Congress-Shining Example of Ethical Stewardship

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) recently released their 2nd annual “Most Corrupt Members of Congress Report” and it comes as no surprise that 21 of the top 25 most ethically challenged elected officials are members of the majority Republican party.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW said today, “The officials named in this report have chosen to enrich themselves and their families and friends by abusing the power of their office, rather than work for the public good. Their collective corruption affects all Americans.”

Seems that the old saying about power corrupting still rings true. And while those of our friends on the right can easily (and with a fair amount of veracity) claim that Democrats were just as corrupt when they held the reins of power in Congress, it is also only fair to note that in their great unethical efficiency, it has only taken the Republican party a decade to achieve the same level of corruption that it took the Democrats 40 years to master. So go ahead and give your party a big pat on the back, conservatives. You really ARE #1, at least when it comes to electing professional scumbags.

Surprisingly though, (or maybe not surprisingly at all in this era where most people bitch and moan but make no effort to create change) with a recent Harris Poll showing a 73% negative view of Congress, few incumbents have lost their bids for re-election in their state primaries. I guess all those people who think Congress needs a good house cleaning want people in other districts to do all the cleaning for them. It’s kind of like the old adage used by racists. They’re all corrupt, except for my congressperson.

And what ever happened to that ethics reform that so dominated the news for a few weeks early in the year? Oh, right. No more free meals for elected officials. Otherwise, pretty much business as usual.

So, did your elected representative make this years list? Only one way to find out…read the report.

(originally posted at Bring It On!)

Floyd Says:
October 4th, 2006 at 5:02 am

Hey Ken great post, I have been hearing this it seems congress has a negative few with the public, but, the public seems to think their congressman or Senator is alright.

This does not compute with me based on the basis of common sense, where the 73% were polled it seems if they had a negative view of congress they would translate that into a vote.

Really these polls are skewed by the main-stream media to say what they want them to say, I could not say really anymore if the elections are on the up and up??????

Liam Says:
October 6th, 2006 at 1:25 pm

And that, Floyd, is a part of what makes me (and I suspect many others) slow to act to try to change things.

Our system is seriously broken, and identifying any action which will do anything to help the problem (beyond the “mental masturbatory” effect of making us feel like we’re doing SOMETHING) is very difficult.

Run for office? In a country of negative campaigning taken to the level of art form, very few of us could run an honest campaign and be elected on merit of our positions. Hell, I doubt many of us can say with any certainty what the positions are of any of our candidates. Certainly I try to stay on top, and I’ve been surprised often by how someone turned out in comparison to the story I thought I understood about them.

You no longer frame your own story, you simply set up a battle where you try to frame your opponent’s message negatively while preventing him from doing the same to you. And forget it if you experimented with drugs or rampant sex in college, or have a history of depression, or ever hired anyone to do any work for you who might not be a legal resident of this country.

Getting a message out there doesn’t work. I’ve lost faith that getting out the vote works, inasmuch as I no longer believe that the official tally of our elections (at least the major ones) in any way reflects the actual tally of votes cast, to say nothing of the will of the majority or even the majority of legal, legitimate voters.

No, the only things I can think of that would have any real chance of changing things involve sinking to the level of those I would fight against. Getting really good at lying and cheating. Learning to hack into the voting system and change it to MY liking. Practicing to become a sniper. Clearly any of these COULD make changes, but in the process, you would become as bad as those you’re fighting against, and what is the point of replacing one corrupt government with another?

And don’t fool yourself that you can fight back with their tactics but maintain your integrity, I don’t believe it. It’s a primrose path, a road to hell paved with good intentions. Each step down the path of evil corrupts your soul a little bit more, so that by the time you accomplish your goal, you’re no longer fit to fix the very problems you got into it to work on in the first place.

My wife has suggested that she and I start a new political party, get a lot of other disillusioned folks and see if we can create a groundswell. But even if we could, even if we had any idea how, and even assuming (a longshot at best) that we could get an honorable candidate elected to a high office, with the first taste of success the sharks, smelling the sweet chum of power, would be sniffing around, working their way into the ranks, and pretty soon we’d have a party as bad as the major ones, the idealists who started it ousted from their own seats of power by people who aren’t at all interested in making the system better, only at attaching themselves to an up and coming power center.

All of that said, I still salute Ken for trying. I hope he proves me wrong, and is successfully able to run a clean campaign, win a high office, and help to honestly fix the system.

But I have a hard time motivating myself to the near herculean task against the overwhelming paucity of chance of success, and I suspect that’s probably true of many others as well.

Liam.