Anyone besdies me remember an earlier similar incident during the 2000 Florida recount in which goons (in white shirts and ties) from Tom DeLay's Washington office entered the Miami government office and disrupted efforts to count the vote?
[Thanks to TPM]
Addendum
Remember the year 2000 Brooks Brothers Riot instigated by Bush's Republicans? Here is a precis to give details:
After the Miami “Brooks Brothers Riot” – named after the protesters’ preppie clothing – no government action was taken beyond the police rescuing several Democrats who were surrounded and roughed up by the rioters. While no legal charges were filed against the Republicans, newly released documents show that at least a half dozen of the publicly identified rioters were paid by Bush’s recount committee.This is from The Consortium.
The payments to the Republican activists are documented in hundreds of pages of Bush committee records – released grudgingly to the Internal Revenue Service last month, 19 months after the 36-day recount battle ended. Overall, the records provide a road map of how the Bush recount team brought its operatives across state lines to stop then-Vice President Al Gore’s recount efforts.
The records show that the Bush committee spent a total of $13.8 million to frustrate the recount of Florida’s votes and secure the state's crucial electoral votes for Bush. By contrast, the Gore recount operation spent $3.2 million, about one quarter of the Bush total. Bush spent more just on lawyers – $4.4 million – than Gore did on his entire effort.
Extended Deadline
The new evidence was submitted by the Bush recount committee to the IRS under an extended deadline for disclosures of soft-money spending by so-called “527 committees,” which are not directly related to a candidate’s campaign. Bush lawyers had argued that they were not obligated legally to disclose how they had raised and spent their money.
The Bush committee finally reversed itself and filed the records on July 15. The records were released to the public on the IRS Web site in late July. Gore's committee submitted its records in line with the original IRS deadlines.
The documents show that the Bush organization put on the payroll about 250 staffers, spent about $1.2 million to fly operatives to Florida and elsewhere, and paid for hotel bills adding up to about $1 million. To add flexibility to the travel arrangements, a fleet of corporate jets was assembled, including planes owned by Enron Corp., then run by Bush backer Kenneth Lay, and Halliburton Co., where Dick Cheney had served as chairman and chief executive officer.
Only a handful of the Brooks Brothers rioters were publicly identified, some through photographs published in the Washington Post. Jake Tapper’s book on the recount battle, Down and Dirty, provides a list of 12 Republican operatives who took part in the Miami riot. Half of those individuals received payments from the Bush recount committee, according to the IRS records.
The Miami protesters who were paid by Bush recount committee were: Matt Schlapp, a Bush staffer who was based in Austin and received $4,276.09; Thomas Pyle, a staff aide to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, $456; Michael Murphy, a DeLay fund-raiser, $935.12; Garry Malphrus, House majority chief counsel to the House Judiciary subcommittee on criminal justice, $330; Charles Royal, a legislative aide to Rep. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. $391.80; and Kevin Smith, a former GOP House staffer, $373.23.
Three of the Miami protesters are now members of Bush’s White House staff, the Miami Herald reported last month. They include Schlapp, who is now a special assistant to the president; Malphrus, who is now deputy director of the president’s Domestic Policy Council; and Joel Kaplan, another special assistant to the president. [See Miami Herald, July 14, 2002]
The Bush committee records show, too, that Bush’s operation paid for the hotel where the Republican protesters celebrated after the Miami riot at a Thanksgiving Day party. At the party, the activists received thank-you phone calls from Bush and Cheney, and were serenaded by crooner Wayne Newton, singing “Danke Schoen,” German for thank-you very much. [Wall Street Journal, Nov. 27, 2000; Consortiumnews.com's "W's Triumph of the Will"]
The IRS records show that the Bush recount committee paid $35,501.52 to the Hyatt Regency Pier 66 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where the party was held.
The House of Masquerades
A number of miscellaneous expenses, reported by the Bush recount committee, also appear to have gone for party items, such as lighting, sound systems and even costumes. Garrett Sound and Lighting in Fort Lauderdale was paid $5,902; Beach Sound Inc. in North Miami was paid $3,500; and the House of Masquerades, a costume shop in Miami, had three payments totaling $640.92, according to the Bush records.
The Brooks Brothers Riot – carried live on CNN and other networks – marked a turning point in the recount battle. At the time, Bush clung to a lead that had dwindled to several hundred votes and Gore was pressing for recounts. The riot in Miami and the prospects of spreading violence were among the arguments later cited by defenders of the 5-to-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Dec. 12, 2000, that stopped a statewide Florida recount and handed Bush the presidency.
Backed by the $13.8 million war chest, the Bush operation made clear in Miami and in other protests that it was ready to kick up plenty of political dust if it didn’t get its way.
A later unofficial recount by news organizations found that if all legally cast ballots in Florida had been counted – regardless of which kinds of chads were accepted, whether punched-through, hanging or dimpled – Gore would have won Florida and thus the presidency. Gore also won the national popular vote, defeating Bush by more than a half million votes, making Bush the first popular-vote loser in more than a century to be installed in the White House. [Consortiumnews.com's "So Bush Did Steal the White House"]
Across State Lines
The evidence also is clear that the Bush campaign organized the transportation of Republican activists across state lines into Florida. As early as mid-November, the Bush campaign called on activists to rush to Florida and promised to pay their expenses. “We now need to send reinforcements,” the Bush campaign said in an appeal to Republicans on Nov. 18, 2000. “The campaign will pay airfare and hotel expenses for people willing to go.” [See Tapper’s Down and Dirty.]
These reinforcements – many of them Republican staffers from Capitol Hill – added an angrier tone to the dueling street protests already underway between supporters of Bush and Gore. The new wave of Republican activists injected “venom and volatility into an already edgy situation,” wrote Tapper.
“This is the new Republican Party, sir!” Brad Blakeman, Bush’s campaign director of advance travel logistics, bellowed into a bullhorn to disrupt a CNN correspondent interviewing a Democratic congressman. “We’re not going to take it anymore!”
Around the country, the conservative media apparatus, led by talk show host Rush Limbaugh and pro-Bush pundits, rallied the faithful with charges that a hand recount was fraudulent and amounted to "inventing" votes.
1 comment:
The new White House chief of staff for policy, Joel Kaplan, was a participant in the Brooks Brothers Riot. This administration takes brazen bullying to new heights. When will the American people call them to account? The Republicans in all three branches of the federal government are an absolute disgrace. I am ashamed to be part of a national community that has allowed these people to take control of the government.
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