Ah, Maureen, Sleazoid is Just Too Nice a Word
From Maureen Dowd today:
Sleazoid lawmakers like Tom DeLay gulp down the graft from sleazoid lobbyists like Jack Abramoff, who took Mr. DeLay, the House majority leader, to play golf in Scotland in 2000 as part of a $70,000 trip with Mr. DeLay's wife and staff, and for a six-day "fact finding" trip to Moscow in 1997.Now, lobbyists in Washington now are almost completely GOP. Why? Because Tom DeLay won't talk to Dem lobbyists.
If there are any ethics questions, Republicans helpfully gut the House Ethics Committee, while DeLay & Co. try to gut the New Deal.
Before he became a $750-an-hour superlobbyist accused of defrauding Indian tribes of tens of millions of their gambling dollars and pitting them against one another to pay for lavish trips for congressmen, "Casino Jack" had never been a White House wise man or spent years in public service. He produced B movies like "Red Scorpion" and "Red Scorpion 2."
Unlike the cultivated Tommy, who was a bit of a Robin Hood, taking care of lots of people who were down and out, Mr. Abramoff leeched off a group that's always gotten gypped and then wrote ugly e-mail deriding his Indian clients as "monkeys" and "idiots."
Another lobbyist, Tongsun Park, a South Korean at the center of a Congressional bribery scandal in the 1970's known as Koreagate, blasted back from the past this week. Mr. Park has been charged with secretly collecting at least $2 million from Saddam Hussein for clandestine help setting up the corrupt U.N. oil-for-food program and carting away bags of cash from Iraq's diplomats in New York, partly to bribe a U.N. official.
Not exactly broad daylight with a brass band. More like midnight in the sewer.
Unfortunately, however, this crap is going on on both sides. And it should be stopped now and forever.
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