Corruption is closely associated with power, so much so that it is tempting to define it as the abuse of power.
A week ago, Jimmie Moore pleaded guilty to filing a false campaign finance report in order to conceal a $90,000 payment he received to drop out of a Pennsylvania congressional race. In other parlance it is called a payoff, as the former Philadelphia judge surely knew.
The nearly one-hundred-grand came from the incumbent being challenged: Congressman Bob Brady (D-Pa.). Brady has been serving (himself) in Congress for the last 19 years, representing a slam-dunk Democratic Party district. For even longer, the last 31 years, Brady has chaired the Democratic Party of Philadelphia.
Moore, who implicated Rep. Brady in the scheme, now faces as many as five years in prison. Brady, for his part, has yet to be charged.
Want to stay in Pennsylvania? A pro-life politician’s 15-year tenure in Congress has come to an end. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) has resigned following revelations that he had urged the woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair to have an abortion.
Hypocrisy in Washington is sort of a positive, like being almost half right.
Turns out Murphy’s “service” resulted in an ample quantity of additional bad behavior, according to an in-depth Politicoexposé. One former staffer dubbed the Washington congressional office “a culture of abuse and a culture of corruption.”
Go figure.
More? Well, there is the media-neglected trial of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) on federal corruption charges. And the list of congressmen, governors, state legislators, mayors and other elected officials convicted of corruption is large and growing.
If better organized, government would rival organized crime.
Just Google corruption. You will have to eventually stop hitting links and reading and mumbling to yourself . . . and go on to sleep.
But for the biggest scandal story, go Hollywood. Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has been ousted from The Weinstein Company upon allegations that he had committed criminal sexual harassment and assaults for decades. Rape has been alleged, along with a bevy of other sick, manipulative acts of abuse.
Because he is a huge donor to the Democratic Party, questions abound. Which Democrats had knowledge of Weinstein’s behavior when — and yet remained silent?
Weinstein gave generously to Hillary Clinton’s quest for the presidency. Hillary has now of course condemned his “sexist and misogynistic” behavior.
A British interviewer asked her if dismissing the three women brought to a presidential debate, who had each accused her husband, Bill Clinton, of one form or another of sexual assault, was “the right thing to do.”
“That had all been litigated,” responded Mrs. Clinton, adding, “. . . that was clearly in the past.” Ah, my favorite Clinton defense: their bad action was in the past. (By definition, of course.)
Various recorded comments about Weinstein have now surfaced demonstrating that his misbehavior was an open secret in the entertainment industry. Many also question why NBC News “spiked” the story, with one anonymous insider claiming that, “NBC did everything they could to delay it, complicate it, and ultimately Noah [Oppenheim] killed it. NBC shut it down.”
That ‘look the other way’ rot seems to have spread to a media/entertainment institution on NBC: Saturday Night Live. A week ago Saturday night, observers were surprised that SNL did not feature even one joke at “liberal” Weinstein’s expense.
“It’s a New York thing,” quipped Producer Lorne Michaels when questioned about the omission.
And yet audience members at a rehearsal said there had been a Weinstein joke in one sketch, and that it had garnered a big laugh. But the joke was apparently pulled from the live broadcast.
I’m not big on launching boycotts at every turn. But do we want comedy to be pure political propaganda? How could anyone who values evenhandedness have turned on SNL last night or next Saturday as if nothing had happened?
Who needs these jesters covering for corruption?
We have enough already and it is not funny.