Sunday, January 08, 2006

Protection rackets

As you surely know, "Godfather" Jack Abramoff (G.O.P. moneyman and funder of Israeli sniper schools) teamed up with Ralph Reed (a professional pseudo-Christian) to run a protection racket involving Indian tribes.

Any tribe that made a sufficient pay-off to Abramoff -- i.e., to the Republican party -- was allowed to operate a casino. If the Indians didn't fork over the dough (for Abramoff's alleged "lobbying" services), Reed would send word out to his hordes of Jesusmaniac zombies: "We are shocked -- SHOCKED to discover that gambling is taking place on Indian lands! Let us bring the wrath of God down upon the heathens!"

The Republicans, it seems, had a scheme to grab a huge chunk of all the world's casino action, including Indian gaming, internet gambling and casino boats operating outside U.S. territorial waters. That's one of two reasons why Godfather Jack and his gang insisted on grabbing the extremely lucrative casino boats operating out of South Florida.

(The other reason, of course, is drugs. Those boats come and go without oversight -- and if you're a grown-up, you know damn well what that means.)

Trouble was, the boats belonged to a fellow named Gus Boulis, who had previously made a tidy pile with his Miami Subs chain of sandwich shops. Boulis was also something of a thug -- one who wouldn't play ball with the GOP big boys. Godfather Jack and his partner Adam Kidan forced a sale -- see below -- and then welched on the payments they had promised. When Boulis complained, he was gunned down.

Daniel Hopsicker, in a fine new piece on the Abramoff scandal, puts the matter nicely:
Writing a quarter million dollars worth of checks (for no discernible purpose) to Mafia hit men who are later charged with the murder of the check-writer’s biggest enemy in the whole damn world is just another in a long line of "freak coincidences" in South Florida, a place where things have always been a little...different.
You probably already knew most or all of what I just wrote. However, far too few people are talking about the reason why local prosecutors refused to go after Abramoff and his casino boat partner Adam Kidan.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the State Attorney in Broward County is Michael Satz. Local wags refer to him as Michael Sitz, because he sits on cases -- particularly cases involving political corruption.

In the late 1990s, however, the normally lethargic lawman managed to rouse himself for an all out "Sitzkrieg." With uncharacteristic gusto, he went after...Gus Boulis.
The operators of the SunCruz ships and the New SeaEscape were charged individually with both unlawful sports bookmaking and casino gambling. The operators of the Monte Carlo were charged with unlawful casino gambling, while the operators of the Palm Beach Princess were charged with unlawful bookmaking.

The investigation was conducted jointly by the attorney general's office, Broward County State Attorney Michael Satz...
Several other county prosecutors were also involved.

You will recall that Gus Boulis was such an awful, awful man that even Representative Bob Ney of Ohio spoke out against him. Some may find it odd that a sandwich-seller in Florida should so perturb a politician from Ohio. Odd, too, that he should go out of his way to put flattering comments about Adam Kidan into the Congressional Record.

Of course, Ney was taking pay-offs from Godfather Jack.

My point is this: Boulis didn't sell his boats just because Bob Ney insulted him. Pressure from Florida prosecutors did the trick. They accused Boulis of various misdeeds, such as not making correct payouts to his customers.

Those were important crimes. Murder, it seems, is not.

Yes, the murder investigation is now a state matter; Sitz can't sit on this one all by himself. But even at the state level, we're talking about the same fellows who went after Boulis.

Who watches the watchmen? Abramoff may be singing now, but does anyone want to hear him sing about...oh, say, Michael Satz?

The killing of Gus Boulis will probably go down in history as one of those crimes -- everyone knows what really happened, even though the guys who ordered the hit will probably never be charged with murder. Don't expect to see headlines about Republican thugs who use gunfire to control the gaming and drug trades. If such headlines ever do appear, even the Jesusmaniac zombies might get a clue as to what their beloved G.O.P. has really been up to these past couple of decades.

There are all sorts of protection rackets. The most important one: Protecting the public from ever hearing the truth.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you know amything about why SunCruz ended up in bankruptcy? Why did such a lucrative business go belly-up a few years after the Kidan/Abramoff purchase?

Anonymous said...

An article just posted on Robert Parry's Consortiumnews website seems more encouraging:

Brian Cavanaugh, a prosecutor in Ft. Lauderdale, said late Friday that his office is making arrangements to interview Abramoff and two of his associates, Michael Scanlon and Adam Kidan, as potential witnesses in the 2001 murder of Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis, who had sold the SunCruz casino line to Abramoff and Kidan....

While the prosecutors in the Boulis case were not involved in the plea bargaining that led to Abramoff’s guilty pleas in Washington and Miami this past week, Cavanaugh’s office does stand to benefit because the plea deals require cooperation with prosecutors on all cases.

Cavanaugh said Abramoff – as well as Kidan and Scanlon, who also have entered guilty pleas on fraud charges – will be questioned in the next couple of weeks about what they might know regarding Boulis’s murder.

As for how useful that information will be, Cavanaugh said, “It depends on whether we believe them or not. All these guys come with baggage.”

Maybe law enforcement authorities are not necessarily "sitting" on this one. However, I have been wondering what incentive would Abramoff and Kidan have to enter into plea agreements if they had to fear a possible future death penalty sentence for murder? Why bother ratting out your fellow conspirators if you may end up paying the ultimate penalty any way? I think this plea agreement strategy and negotiation would have to have been a very tricky thing, considering how deeply involved Abramoff is involved in the GOP corruption.

Some good insights and interesting commentary on this post, Joe.

Now, when are we going to hear about the indictments of Karl Rove, et al, by Patrick Fitzgerald?