If We Did This, We’d Be Fired.

I want to ask any of you out there to please explain to me why we allow members of the U. S. House Of Representatives to sit on committees that oversee the same industries from which they take millions in political donations?

The new Tea/GOP coalition in the House have staffed their business and finance committees with folks taken right out of the business and finance industry. These committees are poised to deregulate companies that were just regulated by recent FDA/EPA/Banking legislation. The Tea/GOP controlled House has already voted to repeal the Health Care Law.

I understand that, to business folks, making extra money for rich stockholders trumps safe food, drinkable water, and…obeying the law. I also understand that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and various other multinational conglomerates have invested heavily in the last election and expect a proper return from the politicians whom that have purchased. But, how many of us regular Joes and Josephines could get away with these  kinds of shenanigans without losing our jobs?

One of the things that I do is practice law. I can already hear some of you saying “lawyers are nothing but liars!” My response is that the anecdotes that make the news, do not statistically correlate with the actual facts. Okay, the law profession has more buttholios per square inch than all others…except for doctors. But you would not believe the endless rules and regulations that the Colorado Supreme Court makes us follow. There is a whole agency, The Office of Attorney Regulation is dedicated to make the legal community mind their p’s and q’s, and they do a great job of it. No, they cannot prevent a lawyer from being a rude, obnoxious jerk, but, among other things, they routinely yank the license of any attorney who, within the purview of their representation, knowingly becomes involved in a conflict of interest.

Let’s say I was to represent a guy who was charged with murder and the main witness for the prosecution is another client of mine. It happens more often than you might think. How am I supposed to zealously represent my murder client, when I have to use the dirt  I know from previous confidential communications with my other client/witness to cross examine him on the stand? The answer is I can’t, no way. Nyet. I am not allowed to just not use the dirt against the one client/witness, because that would hurt my murder client, and I am prohibited from hurting the client/witness, in any event. It doesn’t matter which client is paying me more, or which client I like better, or even if one client is my best buddy. Rules is rules, and even the appearance of impropriety in this area may be enough to bounce me off of the new case.

And I agree with these rules.  To me, it is the ultimate in sleazedom to perpetuate the pretense. Lawyers who think that they are above the rules of conduct are the ones who deserve to lose their licenses, and you have my full permission to despise them. Colorado alone has more lawyers than the whole country of China. My new client will just have to find someone else who can ethically represent him. There are similar provisions for civil practice as well.

Now let’s talk about the U. S. House of Representatives:

1. The big health care conglomerates gave $5 million to GOP leaders over the last two years. The same GOP that was trying to block any health care reform, and the same GOP that just voted to repeal it with nothing to replace it.. It gets worse.

2. $2 million of that payola went to the recently elected Speaker of the House, John Boehner, R-Ohio. Yeah, he’s the same guy who has been yammering ad nauseam about how the health care reform law is so bad, cause it kills jobs, and is a gummint take over and is socialism and has death panels and is somehow more bureaucratic than the private companies already are. None of that is actual fact, but the language closely tracks those of his big money contributors. Oh, but there’s more!

3. The new House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, R-VA., comes from the finance, insurance, and real estate industries. He is the second most powerful person in the House. He got over $5.6 million from corporate donors, including $2.4 million from the same finance, insurance, and real estate industry, he used to work for. He’s leading the charge to repeal the recent regulations enacted into law after his buddies almost toppled the world economy.

4. More $millions went to key finance-related committee members, including Ways and Means Chair, David Camp R-Mich., and Appropriations Committee Chair, Hal Rogers, R-Ky.

5. Financial Services Committee Chair, Spencer Bachus, R-Alabama, got $1.2 million from the banking industry. He comes from the banking sector. He’s the guy who will sit on the committee to undo the banking reform legislation previously discussed.

6. Fred Upton, R-Michigan., Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, got $400,000, from, you guessed it, the energy and mining industry. He comes from the energy and mining industries. If you are worried about uranium tailings in your water, or another BP disaster, or your kids getting skin cancer from the effects of climate change, rest assured that Upton wants to roll back the new greenhouse-gas regulations, because his big political contributors find them inconvenient.

7. The Chair of the Agriculture Committee, Frank Lucas, R-Okla., got more than $600,000 from the agribusiness lobby. He will be spearheading a repeal of those pesky new FDA rules that keep the rest of us from being poisoned by tainted food, prepared under unsanitary conditions. Bad for business.

8. Chair of the Armed Services Committee,  Howard ”Buck” McKeon, R-California., the guy who is opposing cuts to the military budget, got half of his entire campaign contributions from the defense industry.

9. Budget Committee Chair, Paul Ryan, R- Wis., got $1.4 million from banks, hedge funds, investment houses and other financial services companies. He comes from the Banking, Hedge Fund, Investment Houses, and Financial Services industries.

And these are just the ones who would return the phone calls to the AP reporter, Charles Dharapak, whose data I stole to write this post.

Why are these not prohibited conflicts of interest? Is there not a set of House Rules, that prevent corporations from buying the politicians who oversee their operations? If there are rules, why aren’t they working? Why is this not just plain illegal? What makes politicians more privileged than the rest of us? Bottom line is, how can they be allowed to represent the interests of only the handful of constituents who gave them millions, and then thumb their noses at the rest of us who elected them? Because we let them, that’s how.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo