FRN Columnists" Corner - "FAVORS FOR SALE OR RENT" By Joe Klock, Sr.

Free Republic Network ^ | 10-11-03 | By Joe Klock, Sr.

[Bob J]

FRN Columnists' Corner

"FAVORS FOR SALE OR RENT"

By Joe Klock, Sr.

As regular readers of this column (certifiable masochists in the view of some) know, I have long been bathroom-sick of the way our government at all levels is run by self-serving politicians, special interests and the lobbyists/influence mongers who operate the whorehouses of power.

I refer not exclusively to any political party, nor only to those currently running the show. There is more than enough sleaze to taint every partisan banner, and those drooling hungrily outside the gates of control offer little promise of improvement.

I exclude only those few truly dedicated public servants found here and there from local precincts to the District of Calumny, our political Hall of Chumpions.

Hooray, by the way, for these rare Don Quixotes who genuinely honor the trust that goes along with positions of authority. Although they may flunk Politics 101 and are unlikely to survive until pensiondom come, they are true heros, unsung because they sing the wrong tunes.

You may not, as the old saying goes, be able to buck City Hall, but if you have enough bucks and put them in the right pockets, you might not have to, so favorable will be the Hallmarks therefrom.

Please don't ask me to believe that the gazillions of dollars shelled out to both candidates and incumbents, as well as to PACs, hacks and partisan causes are anything more than ill-concealed bribes, given at best to win access to influential ears and at worst to effect donor-favorable legislation and/or lavish banquets of pork.

Trot out all the euphemisms you'd like, but money makes the political world go 'round, and them as ain't got it or can't get it can neither ascend to power nor long remain there these days.

Worse still, those who catch the electoral brass ring must thereafter devote a substantial portion of their time (they and God alone knowing how much) to raising new money to stay in office and ward off the "outs" working equally hard to get in.

Worst of all, the "ins" are joined at the hip (pocket) to their benefactors, for whom they must deliver satisfactory results or face their backers' departing backs as they defect to more accommodating pols.

At its visceral level, our government is based on bribery and payback, although the participants are no more likely to identify with either word than to find a shred of value in the utterances of their political adversaries, or a speck of soil on their own snow-white wings.

(That's another of my rant-inducing peeves, but not the subject of this particular tirade.) While their rhetoric is focused on the best interests of "the people," their ears are attuned to the lobbyists who swarm around them like flies on horse-poo (an inelegant simile, perhaps, but not entirely inapplicable).

These influence peddlers claim to serve the worthy cause of "clarifying" proposed and existing legislative matters for the elected officials, who are presumably too busy to do so for themselves, despite the support of their full-time staffs. Such impartial guidance is not to be found this side of a used car lot or singles bar!

The likelihood of ridding public life of quid pro quo in campaign financing in the cloak-and-dagger-rooms of government is about on a par with stamping out simulated copulation on television, which has also become embedded in our national structure.

Bribery is not only an evil thing, but a cancer that is growing out of control, and our so-called campaign finance reform movement is no more realistic a solution than that of the fictional Dutch boy whose finger in the dike saved Holland from becoming a second Atlantis.

What is needed is recognition by the public and admission by the practitioners that the present system stinks something awful, and can't be sprayed away by platitudes, half-measures and spin-doctoring.

Could public affairs be run without indecent tidal waves of tainted cash and highly-paid influence peddlers? And could our elected officials be freed from the harlotry imposed on them by the harsh reality of political life? I may be wrong (difficult as that is to contemplate), but I'm pretty sure that's more like what those grand old men in Philadelphia had in mind a little over two centuries ago than is the dirty business that has evolved.

What can we, the aforementioned "people," do? Well, to create a little bit of heaven, we'll just have to raise a lot of hell.

History has proven that the thing most dreaded by politicians is an informed and energized electorate. And recent events - like the "no call" uprising, 50 million strong - proved that government of the people can also be by and for them, unless the hen house is left to the foxes.

Your move, brethren and sistren!

Joe Klock, Sr. is a freelance writer in Key Largo, FL. E-mail joeklock@aol.com

[Pikachu_Dad]

On its positive side, such a system makes for a responsive and sensitive government.

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[yoswif]

Without massive federal bureaucracies, the politicians would have little to sell. Maintaining the power and cost of massive federal bureaucracies will require the average child in America to pay over 80% of their lifetime earnings in federal taxes. If the federal courts were to force the federal government to reduce this # to a morally responsible and sustainable level, like whatever the average 70 year old has paid in federal taxes on their earnings over their lifetime, politicians would have little to sell.