Monday, January 26, 2009

Blagojevich and Madoff - Wrongly Singled Out?

Governor Rod Blagojevich is being impeached for allegedly auctioning off a US Senate seat to the highest bidder. Bernard Madoff is going on trial for an alleged ponzi scheme, where money is brought in, and returns on investment on paid with the money of other contributors, rather than the merits of the investment.

Why are these guys being singled out? Most Congressman vote on bills not for the bill's merit, but by the amount of pork that gets fed into a bill that has nothing to do with the bill. That's how the bailout passed. The first bailout was voted down. Then it was voted in because congressmen were promised money in their district for various programs that had nothing to do with the bailout. Isn't that selling your vote? How does that differ from Blagojevich? How is it wrong wrong to sell the job, but OK to act that way once you have the job.

As for a 50 billion dollar ponzi scheme: How many trillions of dollars have gone into Social Security, where we pay into a system that transfer the money to someone else? The scheme has been going on longer than Madoff's and is tremendously larger, but one of these days that scam is going to run out of money too. I doubt anyone is going to stand trial for that one.


No comments: