Legalized Corruption exposed by Abramoff

This is how the game has been rigged. This is how we've lost our democracy.

Legalized corruption in government exposed by Jack Abramoff, a former lobbyist. He details exactly how the revolving door works - he even said "Every request from our office, every request from our clients, everything that we want, they're going to do."

Abramoff said that, while he was a lobbyist, they had influence in 100 offices. Now, with Obama as president, the lobbyists have influence (read: control) of 533 offices (435 in the House; 100 in the Senate).

The problem isn't what's illegal; the problem is what's legal. If Congress wasn't already a proxy organization for corporations, Abramoff outright confirms it.

"We crafted language (on bills), that was so obscure, so confusing, so uninformative, but so precise, to change the US reform code."

The chairmen of the committees are the only ones that knew of that; "Members don't read the bills", says Abramoff.

Furthermore, someone from Capital Hill said that, every time they went to go write a piece of legislation for the Dodd-Frank Reform bill, they would erase the obscure part of the bill, but it would pop back up in the new version of the bill. Turns out every new version of the bill was written by the Fed, who went to the banks and said "Can you write this?" Every single version of the financial reform bill was written by bank lobbyists, and that is how we lost our money to the big banks.

Hmmm.

Makes me think that maybe, A) Fed should be made a public entity rather than the private entity it is, and B) we should have a law about the length of bills...

"Abramoff is communist North Korean agent" on Fox News in 3... 2... 1...

edited 8th Nov '11 12:05:54 AM by Mandemo

Oh, fox is just going to ignore this.

"And today, the mcribb came back!" will be the all day headline.

@Enkufka

The Federal Reserve becoming a public entity would certainly provide a degree of transparency, but how impossibly dysfunctional would it likely become in the hands of the same elected representatives and public administrators who maintain the splintered, byzantine mess that exists now? I'm not even remotely arguing in favor of the current Federal Reserve, but trying to point out that "small" fixes will reform us into more problems with the exact same system.

I also agree that legislation has become disastrously complex, driven into a realm that only hyper-specialist lawyers can enter (what lovely job security). In response to introducing legislation concerning a maximum length of legislation, however, I can't help but wonder if that won't just lead to another labyrinthine process to either loop out of restrictions, condense legal incomprehensibility, etc. Specifically, why is our response to problems immediately to legislate against it? That's putting a patch on your bicycle tire, but that isn't going to last. The whole system has been inundated by reform after reform to the point that none of it is even remotely human anymore. There is no legislative matter so complex that a high school graduate shouldn't be able to understand. Of course, high school graduates are being cheated out of education and self-actualization almost exponentially, so... pft.

Corruption is legal. Nothing more complicated is needed to explain that unequivocal legal truth. The cause behind corruption's legality, however, may very well be the fractured system that we have inadvertently created, and I'll be damned if we haven't imprisoned ourself with the whole physical and philosophical structure.

The scandal with Abramoff indirectly caused Karl Rove to resign as Deputy Chief of Staff. The fact that Abramoff even had the consideration to say that on 60 Minutes shows that he has no shame.

Becoming a part of government (which certainly includes those who aren't in, like Abramoff) at that level pretty much requires one to forget what shame ever was. I don't think anyone at the national level could even move that far ahead if they still felt some kind of shame. Look at all those who are elected when caught during scandals - they aren't ashamed, they're pissed because they were dumb enough to get caught in a game with no rules.

Makes you wonder - if pretty much anything can be slipped in via the Unreadable Disclaimer, does any legal code really mean anything? I mean theoretically anything can be quietly added in or taken out this way, right? There could be something tucked away anywhere in the miles of legalese text that makes anything legal or illegal, and who would actually know for sure?

edited 8th Nov '11 3:38:08 AM by TheBatPencil

I'd say that we should just get rid of lobbyists but that's treating a symptom. We need to remove the cause and the cause seems to be the structure of government. Perhaps it's time to rethink how democracy works.

US social structure is broken. What a surprise.

~sigh~

Move along, nothing new to see here.

So what exactly happened to the Plain Writing Act? It seems like this is exactly the sort of thing it was meant to prevent.

edited 8th Nov '11 7:32:46 AM by Desertopa

I'm assuming that the recent quintupling is due to the Supreme Court ruling?

Nothing is ever new with politics. Don't Wangst about it.

Yeah; that's what the bill was supposed to cover, but I'm not sure if it ever did anything to fix that Orwellian language.

Citizens United, you can blame for that.

Hmm, maybe public funding for a semi-independent entity charged with writing bills for Congress? That would at least make the bill writers accountable, and give outside lobbyists a little less leverage.

Shithole, I say.

It explains everything you need to know about the revolving door of politics.

It's that Farscape episode with the Planet of Lawyers. Originally the law fit into a tiny book, but as the glut of lawyers grew, the law had to be expanded to ridiculous lengths to justifiy their existence.