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Concurring bump, from someone who once worked both for Gulf Oil (caught paying Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., under the table with offshore money; Scott retired, Gulf CEO Bob Dorsey was fired, and the real beneficiaries of the corruption, Mellon Bank and the Mellon family, went scot free -- as did Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, when their rickety dam failed and killed hundreds in the Johnstown Flood) and Occidental Petroleum (Armand Hammer was a legendary sleaze who sleazed around with prominent people and was rewarded by being portrayed by Burt Lancaster in a movie). They didn't make me corrupt, but the leadership of these firms certainly challenged me to wonder just who and what in the hell I was working for.

Your analogy is a poor one. Nobody got caught paying anyone under the table on the pro-Metro side of the bond referendum, especially STV. If anything, their publically disclosed contribution to support the bond referendum was more likely a result of the Houston city government putting the squeeze on the existing Metro project manager, rather than the other way around.

Bottom line: STV's contribution was neither illegal or unethical as had been suggested, and in a well funded campaign against the Metro bond (including a nice chunk of TRMPAC cash), STV's twenty five thousand dollar contribution to the pro-side was not determinant to the outcome.