As Vile as Abramoff is (More Below) Think He's the Only One?

Charity is in Abramoff's blood. As, apparently, is stealing from them. But it's ok, because they're the charities he set up in the first place for funneling money.

Like the American International Center. What an impressive name for a beach house near Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. The "Center" was used by Abramoff and his chrony Michael Scanlon, to funnel money from lobbying clients to their personal accounts. We should have have such wonderful International Centers at our disposal!

For more nationally oriented covers, there was the National Center for Public Policy Research here in DC that Abramoff used to funnel over $2 million back to himself and Scanlon.

For those who prefer sports charity, there was the Capital Athletic Foundation, a youth charity created by Abramoff that also served to funnel money.

And don't worry, Abramoff made sure that his charities helped benefit religion as well. There was the Mercer Island, Washington charity Toward Tradition, that promoted "traditional Judeo Christian values" by letting Abramoff funnel $50,000 to one of DeLay's aides.

And the people in some of these charities? The real ones, that is? What did they know of Abramoff's schemes? Well the head of Toward Tradition, Rabbi Lapin, apparently did not suspect a thing when his anti-gambling organization received money from Abramoff's client, "eLottery." No doubt in the Rabbi's mind, eLottery was an acronym for something in line with those traditional values.

I think I'll stick with my apparently non traditional values that don't include bribery and kickbacks. I'm soooooooo old fashioned!