Can You Imagine?

…and so they stopped and rested on a rock conveniently low
And all the little oysters stood and waited in a row.

“The time has come,” the Walrus, said, “to talk of many things,
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and Kings
And why the sea is boiling hot and weather pigs have wings.”

-- Lewis Carol, Through the Looking Glass

Which is to say, time to get down to the nitty gritty. A socialist in name only, president Barack Obama, knows instinctively which side the bread is buttered on. He came out today with renewed attacks on special interests. Of course, he is referring to special special interests, that is, those not already in his camp. That would currently be the health care insurance companies. He is definitely not talking about General Electric, which is on the global warming gravy train. He is not talking about the United Steel Workers, whose boss he made a Commissar and which, along with other construction industries, are economic stimulus payees. Apparently he doesn't mean big drug makers or ARRP or the AMA. He is certainly not talking about auto, banking, political action groups, community organizers, or government unions who he are in his back pocket ( or his front pockets since the back ones are overflowing). There’s hardly anyone or anything left to threaten or pay off, except for us, the regular taxpayers of this country.

However, and unfortunately for him and most professional politicians, at the town halls and tea parties, the people have spoken. What they said is not necessarily what any one person or faction has said or would say. Nevertheless, what they said is clear. They want change but not BHO’s kind of change. They want actual accountability and openness, not the kind promised but never delivered by politicians of any party or any era. What they want most of all is the end of a corrupt system that they see as enriching the political and corporate participants at their expense.

What they complain about goes by many names: corruption and payoffs come to mind; but also executive bonuses, bail-outs, stimulus packages, campaign contributions, and earmarks are on their hit list. The later are openly the stock and trade of the professional politician. Governor Blaggovich was a prime example of the former: the corrupt politician par excellance. He made no excuses for selling office. Charlie Wrangle, currently under investigation by congress, is a current example of political corruption of the ‘look the other way, wink and a nod’ variety. That is, everyone knows it and ‘every one does it type’. He took it a little too far so he has to wear the scarlet ‘C’. If he isn't reelected, he probably has a lobbyist job waiting. However, maybe, just maybe, at long last and finally, the informed and sovereign voter is saying no more to the pervasive and systematic spoil system that is our political system from top to bottom.

This would be real change. The lobbyist and campaign contribution is the live blood of the current system. How to change without creating something worse has always been the difficulty. Can you imagine no lobbyists, non-millionaire congress members, citizen legislators?

It is hard to imagine a no lobbyists system because of the informational roll they play. Legislation regarding major segments of commerce is too complicated for anyone not in that segment of commerce to understand. What congress has been giving us are 1,000 plus page monstrosities that are written by corporate lobbyists or by the most partisan elements of the party in power.

(Foot note: Of course it seems to me that it is mostly the Democrat party that does this. See the stimulus package that was written by communist Van Jones and contains huge grants for radical Party activists. Compare that to the Patriot Act. The worse the Democrats seem to have found in that bill is powers to eavesdrop on terrorist communication, powers law enforcement already had regarding organized crime. By the way, it recently occurred to me that there probably was actual communication of domestic political groups that they definitely did not want heard. It wasn't just an intellectual exercise in free speech for some of the left.)

These massive omnibus bills generally provide specifically for preemption of state law. That means the laws passed by our state representatives and the common law developed over centuries by the give and take of our court system can be wiped out by the stroke of a pen in Washington. If a faction, whether a group with some political clout or an industry group represented by lobbyists, has their ambitions stymied by state law, they can resort to federal legislation. Of course it helps to have cooperative federal judges. This is in fact becoming the favored modus operandi of some political and industry groups. (i.e. environmentalists with just about everything they want; and yes, the insurance industry and medical lobbies as with the EISA and HIPAA.) Sometimes these laws impose massive regulation, sometimes they free some practices from federal and/or state regulation. Sometimes they put roadblocks in the way of redress of grievances. As stated elsewhere in this blog, this type of action is not necessarily what is meant by free market economic policies, although there are some who hide their sharp business practices behind that claim.

If there were no lobbyist for special interests, what would fill the power vacuum? Could we trust the press, the lawyers, and communistic Party Commissars of Barack Obama to give us a legitimate representative democracy? The founders of this nation could imagine a democracy and they embodied it into the framework and checks and balances of the constitution. (The Commissars probably do not fit in that framework, a free press does, and lawyers and our jury system will always be needed to fight against self serving bureaucratic regulation in government and industry.) The constitution has been called an imperfect document. Ben Franklin said that the constitution gave us a republic, if we could keep it. Thomas Jefferson said that every generation had to protect and earn their freedom or they would lose it. So I guess that is the best we can do. It has served us well so far; we had better busy ourselves with keeping it. What to do with the likes of ENRON, Van Jones, ACORN lobbyists, GE lobbyists, Oil lobbyists, Green Peace lobbyists... We must exercise discrimination, judgement, and common sense. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.