Unfortunately, we had to follow up that good feeling post with two posts that covered The Bad about the politicians in this country. The wasteful spending of taxpayer money with no societal benefit in return, the inefficient and ineffective government programs that often make a problem worse, etc. The first Bad post can be accessed at:
Yesterday and today we are looking at “The Ugly” side of American politicians. This does not mean that what they have done to the country is not ugly:
- Record high unemployment numbers for a record length of time.
- Economic programs that are expensive and useless.
- Government programs that are fraught with fraud and which lose well over $100 billion a year.
- A health care reform piece of legislation that is increasing the cost and decreasing the health insurance coverage of Americans, the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do.
- Downgrading of the country’s credit rating for the first time in our history.
- A tax burden that forces Americans to work over half of the year just to pay for taxes at all levels of government.
- A regulatory burden that stifles the economy and job creation.
- A national debt approaching an unfathomable $18 TRILLION, well above $50,000 for every person in the country including our kids.
- A foreign policy that is in tatters and useless besides endangering the national security of the country.
Today we continue to look at their attitude and how their selfishness and personal greed are likely major contributing factors to the dismal results they seem to always end up producing. It is their attitude, as much as their non-success in resolving major issues, that cause the majority of us to loathe them so much.
Remember, recent and credible public opinion surveys put our approval rating of Congress at levels far less than 10%. Obama’s approval rating has been in free fall for a while now with far more Americans disapproving of his performance than those that approve his performance. We despise them and yesterday and today we look at several reasons while that spite goes beyond their inability to effectively govern.
3) Much like the same behavior that the Washington political class used to gut the STOCK Act (see yesterday’s post) and make it easier for them to do insider trading and personal enrichment, they were up to the same secrecy and shenanigans on another topic recently. Our Washington political types recently made it more difficult to identify which members of Congress, and their spouses and other family members, are lavished with all-expenses-paid trips around the world by non-government entities.
House of Representatives rules have quietly been changed and the Washington political class has stripped away the requirement that privately sponsored and paid for travel be included on lawmakers' annual financial-disclosure forms. Such disclosures made it very easy to track what companies, unions, and other entities were treating sitting politicians to special favors and travels, in all likelihood hoping for political and financial favors in return.
As with the neutering of the STOCK Act, this move was also made secretly behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee. This move undoes more than three decades of reporting on gifts of travel to politicians. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on the yearly financial form dating back its creation in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal.
The only reason anyone outside of the inner circle of Congress knows about this trickery is that the National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when it analyzed the most recent batch of yearly filings: "This is such an obvious effort to avoid accountability," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "There's no legitimate reason. There's no good reason for it. The more you can hide, the less accountable you can be. It's clear these forms are useful for reporters and watchdogs, and obviously a little too useful."
I would disagree with Ms. Sloan is that there is a no legitimate and good reason for the deletion of the requirement: it makes it easier to bribe sitting Congressional representatives without their constituents finding out. It may not be a good reason from a voter perspective but from a self enriching sitting politician’s view point, it makes perfectly good sense.
Free trips paid for by private groups must still be reported separately to the House's Office of the Clerk and disclosed there. But they will now be absent from the chief document that reporters, watchdogs, and members of the public have used for decades to review, analyze, and report on lawmakers' finances.
Not unexpectedly:
- News reports claim that House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Conaway, did not return reporters’ calls for comment.
- Ranking minority member Linda Sanchez, of the same committee, referred questions to committee staff.
- In turn, the committee staff declined to comment.
Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the consumer group Public Citizen which tracks the international travels of lawmakers and the actions of the Ethics Committee, was as surprised and shocked as Ms. Sloan: "There's seems to be no reason I could imagine why the Ethics Committee would minimize the amount of information that gets reported. It's always good to have more disclosure than less. It just seems a little odd that the Ethics Committee would pass such a rule change."
Not odd, just typical and greedy. And in a way, cowardly. If you have to do something secretly and behind close doors that has life style and financial benefits to you, than there has to be an unethical strain running down the middle of your conscious. Be a man and stand up front of your voters and tell them that you are taking everything you can get from being elected, don’t hide behind the bureaucracy.
4) Historically, earmarks have been little goodies and favors that are tucked away and partially hidden in legislative bills in Congress that make a sitting member of Congress look good to his or her voters back home. They may include anything from a special grant of money to a hometown university to the funding of a bike path in a town back home to special consideration to a home town company to other types of political favors, possibly in response to having a trip financed by a non-government entity as we discussed above.
We have talked about the uselessness and wastefulness of earmarks many times in this blog. They are nothing more than taxpayer funded public relations events for a sitting politician to help him stay in office. They do not improve the education of our kids, they do not help in the losing war on drugs battles, they do not help ailing veterans get the medical attention they desperately need, they do not seal the border, they do not reduce the ever rising cost of health care, or resolve any major issue facing the country today.
The money, that historically has annually run into the billions and billions of dollars, resolves none of these problems. It is like candy for voters, empty calories that make no real progress in helping taxpayers.
Fortunately, mostly at the urging of Tea Party candidates and principles, the amount and cost of earmarks has gone down recently. However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently went on a rant to bring them back: “I have been a fan of earmarks since I got here the first day. Keep in mind that’s what the country has done for more than 200 years, except for the brief period of time in recent years that we haven’t done these.”
Obviously, doing something for 200 years does not make it right. Slavery probably existed in this country for two hundred years. That does not mean it should be reinstituted because Harry Reid points to tradition.
But Reid is not alone. Other Senators, especially those who have served on appropriations committees, are beginning to advocate for a reconstitution of earmarks. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin recently called earmarks the “glue” that held together each transportation bill, to which earmark hater, Senator Tom Coburn, replied via a Wall Street Journal editorial that “restoring earmarks in today’s Congress would be like opening a bar tab for a bunch of recovering alcoholics.”
We do not need earmarks, which are also used not only to pacify the voters back home but are also used to bribe for votes on legislation. Remember how a Nebraska Senator got a so-called “Cornhusker Exemption” for his voters back home in the Obama Care legislation to garner his vote of support? If you have to bribe to get legislation votes, maybe you either need:
- Better, smarter people writing better pieces of legislation that can stand on its own merits.
- Better, higher integrity people that can develop and debate legislation for the good of the entire country, not just for their state or their Congressional district.
- Allow the current set of Washington politicians run their own bar tab and activate term limits to give them the time to run that tab.
Using taxpayer earmark money to serve their careers, sneaking around in the dead of the night to hide their insider trading and outsider financed lavish travels and vacations from taxpayers, and taking lavish vacations at $12 million vacation homes while lecturing the country on “income inequality. Just four more Ugly reasons why most of us find the current set of politicians in this country not just incompetent but totally loathsome at the same time.
And there you have it. Five days of “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” with the Bad and the ugly doing far more damage than the good that individual Americans are doing for each other.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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