Galbraith: The damage remains

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" Zepp " <zepp

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 07:54:05 -0700

[Zepps_News] Galbraith: The damage remains

 

 

 

 

 

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/james_k_galbraith/2006/04/delay_the_man_is_g\

one_the_dama.html

 

 

The damage remains

 

Tom DeLay is history, but it would take many years to rebuild the House

of Representatives as a proud democratic institution.

 

 

James K Galbraith

<http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/james_k_galbraith/profile.html>

 

Texans for Public Justice - yes, dear readers, we have such

organizations - issued a short statement

<http://www.tpj.org/page_view.jsp?pageid=975 & pubid=740> on the news

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1747013,00.html> that Tom DeLay

is leaving Congress. Here it is in full:

 

How the mighty have fallen. The man who perfected the art of buying

political offices now cannot buy his own seat in his own backyard at

any price. K Street has thoroughly nauseated Main Street.

 

 

The glee is justified but my reaction barely rises to grim enjoyment. I

grew up on the staff of the House of Representatives. I remember what it

used to be like.

 

As a very young man, I worked for the leaders of another time. Henry S.

Reuss of Wisconsin, Richard Bolling of Missouri, the Speaker Tip O'Neill

were the three I knew best: incorruptible leaders of wit and conscience.

One brushed shoulders with Claude Pepper, crusty defender of social

security, Don Edwards, champion of civil liberties, Wright Patman,

scourge of high interest rates, and Barbara Jordan, unbending defender

of the constitution. I knew Republicans with whom the contest of ideas

was a challenge enjoyed on both sides. Jack Kemp sent me mash notes, now

and then, when my attacks on Paul Volcker's monetarism coincided with

his views.

 

House leaders were then the most expert elected officers in government.

Secure in their seats, they had risen over decades in their committees;

they knew the law, they knew the bureaucracy, and they knew their own

minds. They talked to lobbyists, of course, especially on commercial

matters. They were not perfect; I had (at least) one flamboyant felon on

one committee I worked for. But that guy robbed his investors to benefit

his constituents. The lobby did not run the show.

 

In those days, staff-work brought contact every day with imaginative

colleagues, some of them giant-killers who had helped end the Vietnam

war, some who had investigated Watergate, others who wanted (as I did)

to curb the hidden power of the Federal Reserve. We had the support of

caucuses and study groups; it was a place where bright young men and

women could sometimes accomplish great things while still very young.

 

Ronald Reagan and the Republican take-over of the Senate in 1981 did not

destroy this system, though they brought in a generation of rightwingers

and though they did the bidding of the rich when they could. For the

House endured under Reagan, and after the glorious 1982 mid-terms

O'Neill and Reagan negotiated their way to a rough balance of power.

 

Full collapse didn't come until 1995, when Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay

took control. From then on, the House became a shell, its staffs and

study groups destroyed, its independence gutted, its traditions of

debate and compromise thrown away. Under DeLay's gang, the lobby rules.

Bills they draft are voted without amendment, essentially without

debate, often without so much as hearings. It's barely a branch of

government, let alone a co-equal branch, far from a deliberative branch,

anymore.

 

Now DeLay is history, but his damage will endure. What was once a

proud democratic institution would take an upheaval, and then a decade

or more of hard work, to rebuild. And so I'm in mind of a poem I

learned many years ago:

 

They buried the politician today

The crowd it jeered and rang.

But as for me, I wept

For I had hoped to see him hang.

 

 

 

--

" Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government

talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court

order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about

chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order

before we do so "

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004

 

 

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

 

 

 

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