HOW "DEMOCRACY" WORKS:

Congressmen Caught Red Handed

OR

Absolute Proof That Corporate Cash Runs the Country

One executive of Westar Energy Inc. told colleagues in an e-mail that "we have a plan for participation to get a seat at the table" of a House-Senate conference committee on the Bush administration's energy plan. The cost, he wrote, would be $56,500 to campaign committees, including some associated with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.), Rep. Joe Barton (Tex.), Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (La.) and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.).

The e-mail said Tauzin and Barton "made this request" for donations, and Shelby "made a substantial request" for another candidate. It not specify a direct request from DeLay.

And

"Right now, we have $11,500 in immediate needs for a group of candidates associated with Tom DeLay, Billy Tauzin, Joe Barton and Senator Richard Shelby," the e-mail said. It said DeLay's "agreement is necessary before the House Conferees can push the language we have in place in the House bill." Tauzin and Barton "are key House Conferees on our legislation. They have made this request" for contributions to other Republican candidates "in lieu of contributions made to their own campaigns."

Lawrence's e-mail called Shelby "the lead Republican on all Senate PUHCA related matters. He is our anchor on the Senate side. He made a substantial request of us for supporting" Tom Young, Shelby's chief of staff, who in 2002 was running for a House seat from Alabama.

Click here.

Wow.

Of course, I've believed for years that corporations actually rule America, but this is the kind of smoking-gun proof that makes it pretty hard to deny, even for the most conservative, most Republican, most heavily propagandized and indoctrinated 'Mercuns down here in Bush country, a.k.a. Texas--this might even send my neo-con lawyer older brother into a tailspin...

It's not a big story now, but I think it will be soon. I learned about it by listening to an interview with Tyson Slocum of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen group on Pacifica's Flashpoints radio show, a decidedly left-wing, relatively obscure news source, but I did manage to find the above linked Washington Post story from June sixth on the Internet.

According to Slocum, the catalyst for the scandal was rooted in the now-typical outing of energy industry corruption. Executive excesses at Westar Energy resulted in the election of an entirely new board of directors. In an attempt to revive the credibility of the company, the new board decided to come clean on everything, and published a report full of damning information (in PDF format, go to page 341 for the good stuff), a veritable anarchist's bomb thrown right smack dab in the middle of Washington business-as-usual.

Some of the report contains memos written by Westar's top lobbyist that give an inside view of how our "democracy" really works. The long and the short of it is that some Republican congressmen offered their legislative services in return for Westar campaign contributions totaling $60,000 dollars. Westar wanted a regulatory exemption that would allow them to break up into smaller companies, and stick their public utility division with a lot of debt: that means that taxpayers would get screwed while most of the rest of the company becomes debt free. In the end, they didn't get their bill, but not because their bought-off legislators didn't try. In other words, these Congressmen took bribes and acted on them. Slocum says that as many as twelve Congressmen could end up as part of the scandal.

Of course, bribes are illegal.

And for good reason. The notion that our elected representatives are making their legislative decisions based on anything other than a desire to promote the general welfare is a virtual blow to our identity as Americans, the democracy-loving people. Buying the law goes against everything for which America supposedly stands. That is why it is illegal for any public offical to accept a bribe.

However, it must not be forgotten that campaign finance corruption is only a fragment of the overall dismal picture of American "democracy." Corporate power has corrupted American philosophy, American thought. Decades of corporate me-first, buy-and-buy-and-buy, "greed is good" propaganda has created an overall cultural context wherein such political corruption is all but inevitable. Many Americans would do exactly the same thing if they were fat-cat politicians.

Like their scandal-ridden corporate executive counterparts such as Jeff Skilling and "Kennyboy" Lay, DeLay, Barton, Tauzin, and Shelby are but symptoms of a much bigger problem: America worships the dollar. Hopefully, these crooked politicians will be disgraced and punished, but I will be surprised, indeed, if the people of the United States rise up against their evil god, Mammon.

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