lexicography.com

Peggy Noonan asks:

What is wrong with them? This is not a rhetorical question. I think it is unspoken question No. 1 as Americans look at so many of the individuals in our government. What is wrong with them?

I know what is wrong with them. Power corrupts. As Washington has amassed more and more power, our rulers have become worse and worse.

Yet even today, Washington is full of amateurs. Granting Indian casino rights figures large on their kickback and bribe radar. They have absolute power to enrich or impoverish large swaths of the most productive people on earth. Yet a private jet ride to the Paris Air Show and a few days in a luxury hotel, meals, tips, and transfers included, is enough to purchase legislation. For the ability to add twenty words to the tax code (all revenues of the majority owner of Microsoft, their heirs and assigns, are hereby tax exempt from any taxing authority) I could collect billions.

Do not for one second think that the tax code is not riddled with such things. I worked for a law firm that did a former Beatle’s (Hey Jude) taxes. That firm knew the tax code. There were special rules that applied only to natural resource corporations incorporated in the State of Delaware before 1900 with a net capitalization over $600 million. This sounds like a general rule based on some reason, but the genesis was there is only one corporation fitting the description.

Bribery, how little holders of the public trust sell for. Sometimes it is pennies on the thousand dollars.

Why are American prisons worse than those of, say, Turkey? What? You do not think that the typical state or Federal prison in America is worse than that stuff you saw in Midnight Express?

I, for one, once entered a prison. I was young and worked for the US Savings Bond Division of the Treasury. Savings bonds were sold by some employees canvassing other employees (like United Way before we learned that our hard earned dollars bought private helicopters for executives). In the years before I got that territory, no one ever entered the federal prison. I suppose it was possible the inmates would put a knife to the neck of a visiting suit. I was young and foolish and telephoned for an appointment and sat in the reception area with family and lawyers waiting to see inmates. When it was my turn to go in, the electronic controlled bars opened into an airlock like area, the bars closed behind and after a minute the bars opened before me.

From what I hear, the prisons have gangs. There are African-American gangs, white gangs, Hispanic gangs, and other gangs. The authorities have limited power over the inmates. Actually the authorities have little interest in limiting what goes on in prisons because, you are off the radar, the people outside think you are bad and do not care what happens to you. You may end up a sex slave, you may be involuntarily infected with AIDS, you may be bought and sold for a pack of cigarettes.

Why does America, rich beyond belief, easily affording a private room for any person convicted of a crime, allow the degradation and death? Are there no prisoners of conscience, no one who stands on principal

Generally I do not like to link to libertarians of any sort - too alien to normal thought. However, I supressed an involuntary smile reading this:

“It’s no use telling our rulers to mind their own business”, C.S. Lewis observed. “Our whole lives are their business.” You can run afoul of the law nowadays by standing still. Doing nothing is illegal. It means shirking legal obligations to pay taxes, show up for duty, and obey an array of commandments that makes the Talmud look like the Boy Scout Handbook.

Politicians always promise to make even more new laws, as if this were some sort of achievement. It rarely occurs to them to pare down the fantastic body of laws already on the books. In their minds, there is no such thing as enough.

I am telling you, today in America, there is not a citizen who is not guilty of serious felony crimes each day of their lives. Someone just has to notice you to begin the horror.

Via Cathy’s World:

I think that teachers are like police — the majority are decent and honorable, but you really have to keep a careful eye out for bullies and control freaks attracted to the job because of the power it gives them over other people . . .

I used to think that way, but nowadays I am cynical.

If a police officer stopped in the middle of the road in front of me and started talking to the driver of another car, something that was obviously no emergency, personal business or giving directions or something, I would hesitate to blast the horn. I would think it was within my rights to expect the police to pull over and clear the road, give their directions without blocking everyone, but I know what would probably happen. More likely than not, the police would turn on their overhead light and proceed to make me pay a price.

When someone blasts their horn at me, even if I am wrong, I generally desire to make that person pay a price. I just do not have the ability to extract a price.

I believe that most teachers and police, motor vehicle division employees, and ordinary people slowly vacating a parking space in a crowded lot. delight in exercising what little or lot of authority they have over you.

Countless public school teachers say that they love their jobs and stick with it when the monetary rewards are slim. How much of the job satisfaction is being petty tyrant in their classroom? A good half of the students are very concerned about the grades the teacher gets to attach to them. Some kids beg and cry when they are given a bad grade.

Why do Department of Motor Vehicle employees seem to enjoy putting up barriers and procedures which waste your time? I have known doctors who have had to give people bad news and none seem to relish the duty as does the bureaucrat telling you what you have to suffer at his hand. Maybe it is the control, the bureaucrat makes you go to the end of a new line, the doctor is reporting an impersonal tragedy happening to you.

I suspect that most people would enjoy being able to capriciously reward those that they like and punish those that they do not like. The power to do so unleashes a monster. People with easy authority over others should be institutionally restrained and watched carefully.

The police officer should not determine who to prosecute, that should be reserved for an independent official, the District Attorney. The police officer should not determine when a search is warranted, that should be reserved for an independent official, a judge only upon oath or affirmation. The school teacher should not be able to attach stigmatizing medical diagnoses to your children (ADHD), that should be reserved for doctors not in the employ of the school system. It is not that most teachers/police are not good people. It is that they are placed in circumstances under which even good people are subject to ethical lapses.

Perhaps the ability to exercise power over others is the biggest rush, the most addictive drug. It populates all the pleasure receptors; but no one is interested in limiting it. Perhaps the abusers of the drug are as good at rationalizing their consumption as the drunk.

Missed: Bunker Mulligan - goodbye

When the courts started overstepping, the other branches were silent, implicit “if we let you get away with this, you must let us get away with things important to us”. In that way the limits imposed by the Constitution and the effects of three branches each limiting the power of the other was blunted.

By the time McCain-Feingold came, the principle was well established. McCain was clearly unconsitiutional but the MSM got special priv, so they were boosters, incumbants got advantage so they were boosters, and the courts were in debit to the other branches. The courts were operating on fumes and were effectively removed from the game.

Implicit agreements among branches of Government is the rule today. Wherefore seperation of powers?