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Friday, June 16, 2006If this bears out, Hastert should go. He claims he and a few friends bought some land from a distressed farmer, but he didn't really make any money off the deal, and that the proximity of a highway project he pushed for to the land is unrelated and no big deal. But...Over at TPM Muckraker Paul Kiel picks up the Chicago Tribune article about the land deal and provides the total amount of money that the Speaker made off of the deal: $1.5 million. I’m sure that that farmer didn’t sell Hastert the land for that much. He certainly didn’t if he wanted cash up front.In 1994, I finally gave up and joined the Republican Party to support Newt and the ideas that would become the Contract with America. 13 years on, and we have seen that the difference between Republicans and Democrats isn't the culture of entitlement and corruption. Both start by lining their own pockets and those of their contributors. It's just a question of whether the leavings go to the military or the wackos. This makes the Republicans my preference - I think a strong military is of primary importance - but not without a strong sense of disgust. Hastert, Lott and William Jefferson are of a piece. They are all possessed of a form of political Tourette's syndrome: their conduct is unseemly to obscene and yet, tragically, they are incapable of understanding this and are baffled by the unkind looks they get for their behavior. In other circumstances, we might pity their utter failure to appreciate how their actions look and the messages sent. But for guardians of the public trust we need something better. The Republicans have had 13 years to clean up Washington. Instead, the headlines tell us, they've just been cleaning up. Not that the Democrats have been any better. All we know today is that there's one more damning reason to suspect that Hastert protected William Jefferson on self-interest rather than principle. So in the next elections, skip the GOP and Dems. Vote Libertarian or Socialist. With any luck, the gridlock will limit Congressional damage while Bush won't have any more need for embarrassing (in retrospect) signing ceremonies like the one pictured in the linked article. 
posted by gbarto at 5:13 PM |
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Day By Day© by Chris Muir.Old TurkeyBlog here.
