Remember the government
shutdown of 2013? Ted Cruz and his fellow Tea Party types obstructed the appropriation
of funds to run the government for the fiscal year 2014. They were all bunched
up about the Affordable Care Act, and used it as their excuse to put some
800,000 federal employees out of work and leave a million others wondering when
they’d ever see a paycheck. They also used it as an opportunity to puff up
their manly chests.
This is why I tell you that elections have consequences. When we elect people who say they hate gummint to BE the gummint, then this is what we get. A bunch of aging adolescents more interested in chestal puffery than doing the serious work of governing.
This is why I tell you that elections have consequences. When we elect people who say they hate gummint to BE the gummint, then this is what we get. A bunch of aging adolescents more interested in chestal puffery than doing the serious work of governing.
One of the consequences of
the shutdown came at the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). What is the FEC?
From the website: In 1975, Congress created the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to administer
and enforce the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) - the statute that governs
the financing of federal elections. The duties of the FEC, which is an
independent regulatory agency, are to disclose campaign finance information, to
enforce the provisions of the law such as the limits and prohibitions on
contributions, and to oversee the public funding of Presidential elections.
The FEC came about as a direct result of Watergate. The FEC publicly discloses where the campaign money comes from and where it goes.
Because
of the government shutdown, all 339 FEC agency employees were furloughed.
Months earlier, an independent auditor warned that the FEC’s information
systems were at high risk for infiltration. And infiltrated they were. Chinese
hackers launched an attack shortly after the shutdown. They crashed all of the
computer systems – the computers that had all that information about where the
money comes from and where it goes. There was nothing to prevent this from
happening. No one was on duty, thanks to the folks who brought us the shutdown.
The
FEC has been systematically defunded. The agency’s funding has been flat for
five years. They have fewer staff now than in the last 15 years – despite the
explosion in political spending. The analysts who read disclosure reports to
check for compliance have a near quarter of a million page backlog. There are
over 250 unresolved enforcement cases.
That’s why it took so long for the FEC to determine that Frank Guinta had broken campaign finance laws with his magic bank account and five years of ever changing lies. That’s why Frank Guinta was elected twice, in the face of those lies. We watched him stand in front of television cameras and accuse Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter of being a liar. There is no accountability or penalty for that kind of blatant dishonesty, far from it. The O’Brien rump caucus has lined up in support of Guinta. They never cared for him before, but now they figure if gummint says Frank is bad than Frank is good. We saw it in the responses to the Teletalk question “Should Frank Guinta Resign?” A number of people said no, because HILLARY. Ideology over ethics. Ideology over intellect.
Regulatory
failures happen over and over. The environmental agencies that are supposed to
look out for us have been pillaged and underfunded. The Upper Big Branch Coal
Mine in Kentucky exploded and caused the death of 29 miners. This was after
over a decade of safety violations that should have closed the mine down. The
Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling platform exploded in the Gulf of
Mexico, killing 11 workers and spewing oil into the ocean for 87 days. The
Deepwater Horizon had a spotty inspection record. None of the safety mechanisms
in place to prevent the explosion or the oil spill worked.
This
is what happens when we take away the funding and the fangs of the regulatory
agencies. Corporations do not police themselves. They will do anything to avoid
paying for their mistakes, especially those that require a huge cleanup. Their
interest is in making money, and the occasional environmental disaster
shouldn’t be allowed to interfere with that pursuit.
Very
few politicians regulate themselves.
With the influx of money generated by the Citizens United decision
(because free speech is mighty expensive) involved in the political process, we
should all be concerned about the intentional (for what else can it be?)
dismantling of the FEC.
It’s
easy to dismiss the concerns about money as a federal elections issue. Trickle
down economics has been an abysmal failure, but trickle down campaign money is
proving quite successful. As we all know, the NH House is populated with 400
“volunteer” legislators. They earn a stipend of $100 a year and mileage
reimbursement for their service. It used to be that a run for the NH House
meant raising somewhere between $500 and $1000. Candidates needed signs and
handouts for voters. Those days are over, as we learned during a recent special
election for the NH House, in Rockingham District 32.
The special election was needed because the guy who was elected went to work for Frank Guinta (KARMA!) before he was ever sworn in. Former State Rep. Maureen Mann was uncontested in the Democratic primary. The GOP primary came down to two college students. One was arrested for violating a protective order shortly before the election. The other candidate, Yvonne Dean-Bailey, won the primary. Miss Dean-Bailey is a student at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts. She’s one of the angry young libertea Republicans given special attention because she puts the rare female face on that brand of ideology.
Miss
Dean-Bailey’s campaign for the NH House was amazingly well funded. She was the
beneficiary of over $10,000 in PAC money alone. A young libertarian millionaire
from Texas has a PAC that provided over $4,000 for mailings. He has no ties to
NH. He is, however, more than willing to help buy a fellow ideologue a seat in
a volunteer legislature.
Special interests expect a return on their investment. We should be concerned about that on every single level of our government. We need regulatory agencies to police those who lack integrity, but have plenty of cash. Pay to play is not democracy.
Special interests expect a return on their investment. We should be concerned about that on every single level of our government. We need regulatory agencies to police those who lack integrity, but have plenty of cash. Pay to play is not democracy.
If there was one decision I
would overrule, it would be Citizens United. I think the notion that we have
all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is
supposed to be. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
