Lincoln Style Corruption

From the Chicago Tribune: How Hastert benefited from sale: Planned highway could sweeten asset near Plano.
Excerpt:...a real estate transaction in Kendall County last December left House Speaker Dennis Hastert with a seven-figure profit and in prime position to reap further benefits as the exurban region west of Chicago continues its prairie-fire growth boosted by a Hastert-backed federally funded proposed highway...
Now this is the kind of political corruption we like here at Empire Burlesque! This is good old-fashioned, down-home graft just like Mother used to make when she ran Tammany Hall. There's none of your fancy-shmancy, money-laundering, torturous transactions through cut-outs, front groups, PACs, pals, former aides, off-shore islands and what have you, like you get with your Tom DeLays and your Jack Abramoffs and your Duke Cunninghams. No sir, with Big Denny Hastert, it's all up front, just like his prodigious belly: "We gonna build this highway I pushed through right near this land I done bought and, son, we gonna make ourselves a great big pile." That's the American way!

The Whig party, I mean the Republican party is making money the old fashioned way. Now, if Hastert said he was emulating his idol Abraham Lincoln and his approach for making money representing the railroads, would that be okay? Make sure to read the whole article. It gets me all misty eyed when I think about this nostalgic tradition among American Politicians.