If you want to know why Americans mistrust government and politicians, consider this: Government subsidies and regulatory policies are up for sale to the highest bidder.
Two recent stories, barely blips on the national radar, demonstrate the danger of government grown too large and a regulatory apparatus grown too strong.
And they, in turn, lay bare the corruptive nature of government, particularly one that strays from its lawful mandates, in our case, the Constitution.
The more egregious case smacks of nepotism, bribery and influence peddling.
According to the L.A. Weekly newspaper, Linda Daschle, airline lobbyist and wife of Democrat Sen. Tom Daschle, used her powerful husband to scam taxpayers and airline travellers.
“Two clients of Linda Daschle’s,” the paper reports, “got nearly $1 billion from the airline bailout her husband pushed into law.” One of them was Northwest, the paper says, the 1998 Daschle campaign’s second largest contributor. That company “scooped up $404 million in government cash” and “posted a $19 million profit in the third quarter,” following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
“Before 9/11,” the weekly says, “Senator Daschle pushed through the sleazy deal … that forced the [Federal Aviation Administration] to buy defective baggage scanners from one of Linda’s other clients.”
The GOP boasts Nancy Victory, a junior factotum in the Bush regime. In October 2001, this invisible assistant secretary of Commerce, the Associated Press reports, permitted cell-phone lobbyists to throw a bash in her honor at her home. Ten days later, she wrote a letter to the Federal Communications Commission to lift restrictions on how much wireless spectrum cell-phone companies can own in a defined geographic area. The FCC complied.
In Daschle’s case, denying the obvious is not only futile but also absurd. Victory’s case is less so, but it still emits a fetid aroma.
This is what happens when billions of dollars are available for the taking; when we create illegitimate government subsidies, particularly for corporations.
The law permits corporate lobbyists to entertain congressmen and staffers on junkets and ply them with campaign contributions. Senators and congressmen on defense and regulatory committees get millions from defense contractors and regulated companies. Imagine the appearance of judges taking “contributions” from litigants. Bribery, we would call it.
Of course lobbyists use campaign money to lubricate the federal engine dispensing boodle and regulatory relief. The pot of money is too large to ignore, the laws too easy to bend.
We say we mustn’t tolerate these shady practices. We express outrage when we learn about them. And our politicians warble in earnest agreement. But they won’t stop because it pays. And we won’t stop reelecting them.
The stories about Ladies Daschle and Victory are unsurprising.
They merely operate within the rules, however corrupt they may appear. Those rules are written as loosely as possible, so unconstitutional government agencies can distribute as much money and create as much malleable regulation as possible.
So the nettle isn’t just corruption and cupidity. It is the natural character of a largely unconstitutional Leviathan state, which possesses limitless money and infinite regulatory muscle to squeeze out bribes. A government that is mostly illegitimate, meaning illegal measured by its own charter, will spawn illegitimate and possibly illegal activity among those who seek profit and power.
Government is a necessary evil, as they say, but even necessary evils, in the end, are evil.
R. Cort Kirkwood is managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Va. His e-mail address is: kirkwood@shentel.net.
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