What was the 1994 Culture of Corruption?

[waiting for hope]

Try as I may - I can not for the life of me remember what was so friggin wrong back in 1994 that the republicans were able to take control by running on a Culture of Corruption campaign. I've seen the press on it - it was even proudly displayed on the RNC website (the statement has been taken down) as well as DeLay's House page (that no longer exits) but what was it actually that brought the Dems down? What happened proir to 1994 can not be as bad as it is today. I found the below information interesting:


Some argue that the following conditions are favorable for corruption:

Information deficits
Lack of government transparency.
Lacking freedom of information legislation. The Indian Right to Information Act 2005 has "already engendered mass movements in the country that is bringing the lethargic, often corrupt bureaucracy to its knees and changing power equations completely."
Contempt for or negligence of exercising freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Weak accounting practices, including lack of timely financial management.

Lacking control over and accountability of the government.
Democracy absent or dysfunctional. See illiberal democracy.
Lacking civic society and non-governmental organizations which monitor the government.
An individual voter may have a rational ignorance regarding politics, especially in nationwide elections, since each vote has little weight.
Weak rule of law.
Weak legal profession.
Weak judicial independence.
Lack of benchmarking, that is continual detailed evaluation of procedures and comparison to others who do similar things, in the same government or others, in particular comparison to those who do the best work. The Peruvian organization Ciudadanos al Dia has started to measure and compare transparency, costs, and efficiency in different government departments in Peru. It annually awards the best practices which has received widespread media attention. This has created competition among government agencies in order to improve.

Opportunities and incentives
A large public sector and many regulations increase the opportunities for corruption. That is one argument for privatization and deregulation. See Ease of Doing Business Index.
However countries with low to non-existent corruption can have large public sector (see eg. Nordic countries).
Poorly-paid government officials.
Long-time work in the same position may create relationships inside and outside the government which encourage and help conceal corruption and favoritism. Rotating government officials to different positions and geographic areas may help prevent this.
Costly political campaigns, with expenses exceeding normal sources of political funding.
Less interaction with officials reduces the opportunities for corruption. For example, using the Internet for sending in required information, like applications and tax forms, and then processing this with automated computer systems. This may also speed up the processing and reduce unintentional human errors.

Social conditions
Self-interested closed cliques and "old boy networks".
In societies where personal integrity is rated as less important than other characteristics (by contrast, in societies such as 18th and 19th Century England, 20th Century Japan and post-war western Germany, where society showed almost obsessive regard for "honor" and personal integrity, corruption was less frequently seen)
Lacking literacy and education among the population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_corruption


So what was it? Or did we just fall alseep at the wheel in 1994?

[Captain Hilts]

1. Jim Wright. Seems quaint now, don't it? nt

[waiting for hope]

3. That's it!!!!!

That's it? My God, and we don't have enough ammo to take them all down? That was It? Shit, I'm in total disbelief now...

[charlyvi]

2. The Congressional bank would cover overdrafts....

and those vicious Dems were lax in paying them back! Oh the humanity! There was something else with the Post Office, but I don't remember it very well. Maybe abusing the franking privilege?

[Recursion]

6. Yeah, it was the franks

Congresspeople and staffers were sending out personal correspondances on franked envelopes, which you aren't supposed to do.

That said, when I was a page (luckily before the days of Foley) I got pretty darn good at forging a few Congressmen's franks (Sonny Montgomery's was really easy, just a "GV" in sloppy cursive, and Gingrich's was pretty easy too) -- I sure hope the mean old ethics investigators don't come after me for that... :scared:

[Recursion]

4. Jim Wright mostly, also Rosty

And let's be honest, Rostenkowski was pretty damn corrupt at the time, and on most issues was a DINO. You also just had some really really old Democrats, especially from the South, who were using the Federal budget as a slush fund for their district (I'm thinking particularly of Jamie Whitten, who was still in Congress in 1994 having voted to declare war on Imperial Japan in his first term, and by 1994 was so senile that Rostenkowski -- see above -- was pushing the levers for him during votes).

[waiting for hope]

5. As I said above...

That's It? Why can't the DNC pull this all out and compare the two - Culture of Corruption vs Hell Bent on Doing Whatever the Fuck You Want (maybe not those exact words) - should be interesting, let's say "This is what everyone was so upset over? Let's take a look at the Republicant Dirty Laundry List:

Tom Delay
Bill Frist
Dick Cheney (Hallibuton, hunting accident. 2 DWI's, and just being plain evil ad nausea)
Randell Duke Cunningham
Mark Foley
Bob Ney
Conrad Burns or any and all involved with Abramoff

I must be forgetting a few, the scorecard is getting pretty full now.

[JHB]

7. Mostly, it was the Republican spin machine and Democratic spinelessness

The culture of corruption the Republicans were complaing about doesn't hold a candle to what they've done since taking power, but with the Spin Machine in full gear they were much more effective at stirring up anger and focusing it at Democrats.

The other half of it is the lack of any Democratic efforts that would have put the Republicans on the defensive. It's not as if there was any shortage of loose ends from the assorted Reagan-Bush scandals that needed tying up. (And it's not as if the Republicans gave any slack for "putting those behind us".)