Corruption countdown

Just how corrupt is Rod Blagojevich? Trying to place him in the long annals of the financial scandals of American history is like trying to rank the world's greatest pieces of art. Well, the world's greatest pieces of forged art.

So now we begin Countdown's list of the 25 most financially corrupt politicians in this nation's long, and bribe-filled history. The headline here is -- American politics has in large part been animated by the spirit of Zero Mostel, as he expressed it in the original version of "The Producers": “Ohhhhhh! I want that money!"

We begin with Number 25, Arkansas Congressman Tommy Robinson, a kind of symbol of one of the widest, but shallowest scandals in American history: 1992's Rubbergate. The official bank for the House of Representatives used to give Congressmen overdraft protection - and then some. The bank had no computers, just pencils and accounting books. So in the late '80s and early '90s only a few Congressmen were found to have overdrawn their accounts -- about 450.
Congressman Robinson was among 21 criticized by the House Ethics Committee for having had the most checks overdrawn for the longest period of time:

He had 996 of them for sixteen months.

Lauren Victoria Burke / AP Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska

Number 24 is Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. Although he could move up as we begin to find out more about all that he did -- or had others do for him, like the quarter of a million dollars in remodeling to his house done for him by the VECO Corporation and other oil-field service and contracting companies.

Twenty third on our list of the most financially corrupt American politicians: the Governor of Illinois, prosecuted by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

No, not Blagojevich, the guy before him: Governor George Ryan -- the third of Blagojevich's six elected predecessors to go to the big house. His crime: a scheme to award trucking licenses to people who didn't really know how to drive trucks, in exchange for bribes.

Charles Rex Arbogast / AP Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan leaves Chicago's federal courthouse following his conviction on all 22-counts of racketeering and fraud charges.

At Number 22: the 1970's Chairman of the House Administration Committee, Wayne Hays of Ohio. His job was obscure, but his colleagues in Congress feared him, because if he didn't like you, he could literally shut off the air conditioning in your office. So nobody said boo when Hays used Administration Committee funds to hire one Elizabeth Ray to be a staff secretary. The scandal only broke when she went to The Washington Post and complained, "I was good enough to be his mistress for two years but not good enough to be invited to his wedding."

Number 21 on our "Blagojevich List" -- another Illinois Democrat; Dan Rostenkowski. His transgressions were bush-league compared to the Governor's, but they did show that same kind of panoramic versatility. He was accused of putting fake employees on his payroll, using Congressional funds to buy gifts like chairs and ashtrays for his friends, and, most bizarrely, getting several thousand dollars worth of stamps from the Congressional Post Office and trading them in for cash.

AP President Richard Nixon

Number 20 would complain that he's on this list. Richard Nixon's primary rationalization for Watergate was that he never took a dime from anybody. Not so in 1952. Two months after being nominated for Vice President, the New York Post broke the story that campaign donors were buying influence from him by providing him with a secret slush fund for his personal expenses. Nixon - about to be kicked off the ticket -- turned the allegation that he'd taken $18,000 in bribes into a televised speech focused on the sob story that his kids had received a "little Cocker Spaniel" which his daughter Tricia, "the youngest," had named "Checkers."
The rest, is history.

If the abuses of Number 19, recent Ohio Congressman James Traficant, had begun and ended

Haraz Ghanbari / AP If the abuses of recent Ohio Congressman James Traficant, had begun and ended with his hair -- he might still have made the Top 25.

with his hair -- he might still have made the Top 25. But he actually went to jail for filing false tax returns, racketeering, taking bribes, and forcing his Congressional aides to perform chores on his farm and his houseboat.

Eighteenth on the all-time list of American financial political corruption: the dapper mayor of New York in the '30s, Jimmy Walker. Walker's New York was so rancid that innocent people were often pulled off the street and accused of crimes they had not committed, with an array of professional witnesses ready to testify that they did it. An investigation found that at least 51 guiltless women went to jail when they wouldn't, or couldn't, bribe their way out of the extortion scheme. Walker was so guilty he not only resigned as mayor, he resigned and took the first boat for Europe.

Our number 17 is an obscure figure from the most consistently financially corrupt presidential administration ever: Orville Babcock, the personal secretary to President Ulysses S. Grant. He was the lynchpin in the "Whiskey Ring" of 1875, in which Republican politicians, including many connected to Grant, siphoned off millions of dollars in federal taxes on liquor sold in St. Louis. And Chicago. And Milwaukee. And Cincinnati. And New Orleans. And Peoria, Illinois.

At 16, another corrupt member of the Grant Administration: William Belknap, his Secretary of War. At a time when trading outposts in the Wild West were incredibly lucrative, Belknap decided they should be incredibly lucrative for him too. So he sold them to the men appointed as official U.S. Post Traders. Belknap was such a crook that, to this date, he remains the only Cabinet member in history to be impeached!

Coming in at fifteenth on the Blagojevich list, Dusty Foggo. Little more than two months ago he made a plea deal to get out from under a mountain of charges as one of the inside men for the infamous California congressman Duke Cunningham. “Inside" for Foggo was at the CIA, where he was Executive Director. He admitted to one count: taking a bribe to steer an Agency contract to a lifelong friend.

At Number 14 - not necessarily the most financially corrupt of all the Congressmen in our history, but he scores this highly because of the "Colorful Details Factor." The just-forcibly-retired gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Bill Jefferson, who officially only took $100,000 while hidden FBI cameras rolled. But he took it in 100 dollar bills -- that'd be a thousand hundreds -- and 900 of them would be wrapped neatly in aluminum foil, stuffed inside frozen-food containers, and packed away in the freezer in his home.

Bob Daughtery / AP Otto Kerner

And we complete the first 13 of our 25 most financially corrupt American politicians -- the Blagojevich List -- with, yet another Governor of Illinois. Otto Kerner had already resigned to take a federal judgeship when Marge Lindheimer Everett filed her 1969 income tax returns. On them she had entered a series of deductions - stock in the company she managed, which owned the Arlington Park and Washington Park racetracks. She had given the stock to Illinois Governor Kerner, so he would build two exits off a new expressway near the racetrack, and she believed she had earned the deduction because bribery was "an ordinary and necessary business expense in Illinois."

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