Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Mirror, mirror, who's the most corrupt?


The Abramoff fund-raising scandal hasn't aroused much interest in me so far. Basically, it's akin to reading that the sun has come up. Politics has always been crooked, it was in Christ's time and there's no difference now. Therefore, it's not surprising to see that some shiester was waltzing around DC handing out quid pro quo chicklets and tee times to St. Andrews for service. Naseauting, not surprising.

The republicans cannot defend this, it's shady and heads need to roll. But lobbyists are equal opportunity operators. The payoff money flows to whomever is in position to fix a problem. Tennessee had a notorious one in the news last year--Operation Tennessee Waltz. Most of those involved were democrats. So fixing the problem requires more than ousting or humiliating one party or the other.

But alas, the Abramoff story will become another Bush-bash for the mainstream press. Although there is a tangential connection to democrats in this story, we'll see little coverage of that angle. Quotes like this make bigger headlines:
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Abramoff's confession in court was "not a surprise because this Republican Congress is the most corrupt in history and the American people are paying the price."

See, all we need to do is remove Bush and his cronies and everything will be sweetness and light! By the way, that's a pretty powerful charge from Ms. Pelosi. There was no fact-check provided from the AP, but perhaps their very next paragraph regarding the 1992 House banking scandal, which "resulted in the retirement or ouster of 77 lawmakers", amounted to a quiet rebuttal.

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