Congressmen doing What Congressmen Do
Not surprising, but certainly sickening:
They [the PMA GROUP] sank $1,333,074 into the campaigns last year of 3
Democratic members of the House defense appropriations subcommittee and
walked away with $100.5 million in defense earmarks for PMA clients,
Roll Call reported.That means for every buck they spent, their clients got back $75.39. In less than 1 year.
The 3 Democratic rent-to-own congressmen are John
Murtha, Jim Moran and Peter Visclosky. These antiwar Democrats see
nothing wrong with steering military money to PMA clients.And why not? PMA money made up 20% of Murtha's war
chest, 18% of the Moran money and 33% of the Visclosky dough. For 2008,
PMA already has steered $542,500 to the 3 amigos.
Related thoughts from Radley Balko:
So I guess once you're elected to Congress, you're immune from drunk driving laws; you can stash the evidence that you've committed a crime in your office, because investigators aren't allowed to search it; if you kill someone because you've got a lead foot and blew a stop sign, the taxpayers will cover your financial liability; and, we learn today, you can commit whatever Internet-related crimes you please, because the police aren't allowed to search your computer.
Meanwhile, the same Congress that has immunized itself from much of the law is also responsible for the ever-expanding federal criminal code, which we can thank for our shamefully enormous and still-soaring prison population, which is by far and away the largest in the world.
You
have lawmakers who feel they're above the law. And who at the same time
are criminalizing anything and everything they find tacky, repugnant,
or immoral.
M. Hodak:
Balko is awesome-- one of the loudest and clearest anti-authoritarian voices alive. This double-standard he cites is a glaring blind spot for the rest of the media. How is it that those exchanges that in the private world would be called corruption, in the legislative world are tolerated as business as usual?
September 18, 2007, 7:14 pm