> I'd assert, while admitting to being too lazy to defend the
> assertion with a monograph, that state legislatures are going to hell in a
> handbasket faster than Congress. If you think Congress is bought, the
states
> have been bought for a far cheaper price.....
>
> Ian
Nor could I defend such an assertion in a monograph, but it's certainly consistent with our recent experience in Wisconsin. Here, we are in the midst of a huge scandal involving the state legislature. This is a state which has, in the past, enjoyed a reasonably well-deserved reputation for probity in government. No longer. Four state legislators are under indictment on numerous felony counts brought by a special prosecutor. Three of them were charged within weeks of the recent election.
I doubt that the list is interested in a detailed run-down--it gets fairly convoluted, especially the political ramifications, but there are two basic issues. First, members of the legislative leadership were shaking down lobbyists for campaign contributions in return for moving their pet legislation. ("No shit!" you say, but people here were genuinely shocked). Second, employees on the state payroll working for the legislative "caucuses" were routinely used as campaign operatives. The "caucuses" are not what one usually means by the word, but rather bureaus of the legislature that were intended to provide the legislators themselves with "impartial" information-gathering and analytical services--sort of like the Congressional Budget Office. There's one caucus for each major party in each of the two chambers. The caucuses were invented in the early 60s as a "good government" reform, but have now come to this. The sums of money involved were quite small--as little as $500, and never more than a few thou. All of this hole-and-corner stuff, of course, pales in comparison to the perfectly legal flood of corporate, foundation, and out-of-state money that now dominates the political process.
For those interested, there's a web site put up by some Libertarians which offers a good chronology and links to numerous newspaper stories. You can find it here:
http://www.caucusscandal.com/main.html
The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign site has a page on the scandal, also informative, which you'll find here:
http://www.wisdc.org/caucus_index.html
Not long ago, there was a light piece about the scandals on the NYT op-ed page by Michael Feldman, host of the PRI comedy program "Whad'ya Know." The link now goes to the pay section of the NYT site, so I'll post the full text in a subsequent e-mail (it's not terribly long).
Regarding Ian's general point about state legislatures, I would say that seen from the upper midwest, he's right on the money. The villainous dancer in this particular ballet was Tommy Thompson, now busy pandering to the religious right at HHS, who introduced big money politics to the state on a scale not seen here before. People pay far too little attention to what happens at the state level...
Jacob Conrad