The Big Buy - Tom Delay's Stolen Congress

This DVD catalogues the rise of Tom Delay from Texas backbencher to US Congressional power broker to his indictment and downfall.What makes Delay so special or infamous is his reform of congress for the worse. He parceled out money for votes, demanded that lobbying firms contribute money and hire republicans before he would even entertain their interests. (Some would call this bribery or conflict of interest. In our congress it's called business as usual.) He held votes open long after the normal voting period, and brought bills to the floor for vote without legislators even having a chance to read them.He "gerrymandered" Texas redistricting in a deliberate attempt to gain republican seats in congress. He managed to pull this off despite Texas legislators fleeing across the Oklahoma border so that a quorem could not be mustered. The hammer lost that round but eventually muscled his way to victory, and got more republicans elected.Delay's undoing was his insistence on corporate sponsorship (money) to his political action committee called Trmpac. This was patently illegal in a state that already has weak campaign laws. His reaction was to mount a campaign against the prosecutor that was unsuccessful. Finally, Delay resigns in disgrace and vows to help republicans win. His only hope was the people of Texas would re-elect a republican to his old seat. Even in this, Texans had apparently had enough of his shenanigans and elected a democrat.This story may interest those fascinated with Delay, or for those who know very little about him. But it is clear that this is a low-budget production. A couple of times my attention wondered, and I found myself pressing the back button.It is worth a look, and you can always resell it. So, don't delay.

"The Big Buy" may not have the slick gloss of other documentaries, but the content is invaluable in understanding how American democracy has been hijacked. Birnbaum and Schermbeck show how Tom DeLay deliberately reengineered the electoral system to create an incestuous alliance of lobbyists and government officials on a scale not seen before in American politics. This culture of corruption demands business representatives pay thousands of dollars for access to politicians -- akin to practices normally associated with self-serving Third World governments. In the meantime, the interests of average Americans are shunted aside. The documentary cautions that, even though DeLay has had to step down, others of his ilk have replaced him and are carrying on his legacy.Another outstanding source revealing the magnitude of corruption that has taken hold is PBS's Bill Moyers on America. The first episode, "Capitol Crimes," connects the dots regarding Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist and others who brought an agenda to D.C. to buy out Congress with a view to creating a permanent Republican Congress whose power derives from monies given to it by big business.One definition of Fascism is a government aligned in partnership with corporate businesses. "The Big Buy" shows how Tom DeLay has created that model for American in the 21st century. It begs the question -- as we now try to export democracy to other countries -- can we claim to be democracy anymore?

I made up my mind to watch this to the end, but it wasn't long before I wanted to hammer something, like my TV, because this was about the most aimless and boring documentary I've ever sat through. I don't understand why, given all the trouble it must be to arrange and film all these interviews, it was considered too much trouble to provide just a little bit of back-story narration up front, or some narration during the documentary to tell me what's going on, or some text on slides to mark section breaks, or something to keep this from turning into one big long stream-of-conscienceness firehose of interview clips that were supposed to be telling me something.Yes, there is a direction. We start with interview clips telling about Tom DeLay's early years in Texas politics back in the 1980's, and we end up with DeLay resigning, but it's a long and tedious journey from here to there; kind of the film equivalent of driving on a highway through Texas, without even any signs to tell you that you're in Texas.Anyway, I didn't have any feelings about Tom DeLay going into this, and I must admit I learned something, but can documentary makers please get back to making geniune documentaries again? Maybe do a little work up front so I don't have to put everthing together myself while watching something that seems one cut above raw footage? Perhaps then the message would get out a little faster and better, whatever that message happens to be.

This DVD was produced before Tom DeLay got his just rewards before the courts, but you can see it coming anyway. The "Republican revolution" of the 1990s turned into the Republican contest to see who could be the biggest sleazebag, and Tom DeLay was certainly in the running. This documentary pretty much gives him his comeuppance, and if ever there was anyone who deserved some upside-the-head comeuppance, this pest exterminator and pest to end all pests surely did. Highly, highly recommended.

Unfocused, repetitive, and worst of all - boring! What should have been a slam dunk documentary about one of the worst blights on the modern age of politics instead turns out to be a damn shame. Ronnie Earle, the district attorney at the center of the film, says, "This isn't about Democrats and Republicans, this is about cops and robbers." If only the makers of this film could have been so concise at some point in the first reel or two of their documentary as to what it is they were trying to say. Instead, from the start, The Big Buy feels like a film you've walked into thirty minutes late. Following the theme stated by Earle of cops and robbers, The Big Buy is supposed to have a film noir aesthetic, but the intended use of light and shadow is so intermittent you likely won't notice. Somewhere in this mess is a good film and a better story, to bad it's not being told here.