Reply #52: Ok. This is a first stab, but you're 5, so, please don't hurt me. [View All]

[jazzjunkysue]

(I know this is oversimplified and lacking in precision, so, disclaimer: It's a basic description, not a detailed account. Please, please, if you understand this better, just leave this here for all the new people who want a simple intro, OK??)

Thanks.

You're an indian tribe with a couple casinos. You want to build more. The other indian tribe does, too. So, you need permission from the state government to bend a few rules, like, allowing gambling boats, etc. And, the other tribe is getting better deals than you are.

So, a slick lawyer named Abramoff calls you up and says he can get you into the white house and senate and get you the deals you need. All you have to do is "pay" Abramoff millions of dollars to "Lobby" the legislators.

So, you do. Then, one day you find out about the other tribe and that their lawyer and your lawyer have been fradulently filing petitions and stuff against each other and billing both of you for lying to you and pretending to fight for you.

So, you clue in the federal investigators, and they finger a couple of people who helped Abramoff rob you: Scanlon and a few others. They finger Abramoff and the feds sit him down under a bright light, explaining that he can either go to jail for 30+ years, or 8, if he tells the feds which legislators changed the rules on your behalf.

And so he took the deal, and will be sentenced after the feds think they've gotten all of his emails and paperwork that will prove which lawmakers changed laws in return for lots of campaign contributions, and lots of very expensive toys and trips.

So, it's buying a law with millions of dollars so you can make more dollars. It's illegal for the house and senate to sell the power of their offices to the highest bidder. Abramoff was merely the broker. It's the lawmakers who took his money and re-wrote the laws that we really want indicted and thrown out of office.

Abramoff is tattling on the senate and congress to shorten his jail sentence.