I know why corruption is a problem at the top in politics, so Molly should relax a slight bit and cool the chuckles.
It is that politicians are underpaid.
Compare elected officials’ pay to private industry salary; poor politicians, they have to look for whatever favors are available at the banquet tables and receptions, in-kind gifts and vicuna coats, because the lobbyists are getting paid millions and the industry political action committees are disbursing millions on behalf of executives most of whose salaries are in seven figures.
Why, I was reading a while back of some disadvantaged members of the US House of Representatives, who, during Congress’ session, rent together a modest apartment in Georgetown; I mean, these Representatives have nice clothes and the basic amenities, but, how tragic that they have to room together like young adult college students instead of having their own privacy or being capable of affording their own cottage in Georgetown.
Let me tell you a little story and then I have to get back to work.  I met one of these Representatives after he was back in a private law firm having completed a few Congressional terms, and he Still Remembered, irascibly, a one-half sandwich which a lobbyist for whom I worked had bought during a tour of an industrial site; both my lobbyist and the Representaive were Hounded by the Federal Elections Commission; jawboned; chastised; and threatened with fines; and actually fined; all because of a little helicopter flight over an open pit mine while listening to a lobbyist spiel about the US Resource Recovery and Reclamation Act’s amorphous constructs, and while munching on a deli sandwich; not, exactly a full sandwich, only a half sandwich.  FEC said the sandwich should not have been bought for $7.50 by the lobbyist.
If we simply make Congress a more humane environment for officials whom we elect, the representatives there will do their legislative work without developing proclivities for ferreting out lobbyists who might offer a free lunch.
The Supreme Court certainly is starting to appear like it is comprised of Justices who would look favorably upon some relaxation of the overly tight regulations in the FEC; probably that rule about the illegality of one-half sandwiches is Un-Constitutional.
See how easy it is Molly, we can have clean and honest, hard-working elected officials.  Then we will feel like our votes truly count, and most of the votes were counted truthfully, to boot.

All a waste of perfectly good bandwidth.  Catch-22, as Joe Heller told us, is simply this: They can do whatever they want to you if you cannot stop them from doing it. 

Herewith, for your edification, is the final paragraph from George Orwell’s 1984:

“He [Winston Smith] gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

Molly your writing is still awesome.
Solution: $100 gift limit, $100 donation limit...public TV time available to all candidates for free…
Has everyone been forgetting my illustrious Congress member, Duke Cunningham? Must one steal millions and bribe others before something is done here?! Throw the repubs out and require accountability from your representatives in government!
Maybe we should pay folks with public money to vote? But only after they pass a voter education course! HAH!

Too much of that campaign money is spent on the mainstream media for political advertising, we will never see them support public financing of the electoral process, although it would surely make a big dent in the pay-for-play system that has manifest itself as the Abrahamoff scandal.

Just the fact that the media is the inevitable recipient of all that advertising revenue means they will not take part in biting the hand that feeds them, let alone dismantling the system completely.

In the hands of Wall Street, The Press is never free. 

It costs by the inch and by the second, a real time-space continuum of corruption.

JEP

Dear Molly,

I like your idea about belling the Elephant, but the problem is not the bell, but the putting it on. How are we going to do that.

Like Elephant trainers who have not been suffeciently thoughtful we have let the Elephant go rogue and are in danger of getting stopmed if we press to hard and more danger if we do not.

I would like to have elections where each congress critter was the representative of a coalition of one to hundreds of folk who got a certain minimum votes togeather. Then everybody would have representation instead of half of those who voted (or less in States with electronic vote/count or heavy gerrymandring)

But there is the rub, they dance with those who brung them, and those who don’t win because they carved a safe district seem to have staged a win even if nobody votes for them.

There might be a revulsion against Republicans that translates to a counted win for Democrats.... and Lucy might actually let Linus kick the ball...............

Let’s talk Bushco’s committment to selling our ports to the country of Kuwait.  Is the Carlyle Group (Bushco Senior’s company) the dealmaker behind this?

Nepotism to the max.  Junior funnels the juciest deal in history to his Dad’s firm to score points with Dad.  No respect for national security, those that died on 9/11 nor for our soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Let’s talk blackhearted, evil irony.  Bush starts the illegal war, jack’s up our costs for energy two-fold.  National and international oil companies get richer than God, and then use their War-Driven-Profits to buy our country and make us debtors. 

Let’s talk pathetic.  Piss-poor Republicans support Bushco because he preys on their bigotry, hatred and fear.  These poor slobs prop him up and he charges them through the NOSE to tank up their 4x4s.  Bushco companies then foreclose on the slobs’ houses, make them work in Walmart, and own their very souls till the end of time. 

Almost makes me wish the end comes soon.  Lets get religious and practice our acceptance, of getting shafted that is.

re: comment 4083 by Jim Caddell:

In the United Kingdom anyone can run for office by simply filing and paying a filing fee. If you lose your fee is returned as long as you have received a minimum percentage of the votes cast in the race you were in. Surely some form of that would enable 3rd, 4th, etc, party candidates?

Dear Molly,
Oh how I love your columns. You make like-minded citizens feel embraced, not so alone anymore.
I agree public financed elections (and I’m talking no Diebold or any other fixed voting machines as imperative in the process) is the only answer. Special interests are tearing this country apart, with Bush’s assistance and enthusiasm. I want Bush impeached just to be very clear where I stand. He is a menace.
With Warm Regards to you,
Peggy

Dear Jim,

I’m not being dismissive over your concerns about public financing of campaigns but … not a problem.

Public financing can work is we subscribe to a few basic realities.

Ours is a two party system by design. It’s part of the system of checks and balances whereby representation of many viewpoints filters up to two opposing parties who engage in a meaningful and productive debate. And it works, as long as the two parties are held accountable to their varied constituents and thereby remain distinct from one another.

So let’s say we publicly fund the two major parties’ elections. You can’t possibly find a way to publicly finance the limitless numbers of “Greens, Libertarians, Independents, Communists, Nazis, Nudists, and what-have-yous” you mentioned and the many more that would step up to the trough once such financing was legislated. But you don’t have to.

1. They get funding now, maintain a political presence and can continue to do so. If you are passionate about nudism you can darn well pay for it.

2. Their agendas can then be put to more purposeful democratic use by bartering the support of their constituencies with the two major parties and pressuring to get representation. Just like real politics. Votes are currency.

Ultimately you shouldn’t fund all these varied points of view anyhow. It subverts the system of compromise that is the foundation of democracy.  What’s wrong with politics today is that people don’t feel they have to invest in the system. They feel they can sit it out or follow some “alternative” party or candidate to no avail ... while Rome burns. It’s sort of ... bourgeois

The Republicans have created what we call a coalition, which is in fact many groups with many points of view that could very easily split off into smaller parties. But those parties would have no impact at all and really serve as “vanity” parties for those wanting to disassociate themselves from what George McGovern once called “The messiest, most chaotic and best political system in the world.”

Look at what would have happened if Perot had leveraged his power with the Republicans. Would they be as fiscally irresponsible as they are today?  Would Clinton have ever been President? Would he be running now? And what if Nader (ugh!) signed on with the Democrats? Would we be in Iraq? Would we have no alternative fuel strategy? How different our political landscapes might have been. 

Is this hassle to contemplate? Yes!

Is the current situation tolerable?

Here’s a radical idea, why not hold the American people responsible for all this crap? We’re the ones who put these boobs up there in the first place. And the best thing about blaming ourselves is we already have the means in place to throw the bums out, from both sides of the aisle, in both chambers, and on both ends of Penn. Ave. They’re called elections, and if people would bother to inform themselves and then act on that information, and hold their elected leaders and the media accountable, why amazin’ things could happen!
Politicians always say the money they collect by the barrowful doesn’t affect their votes (cough and turn your head) and that they need the money for costly election campaigns, that is, to produce vapid misleading TV commercials to convince some dumb-ass that “I’m you’re guy/gal or that my opponent is a scum bag.”
An informed active citizenry could render obsolete those glossy ads by taking just a few minutes each day to turn off American Idol or pro wrestling, and review a serious newspaper or magazine, Internet, even some TV, become informed and then act on the issues that are important to them. 
The fact is that the majority of Americans are too lazy to bother getting involved. They dont vote, they dont write their congressmen/women, they dont go to political rallies of any stripe. They dont care. They remain ignorant. Politicians and their advisors understand this. What we have now should come as no surprise.
Believe it or not, politicians are still very sensitive to public pressure. A well-argued letter to your Congressman/woman on a specific issue and persistence in demanding an answer, letters to the editors, too, can have a pronounced affect. Politicians are apt to think, and rightly so, that for every letter writer there is a significant portion of the constituency that is in agreement but hasnt bothered to act. Look, for example, at how fast Republicans dropped the Terry Schiavo debacle when the polls came out.
Was it HL Mencken who said “People get the government they deserve.”? Whoever said it said it right.

Although I agree with you 100%, I can’t imagine how to fix this problem. In the first place, the people in power don’t want to “fix” the system that put them in power. In the second place, any public finance funding legislation offered is going to favor the two main political parties and leave the Greens, Libertarians, Independents, Communists, Nazis, Buddhist Nudists, and what-have-yous out in the cold. The gummint can’t support every party, but it can’t discriminate either. Ouch! New problem.

Jim

Molly,

Thanks for taking this issue up.

What’s really depressing me at this moment is my realization that that most Americans, too frazzled juggling energy bills, medical costs and their children’s education expenses are likely to accept these feeble “reforms” as we endure politicians’ rhetoric on the subject throughout the ‘06 elections. Then it will go back to being “business as usual” in DC.

But while they bluster, I’d like you and your readers to consider the following:

1. This administration and its neo-con followers in Congress claim to be more business-like, more professional, more “corporate” than the previous one. However, the only real evidence of it I can see is that they wear coats and ties to work, which in reality few corporations really do anymore. In so many other ways they are much less like a business than you can possibly imagine.

On this matter of gifts for instance, they really out of touch with corporate America. Way out of touch.

Corporate gift policies are not only strict, they’re strictly over-enforced. Unlike our elected representatives who feel they can get away with anything so long as they don’t violate the strict “letter” of any regulations (this apparently applies to their views of the law as well), in corporate America, we are just as concerned about the “spirit” of it. That is, you don’t even have to break the regulation to be held accountable, you need only create the impression that you are. People have been fired for creating a perception of corruption.

Gifts are shunned. Period. Golf trips even if they are for charity. Holiday gifts. Concert tickets. All of it, is frowned upon and usually disallowed. In any amount. Does that mean you can’t accept a T-shirt from a local high school? It could and so what? Accept it, autograph it and give it back to the school and raffle it off to make money for the football team. (If your autograph is worth anything)

No gifts. None. One brilliant guy I worked for used to require all the holiday gifts we received from Suppliers and Chambers of Commerce - and anyone else who was in business and whose gift could be even perceived as an appeal to get business - were to be put into a locked closet. Then, they would then be raffled off to all the employees at the annual holiday party.  The employees even got the message and in subsequent years they just voted for the gifts to be given to charity.

So what makes politicians so special? As you rightly observed, have they been corrupt so long it looks OK to them? Who do they think they are, Indie “Stars” at Sundance? Why can’t their gifts be given to … oh say, the people in New Orleans? Sure they can’t use golf trips, but a house would suit them, or a job. Oh forget it, there I go in vain search of justice again.

But I do think they should be held to the same standards as the rest of us.

2. Speaking of justice for the rest of us, I’d like to fast forward beyond the cosmetic reforms our Legislators manage to come up with on the Abramhoff scandal - - and move to the next stage in this drama. Beyond Reform to Retribution.

What punishment may we expect for Abramhoff, et al, if any at all? And also what payback for the legislators who benefited from his crass largesse?

Not fines I hope. They are all millionaires. You don’t fine millionaires. It just takes them back a few steps on the (literal) monopoly board. Jail times? I doubt it will get through to them. They’ll still get gifts sent to them in the slammer and the slammer as such, will respect their more “refined social status”. It’ll be like the jail time the guys spent in “Goodfellas”. (In many more ways than one)

Besides, not only will the accommodations be pleasant, the jail sentences will give them plenty of time to find Jesus - who seems to hang out in white collar prisons - and write a book and make a million after their (all too short) release.

I have a better idea. Anyone found guilty in this or any other scam involving corruption in Lobbying should carry a maximum ten-year sentence of serving as a Lobbyist ... for the American People.

I mean seriously, every interest in our nation, corporations, trade associations, unions, industries, professions, etc. has a lobby ... except us. The US people.

I heard Lobbying defended as an educational necessity that is there to educate our legislators at all levels on the issues behind a bill under consideration. Lobbyists educate legislators to their employer’s point of view thereby bringing balance to the process. Sounds reasonable. Sounds great actually.

So what has our government done lately to convince you that our legislators are properly “educated” on what their polices do for - or more accurately TO - the American people? Can I get a “Damned Little” please?

For example, does a group of people, (mostly) all millionaires, who get the best medical plan in the nation at no cost to them and their families for life seem like the right group of people to empathize with the problems even middle class people face with increased “personal responsibility” for medical costs?

Do their policies seem to you to indicate they are “properly educated” on stagnated salaries, rising drug costs, employers’ wholesale disassociation from responsibility for their employees’ health, etc.?

We need a lobby too. And don’t tell me we already have one in our Legislators. We don’t. These people who say they are our lobby have been bought and sold by our competition - the corporations and the associations who want our money but want no responsibility for our welfare or well being.

It’s a free market isn’t it? They’re free to do whatever they want. We’re free to … what, move to Canada?

So let’s see Abramhoff and all his lackeys (and by that I mean the legislators he bought and paid for) do time ... and do it on our behalf! We end up paying for it anyhow.

Molly, I love you. Your wry humor elevates the despair I feel about the Reign of Error, to mere grave concern.

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.

Dear Molly,
Keep up the good work!
Lew

Yes, they need to be treated like children because they act like children. Yes, absolutely, nothing else will do, public financing. And an amendment to the Constitution that says no elected official shall be paid more than the Federal minimum wage. Their retirement will consist of Social Security. Their healthcare will be by medicare or their own personal health insurance policy that they pay for. Should they become ill while serving they shall be taken to the nearest public hospital emergency room. They shall not take any gifts from anyone ever! They will utilize public transportation while in the office they were elected to. And they may never be employed by any organization which had business before their office which they voted on!

What you would notice is a rapid increase in the quality of life for all Americans. And keep up the good work Molly!