Last year my impression of Bill Moyers as a stately intellect was shattered when I discovered that he is actually a really intelligent rabblerouser.
Well, this year he’s still rousing the rabble, this time about campaign finance and K Street corruption, and making a lot of sense while doing it. He starts out with a pithy summary of the problem, that he spends about half the piece expanding on, bringing in all the DeLay and Abramoff stuff:
Our system of privately financed campaigns has shut regular people out of any meaningful participation in democracy. Less than one-half of one percent of all Americans made a political contribution of $200 or more to a federal candidate in 2004. When the average cost of winning a seat in the House of Representatives has topped $1 million, we can no longer refer to that chamber as “The People’s House.” Congress belongs to the highest bidder.
At the same time that the cost of getting elected is exploding beyond the reach of ordinary people, the business of influencing our elected representatives has become a growth industry. Since President Bush was elected the number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled. That’s 16,342 lobbyists in 2000 and 34,785 last year: 65 lobbyists for every member of Congress. The total spent per month by special interests wining, dining, and seducing federal officials is now nearly $200 million. Per month.
After he’s painted a very bleak picture of what the situation is today, that’s when Bill really starts to shine:
You may say, “What can we do about it? These forces are too rich, too powerful, too entrenched to be defeated.” Maybe. But if others had given up before us, blacks would still be three-fifths of a person, women wouldn’t have the vote, workers couldn’t organize, and children would still be working in the mines. It’s time to fight again. These people in Washington have no right to be doing what they are doing. It’s not their government, it’s your government. They work for you, and if they let you down and sell you out, they should be fired. That goes for everyone, from the lowliest bureaucrat in town to the senior leaders of Congress on up to the president of the United States. The stakes are too high for us to give up.
Go. Read.
