Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

Many Congreesmen are scrambling to return money donated by Jack Abramoff or his clients. It is nice that some of the money ended up in charities but the whole thing is rather silly. If you accepted money from the mob and committed a crime in exchange, would giving back the money absolve you of the crime? A Congressman who voted according to his conscience should not have returned the money. A Congressman who was bought by the money would still be guilty even if he returned every cent. The problem is that even money that is contributed legally may influence a politician to do the wrong thing. If a lobbyst contributed money legally to a Congressman which causes him to change his vote, wouldn't that be a bribe also? There are too many loop holes in the law because the lawmakers like it that way. Campaign reform will unlikely be able to solve this problem.

Ideally voters should be the ones making judgments on this. If voters feel their representatives are being bought, they can voted them out. Unfortunately, unless there is a situation like with Abramoff, the voters will have no idea who is bribing their representatives. Even now, do most voters check to see if Abramoff contributed money to their Congressman? Voters are unlikely to be able to figure out who contributed to their Congressman and more unlikely to know if he/she was influenced by the money. The only time the voters will hear about their politician being influenced by special interests is during election when negative advertising is all over the place. Nobody can sort out what is true or false during those times.

I advocate an ombudsman system for the federal and state governments. The system will hire people who are nonparisian and have no ties with any business or union. They will investigate to see whether there is a connection between a large donation and how a politician votes. Periodically, a report will be sent to each voter in the district of a particular politician. Of course, the voters may like the politician even if he gets a negative report. This is because many politicians bring "pork" home to his districts. If the voters do not read these reports or ignore them then they deserve what they get.