AFL-CIO Tries to Tag Bush Nominee With Abramoff Link

Members of Congress are giving back tainted campaign contributions. Staff members across Capitol Hill and the executive branch are combing their e-mail archives. Lobbyists are praying they don't get a call from the FBI. All are suffering from Washington's latest malady, what might be called Abramoff Anxiety. That's the pervasive fear of somehow getting ensnared in the investigation of Jack Abramoff, the former king of K Street, benefactor of the powerful -- a lobbyist who sprinkled cash, MCI Center box seats and luxury trips to Scotland and the Northern Marianas to friends and business partners across town.

The case of Peter N. Kirsanow, a Cleveland lawyer whom President Bush has tapped for a seat on the National Labor Relations Board, is a good example of how even tangential connections to Abramoff can now be a delicate subject.
The AFL-CIO, which would love to sink Kirsanow's nomination, is hoping to use alleged links to Abramoff to make life difficult for him. Kirsanow, who currently sits on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, calls Abramoff a stranger.

To hear the AFL-CIO tell it, Kirsanow is "a mouthpiece for extremist right-wing issues" who has "horrified the civil rights community." In addition -- and this next part requires a deep breath and careful reading -- he is "a prominent member of a project of the Center which Abramoff used as a front group for the Scotland golfing junket, among others."

The case goes like this: Kirsanow has served on an advisory board and done some writing for a group called Project 21. Project 21 sought to get publicity for the views of conservative blacks, including Kirsanow. Project 21, says the AFL-CIO, "is an initiative for the National Center for Public Policy Research," which happened in turn to be "the front" group that Abramoff and business interests used to pay for alleged golfing junkets taken by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), the former House majority leader. The center is also reported to have received a $1.07 million donation from Abramoff's client, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. Kirsanow, in an interview, dismissed the allegations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/24/AR2005122400774.html

Hope your LTTE was phrased exactly that way.

Did you know that the MTA are blameless saints trying to deal with the irrational demands of the rich and overprivileged TWU?

Because, after 25 working at a so-so barely adequate salary, retiring on half of it is just too princely to imagine.

A little over a year ago, there was a series of lengthy threads at DU about Medicare scam letters that NCPPR was sending out to little old ladies. This was before Jack Abramoff's name had ever come up. It eventually turned out that the head of NCPPR, Amy Ridenour, is an old pal of Abramoff's from his College Republican days. The ties there are very close, and it's no coincidence that Abramoff was launding funds through them.

In addition, Project 21 is a fake black front group, mainly run by the white folks at NCPPR. If Kirsanow was associated with them, he has to have known the organization was crooked.