The wheels of justice
September 28, 2005
I’ve frequently observed that the Republicans in Congress are totally intoxicated with power and out of control. And now from Austin, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) has been indicted by a Travis County grand jury for criminal conspiracy, in connection with a wide-ranging campaign finance scheme. The indictment follows earlier indictments of a state political action committee founded by DeLay and three of his political associates. According to the Austin American-Statesman, the charge is a felony punishable by up to two years in jail.
Of Wisconsin’s four Republican Congressmen, only Paul Ryan (WI-1) is on record for voting against the Republican effort last year to allow indicted Congressmen to retain their leadership positions in the GOP caucus. Tom Petri (WI-6) voted in favor of the DeLay Rule, saying that corruption “is a little bit like a traffic infraction; you can get arrested for things, but it’s not as though it’s a murder.” F. James Sensenbrenner (WI-5) and Mark Green (WI-8) both refused to give straight answers on the vote.
All four GOP Congressmen received money and contributions from Tom DeLay’s political action committees — Mark Green and Paul Ryan in considerable amounts.
Democrat Bryan Kennedy is running against Mr. Sensenbrenner next year, and several candidates have entered the Democratic primary in the Wisconsin 8th. Folkbum has a good rundown of that race.
Tom DeLay gets away with his corruption because the vast, silent majority of the Republican caucus doesn’t give a damn about clean government. They all benefit from Mr DeLay’s shenanigans, either directly, like Messrs. Green and Ryan, or indirectly, by leveraging all that money to strengthen the Republican majority in Congress. Google “Texas redistricting” and you’ll see what I mean (”Georgia redistricting” and “Ohio redistricting” will yield similar results).
But in the end their money and greed can only pay for so much. In the end they are accountable to the voters. In the end, we get to vote them out of office, whether they get frogmarched into court or not. So if you’re here in Wisconsin, throw some support behind our challengers, and help keep Wisconsin government clean.
September 28th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
I agree with you here, Ben, although Republicans have no monopoly on this; they just happen to be in power at the moment. You may perhaps be a little young to remember when Democrats controlled with even larger majorities than the Republicans have.
I think the US Congress is one of the best examples of “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” One reason I’ve been in favor of term limits, though it’s now out of favor. The good people we lose would be more than made up for by the crooks we get rid of, although there would no doubt be other offices they could be corrupt in.
September 28th, 2005 at 4:45 pm
Dean, I agree that corruption is a problem in both political parties. I think that the brand of big-business Republicanism currently in power is vastly more prone to cronyism and corruption (and certainly to large scale corruption) than either traditional conservatism or progressive liberalism. But regardless of that, everyone across the political spectrum ought to come down hard on any and all corrupt politicians. Caesar’s wife must be above reproach.
I favor term limits for executives: mayors and governors and presidents. I don’t think they are a good idea for legislators. Writing laws is not an easy thing, and experience is invaluable. In states that do have term limits on their Congressmen (California comes to mind), it is corrupt lobbyists who have become extremely powerful. They stay; the individual legislators come and go. By the time a legislators eight or twelve years is up, if they’re good at it, they might become a lobbyist. Their experience and knowledge of the law-making process is now used to subordinate the public good to the private good of a particular lobby.
I think a better check on corrupt legislators is competitive elections, anti-gerrymandering reform, clean financing of election campaigns (a very tricky and complex issue, of course), a prosecutorial media, and an active citizenry that demands clean government. Easier said than done, of course.
September 28th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
Woot! I hope Mr DeLay can avail himself of the Chuck Colson Prison Ministry for Felonious Republican Politicians.
September 28th, 2005 at 9:11 pm
Where is do process. It seems democrates believe everybody is inocent until proven guilty, unless you are a conserative. Remember this D.A. is a democrat partisn who brought 3 charges agains Kay Baily Hutchinson, that where laughed out of court. Prisioners of war in Gitmo need do process, but a republican is guilty without trial. Your double standards are a main reason why the democratic party has lost touch with Americans. The American people are not as dumb as you and Mr. Moore think.
September 28th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
And to say Wisconsin govermment is clean. Question- Why does Jim Doyle oppose voter ID ? Even Jimmy Carter supports it. Answer- to keep democratic vote fraud alive.
September 28th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
Ben, the more I hear about lobbyists and especially the professional lobbyists, I wonder about the honesty of the legislative process. I’m not quite to the point where I say it’s wrong (free speech and all that), but I just get that ugly feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Although not quite as radical as our friend Jerry, a prosecutorial media is fine, as long as they prosecute both sides. The other items have merit although we might disagree as the best method to accomplish them.
Hopefully we can educate the citizenry to weed out the corrupt politicians of both parties.
September 28th, 2005 at 10:36 pm
Jerry, do ya really think he’s innocent? Really? Or are we just going for some cheap moral equivalence? Well, sure, the Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives was indicted for criminal conspiracy, but some poor people in Milwaukee voted without an ID, so see, the Democrats are really the ones to blame!
September 29th, 2005 at 9:02 am
As far as the objectivity of the prosecutor, it turns out that Earle has prosecuted more democrats than republicans. That speaks a little to your point about corruption in both parties, but it also shows that this was not simply a “partisian witch hunt”.
September 29th, 2005 at 11:12 am
I lived in Austin for a couple of years, and I’ve gotta say that Ronnie Earle is the man. He’s not a partisan Democrat. For many, many years, the Texas Democrats were just as entrenched and corrupt as the Texas Republicans are now, and Ronnie Earle was indefatigable in taking them down - the Speaker of the Texas House, a Texas Supreme Court Justice, the Attorney General, and on and on. The charges against Kay Bailey Hutchinson were not laughed out of court, but dropped by Earle himself.
The “partisan witch hunt” idea is simply wrong. And don’t forget, it’s not Earle that indicted Speaker DeLay, but the grand jury that was convened to consider the evidence that Earle’s team has put together. Conspiracy is a messy and difficult crime to prove, and you don’t get indictments handed down without some concrete evidence and a pretty solid paper trail.
As far as the Gitmo quip, spare me. I suppose Mr. DeLay should be lucky he wasn’t extraordinarily renditioned to Saudi Arabia, or something? Of course he’s innocent until proven guilty. For crying out loud, he’s still a sitting member of Congress, at least until next November.
September 29th, 2005 at 11:16 am
Dean, I agree with you about the power of lobbyists, and their ability to basically write their own laws. I get that ugly feeling in the pit of my stomach too. And like you, I’m not sure what the answer is. Lobbying is inherently a good part of the political process in a free and open democracy: I care about some idea, so I try to convince my representatives to care about it as well.
The problems arise when that lobbying becomes so enmeshed and entrenched with the legislative process that the legislators themselves have little or no independence, and the ugly nexus of money and power and influence basically takes over the system.
I wish I had a solution, but I don’t. Eternal vigilence on the part of the voters, I guess. And good folks like Ronnie Earle to bring down the hammer on people who break the law.
September 29th, 2005 at 7:37 pm
There is 100% no chance he will be convicted. It would be a miracle if this even made trial. Have any of you read the charges? Earle’s own staff didn’t want him to proced. No this wasn’t a which hunt. Even though Earl boasted in May at a demacratic fundraiser that he is the man who will bring down Tom Delay. Why did Earle drop the case against Huctinson, ah I don’t know, maybe because there was not one. Ronnie Earle is man who extorts money from corporations in Texas. He has brought charges against them and droped them after contributions made to his charitable groups. Look it up.
You sit and ponder about finance and honesty, but jump right into bed with slime like Earle when he does your dirty work.
Oh Jen, it’s not about voting without an ID, but who many times you vote.
But of course if it is for a democrat it’s ok because you know whats best for people. Again why you will never again gain power, the little fact of the truth.
September 30th, 2005 at 8:26 am
Just another thing I found out when reading up on Ronnie Earle: he prosecuted himself back in the early 80s when he screwed up and fell afoul of campaign financing laws.
No one has ever seriously suggested that Earle is corrupt, Jerry, and I think your extortion charges need some citations. Can you provide any evidence for the claims you’re making? The Hutchinson case was dropped because some of the key evidence was ruled inadmissible — I don’t know the details of why, but that happens sometimes: she was found innocent, and so I’ll assume she was. Since when are prosecutors expected to have a 100% success rate?
Oh, and he’s not going to be the “guy who brought down Tom DeLay”. DeLay is not going to end up in jail — my suspicion is that he’ll eventually plead nolo contendere and pay a fine. But the voters of the Texas 22nd will bring him down next year — you heard it here first.
September 30th, 2005 at 12:36 pm
No prosecuter should be 100%. But you need valid charges, of which Earlehttp://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200509290811.asp has no. No plea will be reached, because Earle has no facts.
September 30th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
Jerry, National Review is hardly a non-partisan news source, but even their slanted and weird take on the matter falls well short of your extortion claims.
Ronnie Earle dropped an indictment against a group of corporate donors in exchange for their contributing to a watchdog group for clean government. It wasn’t a charity, and it wasn’t run by Earle. These things are called “plea bargains”, and they are fairly common tactics.
Even Tom DeLay doesn’t contest the basic facts of Earle’s case. He contends that they weren’t, in fact, illegal. The public copy of the indictment includes copies of the checks written to various organizations, along with a list of state campaigns to which the laundered money was to be distributed.
I agree with Ben that a plea of no contest is likely. I doubt that he will go to trial, in the end.