Some observers of the tsunami of political corruption we are enduring suggest that Congress should clean up the mess, starting with itself. There is even a “Fix Congress Now Caucus” in the House of Representatives, hard at work on that job. The caucus consists of two newly minted Republican congressmen. They have developed an impressive program consisting of two agenda items: term limits and lower retirement pay.[i]
As I write this blog, democrats and republicans in the House and Senate are struggling to gain partisan political advantage over a pending bill dealing with unethical behavior in the legislature, the STOCK Act. That bill addresses a few symptoms of the disease (insider trading by representatives for one), but does not get close to the heart of the problem. Even so, it has become a political football and is uncertain of passage.
The Coffee Party and other groups have more comprehensive legislative solutions on their website, but oddly enough, Jack Abramoff, the nation’s leading hands-on expert on political corruption offers up some of the most serious cures in his recent book.
Abramoff recommends that we should enact laws TOTALLY banning contributions and gifts to politicians and political campaigns by any lobbyist or Federal contractor. Next, he wants the revolving door to be slammed completely shut—forever— so that if you serve in Congress or work in Congress, you would be under a lifetime ban from lobbying or working for any company, partnership or firm that does any lobbying of Federal contracting. According to Abramoff, and he should know, any watered down version of his prescriptions would only open loopholes and deepen the corruption.[ii]
The problem with all this self medication is that asking congress to fix itself is like asking a murderous Mexican drug cartel to “Just Say No”. Earlier blog rants explained how our elections are gamed and how Congress has become totally penned in by lobbyists and campaign bribes.
Congress, at least the current congress, cannot be the doctor. It is part of the infection. Working with the current Congress is like taking a lethal poison to cure cancer.
Until we have a new Congress and change the way Congress, elections, and the whole political system works, to remove the pervasive overwhelming corrupt influence of money, we are not going to be able to cure the systemic problems.
A least one prestigious law professor thinks amending the constitution to take money out of politics is the only way out.[iii]
Fixing this mess will take a huge crisis of awareness.
It could happen. Not many years ago, Brazil was in even worse shape than the United States is now. Inflation was so extreme that people had to take wheelbarrows full of cash to the bank, and by the time they got there, it was worthless. Corruption was rampant and the divide between rich and poor was even greater than in the United States. The situation became a frightening crisis. Suddenly something weird happened. Desperate leaders on both sides abandoned their rigid political mindsets and starting doing things that made sense, regardless of preexisting positions and ideology. Right wing executives began to realize that if a tiny minority had all the money, there would be no market for the goods and services that business wanted to produce. The left moved right and the right moved left. Now Brazil is an economic powerhouse, the envy of the developing world.
Could it happen here?
The only way out of the ocean of corruption is a complete of change attitudes on the part of a majority of the American people, a shift away from acceptance of corrupt behavior .
Impossible?
Maybe. But we did it with civil rights. We did it with the Vietnam war. In both cases it took massive marches and expressions of outrage by large numbers of concerned people. I don’t see that in the works quite yet. The Occupy movement is still a baby, but it could happen.
As the old Navajo saying goes, “if we don’t turn around now, we just might get where we are going”.
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