Comments
by Scoper...
Have Another Drink, Congressman
A little throwaway item in
the Washington Post caught my eye today. It was very instructive, revealing
something they don't teach in civics class. It's this: for all their partisan
blustering, your elected representatives - Democrats and Republicans -
in Washington or your own state capital, at the end of the day all go out
and get drunk at the same bar. And they send you the bill.
The Post article mentions
"a rare election-year round of bipartisanship" in the U.S. House, as members
passed "dozens of pet projects…before Congress heads home for its summer
break." It's actually not so rare as you might think, though "good government"
has very little to do with it. Adjourning to go home and campaign for re-election
has a lot to do with it.
Basically, Congress suspends
its own rules on debate and amendment, bunching dozens of bills together
in one package and passing them on a two-thirds vote. That's interesting,
because when the clock isn't ticking, you can't get two-thirds of Congress
to whistle "Yankee Doodle" at the same time.
What gets passed in this
"suspension" procedure? A whole lotta pork. Things like: $16 million to
build a "Freedom Center" in Cincinnati to "promote awareness of the Underground
Railroad." $134 million for more bulletproof vests for police. (A lot of
police departments already provide them, and a lot of cops don't like to
wear them.)
Some bills are patently worthless:
the "innocent child protection bill" prohibits states from putting pregnant
women to death. It was already against the law!
This one's the cake-taker:
a bill to establish "National Eat Dinner With Your Children Day." Apparently
a recent study (probably tax-funded, but I don't know) showed that "children
who eat dinner with their parents are less likely to smoke, drink, or do
drugs." That may be true. I was never allowed to light up or shoot up during
dinner. But gosh, could it be that kids who eat dinner with their parents
have parents who behave as parents at other times of the day, taking
responsibility for teaching their kids, oh, maybe right from wrong? And
of the parents who don't give a damn, will even one of them change
their behavior because "Congress said to?"
Sorry about the rant, but
the point is this. All session long, we've been watching Republicans and
Democrats doing plenty of ranting of their own. Just like last year and
the year before, and so on. Especially when the TV cameras are on. They
huff, and puff, and posture, but it's all staged. They spend hours wrangling
over whether the federal budget should grow by 5 percent or 10 percent.
If you want government to take less of what you earn and be less intrusive
in your life, you're still screwed.
Put another way: Democrats
and Republicans don't hate each other. Their differences are minor
and manufactured. They're sucking up the same tax dollars, and spreading
them around with the same purpose in mind - getting through the next election.
"That's politics," you say. Yes, it is. And do you wonder a little less
now why so many people don't bother to vote at all? Apathy may take more
than one form. It may be that today, more of the electorate have come to
believe these last two paragraphs, and are sick and tired of "rubber stamping"
a dysfunctional system.
As Llewellyn Rockwell writes
in World Net Daily:" "The glory of American democracy is that
it permits us to kick out the nasty tribe of political despots that is
currently ruling us. The tragedy is that it installs another group that
will do essentially the same thing. This is one reason the Republican Congress
didn't cut government. Why shrink something you're going to inherit?"
(Above quote re-posted here
with permission from www.lewrockwell.com.)
There's one more thing the
major parties have brainwashed us into believing, something so insidious
it's almost a thing of beauty. A co-worker parroted that tired old line
recently when I mentioned a passing interest in a third-party candidate.
You know the line: "You're wasting your vote!"
She's got it all wrong. You're
wasting your vote when you don't cast it. You're wasting your vote
when you vote for someone you don't believe in. You're wasting your
vote when you hate the status quo yet support it anyway.
I will never endorse a political
candidate in this column. There are people out there willing to work hard
for fundamental, lasting change if they're given the chance. Some of them
may believe exactly as you. But their funding is measly, they're largely
ignored by the mainstream media, and sometimes they can't even get their
names on the ballot because the D's and R's have made it almost impossible.
But wouldn't it be fun to
watch them squirm if one of those obscure House, Senate or Presidential
candidates got just enough votes to shake up the "plurality?" Then they'd
really
have an excuse to head for the bar!
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