Voters in three Western states saw through Howie Rich’s expensive con job for what it was and handed him a solid drubbing on Tuesday. Initiatives that would have wreaked havoc on land use controls and threatened to sap billions of dollars from state treasuries were rejected by voters in California, Idaho and Washington state.

Only in one state, Arizona, was Rich successful.

Nonprofits funded by Rich spent $8.6 million to finance campaigns that collected signatures in eight states to get the takings initiatives on the ballot and then  promote their passage. In four states, Missouri , Montana, Nevada and Oklahoma, the initiatives were barred from the ballot either by the courts or state officials.

Here’s how sanity prevailed on Nov. 7:

In California, Proposition 90 went down by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent.  Read the measure and analysis of it is here.

In Idaho, Proposition 2 suffered a 3:1 humiliation, suffering a 76 percent to 24 percent drubbing. Read the measure here.

In Washington, voters rejected Rich’s Proposition 933 by a margin of 58 percent to 42 percent. Read the measure here.

Unfortunately, Arizona voters were not so perceptive. They approved Proposition 207 by 65 percent to 34 percent.  Read the measure here.

In a report published before the Nov. 7 election, Public Citizen said,

“These initiatives, falsely advertised as necessary to prevent state governments from intruding on property owners, are actually intended to serve as cash cows for developers. If approved, the initiatives would leave state governments with an unacceptable choice between rolling back decades of environmental protection rules – such as those to combat sprawl, protect wetlands and preserve clean air and water – or paying bounties to developers as ‘compensation’ for being prevented from using their land however they please.”

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On August 3, 2002, Ohio voters probably didn’t care, or even know for that matter, that their Congressman, Bob Ney (R-Ohio), was being whisked away on a chartered plane for a golf trip in Scotland.  However after discovering that the golf trip was paid for by Indian gambling money funneled through religious charity foundations, and after discovering that the swanky trip was financed by disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Ohio voters will be given the opportunity this fall to prove the country’s dissatisfaction with the corruption in Washington.  Ney’s former Chief of Staff, Niel Volz, and Jack Abramoff have both pleaded guilty, admitting that they bribed the Congressman in exchange for official acts influencing laws, such as supporting Abramoff’s Indian gambling clients.  With Ney’s top Capitol Hill aides leaving and after federal investigators slapped a subpoena on his Ohio district director last week, Bob Ney has even described himself as “the most vulnerable House incumbent,” according to the political newsletter Hotline.

While Ney calls Abramoff a con man and claims he was duped by the scheming lobbyist, his arguments appear to hold little water when put next to his actions.  According to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, when Ney filled out his official House disclosure form, he claimed that the National Center for Public Policy Research was paying for the junket and that the purpose of the trip was to give a "speech to Scottish Parliamentarians."  However, that think tank denies sponsoring Ney while Abramoff’s records state that his foundation paid for the chartered jet.  Also, the Scottish Parliament shows that while other members of Congress visited during the same month, at the time of Ney’s trip, Parliament was in recess. "There is no way" that he could have addressed the body, according to a Parliament spokeswoman.

Four years after the now infamous St. Andrew’s golf trip, Abramoff has been convicted and will soon be behind bars, and Bob Ney is facing one of the most contested re-election campaigns in the country as his staffers are either subpoenaed or quitting their jobs.

Jack Abramoff has become a household name over the past year.   All one needs to do is mention him in order to bring attention to the scandalous ethics abuses which have involved bribes, lies, Indian casinos, lavish trips to golf courses in Europe, and secretly funneling illegal contributions through charities.

While most of the media has focused on these stories, not much attention has been given to looking into the personality and character of the man who created a massive web of corruption throughout Washington D.C. and the rest of the country.  Who is Jack Abramoff?  What type of person is able to justify these actions to himself?  How does his mind work?

We get a glimpse inside that mind in the recently released 357-page report of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which details Abramoff’s personal email conversations with his colleagues.  The Hill writes about two in particular, which show an astounding level of disrespect and even contempt for his clients – clients he was busy ripping off at the time.

In one email, Abramoff told a friend he was unable to go to lunch because he had a lunch with “the Gabon guys,” referring to representatives from the small, West African country.  When asked, “What is Gabon,” Abramoff offered a racial slur.

In another email, Abramoff labeled an Indian tribe he was working with as “troglodytes,” who were a “lower form of existence.”

Such deplorable bigotry and racism against anyone is disgusting, but in these cases Abramoff was actually speaking about his own clients. Should it surprise us that this same person was only too willing to subvert our democracy?

-Daniel Werner

Today’s conviction of former White House aide David Safavian, on charges that he lied and obstructed justice in the investigation of his dealings with disgraced former super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, is a breath of fresh air. (See today’s headlines, below.) While a number of players in the wide-ranging corruption probe, including Abramoff himself, pled guilty to charges, today’s conviction follows the first trial coming out of the Abramoff scandal.

Every once in a while, justice is served.

The larger and more important question, though, is who will follow? Safavian was found guilty on one count for lying about the infamous Abramoff-organized trip to St. Andrew’s golf course in Scotland in 2002. Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) was on that trip, and Ney’s former chief of staff Neil Volz (who has pled guilty), testifed against Safavian. Will Ney be the next one indicted? What about other inductees in our Hall of Shame, many of them under scrutiny for their ties to Abramoff? Given that Safavian was the top White House procurement officer, will his conviction once again raise the question of Bush’s ties to Abramoff?

The even larger question, of course, is whether additional convictions of current lawmakers will bring about changes in the way Congress does business, including better ethics rules and lobbying reform than the toothless jokes Congress offered up this spring. And if not, will that failure then lead to a reaction by the electorate in November…and a new crop of legislators more interested in doing the people’s business rather than the business of their campaign contributors and lobbyists?

-Gordon Clark

We are delighted to announce that the forces of fiscal sanity and fairness won a very important battle in the U.S. Senate today, as those trying to force a vote on full repeal of the estate tax failed to get enough support to end a threatened filibuster. The repeal attempt is, for the moment, dead.

We would like to thank every one of the Clean Up Washington activists and Corruption Watchdogs who made this victory possible.

The battle for estate tax repeal at its core represented the very essence of corruption in our nation’s capitol: special interests using large sums of money – through political contributions, intensive lobbying, and deceptive PR campaigns – to force through legislation to enrich themselves, rather than help the American people. A Public Citizen report proved that a small number of super-wealthy families (the Waltons, Mars and Gallos among them) were behind the repeal campaign. The report received nationwide news coverage and shaped the public debate by pointing out the self-interest of the ultra-rich families backing estate tax repeal.

While those families would have popped fancy champagne corks if the repeal had passed, the remaining 99.7 percent of us would have suffered mightily. Full repeal would have cost the U.S. Treasury up to $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) during the first ten years, a shortfall that would have resulted in cuts in vital services or higher taxes for everyone.

Unsurprisingly, too many senators chose to serve the interests of the wealthy elite, continuing to live in a fantasy land where debts never have to be repaid. Fortunately, enough of them – bolstered by your phone calls and emails – chose to do the right thing.

The Republican leadership may try to bring up a “compromise” bill, and you can be sure that we will be there to meet them if they try.   In the meantime, please accept our thanks once again for this important victory, and have a sip of champagne yourself – the cheap stuff, of course!

Read here for the statement by Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook

Click here to tell your senators that you support this vote for fairness and fiscal sanity.

-Gordon Clark