As We See It: DC corruption and Sarah Palin

Who would dream that in this year of rising discontent against Wall Street and big government, it would take Sarah Palin to fix the blame where it truly should land.

In an essay published under her name last week, Palin said protesters are missing their mark. Instead of big banks and big government, Palin took aim at Congress, including both Republicans and Democrats.

"The corruption isn't confined to one political party or just a few bad apples. It's an endemic problem encompassing leadership on both sides of the aisle. It's an entire system of public servants feathering their own nests," she wrote in the essay published Friday in the usually conservative opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal.

Palin didn't come up with her arguments entirely by herself, noting that she has found answers to questions many are asking in "Throw Them Out," a book by one of her foreign-policy advisers, Peter Schweitzer, which she writes reveals the "permanent political class in all its arrogant glory."

Palin/Schweitzer detail the money-making opportunities for this privileged class, and she concludes, "We need equality under the law. From now on, laws that apply to the private sector must apply to Congress, including whistleblower, conflict-of-interest and insider-trading laws. Trading on nonpublic government information should be illegal both for those who pass on the information and those who trade on it ...

"No more sweetheart land deals with campaign

contributors. No gifts of IPO shares. No trading of stocks related to committee assignments. No earmarks where the congressman receives a direct benefit. No accepting campaign contributions while Congress is in session. No lobbyists as family members, and no transitioning into a lobbying career after leaving office. No more revolving door, ever."

Ever?

Even if Palin didn't write the piece, or the ideas came from an aide, this is new territory for a major political figure in the Republican Party. Palin isn't running for pres! ident, t his year, but none of the 2012 candidates are talking about the corruption that has made Congress beholden to big business, personal enrichment schemes and lobbyists.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich certainly isn't saying much. The former House speaker has inched upward in approval ratings in the light of Herman Cain's sexual harassment troubles and Rick Perry's inability to remember what he was talking about. But Gingrich should be careful in how he has been attacking Democrats like Barney Frank for being too close to Freddie Mac in its era of making dubious mortgage loans.

Gingrich made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million from the disgraced housing organization after he left government service for giving his insider advice.

Although Gingrich last week insisted he has not been a lobbyist, it turns out that health companies paid as much as $200,000 a year in dues to the Center for Health Transformation -- a health care think tank he created in 2003 to find ways to improve health care and make it cheaper. The Washington Post reported that the center collected at least $37 million in the last eight years as Gingrich pushed public policy positions favored by many of these companies.

Democrats, of course, are no better. On this page, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank notes how top House Democrats joined lobbyists in a recent fundraiser to benefit New York Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel, who only last year was censured by his colleagues for ethical and financial improprieties. All apparently has been forgiven when there's money to raise.

The stench goes all the way to the Obama administration. Take the Solyndra solar debacle, where a top Obama fundraiser, George Kaiser, also was a major Solyndra investor -- and was a frequent White House visitor as the now bankrupt company was getting the infamous $500 million loan that will never be repaid to taxpayers.

Any wonder Congress has a 9 percent public approval rating and that the early promise of the Obama! adminis tration has tarnished?

Milbank quotes Harvard law professor and liberal ethics specialist Lawrence Lessig, who told him, "Who would ever trust such a system? How can this government continue to behave like this?"

That's what Sarah Palin is asking.

And so should you.