Curtis Brown, president of the Student Government at the Borough of Manhattan Community College is following in the footsteps of a young Jack Abramoff. As reported in the New York Daily News:

May 13, 2008, Brown is trying to evict the New York Public Interest Research Group, NYPIRG from BMCC.The PIRGs have always focused on things like responsible government, consumer protection, and an informed citizenry making intelligent decisions. As chairman of the College Republicans, in 1983, Abramoff and his right-wing storm troopers did not “seek peaceful coexistence with the left.” They felt that their “job is to remove them from power permanently.” Brown is doing what Abramoff tried to do 25 years ago.

Here’s what Thomas Frank wrote in the New York Times, August 29, 2006, “Defunders of Liberty:”

Abramoff and his clean-cut campus radicals pushed their own “defund the left” campaign with characteristic elan, declaring war on Ralph Nader’s Public Interest Research Groups, or PIRG, environmental and consumer activist outfits that were funded by student activity fees on some campuses. The young conservatives were always careful to cast the issue as a matter of “student rights” versus political coercion, but Abramoff clearly saw it as an avenue to ideological victory. “When we win this one,” he boasted in 1983, “we’ll have done more to neutralize Ralph Nader than anyone else, ever.”

The NY Times article is re-published in the blogosphere, click here, and here, and can be googled or yahooed.

Abramoff, currently serving 70 months for conspiracy and fraud, has also admitted to tax evasion, defrauding his clients and conspiring to bribe public officials.