Our houses of Congress are supposed to represent us, but they don’t. Why?Sure, you can write this off as the ravings of someone from Chelmsford, but I believe that would be short sighted.
Their incentive is to get their hefty benefits including a generous retirement. So they have to get reelected. To get reelected, they need to pass out favors. Money works well but doing wise things doesn’t.
Thus, Jefferson’s idea of a volunteer government is truly great. It eliminates monetary favors and leaves only doing a good job as the duty of office.
Of course we will have to listen to all the wailing about how hard it is to get people to volunteer for the offices without offering significant compensation. NH does not seem to have this problem, however.
The fact is that getting elected is expensive, if you have an opponent of any worth. K Street in Washington is awash in lobbyist money. That money is not just staying in the banks of the lobbyists.
This article, from The Wall Street Journal tells us about the problem and tells us about a possible solution. (In reading the article, forget about what party Mr Murtha had tacked next to his name.)
Regards — Cliff
2 comments:
There was a comment, since deleted, which listed URLs to some 40 handbag sites. I have a British friend, PhD in History, former instructor at the (US) National War College, etc, who refers to Lady Margaret Thatcher as an old handbag, but this post seemed more on the advertising side and less on the political comment side. Thus, I have deleted the posting from Anonymous, but would welcome an explanation.
My EMail is crk at theworld.com.
And a hat tip to Jack Mitchell for notifying me about this, as I had not gotten nearly that far down in the EMail.
Regards — Cliff
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