Time to clean house


Dear A– Letter Reader:

In the eight years during which I was privileged to serve as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, I kept in mind the advice of one of my senior colleagues, the late John Ashbrook of Ohio. John’s simple rule of thumb was, 99.9% of the time you’re right if you vote “NO!”

I thought of this yesterday when I read that ‘the world’s greatest deliberative body’ (as they used to call it), the United States Senate, had voted en mass, 97-0, to enact what the AP described as ‘the most sweeping changes in corporate accountability since the Depression.” The last time we saw such lockstep unity was the disastrous USA Patriot Act last October.

OK , so certain corporate officials have been guilty of greed, fraud, corruption, insider trading and falsified accounting. Every one of these same sins can be laid directly at the feet of those in the U.S. Congress who practice regularly these very same malefactions on a daily basis as it pertains to the federal government.

How is it that politicians can possibly pretend to manage the business of others when they can’t even manage their own areas of responsibility?

Does any informed citizen really believe politicians are better suited to run corporations than corporate officials themselves? Those same politicians from both parties who have spent the U.S. budget back into a huge deficit, who vote away our liberties without even reading the laws they pass?

The late Will Rogers used to say that whenever he needed material for his jokes he would just read what Congress had done that day and his audience ‘would die laughing.’ But as Will added: ‘The trouble is, most times when Congress makes a law, it is a joke.’

Well folks, the U.S. is well pass the joke stage. It isn’t capitalism or the American economic system that needs radical reform. What needs a radical makeover are the attitudes and actions of those who pretend to govern us, from the White House on down.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison: “ A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.” And a lot of rebellion is even better.

That’s the way it looks from here.

Bob Bauman