Capitol punishment : the hard truth about Washington corruption from America's most notorious lobbyist by Abramoff Jack

Author:Abramoff, Jack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Abramoff, Jack, Lobbyists, Political corruption
Publisher: Washington, DC : WND Books
Published: 2011-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

In Bad Company

had my hook.

How could a bill to ban gaming on the Internet carve out a significant part of the gambling industry as an exception? The beauty of this provision was that it actually did expand Internet gambling. It wasn’t just some artifice we had concocted in our office.

Our team set out to warn anti-gambling Congressmen of this loophole. Immediately, we conjured up images of young children sitting on their computers in their homes, placing bets on the races. What had until then been the murky, gray area of Internet pari-mutuel betting now became perfectly legal, inviting far more Internet gambling than the current status quo.

I knew that if I convinced the House Republicans to eliminate this exception, the bill would be unable to survive the horse state filibusters in the Senate. If the racing exemption remained, then Congress would be voting for a bill which would increase —not eliminate—Internet gambling. The proponents of the bill would be left to argue that half a loaf of bread was better than none at all. This may be true in real life, but not necessarily in legislating. A compromise on this bill, we argued, would mean millions of children gambling for the first time in their lives.

Our opponents fell into our trap. They posited that the bill in no way legalized gambling and that we were being mendacious. I responded with a prop, a political poster reminiscent of my College Republican and Red Scorpion days. Posters were not used in the lobbying world back then, but I thought they could convey our message better than anything we could say. With only an hour to get something produced, we came up with a simple poster alluding to the lies which pervade the system of government we so love:

THREE WASHINGTON WHOPPERS:

“THE ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT IS OVER”

“I NEVER HAD SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH THAT WOMAN” “THE INTERNET GAMBLING PROHIBITION ACT WILL BAN GAMBLING ON THE INTERNET”

To emphasize the point, the poster then revealed the precise language in the bill exempting horse and dog racing from the ban.

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