Abramoff

Oh Ewww! The more I read about the Abramoff scandal the more depressed I get. Our democracy began with such great promise. Sure, I suppose that you have to acknowledge that it began with a group of aristocratic, wealthy, white men who did not intend to inclue the landless, minorities or women into the democracy. At least their votes couldn't be bought. History leads us to believe that several of these men were actually of great conscious. You have to wonder at today's politicians. And certainly I will blame them, but the sad truth is that the system seems almost to hinge on bribery, which has been exaggerated by virtually toothless finance laws, (admittedly better thanks to the McCain-Feingold Reform Act) and the need for BIG TIME funds to win elections . Seriously, for a candidate to actually win a national election in the United States s/he has to come up with such an INCREDIBLE amount of money to cover not only travel and touring expenses but a fortune in airtime. The magnificent funds needed to run a successful campaign lends itself that only those shady enough to get the money by whatever means necessary are going to win the seats in our House and Congress.

Today's article in the New York Times featured some pretty interesting points. The times reports, "Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois announced that he would donate to charity $69,000 in campaign contributions directed to him from Mr. Abramoff." Is your skin crawling? the article goes on to quote Hastert's spokesman as saying, "The speaker believes that while these contributions were legal, is is appropriate to donate the money to charity." Will giving the money to charity make it look legal to the Justice Department investigators? Will it really distance Hastert from Abramoff in the eyes of his constituency? I don't know. There are a lot of stupid people in the world.

But my favorite bit in the article was a one liner near the end that read, "Mr. Hastert has raised the possibility of new ethics training for lawmakers." Ah-ha! This cracks me up. Have you ever had to sit through a training video for OSHA or any other kinda' of low-budget type training production? You have to do it for some certification or another, so your whole office gathers, drinks coffee, eats donuts, and chats through the whole video. Can't you see our illustrious Senator and Representatives sitting through such a program? What a joke. If the elite, the chosen few among us who have been picked to represent the voice of the American people based on their experience, intelligence, and integrity need training on ethics we are in serious trouble.