Republicans Behind Bars: A Serio-Comic Parade of GOP Hooligans
It may be tempting to look at the latest indictment of a Republican lawmaker and conclude, as my sainted grandfather did many years ago, that “all Republicans are crooks.” A loyal Chicago Democrat through and through, none of us had the heart (or courage) to mention to grandpa a few of the more brazenly corrupt scandals that had tainted the Cook County political machine run by Richard J. Daley, the current mayor’s father.
The indicted lawmaker, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), is charged with seven counts of lying on a financial disclosure form. Using the recent past as a guide, this is pretty tame stuff. But it is highly unlikely the prosecutors are through with the 85-year-old senator because just over the horizon are almost certain indictments for bribery relating to work done on the senator’s house to the tune of $250,000 in gifts from VECO, an oil services firm. It seems the CEO of VECO, seeking government contracts, wanted to get extra chummy with the senator and offered to pay for most of the expansion costs on Steven’s house. Actually, it worked out pretty well at first. Stevens doubled the size of his home and VECO received some nice, rich government contracts.
Alas, no good bribery scheme lasts forever. Two VECO executives have already pleaded guilty to bribery charges and the chances are very good that they will roll on Stevens and testify against him. It would be an ignoble end to a career that has defined all that is wrong with pork-barrel spending in Washington. Stevens was one of the biggest abusers of the “earmark” process and funneled tens of millions of dollars to his home state over the years in appropriations that were snuck into bills without debate or discussion.
The problem, of course, is not grandpa’s “all Republicans are crooks” meme. It’s that the rising expense of congressional campaigns and growing power of lobbyists have combined to offer temptations for corruption that have proven irresistible to a frighteningly large number of members of Congress — both Democratic and Republican — over the past 25 years.
The controlling factor regarding political corruption appears to be which party is in power at any given time, rather than any predilection toward crookedness by one party or the other. Take the Democrats of the 1980s and early 1990s. Ensconced in power for 50 years, Democrats were involved in scandal after scandal that rocked Capitol Hill. The parade of crooked pols included five House members and a senator caught up in the ABSCAM scandal where Arab businessmen/lobbyists (played with great effect and glee by FBI agents) openly offered huge dollops of cash in exchange for immigration and banking favors.
The videotapes of the encounters with the lawmakers bordered on hilarious. One greedy Democrat, after stuffing $25,000 in his coat and pants, actually asked the FBI/Arab businessman “Does it show?” All of the Congressman — including a young John Murtha who appeared to turn down the bribe but later seemed to be wavering — knew full well what was in that briefcase and they couldn’t take their eyes off of it. As a morality play, it was a huge hit.
There was Congressman Charles Diggs of Michigan who was convicted and sent to jail for receiving kickbacks from the salaries of his staff after giving them raises. The good people of his district were either unaware or didn’t care that Charlie was in the klink because, despite being jailed, he was re-elected. Diggs resigned rather than face certain expulsion.
Then there were the “Keating Five.” The Ethics Committee in the Senate determined that three Democratic senators had improperly interfered in a regulatory matter on behalf of Charles Keating, real estate mogul and owner of several Savings and Loans that had gone under. Two other senators — John McCain and John Glenn — were absolved of wrongdoing. McCain was the only Republican named in the ethics complaint.
There were others — House Speaker Jim Wright most prominent among them — who were either censured for unethical behavior or under investigation for malfeasance of one kind or another. The rash of special prosecutors during the 1990s also targeted many Democrats who served in the Clinton administration.
The adage “power corrupts” is too simple. There are many who hold power who manage to maintain their integrity. Senator Larry Pressler from South Dakota was seen on tape refusing ABSCAM money and immediately reporting the meeting to the FBI. And most congressmen and senators make an attempt to hold onto their values while serving the nation.
But in the last eight years, we have seen a serio-comic parade of Republican hooligans whose shocking greed has altered the meaning of corruption.
The rogues gallery includes:
— Feb. 22, 2008: Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Arizona) indicted on charges of extortion, wire fraud, money laundering and other crimes in an Arizona land swap that authorities say helped him collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs.
— June 11, 2007: Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) arrested in a bathroom sex sting at the Minneapolis airport. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. He is now asking a state appeals court to let him withdraw his guilty plea.
— Jan. 19, 2007: Former Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for trading political favors for gifts and campaign donations from lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
— March 3, 2006: Former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-California) sentenced to eight years and four months in prison. He collected $2.4 million in homes, yachts, antique furnishings and other bribes in a corruption scheme.
— Oct. 3, 2005: Former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) charged with felony money laundering and conspiracy in connection with Republican fundraising efforts in 2002. One charge has been dropped and two others are being argued before a state appeals court.
— Aug. 29, 2003: Rep. William Janklow (R-South Dakota) charged with felony second-degree manslaughter and three misdemeanors after his car struck and killed a motorcyclist. He was convicted of vehicular homicide and sentenced to 100 days in prison.
Other shoes that could be dropping:
– John Doolittle (R-California) who is caught up in the Jack Abramoff mess and also has ties to Duke Cunninghams’s partner in crime Brent Wilkes. Either or both investigations may hit pay dirt.
– Jerry Lewis (R-California) is enmeshed in a federal investigation into a lobbying firm headed up by former Republican Congressman Bill Lowery. It is alleged that Lewis, former chairman of the Appropriations Committee, steered hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks and other appropriations to clients of Lowery who then gave to his campaign. It is one the largest bribery investigations in California history involving local governments, universities, and private companies.
– Don Young (R-Alaska) is another Alaska congressman caught up in scandal. It appears that Young inserted an earmark in the budget after the House and Senate voted on a bill (but before Bush signed it) worth $10 million to construct an interstate interchange. Nothing really extraordinary in that except the interchange was not to be located in Alaska but someplace slightly further south — in Florida. Apparently, a developer raised a lot of money for Young’s campaign just prior to the earmark being surreptitiously placed in the bill. Feds are investigating.
– Gary Miller (R-California) is under investigation by the FBI for a real nice real estate scam that’s been ongoing for years. Three separate properties he has bought for a song, sold for a ton, and then claimed the local government declared “eminent domain” forcing him to sell. Miller would then not claim the profits as taxable capital gains due to the “imminent” seizure of the property. One problem: this time, the local government of Monrovia is denying it threatened to invoke eminent domain.
– Tim Murphy (R-Pennsylvania) is under federal investigation for getting caught using his staff for campaign purposes. Note I said “getting caught” because they all skirt the line between official business and campaigning — or go over it in an overt fashion.
– Mark Foley (R-Florida) may not have broken the law but his steamy emails to barely legal kids who were former House pages epitomized a culture of corruption on the Republican-controlled Hill when it was revealed that several GOP Congressional leaders knew of Foley’s interest in the pages and did nothing.
There are also a half dozen former Republican members of Congress who are under investigation for activities carried out while they were serving in the House.
And Democrats are in trouble too. William Jefferson (D-Louisiana), last seen ordering National Guardsmen in New Orleans to assist him in saving items from his house during hurricane Katrina, was caught with $90,000 in his freezer and has been indicted on 16 counts ranging from bribery to wire fraud relating to his business dealings in Africa.
Also, Allan Mollahan (D-West Virginia) is under investigation for steering earmarks to campaign contributors and business partners.
In 2001, Rep. James Traficant (D-Ohio) was sentenced to eight years in prison after being convicted of racketeering and accepting bribes.
The common thread running through almost all of these corrupt practices is cash for campaigns. The non-profit group Public Citizen spells it out in black and white:
The cost of congressional campaigns has skyrocketed, from an average of about $87,000 spent for successful House elections in 1976 (about $308,000 in 2006 dollars) to an average of $1.3 million spent on winning campaigns in 2006. Successful Senate candidates in 1976 spent an average of $609,000 (about $2.2 million in 2006 dollars), and in 2006, the average Senate winner spent an astonishing $9.6 million.
Starting the day after they are elected, House members must begin raising more than $1,000 a day to amass large enough war chests to wage their next campaign, while senators must raise more than $3,000 per day.
It’s not just the money game that has changed. Lobbyists have gone far beyond simply advocating the passage of legislation to benefit their clients. They have become one-stop shops for corruption. Junketing with their favorite members, bestowing goodies both large and small on their targets, they can also raise copious amounts of campaign cash. And the competition among the lobbyists is so ferocious that things were guaranteed to get out of hand. In the case of Jack Abramoff, they did. The lobbyist spread millions around Capitol Hill and was hugely successful in getting his clients what they wanted and needed from government. In no time, he went from a minor player into the big leagues in terms of billings.
Unless something is done to reform both campaign finance and lobbying rules, the chances are excellent that in a few years the Democrats will have their own sorry bunch of lawbreakers and scofflaws with their mugshots plastered all over the Internet. That is the culture on Capitol Hill at the moment.
And despite promises from both John McCain and Barack Obama to reform this mess, the prospects for real change seem remote.
Rick, several of the men listed don’t square with your theme of corruption. Craig and Foley were more horny than corrupt, and I don’t know why you list vehicular manslaughter- unless you’re insinuating something- fits in there, either. Furthermore, after two years of…um, delay, with those remaining charges, is it not time to accept that the former majority leader from Texas is never going to be convicted of any wrongdoing? ^_^
Agreed with Typewriter King. Foley doesn’t appear to have broken any laws — the age of sexual consent in the District of Columbia is 16 — and it’s not clear that Larry Craig did either. (The ACLU has argued that the “offense” he pleaded guilty to is based on an unconstitutional statute.)
Being gay is not a crime. Deal with it.
Corruption and greed are inescapable elements of the human condition. No collection of people is exempt.
Republicans do a better, albeit still less than perfect job of turning out its miscreants. Yes, the GOP should have turned out Stevens long ago. They deserve to get dinged for him.
What is notable is that the Dems seem to support (if not celebrate) their character deficient: Hastings, Frank, Jefferson…
The message is clear – big government and huge piles of money are invitations for corruption. We need to return to our founding principles of minimalist government.
Actually,in the Abscam case it was a Republican(Kelly from Florida)who said of his bribe filled coat,”Does it show?”.Most of the Abscam miscreants,though,were Democrats,including John Jeanrette,whose wife Rita later posed in Playboy!
And posing for Playboy is a crime? Why do some social conservatives seem to hate heterosexuals?
What about Rep. Richardson from Long Beach, CA?
She financed her congressional election by borrowing against her three (3) sub-prime speculatory flip-and-grow-rich house loans, then walked away from all three, essentially sticking the banks with her campaign costs.
Best part: After taking her seat in Congress and her greed caught up with her, she claims to be a victim of predatory lending. And will probably be bailed out by the housing bail out bill.
So taxpayers will have financed her campaign. No corruption here.
The issue not being considered: The public owns the airwaves. Yet, the licensees have defacto franchise to lawfully extorting billions from the perpetual political campaign industry. Media buys have and continue to drive up the cost of political campaigns. The demands for more and more money are mostly due to the cost of media buys that place what is essentially a private tax on a critical civic process conducted the greater national interest. Why do we allow this rogue “taxation” to continue as it does? TV talking heads with multimillion salaries are ‘directly indirectly’ funded by the massive flows of political campaign dollars and political policies that allow heavily regulated municipal corporations like utilities and medical insurance companies to advertise, running up costs to end users, and the recent gimmee to big media allowing bigpharma to advertise physician prescribed drugs directly to the public. At some point this all adds up to massive price gouging and unconscionable acts on the part of the licensees raping the political process for obscene volumes of money. These are the same people who skewer oil companies; companies that take real risks at enormous development costs to create their products and services. Look a big media by comparison. Empty suits? They can’t even design and manufacture the equipment they use to produce their broadcasts, and they milk disproportionate billions from our economy for what value added?
If there is not a duty to provide access to the airwaves at zero or a greatly reduced cost, then we should consider how best to do so. The massive civic corrosion and distortion caused by the extortionary phenomena of the current system must be changed. We need to open our eyes and begin the work that unties this hideous knot and restores dynamic balance to this market.
IIRC, about twenty congressmen and senators were approached during ABSCAM and six were bribed. A sample of twenty for a total population of 535 gives a pretty reliable result so it’s probably fair to say that a third of the Congress was bribable at that time. Somehow, I doubt things have improved much.
If one included the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac largess, the list would be much longer for both sides of the aisle. I expect the entities soon to be renamed as Dodd’s Fannie and Freddie Frank.
“Cold-cash” Jefferson is my favorite current Congressional crook.
Maybe Topps should make a “corrupt-politician” card series. I’ll trade a Stevens and a Duke Cunningham for a Bob Torricelli and Jim McGreevy to complete my jersey collection.
Are you implying that Janklow intended to commit Manslaughter? Lumping an accident in with intentional criminal activity is a stretch.
The money quote is:
Unfortunately, any attempt to limit this corruption — for that’s what it is, just like in any banana republic — is instantly met with cries of “unconstitutional!” “money is free speech!” etc. from those with a vested interest in perpetuating the corruption. McCain-Feingold is a case in point.
We’ve devolved from “one man, one vote” to “one dollar, one vote.” Which means the U.S. is no longer a democratic republic — it’s an oligarchy. And until we muster the political will to implement Congressional term limits, and eliminate soft money, and forever lock the “revolving door” between Capitol Hill and K Street, it’s just going to get worse.
I agree that far too many R’s have come up “short” but the basic problem is that most of the democrats have “get out of jail free” card. A la Harry Reid’s land deals Pelosi being the ranking member of the subcommittee that oversaw her husbands two billion $ companies.Jimmy Johnson’s apparent activities at Fannie May moving expenses into future years so he could get a year end bonus he didn’t deserve. But the ultimate of course is the maestro himself. William Clinton. They never laid a finger on him.
The way the numbers break down, Democrats go to jail over GOP at a 3:1 ratio, more or less. Check out the book Donkey Cons for details.
They’re all crooks …
instaspoof.com is coming …
You left several out who were convictex, or would have been idnicted and convicted but for their political cloutand related knowledge of similar conduct across the aisle that creates a perpetual “Mexican standoff.” Even with your samples, the rate of crimes and other serious ethical wrongdoing by Members of Congress gives them a crime rate considerably higher than most slums not to mention hte nationa as a whole. Was it Mark Twain or Will Rogers who first said America had no criminal class except Congress?
These lists don’t include the ones everybody knew about who, due to the aforementioned “Mexican standoff” blackmail, never got investigated, indicted, convicted, censured, or even defeated for re-election for grossly unethical and criminal conduct.
I found myself representing a Congressional aide in a kickback scandal, in which the whole staff, some of whom had worked for a Congressman of the other party first, kicked back half their gross pay and kept quiet about it with no question because the Administrative Aide told them that was how all the Congressional offices funded their district offices.
When we asked one of the influential lawyers for a financial industry grooup why they were financing the campaign of a liberal Democrat for Congress, he told a friend and me “He’s our man. We bouught him, we paid for him, and he’s ours.”
He was also one of of the successful politicians, from both parties, who represented me, from City Hall to Congress, who told me they were “straight” when I lived on one side of the street and “gay” after I moved across the street to an area the “gay” activists controlled. My long-time Congressman, who has been first a Democrat and then a Republican, would never tell me why he would not join the Child Abuse Caucus, but I figured that out after Foley was exposed. Of course both parties’ people in his home state and in D.C. had to have known about that for years. Attorney-client and other privileged and confidential relationships prevent me from telling you why some of their immediate and extended family members and I won’t vote for them.
Two elected officials, one from each party, at the state level, sat together at a meeting of a civic group and told some of us exactly how the “campaign contribution” bribery process worked in the state legislature, including names and mechanical details. In law school, we infiltrated a meeting of the youth auxiliary of the other party, after ours ran out of beer, and got treated, by someone later an aide to a Senator, etc., to a dfetailed, later verified, account of the mechanics of raising unreported illegal corporate cash for campaign purposes. I have been persistently hustled for contributions by one judge while I was not only a lawyer but a litigant with a case pending in his court, and received letters from a Supreme Court of Texas justice [elected here] referring to my status as consel of record in a case pending there , and by trial alevel judges referring to their having appointed me in cases, in the context of hitting me up hard for money. The campaign financie manager of another judge, who I was supporting because he was good and his opponent, running in my party, of which he had never been a member until after the day he filed, was a liar, told me pointedly that a contribution in a specific, substantial amount would be a financially profitable investment.
When I started out, a half century ago, a $25.00 contribution and some volunteer leg work got you access to your Representative, Senator, etc. Now my Congressman’s district office doesn’t even answer the phone (6 tries) or a form acknowledgment of a letter, because all they want is money and lots of it. McCain is right. Money is not speech.
Of course, the major campaign contributors and sources of soft and 527 money, etc. are supporting current or predicted incumbency, not ideology or character. A quick sarch reveals people making contributions to opposing candidates in teh same race. That’s payola, plian nad simple, to wit, bribes and payoffs, and that doens’t even include the off the record cash.
And the prosecutors in Cleveland haven’t even STARTED yet.
Can we somehow outlaw lobbyists?
Get rid of all the limits on campaign contributions and bring them out into the light of day. Make all donations public knowledge so that the people will know who has paid for what.
That will do far more good than all the laws on the books limiting what gifts can be given.
That and work to minimize the far reach of the Federal government into every aspect of out lives and the incentive to bribe your congressman will drop accordingly.
Term Limits, make it law and you will far less democrats and republicans on the nightly news. One unmistakable truth, power CORRUPTS regardless of what your political leanings. We should hold our elected officials to a higher standard. 3 terms for congress 2 terms for senate and absolutely no more regardless of race, gender or sexual preference.
ALL CORRUPT AND/OR INCOMPENENT CIVIL SERVANTS belong in jail Due Process, the foundation to all rights is compromised by either. Position of public trust most be protected by the fact of jail. No civil servant should be allowed to make a plea unless it is to testify against another public servant that forced or coerced to preform an illegal act.