(crossposted from the frontpage of My Left Wing)
All this talk of banning gifts and trips is all fine and good. Even superficial reform, after the ravaging we’ve endured, looks good. But in the end it’s really just window dressing. The real bribery and corruption is not going away any time too soon.
Even if they manage to cut out all gifts and trips (not very likely if you ask me), the real payola is in campaign contributions.
(more below the fold...)
David Sirota has an excellent post, Congress Pushes Green M&Ms As Cure for Cancer that pulls back the curtain on the culture of corruption in Congress, exposing the naked inadequacies of the faux reform that is predictably being marketed to us as the real thing.
He was appalled that Democrats were actually bragging about banning things that most people can’t believe are actually legal in the first place.
"What are we going to hear next?," he asked. "Are they going to have a press conference bragging about a new bill that bans politicians from murdering each other?"
I hadn’t actually thought of it this way before, but my brother is right: we now have a Congress basically trying to tell us it is somehow an act of courage to ban behavior that should never have been legal in the first place – behavior that both Democrats and Republicans engaged in for eons. Sirota
All except for the eons part, I’m totally down with David’s statement. These ratfinks have been screwing us for so long that if they start using Vaseline now, it’ll seem a major relief.
I don’t want to prejudge the 110th, nor do I want to rain on anyone’s parade, but in my heart of hearts I fear that any reform will, in the final analysis, be superficial and a case of too little too late.
I’m not singling out the Democrats for abuse here; the repubs are the worst offenders but I’m indicting the whole system.
So if one agrees with David (and I do), one has to wonder, ‘what would REAL reform look like?’
Outlaw All Forms of Paid Lobbying
This would seem a good place to start, and would go a long way toward de-stinkifying Congress. What we’re likely to get instead is ‘breaking the link between lobbying and legislation.’ In other words, stop letting lobbyists actually write legislation. That’s a far cry from squeezing the grubby little bastards out all together, which is what we need to do.
Lobbyists are a cancer on our government. It’s amazing that we’ve allowed them to screw us all so badly, so blatantly and for so long. It’s high time we cut them out – no ifs, ands or buts – and no excuses or further con jobs. Lobbyists, you’re outta there!
Revoke ‘Personhood’ for Corporations
Which has got to be about the silliest idea ever foisted upon the American public by American jurisprudence – and that is saying plenty!
End Corporate Welfare
For years I have been nagged by the suspicion that our compassion and largesse for the hogs at the trough is misplaced.
All the 400 and 500 million dollar retirement packages have me wondering about the homeless, the jobless, the ‘food-insecure’, and all the hardworking Americans who have no health insurance, retirement, or help and support with aging parents and loved ones. Something about this doesn’t seem right. Is it just me?
This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a
government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.
- Rutherford B. Hayes, 1876
The paramount...issue of the day is whether the people will submit to be ruled by the ever-grasping and never satisfied corporations.
- The Humboldt County Democratic Party platform of 1882
Corporations, which should be carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters.
- President Grover Cleveland
Roll back the disastrous tax cuts to millionaires and eliminate all loopholes
There is such a thing as fairness after all. It’s just irresponsible to put the burden on those least able to carry it. Let’s put it where it belongs. This one thing will right a lot of the wrongs in our society.
Ban the Exportation of Jobs
And punish those who have already done so to encourage the return of all such pilfered opportunity.
www.blueflamepolitix.org/
Institute 100% Public Campaign Financing
Last but not least, if we don’t take the big bucks out of our politics we will never have anything other than the culture of corruption we now have. The fact that our politicians don’t even want to discuss this would be funny if it weren’t so damned tragic.
Big corporations and the richest of the rich have forced all the rest of us out of the political arena. We get the lip service; the fat checkbook crowd gets the goods. In this system the American people don’t matter at all. We’re just handy dupes to be manipulated and conned. Our votes do nothing but lend an air of legitimacy to the pirates and thieves who are dedicated to ripping us off.
The American people need to demand public campaign financing and REAL reform, and stop taking no for an answer. Until we do they’re going to keep screwing us.