MOLLY IVINS: Abramoff Indicted, & All We Got Was Lousy $20 Gift ban?

[yurbud]

Abramoff Got Indicted, and All We Got Was This Lousy $20 Gift Ban?

Posted on Feb. 20, 2006

By Molly Ivins

Sheesh. Tom DeLay gets indicted, and all the Republicans can think of is a $20 gift ban. Forget the people talking about “lobby reform.” The lobby does not need to be reformed, the Congress needs to be reformed. This is about congressional corruption, and it is not limited to the surface stuff like taking free meals, hotels and trips. This is about corruption that bites deep into the process of making laws in the public interest. The root of the rot is money (surprise!), and the only way to get control of the money is through public campaign financing.

As long as the special interests pay to elect the pols, we will have government of the special interests, by the special interests and for the special interests. Pols will always dance with them what brung them. We have to fix the system so that when they are elected, they got no one to dance with but us, the people—we don’t want them owing anyone but the public. So the most useful reform bill is being offered by Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.—public campaign financing. We, the citizens, put up the money to elect the pols. This bill won’t cost us money, the savings will be staggering.

<snip>

We’re also looking for a way to control the system of earmarks, which has gotten completely out of hand. “The rush to revise ethics laws in the wake of the Jack Abramoff political corruption scandal has turned into more of a saunter,” reports The Washington Post. The Republicans keep dicking around with the gift ban idea (opposed by those stalwarts who claim “you couldn’t accept a t-shirt from your local high school"). But the best anti-reformer is Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the new House majority leader, elected as a “reformer” (puh-leeze), a man after Tom DeLay’s heart. Boehner argues that gift and travel bans would amount to members of Congress being “treated like children.” (Actually, children are seldom offered golfing vacations.)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060221_molly_ivins_reform/

My comments to Molly:

Molly,

You are correct that the lobbying reform effort has been pathetic so far, but we need to go even farther than your proposals. For any reform, the test case should be whether it would filter out a Dick Cheney/Halliburton relationship. Public financing of elections would help, but a Cheney could still wiggle through.

We need something more drastic: senators, presidents, vice presidents, and any general at the Pentagon should be barred for life from serving as corporate officers, sitting on boards of corporations or financial institutions, or serving as business lobbyists. We give these guys very generous pensions and if they choose to whore out their government access, that pension should be revoked.

Likewise, we need to stop industries getting to choose their own regulators and/or hiring their regulators at the end of their government service.

Certainly drug and product testing should be the financial responsibility of the manufacturers, but they shouldn't get to choose which university or lab does the testing, or they will have the power to suppress findings they don't like or intimidate the lab with threats of not getting work in the future.

You are right that this is a deep rooted problem. We cannot function as democracy if the public interest can so easily and often by subverted for private gain, even to the point of killing people and stealing their oil to enrich a very, very, few.

[rodeodance]

1. She brings things into perspective doesn't she!

[b5d]

2. They could at least start by

banning lobbyists.