{"id":962,"date":"2006-01-07T18:37:28","date_gmt":"2006-01-07T18:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:31","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:31","slug":"whats_the_plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=962","title":{"rendered":"What’s The Plan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Democratic blogger Josh Marshall is wondering about the tepid Democratic reaction to Abramoff<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a political party, you can’t run on corruption if you’re not running for reform. But as near as I can tell there is no Democratic reform proposal in Congress. Maybe this or that representative or senator has some proposal, but nothing that the opposition party in any way, as a whole, has gotten behind.<\/p>\n

\nSo where’s the plan?<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today, the Democrats made a proposal – for an investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rep. Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat, said lobbyists had multiplied by the thousands in recent years to the point where there were now 63 of them for every lawmaker. She said they were using their campaign donations to influence policy and even write laws.<\/p>\n

\nSlaughter called on the House ethics committee to investigate corruption cases involving lawmakers with links to Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who pleaded guilty this week in a U.S. corruption probe.<\/p>\n

\n“The House ethics committee, after a year of inaction, must get to work immediately to investigate pending ethics and corruption cases in the House, including those involving members with ties to Jack Abramoff,” she said in the Democrats’ weekly radio address.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let me make a few suggestions. I do think that this is an opportunity for the Democrats – as the party out of power – to make a stand. I don’t delude myself enough to believe that they will make enough of one to radically change the dysfunctional, corrupt system in place.<\/p>\n

But there is an opportunity to make things better.<\/p>\n

How do they get enough public support? Simple. Make it clear that it is a sea change in the way the Democrats do business, and that it isn’t simply a convenient stick to get Democrats closer to the trough.<\/p>\n

Start by picking the most corrupt members of the Democratic party and busting them.<\/p>\n

John Moran (D-MBNA)<\/a> comes immediately to mind.<\/p>\n

Once they show a willingness to clean their own house, they’ll own the political high ground and will be able to make a case that what they are interested in is drying up the rivers of cash, not just getting themselves a bigger spot on the bank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed Liberal suggests a Democratic response to the Abramoff scandal – first clean our own house, then demand that the GOP clean theirs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}