Congress as a poisoned well
Surely a measure of the dysfunctionality of our federal legislative branch is that when Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts was sworn in as a senator the other day it was front-page news, even though it brings his party’s minority to only forty one.
This is because his presence now enables his party to block legislation by filibustering. Have our elected officials no shame? They should be making front page news by coming together to pass helpful legislation. But because they refuse to come together it’s front page news when one party can obstruct any and all legislation.
This is a disgrace. Not just Congress’s disgrace but the electorate’s as well, because the voters continue to tolerate this kind of tawdry and destructive behavior. Adults should put enough of their differences aside to achieve something. They may differ in their goals, but if they are adults and not spoiled adolescents they will make the compromises necessary to get things done, just as athletic teams do every day. If our teams can do it, why can’t our legislative team? Too many prima donnas, too much bribery? Or both?
We do not have adults in Congress. We have spoiled adolescents bribed by corporations and lobbies, bribed to the point of dysfunction, because they dare not defy the people at whose troughs they feed.
Scott Brown’s swearing in should have been page-back news, incidental news. But it wound up on the front page because we have come to expect our government to backfire, to stall and to break down.
And now the U.S. Supreme Court has poured even more poison into this well by finding that corporations have the same First Amendment free speech rights as individuals and therefore may spend unlimited amounts of money bribing elected officials. Nobody is saying it, but the question that should be raised now is whether the corporations, having been declared individual citizens, will accept the responsibilities of ordinary citizens. Or will they hire lawyers to do a black ops job on any law they don’t like, just as they just did on the law restricting their ability to bribe elected officials?—DM
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