Today, May 16, 2008, 3 hours ago | (Jacob Sullum)
The spectacle of the ****k-laden farm bill sailing through both houses of
Congress with veto-proof majorities is disgusting enough if you imagine
that
its sup****ters are simply political hacks doing what they think is
necessary
to stay in power. They are, of course, but they don't necessarily see it
that way. Since politicians would not be politicians if they did not
believe
the public interest coincided with their own ambitions, they have a
remarkable ability to see blatant pandering, logrolling, and vote buying
as
not only necessary but noble. Hence Barack Obama's bizarre claim that
passing the favor-filled farm bill is a way of standing up to "the special
interests." Or consider the response from Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.),
the
ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, to President
Bush's
veto threat:
Obviously, I have been very disappointed in the comments coming out of
the
White House. But we do have a strong vote in both the House and the
Senate,
and I think that shows you that in a complex piece of legislation like
this,
and it truly is because it touches so many different areas of so many
different aspects of agriculture and food production, as well as nutrition
and conservation and energy, that there is something in this bill for
every
member of the House and every member of the Senate.
If Congress passed legislation giving each representative and senator $1
million in taxpayer's money to spend as he saw fit, there would also be
something in the bill for every member of the House and every member of
the
Senate. By Chambliss' logic, raiding the public treasury in this way would
be clearly fair and justified. The scary thing is, I don't he's faking it.
He really is indignant about Bush's veto threat, because he really does
believe that serving the public interest is a matter of doing favors for
lots and lots of special interests.
Car dealers call people that are this easy to screw, "Laydowns". I think
just about every taxpayer in the US has become a "Laydown". They just
don't
care. They look to the government to provide everything for them. Hell, we
don't have a government anymore, we've got a ****ing insurance company!
--
I'm JC and I approved this message.
http://www.reason.com/
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