Congressional Corruption Bonus Post

On November 1oth and 11th we discussed the list of the fifteen most corrupt politicians in Washington as nominated by CREW organization, Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics In Washington. I had thought that those two posts would cover us, at least for a little while, regarding news on Congressional corruption. How wrong I was. Rather than being finished with covering Congressional corruption. another instance of greed drops into your lap.

According to a news article that appeared on the Earthlink news list this evening, ex-Congressman William Jefferson was sentenced to thirteen years in jail for accepting bribes, the longest term ever imposed on a Congressman on bribery charges. He had been convicted last summer, being found guilty on eleven counts including bribery and racketeering, for taking almost a half million dollars in bribes and seeking more in exchange for facilitating business deals in Africa. In addition to the jail sentence, he has to return the bribe money which may have to be satisfied by seizing personal assets. Mr. Jefferson had represented New Orleans in Congress for almost 20 years.

You may recall that the Congressman had taken some of his loot and stashed it in his freezer, lending credibility to the old saying, "cold cash." The FBI found the frozen money when they raided his home after a businesswoman felt she had been cheated by Jefferson in a business deal and turned to the FBI.

The prosecutor wanted 30 years for the sentence but the judge opted for less, thirteen years, that put the sentence more in line with previous corrupted politicians' jail terms:

• Congressman Randy Cunningham of California received a sentence of eight years for taking $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors.
• Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio received two and a half years in jail for taking bribes from a lobbyist.
• Congressman James Traficant of Ohio received a seven year sentence for bribery and racketeering.

The prosecutor pointed out that Mr. Jefferson stood to get hundreds of millions of dollars if all of his eleven bribery schemes were fully successful.

Three observations come to mind:

• How well was the Congressman serving his constituents in New Orleans and the rest of the country if he was involved with almost a dozen bribery schemes? Guess many of the nation's problems (Iraq, Afghanistan, failing public schools, drug addiction plague, Social Security and Medicare going bankrupt, etc.) were just not important enough for him.
• I remember that when the arrest and the frozen money came to light, the Speaker of the House and others in Congress were upset and mad that the executive branch had dared to arrest a fellow member of the legislative branch of government. While their protestations died off quickly when they realized the depth of the crimes, it did leave a bad taste in many of our mouths. It was almost like the political class was offended that the Bush Justice Department dared to go after a criminal that just happened to be a politician (or is it a politician that happened to be a criminal.)
• His defense attorney at the sentencing hearing wanted the judge to consider the fact that Mr. Jefferson had lifted himself up from poverty to become a Congressman, as if that was good enough to just forget about the eleven counts of bribery and racketeering he was found guilty of. Fortunately, the judge felt that the sentence of thirteen years was justified by the amount of public corruption that had occurred.

What can you say? This sense of entitlement that the political class has developed in this country is just pathetic and repulsive. Their salaries put them in the top 5% of earners in this country. They get untold number of perks including free leased cars (House Of Representitives only), great offices, large staffs, national and international recognition, lucrative positions in private business can easily be obtained after serving their terms (Congressional, not prison), etc. but it never seems to be enough.

This is the type of behavior that "Love My Country, Loathe My Country" seeks to address and reverse. As with the previous corruption posts and examples, term limits looks to be a very important Step to implement since Mr. Jefferson, much like Murtha, Rangel and others, have been around the Washington scene for a very long time. Under Step 5, reducing fraud that is rampant in many government programs, one of the sub tasks is to audit the tax returns of everyone member of Congress and high ranking members of the executive branch in order to seek out suspicious behavior.

When Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House several years ago, she spoke of "lowering the swamp" relative to Congressional corruption and cleaning up Washington. I guess the pump is broken because it still looks like the swamp is at high tide.

Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Stpes To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.