Culture Of Corruption Update

The Democrat majority that was elected, in part, to "clean up Congress" of Republican "corruption" is, um, well, uh, still off to a slow start almost six months later.


***Okay, this item isn't directly on-topic, but it does shed light on what they consider to be "openness" in government:

Senate Democratic leaders moved Tuesday to force a vote on organized labor’s top legislative priority, a bill that would make it far easier to organize workers. But Republican leaders vowed to kill the measure, voicing confidence that they could defeat a motion cutting off debate and bringing it to a vote this week.

The bill, already approved by the House but facing the threat of a veto by the Bush Administration, would give employees at a workplace the right to unionize as soon as a majority signed cards saying they wanted to do so. Under current law, an employer can insist on a secret-ballot election, even after a majority sign.

Union leaders see enactment of the bill as the single most important step toward reversing labor’s long-term loss of membership and might. Virtually all Democrats in Congress are backing the legislation, partly because they recognize that a stronger labor movement, providing campaign contributions and volunteers, could translate into a stronger Democratic Party.

Well, at least the Paper of Bird Cage Bottoms is honest, for a change. Also refreshingly candid is their use of the phrase "reversing labor's long-term loss of membership and might." By taking away the secret ballot and forcing unit employees to declare their preference for or against unionizing publicly, they would become vulnerable and subject to threats and intimidation if they didn't dociley and dutifully knuckle under. Big Labor doesn't have its reputation for thuggery and mob overtones by accident.

It's the ruling class that is supposed to be under the control of the people, not the reverse. The same is supposed to be true of employees and the unions that are supposed to exist to serve them, not bully them into serving Big Labor capos as involuntary ATM machines.


***American workers aren't the only ones being afflicted with the Donks' twisted concept of "openness". "Good government" watchdog groups are also coming into their crosshairs:

A central plank of congressional ethics reform appeared in danger of collapse yesterday when government watchdog groups balked at disclosing their donors.

A provision of the proposed reform would force watchdogs to reveal their donors if they file ethics complaints. But the watchdogs, which have long called for openness in government, voiced strong opposition to openness on their own part. …

They have also pushed lawmakers to allow outside groups to file ethics complaints. The draft proposal for the ethics panel would grant that wish, but at the cost of requiring all complainants to reveal their funding sources.

Government watchdog groups, who helped Democrats convince voters of the existence of a culture of corruption in Congress, also condemned the proposal for not giving the proposed ethics panel enough investigative power and for creating a loophole that would allow complaints to languish in obscurity.

How's that for openness? As in opening up any outside group filing an ethics complaint against a member of Congress to retaliation, as well as every one of their financial supporters. Meanwhile, the complaints themselves can be round-filed down a black hole where they'll never be heard from again.

Will these "good government" cretins learn anything from this naked exercise in corrupt-wagon circling from the crooks they helped re-entrench? Don't count on it.


***Chucky Schumer - whose Democrat Senate Campaign Committee "plumbers" committed identity theft against former Maryland Lieutenant-Governor and GOP senatorial candidate Michael Steele, if you'll recall - has come up with a novel method of sucking up lobbyist grift: he's sending his staffers around to collect the boodle instead:

This invite first appeared (in print only) in Jeffrey Birnbaum's K Street column in Tuesday's Washington Post, but Capitol Briefing can add a few notable details. Read the fine print and you'll see that senators aren't the draw at this event, slated for July 10 at the DSCC's Mott House across the street from the Capitol.

Officially, lobbyists are asked to give or raise $2,000 to be a "host" or $1,000 to be a "DSCC friend" in order to meet "individuals representing" Senate Democrats. That's code word for chiefs of staff and staff directors of committees, according to lobbyists who received the fundraising pitch. The image of the invite that was e-mailed to Capitol Briefing included the file name of "chiefs invitation".

It's part of what some lobbyists say is an emerging technique in fundraising by the campaign committees - gathering a group of top advisers to lawmakers rather than the principals themselves. Lobbyists say they've heard that later this year House Democratic chiefs of staff will be the draw at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Geez, where's John McCain when you really need him? I'd think he'd be all over this. And I suppose he is, not unlike the way Schumer and his comrades are.

I may as well insert here that I don't have any fundamental problem with money in politics. It is inevitable that an enormous federal government spending ungodly amounts of confiscated cash on unimaginable numbers of things they are constitutionally prohibited from getting involved with (or were before the Depression-era SCOTUS blew a statist hole in the Commerce Clause) is going to attract hordes of lobbyists wanting a piece of that action and willing to spread around lucre of their own in order to secure a hefty return on that investment. To oppose this is like protesting a hurricane - it might make you feel good, but you're not going to accomplish a whole lot. You want to change it? You have to change the Big Government dynamic. You have to not just slow the growth of government, but actually start shrinking it.

Fat chance. If Newt Gingrich and the 1994 "revolutionaries" couldn't wrestle the federal leviathan to the mat, it can't be done, at least not outside of an economic cataclysm. And economic cataclysms tend to produce the opposite result.

What amuses me is, again, the brazen hypocrisy of one of the chief Donk apparatchiks of the 2006 "culture of corruption" meme proudly and boastfully unveiling this flimsy scam, complete with a shot of Chucky himself in an Uncle Sam costume, pointing at the recipient and grinning.

And laughing, no doubt, at the bottomless gullibility of the American voter.


***Will such brazeness set up Democrats for a near-term fall? I doubt it. Voters aren't as fickle as they are gullible. It'll take a lot longer than a single biennium for the "change" itch to prompt another electoral "throw the bums out" scratch. Or another 9/11 or worse. At least until the Dems succeed in so "Chavez-izing" our democratic process that it becomes functionally impossible to remove them short of armed revolution.

But there are signs of public discontent, such as Congress's all-time low 14% approval rating in the latest Gallup survey. Since the Dems are running that show, you have to say that falls principally on them. And the obscene haste to belly-flop into the "corruption" bog from which they chased the GOP has to be playing some factor.

There may, however, be a larger question, which Mark Tapscott asks today: If the American people are already soured on the Democrats, and haven't had a chance to get the equally sour taste of the preceding dozen years of GOP rule (hardly mitigated by their collaboration in the wildly unpopular illegal immigration amnesty "jam-down") out of their mouths, to where might they turn to effect the "change" they seek?

I think the question is academic, myself. In a two party system, the only choice is the other party, no matter how unworthy and undeserving. Last November's result proved that.

But Admiral Morrissey is buying into it, and takes the thread a step further:

It's a dangerous development. Congress is, after all, the people's branch of the government. The judiciary has no accountability to the people, and the states elect the President, at least formally. Congress writes laws, determines tax policy, and in general dictates the direction of our representative government. If we cannot trust ourselves with that power, eventually the people will turn to another, less representative form of government to get the difficult issues addressed.

What will America look like when that happens?

It'll take a lot more than galloping Democrat "corruption" hypocrisy to bring about anything that drastic. Say, the collapse of Medicare and Social Security, as Ed mentions.

But, what the heck, I remain unconvinced that we won't ignite the beginning of the end of American democracy by electing Hillary Clinton president next November. Between her Uncle Hugo-like ambitions, the inevitable full-scale retreat in the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism, and the aforementioned entitlements crunch, I expect that the United Islamic Socialist States of America is already on its way. My regret is that I'll probably live to see it.

UPDATE: Ooops; I should have said we've already ignited the beginning of the end of American democracy by putting the Democrats back in charge of Congress seven months ago.

My bad....