Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

Just like the lyrics of the old song by The Who, the surprise election of Ohio Representative John A. Boehner was a missed opportunity for the House Republican leadership to make a clean break with the seeming bad appearances of both the Abramoff lobby scandal and Tom Delay's money machine politics, but instead turned out to be just more of the same old tired politics.

To many in Congress Rep. Boehner is like the big tobbaco lobby's own personal "Western Union", as he actually personally delivers tobacco lobby checks right to the members of Congress. In order to promote the goals of this murderous industry that hooks people on a drug just as addictive as heroin, and causes injury and death to innocent bystanders through secondhand smoke including ear infections in children and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome to infants, Boehner actually distributed tobacco lobby checks to House members right on the floor of Congress to further the murderous tobacco industry interests. And Roy Blunt who was defeated by the Republican leadership, married a lobbyist for Philip Morris. The only question was which tobacco lobby Congressman pal the Republican House leadership would annoit as their new leader in their phony "reform" drive.

Conn. Republican Rep. Chris Shays feels that Boehner is even closer to the big lobby industry than Rep. Blunt who Congress turned down. And former Republican Rep. Linda Smith said that how Boehner conducts himself, if it is not "illegal, then it should be". Yet Boehner laughably represents himself as some sort of "reformer".

In the words of The Who, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss". There was a clear missed opportunity to break with the "culture of corruption" in Congress. But these tired old politicians just could not bring themselves to do that.