The Selling-Out Of America
Brad Harrington
By Bradley Harrington
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely." --Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell
Creighton, 1887--
Once in a while, an issue of practical politics
arises in our culture that, like a magnifying lens
focusing the sun's rays to a white-hot point of light,
illuminates and illustrates a fundamental truth that
would have otherwise remained more hidden and obscure.
That issue, today, is the Supreme Court's recent
landmark decision freeing corporations to openly
contribute to political campaigns (Citizens United vs.
Federal Election Commission (FEC), Jan. 21st), and
most of the fur appears to be flying over whether or
not this decision applies to foreign-owned
corporations: "The most heated controversy over the
recent Supreme Court ruling striking down parts of the
nation's campaign-funding laws has focused on whether
the decision frees foreign corporations to pour money
into American elections." ("Question of foreign
funding of U.S. elections unsettled," Los Angeles
Times, Jan. 31st.)
Partly, in this case. Per FEC regulation 11 CFR 110.20,
it is still illegal for foreign corporations to fund
political elections--although their U.S.-owned
subsidiaries may, provided the money was earned in the
U.S. and their American employees decide on how to
spend it.
Is this an issue that merits much discussion?
Absolutely--but not in the way all the pundits and
politicians mean. A much better question to ask, and
one that strikes right to the heart of the true issue,
is: What is everybody trying to buy?
Influence, what else? The "special interests" are
attempting to manipulate legislation, pure and simple.
In common language, this is known as buying political
power; in more polite parlance, it is known as
"lobbying."
It is quite revealing, in this context, to observe the
historical roots of intense lobbying in the United
States: during the Grant administration, from 1869 to
1877, in regard to the allocation of railroad
subsidies. The railroad era marks the first major
American departure away from privately-funded
capitalism and into the non-objective jungles of the
mixed economy, and the correspondence of the two
phenomena--lobbying and arbitrary federal power--are
no accident; the first follows from the second and
would not exist without it.
Today, 140 years later, the federal government's
capricious control over the economy has increased
exponentially--and the rise in lobbying activities,
not surprisingly, has paced it step by step,
eclipsing the relatively humble beginnings of the
railroading period by several orders of magnitude. As
of June, 2009, there were 12,553 registered lobbyists
in Washington, D.C, which means: for every federal
Senator or Representative, there are 23.47 people
standing close by who have, as their sole activity,
the job of bribing, manipulating, cajoling,
convincing, begging, browbeating, pushing, seducing,
scheming, deceiving, deluding or hoodwinking our 535
members of Congress into enacting legislation geared
towards their ends instead of what's in the interests
of all American citizens--and all of it perfectly
legal, perfectly acceptable and considered to be the
normal mode of operations.
And that's just the "direct" lobbyists, folks, those
who must register due to Congressional contact; that
figure doesn't tally the "indirect" lobbyists who
spend their time leveraging the executive branch's
bureaucratic decrees. According to experts, the number
of lobbyists not covered by the Lobbying Disclosure
Act of 1995 is probably six to seven times that high,
placing the total number of D.C. lobbyists at about
100,000--not counting support staff. Not counting
lobbyists targeting state legislators.
Translation: Washington, D.C., is overrun with more
pull peddlers than the total populations of 99% of the
cities, towns and villages in the entire country
(25,375 such places as of the 2000 census, 273 of
which had more than 100,000 people).
Still wondering why our country is in a shambles,
deluged by a floodgate of non-objective legislation?
Welcome to the realm of the mixed economy, the never-
never land of political pull, where your life,
liberty, property and earnings are only as safe as the
next session of Congress. This is nothing less than
the selling-out of America--not for any grand ideal,
but off in pieces to the highest bidders.
This is not money corrupting the integrity of
politics; this is politics corrupting the integrity of
money. And, lying at the bottom of it all, like a
dark, stinking swamp, squats the arbitrary legislative
power that exists to be bought, and makes this entire
rotting, putrefying cesspool of stupidity possible.
And, when that fact finally sinks in and you decide
that you've had enough, you'll finally do something
about it. Or will you?
--
Bradley Harrington is a former United States Marine
and a free-lance writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Dan Lind
wrote:
> THE SELLING-OUT OF AMERICA
Nice work, Brad.
Dan Lind
RichD
> THE SELLING-OUT OF AMERICA
> By Bradley Harrington
> What is everybody trying to buy?
>
> Influence, what else? The "special interests" are
> attempting to manipulate legislation, pure and simple.
> In common language, this is known as buying political
> power; in more polite parlance, it is known as
> "lobbying."
And with beautiful timing:
http://tinyurl.com/wsj-2-6-10
"Mr. Kindler heeded congressional threats that companies
would do well to have more Democrat-heavy lobby shops."
--
Rich
Matt Barrow
> THE SELLING-OUT OF AMERICA
>
<snip>
>
> Is this an issue that merits much discussion?
> Absolutely--but not in the way all the pundits and
> politicians mean. A much better question to ask, and
> one that strikes right to the heart of the true issue,
> is: What is everybody trying to buy?
>
> Influence, what else? The "special interests" are
> attempting to manipulate legislation, pure and simple.
> In common language, this is known as buying political
> power; in more polite parlance, it is known as
> "lobbying."
In less subdued terms, it's "bribery".
Matt Barrow
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