Abramoff: It’s easy to corrupt congressional staffers

[rhoenix]

Appearing on Current TV’s “The Young Turks” on Tuesday night, notorious former lobbyist and convicted criminal Jack Abramoff explained just how easy it is to corrupt staff members crucial to the daily operations of Congress.

“As soon as you speak to a chief of staff or a staff member up there and say, look, I’d like you to join me when you’re done with your government service, come on over after a couple of years,” Abramoff said. “From that minute on, that person is thinking about where she’s gonna go, or he’s gonna go, in two years. They’re not thinking about where they work now. And everything they do is going to be for the benefit of that lobbyist.”

A recent example of Abramoff’s principle in action: just this week, two senior Republican staffers who worked on the controversial Protect IP and Stop Online Piracy Acts accepted lobbying jobs with the National Music Publishers’ Association and the Motion Pictures Association of America, major advocates for both bills. Naturally, their new employers claimed it’s just a case of knowing the right people and having the right skills, but outsiders suspect there’s something more to it than just that.

Abramoff added that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, now running for the presidency, had engaged in lobbying for the government-sponsored mortgage bank Freddie Mac. Gingrich had claimed he accepted payments of $1.6 million from the bank for serving as a “historian” and adviser. It didn’t seem to help, as the bank later accepted more than $72 billion in taxpayer bailouts.

In truth, Abramoff said, “Newt and others… say they’re strategic advisers, they say they’re giving general world vision views to these people, but [lobbying] is exactly what they’re doing.”

I think this highlights the real issue with America right now, which is that Big Government and Big Business have become thoroughly entangled, and by intent. Teddy Roosevelt's speech of getting all the business money out of politics is sounding more and more necessary.

[Soontir948]

One main thing that should be done is to stop donating to the politician's campaign directly. Your voice from your donation will not be heard as long as they rely more on corporate money. People should be setting up SuperPacs with the objective to promote their values and needs. Republicans already have them like Rove's p.o.s. If we can direct and place campaign ads by ourselves to put pressure on the politicians during their campaign and while they're in office, it would do more than just writing letters of dissent to them that the paid-off staffer will probably just throw out or not tell his boss.