Incumbency leads to power, and power leads to corruption

Posted: Aug 9, 2006

Middle America is angry and depressed. Our government is a dysfunctional disaster. The ghastly Bush War goes on and on killing and maiming. The national debt soars. Congress cuts taxes for the rich. Spying on citizens reminds us of the Gestapo. Our environment lays defiled. Global warming is ignored. Education and health care need blood transfusions. Ports and borders are an open sieve for terrorists and illegal immigrants. Homeland Security is a sick joke. The litany of horrors seems endless.

What do we do? Most important, we must all cast a meaningful vote in November. Citizens who don’t vote deserve all the misery our bungling government provides. But how do we vote? With the monstrous mess in Washington, it’s time to throw out the people who made the mess—the incumbents. Incumbency leads to power, and power leads to corruption. Districts get gerrymandered to protect incumbents, and we foolish voters keep re-electing 95 percent of them. Then guess what? Congress gets loaded with corrupt, powerful people — both Democrats and Republicans. Republicans claim the likes of Tom DeLay and Randy “Duke” Cunningham. Democrats harbor characters like Jim Black and William Jefferson. Both parties have their hand in the till. It’s called bipartisan equal opportunity corruption.

But you say, incumbents do wonderful things for their home districts: a new headquarters on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a bridge to nowhere, a road to nowhere, a teapot museum. This is pork, pure and polyunsaturated. A few pork projects even have merit. Most curry to the favor of special interests. Pork bills are slipped in during the dead of night as “earmarks.” No debate, no nothing. Multiply earmarks by the thousands and we’re wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. Pork and corruption are strangling our democracy.

Corporations pour millions into campaign coffers helping candidates get re-elected. Congressmen learn quickly to rely on this easy money. They get bought out. And America ends up with the best government corporations can buy. Our leaders pay lip service to the will of the people, but they jump to the tune of lobbyists. Driving it all is corporate greed.

Note how politicians pay back corporations for their largess: Congress passes a convoluted $700 billion Medicare prescription law that is a bonanza for drug and insurance companies. It mostly confuses seniors. Congress subsidizes oil billionaires as gasoline prices soar; raising the minimum wage is blocked since it might hurt profits for businesses and corporations. Lawmakers give tax breaks to automakers to produce SUV gas-guzzlers; NAFTA and CAFTA are great for corporate profits but they further impoverish the working poor; Congress looks the other way as corporations exploit illegal immigrants for cheap labor; it enables lumber barons to clear-cut our forests; it enables mining corporations to pollute soil and stream while mutilating our mountains. These are only a few examples of corporate welfare. Then to pour salt in our wounds, Congress passes toothless ethics reform and term limits, congratulates itself with a round of TV backslapping — and laughs all the way to the bank.

It’s high time to throw the bums out. Let’s elect a crop of fresh, naive and inexperienced congressmen. They’ll learn. And they can’t do any worse than the present bunch. We’ll trade untried greenhorns for political hacks entrenched in power and corruption. Not a bad swap in my opinion. Once the corporate lobbyists move in and start corrupting this new Congress, we throw them out too. Grandma was right: diapers and politicians need frequent changing. Just maybe the will of the people and the power of the ballot box will again start to count for something. It’s our choice. It’s our government and it’s our election. What a great message to send to Raleigh and to Washington.