Casino Jack and the United States of Money

[first lines]

Jack Abramoff:
[in an e-mail message to Alex Gibney] Why would you want to make a documentary? No one watches documentaries. You should make an action film!

Himself - Press Secretary for Tom DeLay:
It's amazing how many members of Congress wanted *in* with Jack.

Himself - Republican Activist:
I don't want to abolish government - I just want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it.

Jack Abramoff:
Has it always been like this - or has something changed? Were we more innocent once - or just naive? Is the story of Abramoff, the story of personal corruption or the story of what our Democracy has become?

Jack Abramoff:
The buying and selling of politicians is the free market in action.

Herself - Former Reporter, The Washington Post:
Abramoff couldn't have flourished if the system itself was not corrupt.

Himself - Author, The Wrecking Crew:
You said something earlier about, whether or not Jack Abramoff was a rotten apple or if it was the whole barrel. And the obvious answer to me is that it's the whole barrel. Abramoff is fascinating to me because he is the idealism mixed with the corruption - in one guy. The layers of irony in that whole paranoid world view, where everybody is a pawn of somebody else or some big power. And, of course he is a pawn of big power - of money. He is not the evil. It's what's behind him.

Himself - Representative, Ohio:
This has all gone into a feeding frenzy with money. I don't know what the solution is. I would have loved to have public financing. 'Here's your money, and here's your money; and you don't have to raise any.' This would end all of that if you had a different system. But right now - we don't.

Himself - Author, So Damn Much Money:
The great American pastime has never been baseball, it has always been making money. And we all hope that we're going to be the one to strike it rich next month. That gives the wealthy interests in our society, a huge leg up. Because every time a politician comes along and says, hey wait a minute the rich are getting away with murder; let's take it back from them - a lot of ordinary people say, 'No, no. Don't take it back from them because next year I'm gonna be rich. And I want that to be there when I arrive.'

Himself - Representative, California:
The translator said, 'He says, if you're a powerful man, can you help me sell one of my kidneys; so I can pay my debt and go home?'