Top Ethics Scandals for 2008

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington creates an annual Top 10 Ethics Scandals. The top 10 for 2008 follows:

• Despite ongoing congressional scandals and the House leadership’s pledge to end the “culture of corruption,” no new ethics enforcement mechanisms have been put into place.
• More than 10 million e-mails mysteriously vanished from White House servers from 2003-2005. The administration still has not implemented an electronic record keeping system that properly preserves electronic records and protects them from being tampered with or deleted.
• As prosecutions of members of Congress continue, so to will their reliance on the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution.
• Members of Congress continue to abuse their positions by trading donations for political favors.
• Members of Congress continue to use their positions to financially benefit their families.
• It is a safe bet that last minute presidential pardons will not be without controversy.
• CREW and VoteVets.org exposed an internal Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) e-mail advising VA mental health staff in Texas to consider diagnosing returning veterans with adjustment disorder rather than post traumatic stress disorder as a cost-cutting measure.
• As the federal government’s total investment in bailout programs enacted over the past year approaches $7 trillion, American taxpayers have yet to be assured of proper oversight over expenditures of our money.
• Suspecting special favors for Bush allies, CREW sought documents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection in March 2008 related to the construction of the border fence between the United States and Mexico and the apparent special treatment of Ray L. Hunt.
• The level of politicization of the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the Bush administration is unprecedented.

To read the entire report, click on CREW Releases List of Top Ten Ethics Scandals of 2008.