The corrupt American Congress: Extortionists? Or seduced by bribes? Now that’s something for the FBI to investigate

Now that the FBI has its gumshoes working on cleaning up college athletics, perhaps it could focus on examining corruption elsewhere — perhaps in the American Congress, as my S&R college Sam Smith suggests.

Congress has always been amenable to financial persuasion. That’s the nature of power. Those who have it want to keep it. Those with money want to harness power to achieves their own ends. Politicians and the wealthy have danced together for a few centuries. But now? It’s really nasty.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision unleashed a corrupt system of reward and punishment in Congress. That’s especially ironic, as Citizens United, a right-wing organization founded in 1988, bills itself as “dedicated to restoring our government to citizens’ control.” What that Court decision permitted is far from any conservative group’s goal to rein in the expanse of government.

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