NBC snuck a camera into some of the inaugural balls paid for by corporate cash and found the kind of routine corruption that hardly raises an eyebrow anymore.
We caught up with Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who was talking to a lobbyist for telephone company MCI.
“Nothing wrong with a few corporate sponsors,” said Rep. Wicker.
Was there any influence peddling going on?
“Oh, not any more than any other time,” he said.
Yeah, that’s reassuring.
Some of the examples were more troubling than others. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, for example, was found at a brunch hosted by gambling casinos. When asked to explain, Scalia said, “I have no idea who’s paying for the lunch, thank you.”
But one attendee captured the mindset of the conservatives’ perfectly.
[O]ne congressman has no use for complaints about corporate-funded celebrations.
“Anybody who is against that obviously must be a communist,” says Rep. James Gibbons, R-Nev.
Of course, the “red scare” — the last refuge of a scoundrel.
As it turns out, Gibbons, who’s been taking preliminary steps to run for governor of Nevada, admits that he wasn’t joking, but says his “communist” remarks were taken out of context.
Gibbons had explained more at length to NBC that he firmly believes that everyone in the United States, including corporate executives, have the freedom, under limits of the law, to spend their money for political events and to lobby lawmakers, [spokeswoman Amy] Spanbauer said.
“That’s one of the tenets of our society,” she said.
The Sun made numerous attempts to contact Gibbons to ask him about the remark but he did not return phone calls and could not be found at an inaugural event where he had been scheduled to appear Thursday.
So there you have it. Corporate influence in government is a bedrock of American democracy. So long as you go into detail articulating that belief, it’s perfectly reasonable to call those who disagree with you “communists,” so long as they believe corporate cash may offer these businesses disproportionate influence over the political process.
Republican logic at its finest.