They call it "creative fundraising"...

My city council member is in trouble and you can
read about it here and here. Tomorrow I’ll be vot-
ing for his opponent in the city-wide primary. I’m
not the sort to hold a couple of bribes against an
elected official, but this just added to my animosity
towards him and the Green Party in general. As for
the former, he’s just a classically ineffectual munici-
pal politician who never met an issue he couldn’t
grandstand around. The latter is a party I find myself
siding with theoretically, yet always vote against at
the last minute because I just can’t shake the suspicion
that they’re utterly full of shit. I’m sometimes sorry
I feel that way, but usually I figure it’s a mistake to
put people in power simply because they happen to
be well-intentioned.

Of course it remains to be seen if Dean Zimmerman
even has good intentions going for him anymore. If
the FBI is right about him, the man has grievously
insulted all the kind, committed people who’ve sup-
ported him in all his windmill-tilting adventures. He
ought to be ashamed of that, but it could very well
be that he’s utterly shameless. After all, this is a
person who turned a press conference about the
charges against him into an opportunity to scold
reporters for their indifference to the poor and
homeless on his street. That shit doesn’t play with
me. He and I live in the same neighborhood, and I
can’t say that I’ve seen any great improvement in
services for the impoverished and unfortunate under
his tenure.

The Republicans exploit the poor to trick votes out
of fearful and complacent suburbanites. Apparently,
the Greens exploit them to stoke liberal guilt. Perhaps
that's the real corruption scandal here...