Politics At Its Worst

It’s time to talk about the government again. There is a lot going on and the old tricks never cease. When a must pass bill comes up in congress, such as the National Defense Authorization Act for next year, all sorts of things get attached to it. Sometimes these riders are failed bills from previous tries. The new budget bill is no exception. I want to tell you about a despicable attachment to that bill. A rider was attached which lets a foreign mining company mine on sacred Apache lands. The Apache people say this destroys the graves and the holiness of the land and they are totally against it, but like in days of old when ore is found on their land, they lose. This time it is not gold but copper. I wish we would stop reinforcing the image of the evil, greedy white man with the Native Americans, but I certainly can’t blame them for feeling this way. One columnist stated, this legislation, with its Orwellian title, demonstrates perfectly the United States’ lack of sincerity when it comes to ‘implementing’ the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and when it comes to protecting the sacred and culturally sensitive places of our original nations,” Newcomb said. “It’s business-as-usual for the United States when it comes to corporatizing such sensitive areas on behalf of foreign corporations such as Rio Tinto. Clearly, this is but one more example of the impact of the doctrine of Christian discovery and domination.”

In the above case the Apache are losing 2400 acres of land they consider sacred and being given 5,000 parcels of land around the state which is not the point here. Since they consider their land holy, how can we merely swap lands with them even if we give them more? The second thing is who gave us the right to do this? Here is the blatant part of all this. There are rules in effect in the House and Senate which prohibit the inclusion of legislation in appropriations bills, but this is ignored. You have to wonder who is getting their pockets filled on this one? I am sure this will not escape the world community and just serves to lower the prestige of the United States in the world, if that is possible anymore.

Another provision which was attached to this bill is one which rewards Wall Street again. It would loosen regulations on financial derivatives. A derivative is a contract which gets is value from the performance of what it is about. It can be an asset, index or interest rate. We have already seen what happens when Wall Street plays it too loose and fancy free. When this happens we eventually have to bail them out so instead of loosening regulations we should be tightening them, but Wall Street has so much influence in congress they usually get what they want. They have the money and money talks in our government, it pays for high power lobbyists and lines pockets so it would be foolish to think anyone there cares about the citizens of this country when they have to bail out Wall Street. One top of that if they get too loose with derivatives they may become junk again and people who invest in them might lose their money.

One rider allows the Export-Import Bank to fund coal-fired power plants overseas. This just flies in the face of being environmentally responsible and certainly has no place in the defense budget bill. I have been saying for years that there are powerful people who do not give a fig about our environment and all they care about is making more money and when we see things like this it just serves to reinforce that view. The last thing we need is to allow more carbon to be dumped into the atmosphere. Since we are talking about other countries here, when people complain those who lent the money will either remain silent or pretend it is a terrible thing burning all this coal and not letting on they are the ones who are really responsible.

The government is great at creating phantom savings. You know the old saying, figures don’t lie but liars figure. Must pass bills are targets for all sorts of attachments which never had a chance of passing on their own, but no one wants to be the person who turns down bills like the defense funding bill, so they play politics and vote yes no matter what is attached and this is what is counted on by some members of congress. It is a sneaky way to pass self-serving legislation that if the public knew about would be appalled. We are told we have balanced budgets when these bills are passed, but it never seems to turn out that way. Another rider is a bill which would allow some pension plans to reduce pensions. It is said this was done to reduce the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s spending. I am sure labor is not happy about this rider. The bill is called the CRomnibus bill in congress, because it is such a mash-up of an omnibus bill.

Another feature of the bill sends money from the defense budget to a fund which has no caps on spending as does the defense budget. It is a way of getting around the spending caps and yet claim they are in full effect. Why must everything done in Washington be by tricks, smoke and mirrors? If the general public knew the extent of what was going on in congress and the blatant awarding of contracts to relatives and friends and even wives and husbands, they would demand people be put on trial. The problem is the news media never reports this kind of thing so most people don’t realize the extent of it and as far as Washington is concerned it is business as usual.

Sometimes it is not what is being passed in congress, but what isn’t. Recently a few members of the Tea Party were able to derail the reauthorization of Terrorism Risk Insurance. It doesn’t seem they had anything to gain by this and this insurance was important to many businesses in New York City. Sometimes you just have to wonder if things are being done just to show they can be?