Poster child for corruption in government

On a day when the Moscow Mitch Supreme Court shoved this country further down the road to ruin via blatant political corruption (a court decision worthy of a post of its own on another day), one of our own blue politicians here in Oregon was singled out in a national forum for his own unethical behavior when it comes to campaign finance. Selling the nation's soul for personal gain, it seems, is a bipartisan affair.

The politician in question is Kurt Schrader, congressman from the Fifth District, and as readers of this blog know, a despicable traitor to progressive causes. Recently he's been the beneficiary of media advertising portraying his opponent, who's a true Democrat, as... well, a wicked witch. The pro-Kurt ads (there were apparently more than one) were produced by a political action committee, or PAC, called Center Forward, and so there's no easy way for the public to know which actual corporations or human beings ultimately paid for them. But even I, a guy who shuns commercial TV and tapes sports-related programs so as to zap through the ads, have seen the attack one.

In the commercial spot I saw, Schrader's opponent, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, is assailed as a toxic personality with a loser employment record, and wrong, wrong, wrong to be representing Oregon in Congress.

Now, PACs and candidates are not supposed to be coordinating these things; that's against federal law. But as a front-page story in yesterday's New York Times points out, Schrader's people virtually dictated the ad's content via a "red box" page on his campaign website.

That's old Kurt for you, always on the forefront of sleaze. I hope that come January, he's back to inseminating cows in Canby, or more likely, tending to his frozen plumbing in the Hamptons.