The Corruptocrats
IBD Editorials
Posted 03/04/2010 07:03 PM ET
Ethics: There's a 900-pound elephant in the room in Washington named Corruption. The media don't seem to have noticed it's there — because the pachyderm is actually a donkey.
When Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., was exposed in the fall of 2006 sending sleazy text messages to male teenage congressional pages, the establishment press made sure it cast a heavy shadow on the entire Republican establishment. Again and again it was noted that then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other congressional GOP leaders obviously knew about Foley but did little or nothing.
Where are they now that Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., is undone after unwelcome sexual advances toward a junior male staffer? House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., admits to knowing of the allegations, so where are the headlines like those in 2006 warning that this and other scandals could doom Democrats this November?
And make no mistake, there are plenty of other Democratic scandals. Citing them all might provide a musical satirist like Paul Shanklin the material to do a new version of Paul Simon's "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover." Here are a few:
• President Obama's shady nomination on Wednesday of the brother of Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, a swing vote on health reform, to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
• The forced — but only temporary — and long overdue suspension of Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., from his powerful perch as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee many months after it became known that he failed to pay 20 years of back taxes on a Caribbean villa, on top of tax issues related to four rent-controlled apartments in Harlem used by his campaign, plus other newly revealed House rules violations.
• The "Louisiana Purchase" of $300 million in exclusive Medicaid funds for Louisiana to buy the support of a swing voter, Sen. Mary Landrieu, for health reform.
• The similar "Cornhusker Kickback" of $100 million in exclusive Medicaid funding for Nebraska to secure the vote of Sen. Ben Nelson for ObamaCare.
• President Obama's "Union Carve-Out" to shield his Big Labor supporters from health reform's tax on more-expensive so-called Cadillac health plans.
• The failure of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner since 2001 to pay nearly $40,000 in his Social Security and Medicare taxes because he worked for the International Monetary Fund, which conveniently didn't withhold those taxes as U.S. firms do.
• The Democrats' massive stimulus bill last year, practically written by the party's supporters in Big Labor, with construction projects forced to use union members and pay union wages — in spite of the fact that nonunion workers make up close to 85% of the country's construction work force.
• The Competitive Enterprise Institute's revelation this week that the Obama Energy Department apparently used a George Soros group to sell phony "green jobs."
• The president's arrogant declaration that the health reform debate is over — which it is, with polls showing the American people heavily opposed to the Democrats' plan — and his intention to force a bill through by abusing budget reconciliation rules that were never intended to be used for such sweeping legislation.
If Republicans were guilty of such a deep, wide pattern of corruption on both ends of Capitol Hill, the media would already be writing their political obituary.
Since it's Democrats, it's another story — no story, that is.
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