“Are politicians really a commodity that can be bought and sold?”
Mickey Glantz.
October 12, 2010
It seems that there is a lot of hard evidence as well as circumstantial evidence to support this contention. Every once in a while there is a big scandal where a politician has made an arrangement to make a deal in return for a vote. Now, that vote might have been cast in that direction anyway and the politician was just taking an advantage to cash in on a sure thing. Nevertheless, it is a form of corruption, the kind we like to expose in other developing countries whenever there is a debate about the government’s foreign aid budget.
Actually, it is not the politicians who are the commodity that has value; it is the potential vote that has value to corporations and other interests. Once cast, that value of the vote sharply diminishes. Because each party then has a secret that could be exposed, they basically have each other in check, unless the secret between them gets out.
Actually, it is not that politicians are bought; some are, most aren’t. Based on a gut feeling, I would argue that politicians are only rented not bought by various corporate or other interest groups in attempts to commandeer their potential votes on different issues. They are like the proverbial “guns for hire” of the mid-1800s in the old U.S. Wild West.
The sad thing is that we — the public — know it. Yet we continue to support our own corrupt local politicians no matter what allegations are placed against them. We give them undying support even after they are indicted. Some politicians continue to get support while they are even in prison (e.g., Mayor Cianci, Providence, RI).
Maybe Congresspeople need a new political talent agency that can help individual Congress members as well as other government officials (e.g., the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service [MMS]**) to match their “votes for rent” to those interests that want to buy votes for specific legislation or other oversight activities.
** the solution by the Department of Interior to the known corruption but highlighted to the general public only recently was captured in the following headline: “DOI To Split MMS Into 3 Independent Agencies.” So, I guess that a corrupt government agency can not be destroyed, only transformed into 3 potential corruptable agencies.
[see, www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0506/Gulf-oil-spill-Did-Big-Oil-run-roughshod-over-regulators]
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2 responses to ““Are politicians really a commodity that can be bought and sold?” Mickey Glantz October 12, 2010”
[…] Glantz has an interesting post up on his FragileEcologies Blog in which he muses about whether or not politicians can be bought. […]
It can also be beyond a single vote. Politicians can lobby others to vote in a certain way, to be absent for the vote, or to abstain. Politicians can also trade votes, such as “If you vote this way for this bill, I will vote for your bill”.