7 Earle has a history of this political thing. He needs a slap or a criminal inditement with teeth for the way that he abuses his prosecutorial powers. People in that position can ruin people's lives on a whim. Anyone out there in legal land want to take on Earle? ACLU? |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2005-10-06 19:16 |
| #6 ðáÃôùà ôùà êáêùà What kinda blog don't paste greeks? |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-10-06 18:05 |
| #5 A sane federal prosecutor could go after Earle for violating DeLay's Constitutional right to due process. The grand jury shopping sounds like prosecutorial abuse. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-10-06 15:26 |
| #4 Anybody remember Ronnie Earle's indictment of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson for campaign violations about 10 years ago? The presiding judge threw out the charges. I think it is a vendetta against DeLay's crucial role in Texas redistricting so that congressional representatives more accurately reflect the vote. For years, via gerrymandering, Texas had a majority of Democratic congressmen even as the voters, as a state whole, vote Republican. Anybody remember the Texas legislature Democrats fleeing the state (twice) to avoid having to vote on the new congressional districts? Just by indicting Delay, Earle gets DeLay to step down as Majority Leader (House rules). But vendettas go both ways. Start by zeroing out Austin's road construction funds. Let them stew in the summer with half finished highways and overpasses and construction firms aching to tear out Earle's throat. Add to the pain each year. The Repubs control the purse strings/pain dial. Use it. |
| Posted by: ed 2005-10-06 14:41 |
| #3 I see the Greek font won't paste. In Latin letters it would read, panton ton kakon. The "o's" are Omegas. |
| Posted by: Ebboling Glaving8046 2005-10-06 14:19 |
| #2 The sentence is typcially translated as follows: "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils." For those who care, the Greek all kinds of evils (bad things)reads, "ðáÃôùà ôùà êáêùÃ". The older translation "all evil" ignores the Greek plural. The sentence has nothing to do with campaign contributions. The context has to do with people who so strongly desire to become rich that they sacrifice everything to be rich. The warning is that desiring to be can destroy a person, i.e., greed can lead to bad ends. Money itself is amoral. The principle has some apparent application to Earle, in that he is apparently so greedy for DeLay's scalp, that he is compromising the justice system to achieve his end. |
| Posted by: Ebboling Glaving8046 2005-10-06 14:18 |
| #1 That flaming a-hole doesn't even get the Bible quotation right. It's the LOVE of money that's the root of all evil. Ignorant, prancing, toad. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2005-10-06 12:58 |