Crooked politicians: There are more than you think.

In the dock, along with three of his erstwhile aides, is a sharp-dressed man named Mike Veon, former Democratic Party whip of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Mr. Veon was charged with 59 separate offences, many of them related to the use of his legislative staff to raise funds and campaign for his own reelection, rather than to tend to the public's business. It's been about six numbing weeks since this trial began. Through all that time, the jury has been required to sit through the presentation of more than 17,000 pages of evidence and the testimony of dozens of witnesses for both sides.

It could be any courthouse, anywhere in the United States or Canada, with an elected official in the dock and ordinary citizens acting as their ‘peers’ of the powerful, called to pass judgment against them. Across the United States alone, trials like this begin and end every working day. Each year, more than 1,000 men and women are charged with a similar betrayal of the public trust. Cheating the taxpayer and getting sent to jail is business as usual in the legislatures and city halls of that nation.

Mike Veon paid more than a million dollars in bonuses to his campaign staff out of the public treasury and the even had a couple of his flunkeys fly his motorcycle out to a biker rally in South Dakota and then had the audacity to bill their trip to the taxpayers of his state. These are the kind of political crooks who spit in your face and tell you that its rain.

The Montgomery Federal Prison Camp is like Alcatraz was. The inmates in that cushy prison "Pelican Bay Extra Lite” and for good reason. It is one of the minimum-security campuses and that are constantly ridiculed by the public as "Club Fed." They are the kinds of prisons crooked politicians go to.

Talibdin El-Amin, né Mark Bastain of St. Louis, age 39, formerly an assembly-line worker for Ford Motor Co., formerly a seaman in the U.S. Navy, formerly a member of the Missouri House of Representatives is an inmate in one of those cushy prisons. Now he's in the slammer for bribery. While serving as the people's representative for the 57th District of the Show-Me State, Talibdin El-Amin - or "T. D." as everybody calls him - was convicted of pocketing $2,000 in cash in four installments from a man who owns a gas station in old Saint Louis. His explanation for receiving the money was;

"He was an immigrant and I was assisting him against people who were shaking him down, citing him for trash violations, loitering, that kind of petty stuff. He would be in my office for hours, asking me to help him. He's expressing his gratitude. I'm not independently wealthy. So I took the envelopes.” Yeah and chickens have lips.

He admitted however that what he took was a bribe. He said, "Yes, I took a bribe. The funny thing is, I would have helped him anyway. When I was in office, I really wanted to give the people the office. I didn't hoard the power. It was never really about me. That one action undermined everything I've ever done. Unfortunately, for the politician, the man he allegedly helped was wearing a wire.

As capers go, it was hardly the stuff of Bernie Madoff. Two grand barely was enough money for T.D. El-Amin. But he wasn’t sent to prison because of that small amount. He was sent to prison because of the breach of trust. It wasn't even a record for the Montgomery Federal Prison Camp. – One of the inmates is a former city councilman from Memphis here who took a $12,000 bribe. He'll be serving four full years to T.D.'s 18 months. But $2,000 T.D. took was enough to brand a proud, introspective, once-honoured and honourable man a criminal for life, and to add yet another name to America's long and growing roster of disgraced politicians.

The stain of political corruption taints this nation, from sea to slimy sea. While the poster boy for political sleaze awaits a June trial in Chicago, Senate-seller and Celebrity Apprentice washout Rod Blagojevich is far from alone. Already in prisons across the country are thousands of former members of Congress, state legislators, governors, mayors, councilmen, judges, commissioners and aides.

From the Democratic whip of the Pennsylvania State Assembly to the majority leader of the Rhode Island Legislature, from ex-Congressman in Arizona who is charged with conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and extortion, to the ex-mayor of the largest city here in Alabama, the roster of rotten apples is bulging with convictions for bribery, embezzlement, misuse of public funds, influence peddling and manifold other crimes.

No jurisdiction is exempt, no offence too flagrant. The mayor of Baltimore was forced to resign last winter after cashing $500 worth of gift cards that had been donated to the city's poor. She bought herself an xBox. A Congressman from Baton Rouge hid $90,000 in hot bills in his freezer. Two judges from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., allegedly pocketed more than $2-million in bribes from the owners of a private-sector prison, then they crammed the jail with young offenders who should have never be sent there in the first place.

In one recent survey, the state with the highest number of convicted officials per capita was North Dakota. In Pennsylvania, 25 state legislators and aides from both parties have been indicted this year for misuse of public funds. Alabama is one of the top 10 of worst offenders, trailing only such snake pits as New York, New Jersey and Illinois.

According to the Public Integrity Section of the federal Department of Justice, more than 15,000 elected officials and civil servants were convicted of betraying the public trust for personal power or financial gain between 1999 and 2008.
Two-thirds of Americans tell pollsters that they believe all politicians are corrupt. That may not be literally true, but it's not far from the sad reality.

The public has a real distaste for politicians, and the feeling seems to be reciprocated. There is clearly a sense of greed and a sense of entitlement among politicians.

The United States may not be the most corrupt nation in the world, but on the Corruption Perception Index issued by an organization called Transparency International, the U.S. scored 19th from the top in 2009, barely trailing Britain and Japan, and just ahead of Barbados. Canada is tied for eighth most honest with Iceland and Australia. although those countries have their share of crooked politicians also.

Professor Michael Johnston, of Colgate University in New York state, is a member of the board of directors of the body that ranks the rankest nations. He says, “Despite the best efforts of Milorad Blagojevich and his ilk, the United States is not mired in some all-time trough of malfeasance. Mississippi in the 1830s was worse and the financing of the Transcontinental Railway in the 1860s was as crooked as a Burmese python.”

Still, the expert says, political corruption in America, especially at the state and local level, "is almost Classical in scope; a collective state of being."

Corruption may be systemic in all 50 states, but each successful prosecution requires a rare confluence of willing witnesses, a budget for enforcement, prosecutorial ambition and courtroom skill. The Department of Justice retains only 29 attorneys to oversee the trillion-dollar federal bureaucracy.

It was in Jefferson County that former commissioner and mayor Larry Langford accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and luxury goods via a pair of Democratic party bagmen in connection with contracts to build a new sewage-treatment system. Or, as Matt Taibbi aptly described the scandal last month in Rolling Stone, "A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street." By any standards, the malfeasance of Mr. Langford – and the generosity of his co-conspirators - was impressive, ranging from a $12,000 wristwatch to a closet full of cashmere sweaters and Ferragamo shoes. Facing more than 800 years in jail, he was sent up the river to a federal prison in Kentucky for a mere decade and a half.

T.D. El-Amin said while at the Montgomery Federal Prison Camp. “ I'm a very good person. Inside, I'm still the little kid who used to shovel old people's walks and cut their grass for free.” When told that he was a corrupt politician who took a bribe, he replied, "Who says I'm corrupt? But who should I apologize to? The public? I haven't harmed the public. I apologize to those who put their trust in me. But I haven't harmed anyone but myself and my family that is doing this time with me.” He is obviously the same man he was when he took the bribe. He later had the audacity to say to an interviewer, "The people who will boo me, they'll be jealous. "They'll see how the people welcome me and they'll wonder, ‘Who is this guy?' "When I go home, I don't think it will be boos. I think it will be cheers."

This in my opinion is evidence that he and like many other crooked politicians like him will never change. They will always have a hand out if there is any sign that there is money nearby.