Something a friend wrote

I figured I should post something a tad more serious, if you will. This is a post from a friend of mine that we'll call by his board name, Gypsy Songman, over on Quellious Collective. As I mentioned before, I played EQ for a bit. Aside from a few very good friends, the only real benefit I gleaned from my time in that game was a message board that I still post frequently at. QC's "Off Topic" board is populated by one heckuva great crew of folks. We toss politics, culture, gaming, and anything else around, chew on it, and each other, and stay friends through it all. It is one of the very, very few places on the internet where intelligent dicussion is possible, and I love it, and the people on it dearly.

This particular piece is of a political bent. It's not politics I particularly agree with, as the good Songman is a bit more liberal than I am, but I felt it a very solid, well expressed piece with some very valid things to say. Admittedly, this page is read only by myself (and apparently anon), but it is one more page of exposure for this essay.

It’s a good time to be a ‘Pub-hater. Delay is facing a possible life sentence for money laundering, Frist is under investigation for multiple cases of insider trading, and President Rove is a target of the Grand Jury probe into Plamegate. The leadership of the party, in a matter of weeks, has gone from iron-fisted, ideologically driven political machinists to practical nonexistence. So degraded is the House leadership that they nearly appointed an allegedly gay majority leader to replace Delay! Things may prove still worse for the Republicans soon- Delay loved to spread his dirty money around. Even Roy Blount, the Republicans’ pick for “temporary” Majority Leader, is under scrutiny for donations to his campaign fund that Delay supposedly laundered. In the lead-up to an election year, the Republicans are without guidance, left adrift and exposed by their own corruption.

Delay’s indictments are perhaps the most important development in American politics since Watergate. He is arguably the most powerful Republican in the country- certainly the most powerful in the House, since he’s pulling Denny Hastert’s strings. Why? Money. Delay is the great political patron of hundreds of serving Republican Representatives. His dirty money has elected candidates to state and national office (remember that redistricting in Texas? Yeah, that was him), and all he asks for in return is loyalty. He gets it- when Delay says jump in the house, people jump. The remarkable coherence of the Republican party is due in no small part to Delay’s influence- before becoming ML, he was the party whip, where he earned the nickname “the Hammer”. His perversions of American democracy don’t end with buying elections, sadly.

Have you been wondering, lately, why it is the “Clear Skies Act” is making the air quality worse, or why the recently passed energy bill gives billions in tax breaks, kickbacks, and loans to the energy industry, a special interest so awash with money they’re trying to find new ways to spend it? That, too, you can chalk up to Hot Tub Tommy. Delay is infamous for his relationship to K street, and has been admonished for pressuring lobbying groups to hire only Republican lobbyists. Worse, however, he has made K street the third house of the legislature. For a price, any lobbyist who met with Delay could write favorable legislation for their industry and guarantee its passage. Certain lobbyists- among them the time bomb Jack Abramoff (WP- sub req)- made their bones trading on their access to Delay. He has facilitated- and likely cheered- the slide of America’s once-great political system from the “Shining city on the hill” to a roiling, fetid cesspit of oligarchical deception. Unfortunately for Delay, the slide has eroded the base on which he built everything. When he collapses, he will take a good chunk of the Republican party with him.

Corruption of this stripe is pervasive at both the federal and state levels. In Ohio, state Workman’s Comp chairman Tom Noe invested millions of dollars of the fund in… rare coins. He also allegedly pocketed millions of the dollars he was supposed to be investing. Not surprisingly, a lot of that money ended up in the coffers of Republican politicians- from Governor Taft to President Bush. Noe even gave money to friends and employees to donate to Bush, earning him pioneer status. In addition to the $4 million he is accused of outright stealing, there are some $12 million and 121 rare coins unaccounted for. But fear not! The Ohio AG, after returning the money Noe donated to his campaign, announced he would investigate. What do you think the odds are that he’ll come up with something criminal? At the federal level, cronyism holds our regulatory agencies captive and cripples our ability to effectively control contract spending. Witness David Safavian, who with no prior experience, became the government’s top procurement officer… and who was recently arrested for obstruction of justice in Mr Abramoff’s case. As procurement officer, he was responsible for crony contracts to Khaki, Tyco, and KBR/Haliburton that allowed them to exploit millions of extra dollars from the government.

All of this should be good news for Democrats (and democrats, for that matter)… it looks like a wash, right? Any self-respecting population would toss these assholes out on their collective ears. And yet the Dems just can’t support the idea of backing their base. Their current strategy (re: Miers) notwithstanding, they are amazingly poor political planners with no apparent understanding of how to win hearts and minds. Take the recent anti-war demonstration in DC: 200,000-300,000 people show up on a Saturday and make their feelings about Iraq known. No elected Democrats come to address these politically involved, highly motivated, anti-administration protesters- and yet, 400 anti-anti-war protesters show up, and there’s a Republican Congressman there to address them. The Democrats drop the ball more than the 1919 White Sox, and what’s worse, they just don’t seem to learn. How hard is it to say, “Poverty is a moral issue,” or “Spending our great-grandchildren in to debt just so Paris Hilton can get a tax break is a moral issue,” or, gods forbid, “Killing Iraqis is a moral issue”? Where are the Democrats who will stand up and take God back from the Repubs?

Right now, they don’t exist. At an institutional level, the Democrats, despite the best efforts of Howard Dean, just don’t have the spine to stand up and be counted. I charitably write it up to the fact that they’re appalled at the state of the country and just don’t know how to shake the rights’ hold on politics (when in actual fact it’s probably the DLC’s castration of the party), but it’s time to stop being bewildered. Americans are crying out for leadership, and no one will step up to the plate and show ‘em how it’s done.

And so I look forward to next year with hope and trepidation. The Republicans are weak right now- far closer to the ropes than they’re letting on- and their lack of real leadership (anyone seen Cheney lately?) has left them biting at each others’ flanks. Will the Democrats strike while the iron is hot? Or will they once again let opportunity sail past them?

Only time will tell.

As I said, Gypsy Songman and I differ on many things, but I felt this deserved some repeating. If there is interest, or I feel froggy about it, I'll go into my politics, and/or my views on this piece. Please keep in mind that it does not represent my views, so don't label me by this piece, nor cuddle up to me thinking we share views. I don't cuddle well.