The Rule of Law in our great land has taken one heck of a beating in recent decades on certain fronts. Our Constitution has been violated and distorted in many ways to fit political and other ends. Even the people of this great land have only discretionary respect for the law; choosing which ones apply to them and which ones don't.
Small businesses abound which do at least part of their business on a cash only basis without receipts as a means of beating their fundamental obligation to society to pay their taxes. But who can blame them? Large corporations have their off shore accounts, politicians have their lobbyist and PAC benefits which permit them to dodge paying taxes on money used in their names. Illegal immigrants don't report and neither do their employers, which is a win-win for those involved in profiting from illegal immigration. So, who can blame small one person or family businesses for doing cash only business?
I can ! And so can another 100 million law abiding tax payers who pay their income taxes honestly and forthrightly believing in their nation and country and willing to pay their share to support her, protect her, and her future.
But, that is only a small part of the erosion of rule of law in America. I just returned from a Thanksgiving weekend driving trip to camp in the desert in Big Bend National Park. I drove interstate highway 10 where the speed limit is now a whopping 80 miles an hour. Not fast enough for many however, as my speed limit driving was passed by many others going 10 miles per hour faster or more. In the round trip of nearly 800 miles, I did not see one set of twirling red and blue lights issuing a motorist a citation along side the highway. How can a people have respect for the law when it is not enforced?
But, it goes much higher than this. Our Congress takes bribes for votes as a daily matter of governance. Our laws prevent the partners to the bribe, politicians and the lobbyists and special interest campaign donors, from uttering the 'quid pro quo' words that could make their bribery indictable. But, as biologists know, there are many ways to communicate on this planet with others without expressly using verbal language to spell out the contractual details. Anyone who believes this is going to change under Democrats control of Congress is going to be sorely disappointed. Campaign finance reform and real substantial lobbyist reform is not on their agenda.
The President too is part and parcel of this corruption of the rule of law in America, acting in part as King George of Great Britain did, where he made up his own laws if need be, and dispensed with Parliament's utterances if they disagreed with his wishes. This was known as the rule of men, (or woman, in the case of a Queen like Isabella of Spain) and it was a manner of governance which our founding fathers and colonialists fought a bloody Revolutionary War to overturn. But, it has been returning incrementally for decades with mechanisms like presidential signing orders used to dispense with the people's laws by Congress which the President decides should not apply to him.
This is not the first time men have tried to subvert the Constitution for personal gain or convenience. Sen. McCarthy in the 1950's bypassed the Bill of Rights to seek out Communists, labeled such, for nothing more than having associated with a person who espoused Communist beliefs. Pleading the 5th Amendment right to not testify if such testimony may in the eyes of the interrogator, incriminate the defendant, was construed and used as a signed confession to end a person's life of freedom and choice in America.
So, it was with some hope and respect that I read that U.S. District Judge, Audrey Collins, had struck down portions of the President's anti-terrorism order issued after 9/11. As Reuter's reports:
Collins found that part of the law, signed by Bush on September 23, 2001 and used to freeze the assets of terrorist organizations, violated the Constitution because it put no apparent limit on the president's powers to place groups on that list.
...Collins also threw out a portion of Bush's order which applied the law to those who associate with the designated organizations.
"This law gave the president unfettered authority to create blacklists, an authority president Bush then used to empower the Secretary of the Treasury to impose guilt by association," said David Cole of the Washington-based Center for Constitutional Rights.
The wheels of justice turn very slowly in America, partly by design, and partly by the plethora of litigation and crime omnipresent in our society. When it comes to government litigation the slow turning is largely by design. When it comes to common crime and punishment, it is largely a problem of a vastly under resourced legal system, that permits pedophiles for example, to walk free after their crime, for years on bail, while their lawyers impede the wheels turning, with all manner of delays and motions, which courts can only accommodate months later due to overloaded dockets.
Our judicial system is inadequate, and very inefficient, and, it no longer works better than in all other nations. It could work far better than it does if voters took this issue under consideration at election time. The sheer volume of violations of law from the office of the President to the thief seeking their next meth fix, is breaking down law and order in our country. And otherwise good American citizens are being habituated to observing some laws, while disregarding others on the basis of a kind of "socially acceptable" discrimination between laws which are to be taken seriously and those which are largely inconsequential.
The other half of the problem is the sheer volume of laws themselves. Our society has an astronomical number of codified rules of dos and don'ts. There are a goodly number of these laws which can and should be removed from the books; the kinds of laws which govern personal behavior which have little, to no impact, on anyone else other than the person violating that law. With the growth of our population has come an enormous growth in local legal jurisdictions and a disproportionate growth in the number of laws applicable to this, now dense, and highly mobile citizenry.
Millions of Americans now plow through our legal systems each year. Not only are the majority of their crimes costing our society directly in violence, property damage, and theft, but our law enforcement, penal system, and judicial systems are costing our society and citizens ever larger sums of money and frustration as the gross negligence due to inefficiency and state of inundation, grow. A nation of law that loses control of its laws and its citizen's obedience to those laws, is a nation heading toward a wall of frustration and loss of confidence by its citizens.
Such frustration and loss of confidence is precisely what motivated the revolt against King George and founded this new nation. Are we going to sit idly by and watch history repeat itself? Or, are we going to make demands as voters which politicians cannot ignore? Demands for a restoration of law and order in our great country are needed. Many Americans believe it is impossible to run a society this large and maintain law and order. For many others the broken system offers safe harbor for their own creative illegal activities too small or inconsequential to become an additional burden on the back of a legal system breaking down.
But, for the rest of us who, love this land, this nation, this dream, this heritage, and wish to preserve and enhance it for our children, the time to act is at election time: each and every election time. If your representatives are not making legal, judicial, and criminal reforms a top priority, and you love our nation, vote for a challenger instead of a status quo politician who would rather focus on reelection than on our nation's integrity and future.
Nelson Walker said at :
5:00 PM, 12 01 2006 | Permalink
CONGRESS IS A SHORT TERM CIVIC DUTY, NOT A CAREER!
As a career, a seat in Congress (or in any elective body) becomes a conflict of interest.
An incumbent who seeks reelection cannot freely vote his conscience, or his principles, for fear that he is going to offend some slice of the electorate, and therefore reduce his chances of reelection.
Obviously, one way to correct this problem is to reduce or eliminate the option for reelection. In other words, establish either one or two term limits on all offices in government.
In all the the cacophony among the pundits, editorialists, and bloggers about the reasons for the Democratic sweep in 2006, nowhere does anyone address the the most obvious - that the bulk of the failings of our American electoral system arise out of the trend toward careerism and tenure in the body politic, particularly in Congress.
No one has stood up and yelled "It's about reelections (not issues), stupid!"
No one seems to recognize that, in their desparate struggle to hold on to their extremely 'cushy' jobs, career politicians will vote, not on principle or merit, but on their 'reelection odds' only.
Those that do it successfully, go on to lifelong tenure (e.g. Byrd, Kennedy, Stevens, Domenici, et al). Those who try to hold to principle invariably serve very short terms.
In other words, if your first concern is reelection, rather than the what is best for the country, you reap the rewards of a long tenure. Is this any way to run a country?
The fundamental reason we need Congressional Term Limits is simply that Congress is no longer doing its job. Instead, it is working very hard at keeping its job.
Of the many hot issues actually 'debated' by Congress and passed, most have been so chewed up, amended, and emasculated, that they are often not worth the paper they are written on. Congress will do anything it can to avoid making clear-cut decisions to get good legislation, in order not to offend or lose the voters they need for reelection.
Some people would say that's the way a democracy works, and to some degree that is true. However, I take issue with that superficial way of looking at what is actually happening. Rather, I believe that what we are seeing is the result of the emergence of a Congressional class which is overwhelmingly committed to reelection first, all other considerations, especially good governance, last. This is true on both sides of the aisle.
The best evidence of this is the fact that in two recent ('02, '04) elections, Congressional incumbents won reelection at a 99% rate. Before 50 years ago, that rate was about 50-60%. Do you really believe that 99% of incumbents deserved reelection ? In two successive elections?
The '06 election was merely a bump in the road. Things have not changed. A great majority of the really long termers survived. They always will, thanks to gerrymandered districts, name recognition, and other incumbent advantages. We still have a virtually permanent Congress.
How this has come about can be understood by examining Congressional voting patterns on the major issues in our current political environment, all of which are now routine, and all of which have arisen during the last part of the 20th century, as Congress has learned how to 'game the system'.
For example, and the following applies to both sides of the aisle :
•They don't reform Soc Sec to get personal retirement accounts. They might lose voters for reelection
•They don't reform health care to get personal medical accounts. They might lose voters for reelection
•They don't stop earmarks, because they want to spend federal money (for local votes) for reelection
•They don't vote school choice, because they want teacher's union money for reelection
•They don't vote for tort reform, because they want lawyer money for reelection
•They don't vote for right-to-work, because they want union money for reelection
•They don't want computer neutral redistricting, because they want safe seats for reelection
•They don't deregulate campaign financing with instant disclosure, because they lose contributors for reelection
•They won't lower taxes, because they won't be able to vote irresponsible 'goodies' for reelection
•They won't reduce the size of government, because that would reduce their control of voters for reelection
•Last, but not least, Congressional office has become a livelihood, which is in itself, a conflict of interest, because incumbents become more interested in holding on to the job than passing good legislation. Unlimited reelections should not be allowed.
It is time for a Congressional Term Limits Amendment !
Nelson Lee Walker
tenurecorrupts.com
Nelson Walker | December 1, 2006 5:00 PM
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d.a.n said at :
2:54 PM, 12 02 2006 | Permalink
Nelson Walker,
I agree.
That's what the current bunch in our Do-Nothing CONGRESS deserves (i.e. term limits).
Our government is FOR-SALE.
But, those in CONGRESS ain't likely to ever pass a TERM LIMITS BILL.
TERM LIMITS, lawlessness, campaign finance, Gerrymandering, election reform, ONE-PURPOSE-PER-BILL, etc. are just a few of the MANY symptoms of a more FUNDAMENTAL problem, are those symptoms are unlikely to ever be resolved by voters that continually reward and empower irresponsible incumbent politicians by repeatedly re-electing them.
Sooner would be better than later, because the longer we move down the current path torward total fiscal and moral bankruptcy, the worse it will be for many generations to come (if it is not too late already).
d.a.n | December 2, 2006 2:54 PM
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