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They're All Crooks And Moral Degenerates

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J.G. NASH Of Cabbages and Kings

The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 31, 2009

A couple of years back, while visiting Praha (that's in the Czech Republic, Hillary), I attended a lecture in the ornate halls of the city's historic university.

The silver-haired professor spoke about his nation's economy and government. At one point, and in reference to a current news story about immorality and criminal conduct by some U.S. Government officials (including our president), the professor wondered why "you Americans seem to get excited and upset when you discover that one or another of your elected officials are crooks: Over here, we accept that they're dishonest and without honor when we elect them, so their shenanigans, while in office, come as no great surprise."

Based on what we are now learning about governors, and congressmen at state and federal levels, that professor had it about right. What still bothers me is in that, while we quickly lock up street-corner dope pushers for a dozen or more years, the really big, and very smelly, "fish" (i.e., government officials, lobbyists, and CEOs of mismanaged corporations) seldom get more than a couple of years vacation in a federal country club (called "satellites" of Federal Correctional Institutes, or FCIs); sometimes, they never suffer a single day of so-called "punishment" for their heinous crimes of major magnitude.

Jack Abramoff, whom achieved infamy as one of the more corrupt lobbyists in Sodom on the Potomac, is cooling his heels in the FCI satellite in Cumberland, Md. He was sentenced to serve four years of leisure for having done inestimable damage to our federal government and every citizen of this beleaguered nation. Wayne R. Bryant (a one-time Democratic senator in New Jersey) has been convicted of multiple corruption charges, involving millions of dollars, yet is still prowling the corridors of government, instead of doing hard time in some dingy prison. Kevin Geddings, who was convicted of fraud while Commissioner of North Carolina's lottery, received a measly four-year sentence, which is being served in a federal prison in Jessup, Ga. And Randy "Duke" Cunningham (former U.S. representative, R-Calif.) is temporarily relocated to another of those cushy satellite camps, after pleading guilty to multiple corruption charges, involving the acceptance of millions of dollars worth of bribes from government contractors (which probably furnished overpriced and substandard items to our military).

It seems clear that we need to begin to fight this cancer in our government by handing down some stiff and unpleasant punishment for misconduct in public office. While we seem to get our undies in a knot over such as a child pornographer (whose inexcusable conduct may have undesirable effect on one or two persons, but whom we put in the more depressing prisons for more than a dozen years), some sleaze ball, that bilks the taxpayer for billions of dollars, gets a couple of years in a woodsy camp in Maryland or Tucson. I think that the latter type of criminal should get life in a hard-time prison. On second thought, the death sentence would be less expensive and more appropriate.

I'll go even further. By suggesting that we need some way to identify, and appropriately discipline, elected officials that so abuse their responsibilities as to cause the people significant discomfort and expense.

Take U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., as an example. It is possible to argue that Frank, more than any other individual, is responsible for our current economic crisis: Responsible both via action and inaction, while in positions of singular, applicable importance. Frank has been a key member of the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) for around six years. In fact, he has been the chairman of that key committee since 2007.

Yet, during his time in that position of great responsibility, he apparently not only failed to discharge his duties faithfully or morally, but indeed may have acted with reckless abandon, which, by itself, precipitated our current economic recession, and looming depression.

The HFSC oversees the entire financial services industry, which includes securities (Wall Street), insurance, banking and housing. Those, obviously, are the sectors most in trouble today, and the elements whose self-inflicted problems now threaten all of us.

Yes, we probably should accept that our politicians are crooks when we vote for them, but when they openly demonstrate that our assumption was all too correct, shouldn't we be able to get rid of them quickly, and with prejudice? Let's start with Mr. Frank.

Of Cabbages and Kings is a regular feature of this paper. The author welcomes rational comment, which may be sent to him at john@have-eye.com.

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