Thinking Outside The Box

by digby

I was reading this incisive post on corruption at the Poorman and had a revolutionary idea. The Editors:

Imagine that. Elect gangsters, get gangsterism. Look, it’s a great thing that DeLay and Abramoff & Co. are getting in a bit of legal trouble now, but don’t pretend that this is some example of the system working and the balance being restored, because it isn’t. The worst case scenario for these guys is to spend a few years in a the nicest prison on Earth, followed by a career as an absurdly well-compensated and influential lobbyist, and kickbacks galore for you and yours. You can get a few years in prison for downloading mp3’s on the internets, and your chances of getting a trashbag full of cash and a cake job when you come out the other end are very, very, very slim. And a decade or so of federal legislation is arguably worth even more than kelis_milkshake.mp3. Justice for these people, and for us, would be massive jail sentences for everyone involved, a mass nullification of nearly every piece of legislation and every judicial appointment since 1994 (at least), and the guilty parties and their bagmen paying us restitution with interest. That would make things right. Lots of luck. Whatever slap on the wrist these guys get, we got taken.

This is another one of those un-unshittable beds, I’m afraid, so it makes a lot more sense to concentrate on not shitting it in the future. Step one, obviously, is to get rid of the crooks, or, as they are known in polite company, “the Republicans”. But as long as the system is what it is – as long as you can gainfully set up a blatantly corrupt political machine like DeLay’s, and make money hand-over-fist for years in exchange for a possible plea bargain down the road – this kind of behavior is going to continue. While it may be a little hard to imagine the Democrats (or the Greens, or the International Society of Con Men and Embezzling Liars) ever being able to top the standard set by these current Republicans, I’m sure they’d be willing to give it the old college try. Because if they won’t, someone else will.

Since I see little hope that the system is going to be reformed, it occurs to me that we liberals should just hire ourselves some lobbyists. Really. We spend many, many millions on political campaigns that get us zilch. Nada. We should just raise funds to buy congressmen yachts or send them to Australia on vacation or hire their wives at 5 grand a month to survey what congressmen like for dinner. These guys go cheap when you really think about it. They’ll do pretty much anything you want for a golfing trip. We’d actually save money just by buying them all French commodes. In exchange we get them to vote for national health care and legal gay marriage and a $15.00 minimum wage.

I think we should consider it. At this rate, it’s going to be 2100 before we ever get a chance to renact any true progressive legislation the old fashioned way, if then. It’s time we in the reality based community faced the music. If you want something done in our government, you have to pay top dollar for it.

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