From Arianna Huffington: Abramoff scandal


"Like a bad meal endlessly repeating, the gaseous belch of the Abramoff scandal keeps offering up odiferous reminders of the sorry state of our politics.

It's now clear that this is the political equivalent of the corporate corruption I wrote about in Pigs at the Trough. Bill Frist and Tom DeLay are the Beltway incarnations of John Rigas and Dennis Kozlowski, the Adelphia and Tyco CEOs who used their companies as their personal piggy banks -- and have been sentenced to serious jail time because of it.

I see the same self-dealing, the same hubris, the same mentality that says, I can do anything I want, say anything I want, give money and high-paying jobs to anyone I want.

Of course, politicians like Frist and DeLay should pay an even higher price than the corporate Capones since they are betraying something even more sacred than shareholders: the public trust.

The latest, from today's Washington Post, is that prosecutors have issued subpoenas seeking documents relating to money from the National Republican Congressional Committee funneled through the U.S. Family Network, a nonprofit group with close ties to Abramoff and Tom DeLay, and used to fund attack ads against Democrats...
The widening Abramoff affair has put the spotlight back on the dominant role Big Money continues to play in our politics -- and of how politicians and their lobbyist pals keep coming up with new and nefarious ways of selling access and influence to the highest bidder..."

-snip-

Read the full article. It's a sin and a shame what our country has come to.