Despite all the faux-outrage about Wall Street bonuses on Capitol Hill, it seems to be the members of the political class who are getting away with things. Some examples:
Obama's appointee as Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, turns out not to have paid all of his taxes.
Tom Daschle had a $100,000 tax problem, which caused him to forfeit his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-NY, faces too many scandals to count, from tax problems, to real estate questions, to an interest-group-funded Caribbean junket that violated House ethics rules.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-CT, had sweetheart loans from Countrywide Mortgage -- a subprime lender under the jurisdiction of the Senate Banking Committee, which he chairs.
We've gone from a "culture of corruption" in which people who figured in scandals faced actual consequences, to a ”culture of impunity.”
By all accounts, we're heading into a rough period, with the economy spiraling downward, the federal government near bankruptcy, and many state and local governments actually broke. And the fault will lie with our political class, which has done so much to forfeit the trust that, ultimately, makes a nation possible.
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