Honorless Thieves: Throw Them Out

Glenn Beck this evening was pointing out that this isn't a bailout bill with some pork attached--it's a pork bill with a side of bailout. He pointed out that Sen. Harry Reid's claim that this "wasn't for Wall Street, but for Main Street" is nonsense--it's for the lobbyists on K Street, who got their grubby little fingers into the cookie jar, at the expense of the American people. Beck called those who voted for this pork barrel montrosity "honorless thieves," then apologized to any actual thieves who were watching him. (And that's appropriate--all the thieves in America for a century couldn't do as much redistribution of wealth as this crookedly bipartisan bunch.)

Look, there are parts of this bill that aren't exactly horrible or ferocious--for example, extending the Craig-Wyden appropriations again for rural counties devastated by the spotted owl craziness. But passing all of this stuff as part of the bailout is dishonest.

Anyone that voted for the Senate bill needs to be tossed out in November, Democrat or Republican. I don't have much confidence that this is likely to happen--in spite of enormous popular upset about this bailout--because so much money gets spent protecting incumbents.

We are approaching the point where the corruption of Congress is so severe that it may not be possible to fix this system anymore through elections--but we need to make the try. We preserve our liberties with a series of boxes: soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge. That's the right order--but the obscenely rich crooks that run this country (and at least as much through the Democratic Party as the Republican) need to be aware of the penultimate box, and the horrendous consequences if it gets that far.