Is Ozawa innocent? Doesn't matter.

I wonder the following. Perhaps all politicians (not just in Japan, but anywhere) are dirty. Perhaps all politicians have a skeleton in their closet that someone knows about. And perhaps whenever a scandal hits the papers, it's not because, for shame, that single politician actually did something "wrong", but merely because there's a type of turf war going on and someone is being called out as part of it.

Is any of that true? I don't know. But I wonder about it.

Watching the latest scandal revolving around Ichiro Ozawa come to light, it leaves me wondering even more.

Just read the lurid details from the Yomiuri, Ozawa 'got 50 mil. yen as reward for dam order':

... Ozawa's political fund management organization, purchased a plot of land in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, out of 400 million yen in off-the-books cash. The organization did not record the money transfer in its political fund report for 2004.

Okay, that almost $4.5 million of off-the-books cash. Wow. Where'd the money come from? I mean where would Ozawa's organization get this money?

The article suggests this:

Former executives of Mizutani Construction Co. have told prosecutors that 50 million yen the firm gave to House of Representatives member Tomohiro Ishikawa in October 2004 when he was secretary to Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa was a "reward" for the company winning a dam construction contract, a source said Thursday. The former executives of the second-tier general contractor based in Kuwana, Mie Prefecture, told the special investigation squad of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office they handed the money to Ishikawa, who was one of Ozawa's privately hired secretaries at the time. Recently, they told the prosecutors that the money had been paid as a reward after the company won contracts to build Isawa Dam in Oshu, Iwate Prefecture, which was ordered by the Tohoku Regional Bureau of the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry.

Okay. That accounts for about a fourth of the money. How about the rest?

Well the end of the article states:

According to sources, the former Mizutani executives previously told prosecutors they had handed Ishikawa 50 million yen in cash in October 2004 at a hotel in Minato Ward, Tokyo. It also came to light that the former executives told the prosecutors that they handed Okubo another 50 million yen in April 2005 at the same hotel.

And so on and so forth ...

If Ichiro Ozawa has a blueprint for a new Japan, I suppose this isn't it. Is he even guilty? Or is he even *more* guilty than any other politician in Japan -- or perhaps just a little more skillful than the rest?

According to this morning's Asahi, considerations about whether Ozawa should resign -- or not -- are focused on two things. How necessary is he to getting passage of desired legislation, particularly the budget, versus criticism he will bring from the LDP if he continues on. What's obviously absent from this calculation is whether or not Ozawa is innocent or not. Why? Because no one cares. He obviously is, and he obviously isn't.