I know nothing about the climate-change bill that just passed the house this past Friday. Life in general kept my focus on other events, so I have absolutely no working knowledge – what it hopes to accomplish, what taxes may be included or how the bill may impact the “everyday” person – all I know this this: the manner in which the bill was passed is akin to strong arming an unwilling participant into taking some action they oppose.
But didn’t the bill narrowly pass, 219 to 212, so how can that be “strong arming”?
While the political process has always included last second maneuvers or grandstanding aimed at obtaining a desired outcome, say a large amount of pork barrel spending included countless pages of seemingly mundane text, the climate change legislation that just passed takes this to a new level. At roughly 3AM Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman tacked on another 300 pages of to a bill that was already 1,200 pages in length. Thankfully Minority leader John Boehner exposed exactly what was taking place and the amendment was dropped.
It’s obvious politicians only read the bullet points to said bills, they don’t pay attention to what every single detail. With the volume of law that is being pushed these days, I can understand where that would be the case, however; adding 300 pages of unread, un-vetted, text to an already monster bill is not only political strong arming, it’s disingenuous and is in no way helping the general public in the United States as such acts remove the ability for people to contact their representatives in order to voice their feelings.
There was a time when politicians actually worked for the best of the nation. The special interest groups and big business did not have the control we are currently witnessing. But that was supposed to change. Recently, promises were also made by politicians that bills would be viewable for 5 days in an attempt to create a new era of openness within the government, a level of transparency and accountability that would usher in a new era of government, and provide constituents the understanding of what is taking place.
Obviously, on a majority, that is not the case any longer.
As with most thing these days, this isn’t about Republican or Democrats, no, this is about power. It’s about checks and balances. It’s about the blatant disregard of the wishes of the many for the special interests of the few. In the end, this isn’t about the Energy Bill, this is about how politics are practiced in the United States. We will continue to witness politicians taking advantage of the system in order to move their agenda forward and as the balance of power between the two political parties swings in favor of one over the other, the questionable activities will only become more extreme leaving the American public at the whim of those in power.
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