Foley Scandal Boils, Abramoff Scandal Steams
As the scandal over gay Republican former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley boils over in Washington, it should not totally overshadow a more sinister scandal involving the total corruption of the system of financing elections in America.
If you missed Bill Moyers' special on PBS last night, you can watch it on the rerun or online.
"It's a dizzying scope of perfidy and politics that boggles the imagination, and although Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay have been brought down, the system remains as vulnerable as ever," Moyers says. "The scale of corruption still coming to light dwarfs anything since Watergate. In one sense it's the age-old tale of greed, but greed encouraged now by the way our system works. Deep in the plea agreements of Jack Abramoff and his cronies is the admission that they conspired to use campaign contributions to bribe politicians; campaign finance is at the core of the corruption. They took great pains to cover their tracks, and they might have pulled it off except for a handful of honest people, and the work of some enterprising print reporters, Senate investigators, and the ethics team at the department of justice."