In 2007, two U.S. Congressmen privately admonished a Chinese official about the sudden spike in potentially harmful Made-in-China products being shipped around the world, according to a cable from the U.S. embassy in Beijing obtained by WikiLeaks and provided to Reuters by a third party.

Two years later, the cables show, the same U.S. Congressmen — Mark Kirk, then a House Republican from Illinois, and Rick Larsen, a Democrat from Washington — returned to Beijing, only this time they had an entirely different message. Kirk and Larsen asked Chinese officials to look the other way as an American company failed to meet regulations restricting the use of a toxic chemical in medical equipment sold to Chinese hospitals.

Just in case, you know, there was any lingering doubt about the betrayal of the public trust by Congress, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Business, Incorporated.