Here a PAC, There a PAC, Everywhere a PAC, PAC

Hey, if they can do it, why can't I? I need to figure out how to establish my own leadership PAC to pay for the necessary incidentials like educational travel.

Today's Jim Hightower report:

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

"CONGRESSIONAL LIFESTYLE SLUSH FUNDS"

Members of congress like to claim that they're just regular folks. But I don't know many ordinary Americans who have political slush funds to pay for life's little necessities, do you? These funds called "leadership PACs," are created by various lawmakers ostensibly to collect money to help elect or re-elect other politicians of their particular stripe. Many of the congressional leaders, however, have been doling out big chunks of their PAC money to the politician they favor the most: Themselves! Take Michael Oxley, of Ohio, who chairs a powerful committee. Corporations needing legislative favors are delighted to shove money into Oxley's leadership PAC, but this "leader" is diverting much of it to pay for his own royal lifestyle. In the past two years alone, for example, his PAC paid for $25,000-worth of chauffered limousine rides around Manhattan. It also covered 47 trips on chartered jets, plus financing his annual ski jaunt out to Vail, as well as golfing trips to Arizona and Florida. Other members even use their leadership PACs for some of the more mundane purchases that you'd think they'd cover themselves. Tom DeLay, for example, uses his PAC fund to buy cigars, Roy Blunt billed his PAC for tickets to a Fleetwood Mac concert, and Senator Rick Santorum even charges his PAC for the cups of coffee he buys at Starbucks. Note that all of these congress critters are arch-conservatives who're constantly giving speeches about fiscal responsibility and personal integrity. Both Democrats and Republicans play this self-serving slush-fund game, and both rush to defend their expenditures by saying that the practice is perfectly legal. Well, yes, but guess who wrote the law that makes it legal? This is Jim Hightower saying... If the managers of, say, a union PAC were caught self-dealing, they'd be indicted. But then, they don't get to write laws to legalize their own immoral behavior.