The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!

Lobbyists, my heart aches for thee.

The doyens of K Street fear an industry-wide crisis akin to the subprime mortgage meltdown. With Vito McVeto promising a 50% reduction in earmark spending, K Streeters face a future devoid of 12 martini lunches, strip poker games with hookers, and doling out a lil’ sumpin’, sumpin’ to their Congressional marks. Like many other things in Washington, the cesspool is so deep even the recipients of lobbyists’ largess understand someone has to go down for their corruption.

One of the last bipartisan fronts in this country is a firm belief that earmarks are all numbered 666 - the earmark of the devil. Everyone decries them while slipping down to the Government Printing Office to add a few before the printers go to work. The administration, despite their belated call for halving the number, has a long and storied history of taking lobbyists’ essential “counsel”, usually behind closed doors and with refusals to let the sun shine in. The Democrats are no better. In fact, I can’t recall a single politician ever saying, “They gave me a $35,000 campaign contribution, so I voted as they asked.” It’s always, “The $35K didn’t influence me in the least. Hey! I hear they’re handing out golf trips to the Bahamas over at the Congressional dining room!”

I’m pretty confident most of the lobbyists shouldn’t worry. I’m sure Shrub will sign off on all the Republican earmarks and sacrifice Democrats’ pork to the giant maw of politics. That’s 50% guaranteed right there. I’m equally sure Democrats and Republicans alike will find new ways to shoehorn the rest into bills as part of the funding for specific, and probably tangential, programs. It is, after all, what they do and since lobbyists actually write many laws for the lawmakers, I’m sure they’ll find a way.

There’ll certainly be a few sacrificial goats from carefully-chosen, and none too important lobbies. One must keep up appearances in the Kabuki of politics. Banking will go untouched. Ditto telcom. And, of course, how could we live without the oil companies’ “help”? It’s more likely those rabid advocates for public aquariums or independent booksellers will get the shaft. “No fishes for you,” says the Earmark Soup Nazi.

But as bad as the lobbyist situation is, you can’t blame it completely on them. It’s true we look askance at these shenanigans, but we also reward them with our support in return for a new Jello-wrestling complex in Minnesota or a bridge to nowhere in Alaska. Its just another variation of “NIMBY” - “NIMEM”, not in my earmark. Do anything you want to that other district, but hand me that rasher of bacon.

Are you listening Senator Byrd?

We’ve allowed lobbying to run away with itself. They have a defacto monopoly on power. The courts vested them with rights equal to individual citizens and they used that base to widen their footprint. At the same time, so did the politicians. Now we have a Rube Goldberg political money machine no one actually understands or can control. The problem is we desperately need reform, but it’ll have to be paid for with money printed by the lobbyists and stuffed into pols’ pockets.

Foxes guarding the hen house are never a good thing, but what are you going to do?

I’m not sure whether to be worried or not, but I found myself agreeing with Mike Huckabee this week. For a man who thinks the planet was created last week, he’s remarkably astute about the stimulus package both parties are currently flogging.

The Huckster hit the nail on the head when he said that we’ll go hat-in-hand to China and borrow the money to fund the tax rebates. The folks who qualify for the rebates will then spend it on something frivolous, like food or clothing. They’ll run down to the local Walmart and buy Chinese-made underwear or toxin-laced tomatoes.

Simply Stimulating
The plan has other “stimulating” facets too. While the bipartisan boneheads are throwing a sop to the lower income segment, they’re also making sure corporations get a big chunk of the pie. These would be the same corporations that loaned money to people using oxygen for collateral, or that have moved all their production to China, or both.

The mortgage meltdown was obvious to anyone who ever balanced a checkbook long before the astronomically paid investment bankers and their equally greased clientele woke up to it. Somehow they missed the Economics 101 lecture about the inadvisability of loaning money to people who can’t pay it back. And while the saga unfolded, the C-student from Yale stood by not only insisting that things were just fine, but refusing to regulate a market completely unwilling to regulate itself. At least Alan Greenspan, had the good manners to call the equally unregulated Clinton markets “irrationally exuberant”.

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Page, AZ - I’ve always had a great love for travel. There’s something comforting about feeling the miles unspool under my feet. For me, the destination has no real point, I’m all about the journey.

Day-to-day life can be grinding. Too much stress and strife. It’s easy to forget - despite what may be happening - we are still a great nation. We live in a beautiful land of infinite variety. Our geography is perhaps some of the most beautiful in the world. But trips like this also help remind me that our people are as beautiful as our land.

An elderly woman asked where I was headed last night. When I explained nowhere in particular, she opened a conversation that was a nice break from the whole not-talking-to-anyone thing. Or the woman who helpfully offered two cents to the drugstore clerk when I had no change. Last night a waitress, easily 30 years my junior - called me “Hon”. If they weren’t so cynical, I think these small gestures would be the best thing about politicians campaigning.

The folks who offered these small pleasantries could have been serial murderers for all I know, but the things they said and did were still nice at the time. The point to what they said or did weren’t the real point, the journey that connected them with me is what they’re all about.

My motel room is only a few blocks from the Glen Canyon Dam. It’s wedged into a hole of incredible depth and sits there humming electricity and providing water for farmers and cities. Though not a WPA project from the depression, it carries the style and unmistakable grace of government monument building. It’s all sturdy concrete and decorative flourishes - what nature has joined together, man will cast asunder.

Some would argue this dam is an evil thing. They prefer a world in which water and electricity are second choices to the needs of man, or more correctly, appears without any footprint at all being imposed on nature. But, that cat was out of the bag long ago. Today there are millions depending on the dam’s water to drink and its electricity to keep things running. It’s going to be damnably hard to do what many environmentalists prefer - blow it up and let nature take the canyon back.

Man, like any other animal, always leaves a footprint. It’s impossible to do otherwise. We must have food and water and shelter, all things even the staunchest of environmentalists take for granted. The dam may have inundated the beautiful valley, but at least it’s a utilitarian act. Man built a beautiful structure and followed the ancient advice to build only that which we can use. The dam is curious like that. The destruction of beauty in the quest of utility. Making that decision repeatedly throughout our history, we have a mixed track record. Some things we killed for nothing other than greed or just because we could, but sometimes we did a bit of a good thing. We did some things that to the eye of the beholder are poxes on the earth, but we live in a country where you can speak out against it or in a country that sometimes values beauty, even the man-made kind. We could have done much worse. At least we did it with the best of intentions and to the benefit of many.

And that’s not so bad.