Don’t Think We Haven’t Noticed

This comment from g7enn at The Huffington Post is so good (in response to this post from Jerry and Joe Long at HuffPo) that I’m highlighting it here regarding recently elected House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (for anyone who thinks I take it easy too much on Dems).

Potential Tom DeLay clone, Steny Hoyer's selection as house majority leader means lobbyist control of the House and stay the course in Iraq:

"Hoyer's Own K Street Project," about how he was starting a fund-raising operation to shake down corporate lobbyists for cash. Hoyer made sure he was featured in The Hill newspaper reassuring the corporate community that he "has sought to make himself the first contact for K Street" and that he would continue holding regular meetings with their lobbyists."

...it was Hoyer - the Democratic Whip - who refused to whip votes together to try to defeat the corporate-written Central American Free Trade Agreement. ...it was Hoyer, the second-ranking Democrat in the House, who not only didn't whip against the bankruptcy bill, but actually voted for it, after pocketing massive campaign contributions from the banking industry. ...Hoyer was voting for the Iraq War. ..the GOP Energy Bill, it was Hoyer who voted for the nauseating legislation after pocketing more than $300,000 from energy/natural resource industry cash. That legislation that literally gave away billions of taxpayer dollars to the energy industry profiteers who proceeded to bilk Americans with higher and higher gas prices."

(related Common Dreams article here...)

And I don’t want to hear about John Murtha and ABSCAM, by the way. He was recorded as saying something that could give the impression that he might be susceptible to a bribe, but he never took any money.

I’ll be honest – Hoyer concerns me, though I realize that moving him up the chain based on senority is the "safe" move. Murtha doesn’t have the same trail behind him and at least double the courage and integrity.

But what’s done is done (sorry to participate in this circus after I decried it yesterday).