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Bride of Rove worries that Glenn Beck's call for whistleblowers on Monday may be a sign that he's close to losing it.
She sites three possible motives for people coming forward:
- To take someone out equally repulsive as themselves in which case you are not really fixing anything at all.
- To set you up for some elaborate fall. You are dealing with people who have had years of experience at working people over, who can’t be fired, and who have the patience of saints when it comes to revenge. They can’t think up ways to fix the economy, but they are MASTERS at thinking up ways to screw with you.
- Writing a book and looking for a $$$ retirement and a little fame.
Point 2 is interesting. It assumes that Beck wouldn't fact-check anything brought forward and confirm it independently if possible. There is enough at stake that this is a legitimate concern, but you figure Beck and Fox haven't got this far without impressive CYA systems in place.
Point 1 gets at the need for systemic reform. Beck has been on a corruption tear this week, but I have bad news: even a 50% purge in Congress is tantamount to mowing a weedy lawn. The weeds will return so long as the roots remain.
And it's not like you'll ever have a corruption-free Congress. So let's disabuse ourselves of the notion that the 111th Congress is overwhelmingly more corrupt than previous versions. It may be more corrupt than average, however you measure that. But even under Newt Gingrich, there was no walking back of the national debt. Using that as a metric, you have to go back to the Truman administration to find a Congress that was less corrupt.
My hope is that Beck finishes off the week looking a Federalism. Until the Congress and the people get off the co-dependent relationship born 100 years ago, and restore the States to significant political meaning, all these calls for ending corruption are just so much noise. The moral hazard of the Imperial Fed is the real issue.
The hopeful of 9/12 is that the people are watching. Whether they are willing to fight to restore what's been lost, and then fight to retain the political power at the level of their State remains to be seen. The temptation to allow moral hazard in the name of economies of scale is seductive indeed.
But this is the Information Age. Technology should be driving de-centralization of power, not its concentration into the building blocks of tyranny. Kids are running amok with hidden cameras, embarrassing the corrupt in and out of office. Good times.
So hopefully Glenn Beck does more than drive his show's ratings, and I'm confident he will.
Like all the conservative illuminati, Glenn is a big boy and can take care of himself without our help or prognostications.
ReplyDeleteGracias for the link. I'm still not getting coffee for you guys.
ReplyDeleteJon Stewart did an amazing impression of Beck tonight.
Of course, Beck's anticorruption crusade is pointless. The Congress has been utterly corrupt since the git-go. The actual purpose of the Congress is to give tax dollars to people/corporations who bribe them. You won't eliminate Congressional corruption unless you eliminate Congress itself.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Louis IV and his crowd weren't exactly Christian saints, either. Corruption is the lubricant of any government.
RSMcCain
ReplyDelete1-2-3 so well put.
Nothing against the Bride of Rove..
ReplyDeletebut that link was evil. Noticed that it ended with 666?
This is the key point --
ReplyDelete"My hope is that Beck finishes off the week looking a Federalism. Until the Congress and the people get off the co-dependent relationship born 100 years ago, and restore the States to significant political meaning, all these calls for ending corruption are just so much noise. The moral hazard of the Imperial Fed is the real issue."
The best way to fix the corruption problem in DC is to reduce the power (money) that's concentrated in DC.
I vote you start and lead a federalism education campaign.
Beck is hyperboling with one purpose: to get the message out. That is why he is repeating the mantra of ordinary-nonpartisan-people-get-along-against-corrupt-politicians.
ReplyDeleteI think he knows "corruption" is not the problem. Liberal agenda is. Multiculturism is. But he has to elaboratly mask the problem in as populist way as possible in order to get the message out. This is exactly the opposite of what the intellectual beltway conservatives have been doing, and IT WORKS. Damn it, it works.
If we want to resurrect federalism, we have to repeal the 17th Amendment's provisions for the direct election of Senators. We must go back to the original constitutional plan: state legislatures should elect senators.
ReplyDeleteThere is no statutory fix. The states have no representation. No wonder they have become mere federal departments.
It's gonna' take a constitutional amendment folks.
I've never seen the Glen Beck show, Smitty.
ReplyDeleteI've seen a few clips on blogs, heard an hour of his show once in the car, what's the big deal with Beck?
I can appreciate our side's political pundits, but I fail to get the rock star status and emotional overload some folks seem to develop with these eloquent people.
I don't get the Left's obsession with them, either.
The jury is out for me. I believe while Beck is patriotic, that number 3 is an obvious motivator, that crying corruption long enough and loud enough could, after awhile, cause folks to mistake him for Henny Penny and start settling back into status quo-ville while forgetting about all those silly Tea Parties and personal responsibilities.
ReplyDeleteYou'll have to do more than repeal the 17th amendment. You'll have to repeal the 16th too, and take away the pension system for politicians. It was never meant to be a life long career and the tax money is where they get their power. If they have less to spend, they have less to bribe with. Of course a lot of this is pipe dreams and the only way it would happen is a true revolution. Americans do not have the stomach nor the attention spans for such things, nor the will. So what you are left with is tit for tat minor changes and posturing by members of the one party system to make it look like they are doing something. It'll be more of the same until real pressure is brought to bear.
ReplyDelete