WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING?

Congressman Vern Buchanan made today's Sarasota Herald Tribune front page. Being generally right of center politically, he would never get this honor except when the paper had something negative to report. This had to be something really special to dispossess the usual front page article "Nancy Pelosi walks on water, again."

It's not that I am heading up the Vern For Congress campaign but generally he seems to think like a businessman and not like a social worker. I think that is a good thing in a politician. Unfortunately he seems to be having a hand-in-the-cookie-jar moment. Today's paper describes a scheme in which a former business partner of our congressman/used car dealer allegedly coerced his employees into donating to his campaign and then would reimburse them for their donation...in clear violation of election laws. And you know how fair those are, ACORN. Anyway, if Vern were a Democrat, the paper would not likely have put this news on page one, perhaps because folks like Charlie Rangel are not held to much of a standard and Republicans being the preachy holier-than thou moralists that they are make the best targets. At least that's the impression I get from reading the paper.

We had a guy here in Sarasota who did this same thing and had to go away to Federal Prison from 6 months...Camp Cupcake with Martha Stewart I believe. On his return, tanned and with an improved golf score, he was forbidden to ever go into the insurance business again. Naturally, 15 milliseconds later... he was back in...insurance. Our very effective regulatory system failed once again to do anything but make life difficult for folks who try to do the right thing but nothing to thwart those who are schemers.

It's going to be interesting to see if this politician will be implicated legally as much as he was damned by association with his ex-business partner in the paper. Who could have seen this one coming? A dishonest car dealer? And the severe punishment that Rangel got... a letter in his file and having to write "I was a Bad Boy" 100 times...I wonder if this will be Vern's fate as well. And, will this whole sordid mess give politics a bad name?