Step back from partisanship for a moment. The recent Daschle debacle can be quite instructive. Regardless of the motives of the players, "soft corruption" is the inevitable result of a tax and spend regime that is unbounded by the voters. Of course, there is also a lot of room for garden variety corruption.
The Daschle issue is not really the failure to pay taxes (corruption?). The issue is: Why are connected politicians immediately worth millions or tens of millions when they enter the private sector? Make no mistake, this is a bi-partisan cheesefest. Reagan, Bush I, Clinton(s), Gore, Emanuel, Daschle, Rubin, Cheaney, etc. This article explains it well. They can direct or influence the direction of billions of dollars through spending bills and regulations.
Voters have been carved into so many small special interest groups, that they cannot resist this onslaught. Sometimes, with the help of their congressional friends and regulators, the rats back up dump trucks to haul away the subprime cheese. Do we have to wait for our total financial destruction before we can support the Hedge Tax?
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