Posted on 12/09/2005 8:49:34 AM PST by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO — “So you’re a reporter,” the salesman said as we sat in the little room. He was just trying to break the silence as we waited for his boss to come back and tell me that my offer for their overpriced car was too low.
“What’s it like down there at the Capitol,” he asked. “Is it just all corruption?”
That was several weeks ago. But I thought about the salesman when I read about Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham pleading guilty to taking at least $2.4 million in bribes.
Probably no one is more representative of middle America than car salesmen. His question was a reminder that an awful lot of people suspect that many, if not all, politicians are on the take.
Well, are they?
The short answer is, some are, probably most aren’t.
The problem for voters is knowing which is which. That’s not easy. Like Cunningham, corrupt politicians are usually exposed only after they have been taking bribes or pocketing other illegal money for years.
I told the salesman that at any given time in Sacramento, one or more politicians usually are under suspicion of dealing under the table.
Just this year, Democrat Kevin Shelley was forced to resign as Secretary of State amid an investigation into whether state grant money was laundered back into his campaign treasury.
One of the state’s most powerful figures, the Democratic leader of the state Senate, Don Perata of Oakland, is among targets of an FBI investigation into possibly shady business deals.
To be fair, neither Shelley nor Perata have been charged or convicted of any crimes at this point.
But I also told the salesman that, in Sacramento at least, the corruption cases we know about don’t seem to be as numerous or as blatant as they once were.
In the 1980s, undercover FBI agents dangled bribes in front of lawmakers and lobbyists in a sting operation, and an astonishing number of them grabbed the money. Five lawmakers — both Democrats and Republicans — two lobbyists and some legislative aides went to prison as a result of the sting.
One of the things that attracted the FBI’s attention was the pervasive rumor that lobbyists regularly sat in the visitor’s gallery of the Senate and the Assembly and held up one, two or three fingers indicating how many thousands of dollars they would pay for a key lawmaker’s vote on a pending bill that would make money for their clients.
No one ever proved in court whether that was true or not, but it was accepted as fact at the time.
As a young reporter at the time, I thought I was onto a hot story one day when I was covering a state Senate session and happened to notice one Senator pull a roll of bills out of his pocket and surreptitiously slip it to an aide.
I followed the aide as he walked out of the chamber and down a hallway, sure I was witnessing a corruption case of some kind.
It was lawbreaking all right, but nothing that would get me on the front page of my newspaper.
The aide handed the roll of money to a shoeshine stand operator who was well known as the Capitol’s bookie.
In my experience, corruption cases usually come in waves. A series of convictions focuses attention on ethics and most politicians play it straight — or at least cool — for a while. Then the temptations of power and easy money begin to find a more receptive audience.
The Watergate scandal of the early 1970s was followed by a series of political ethics reforms across the country and relatively few corruption cases for several years.
In Sacramento, the next wave hit with the FBI’s “shrimpscam” sting in the 1980s and early ’90s.
At about the same time, there were some high-profile cases in Congress.
The then-Democratic Speaker of the House, Jim Wright, resigned under criticism of a shady book deal. Another powerful Democrat, Dan Rostenkowski, quit in the face of felony charges for embezzlement, mail fraud and other misdeeds.
The next wave of corruption scandals — which is still under way — began to unfold a year or two ago.
Shelley and Perata seem to be part of that.
In Washington, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is under indictment. The investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff seems to have ever-widening ripples. Then there’s the overlaying shadow of the investigation into who leaked a covert CIA agent’s name to the press.
Cunningham’s case has stunned nearly everyone with its unprecedented magnitude and audacity.
Each wave of corruption also seems to launch its own wave of political consequences that goes well beyond the resignations, guilty pleas and convictions.
In the 1980s and early ’90s, most of the scandals — though not all — involved prominent Democrats.
Republicans, led by Congressman Newt Gingrich, parlayed that plus a lot of voter dissatisfaction in general into a GOP takeover of Congress. At the same time, Republicans won control of the state Assembly in California, although that didn’t last long with the state’s basic Democratic tendencies.
What the current wave of predominantly Republican scandals will produce remains to be seen.
GOP leaders are clearly worried that it will give the Democrats an opportunity to take back Congress and perhaps the White House.
But that may depend on whether Democrats can figure out how to take advantage of it, something they don’t seem to have done yet.
What about Kern County’s lawmakers?
None of them have been been touched by allegations of corruption for personal gain. The most recent local corruption case involved Brian Setencich, who represented part of the county for one term in the Assembly in 1995 and 1996.
Setencich was best known for cooperating with Democrats to delay the Assembly takeover won by the GOP in 1994, a move that resulted in his ouster by another Republican in 1996.
After he left office he was indicted on corruption charges stemming from his pre-Assembly service on the Fresno City Council. He was acquitted on some of the charges, but he was convicted of income tax evasion and sentenced to seven months in a halfway house.
"... an awful lot of people suspect that many, if not all, politicians are on the take.
Well, are they?
The short answer is, some are, probably most aren’t. "
BS! They may start with the best of intentions, but I'm convinced, anyone who's been in Washington more than one term is seriously compromised. The political machine won't allow for honest politicians. Honest ones don't get favor, thus fail in re-election bids.
It's like the government or union workers who put pressure on hard workers to slow down, and not make them look bad.
The period of the early eighties was the heyday of Senate President David Roberti and assembly speaker Willie Brown. I worked the California Legislature for an airline client one full summer during their tenure, and found out that they had a real scam going. One side of the assembly would pass legislation after getting all they could get from lobbyists and their clients, then the other house would extort as much as they could before deciding for the highest bidder.
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