Scandal sullies both Republicans and Democrats (In their DREAMS!)

[Ian David]

Scandal sullies both Republicans and Democrats
By Steven Thomma
E-mail Steven at [e-mail]

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The political fallout from the Abramoff lobbying scandal will hinge on whether it's defined as a Republican mess or a bipartisan one in which neither party is to blame because everyone's in bed with lobbyists.

<snip>

More broadly, the scandal isn't just about Abramoff but instead about too-cozy ties between lawmakers and lobbyists. Lawmakers from both parties frequently take junkets linked to lobbyists. That's a common - and legal - perk, but one that offends "good government" groups. Republicans take money from big business and write legislation that favors corporations. Democrats take money from labor unions, trial lawyers and environmental groups and write legislation advancing their interests.

<snip>

"It's mostly a bipartisan scandal," said Alex Knott, an analyst at the Center for Public Integrity, also a nonpartisan research group.

He noted that it touches more Republicans than Democrats for two reasons: Republicans are in power and thus more likely to be lobbied, and Republicans courted closer financial and political ties with lobbyists through their "K Street Project," a concerted GOP effort to press D.C. lobbying firms to hire Republican loyalists if they wanted to be effective on Capitol Hill.

More:
http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/nation/13620742.htm

For more on money in politics, go to www.publicintegrity.org and www.crp.org

Contact that fucktard Steven Thomma:

Politics

STEVEN THOMMA

Steven Thomma, the chief political correspondent, has written about Washington issues since 1987. Before joining the Washington Bureau's national staff in 1994, he was the St. Paul Pioneer Press's Washington correspondent and won the National Press Club's award for best regional reporting. He previously worked for the Pioneer Press in Minnesota, the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette in Indiana and City News Bureau in Chicago. Thomma won the Aldo Beckman Award for distinguished White House coverage for his campaign work in 2000.

E-mail Steven at [e-mail]
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/columnists/steven_thomma/

[joefree1]

1. Cut off the money

And let's see who turns blue in the face (pun unintended).

[rainy]

2. the thing is, just like all the other scandals this will just disappear

They have already framed it. Corrupt politics as usual on both sides and the media are not correcting but fueling the misinformation as usual. Same with the wiretap scandal. We need to keep plugging away at the media.

[JAbuchan08]

3. "except for the fact that more Republicans are involved

this is a bipartisan scandal"

I will grant that lobbyists have too much influence on both Democrats and Republicans, but the Democrats didn't sell out our entire nation to their corporate masters. All one has to do is look at the bills they passed.