We don't know how many of our tax dollars were paid out because — incredibly — the process allows any payouts to be "disguised" as salary over a period of months. As Meehan was looking to run for a fifth term in November, voters wouldn't have known about any of this were it not for dogged journalism by Vogel and his co-author Katie Rogers. This set-up that has allowed members of Congress to get away with acts of sexual harassment or worse sure sounds a lot like, to borrow a phrase, "a culture of corruption" — with suckers like you and me paying for it.