James Bauhaus

NO OVERSIGHT? NO QUALITY!

Look at the quality in gov't. Every few clays there is another flagrant betrayal of the public trust involving millions of lives or billions of dollars. For example, Reagan's $500 billion savings and loan waste, the HUD theft that occurred simultaneously, the Waco massacre, Ruby Ridge, the every-ten-years investor ripoffs from each major brokerage house, over 100 death sentences given to innocent people, 23 of whom who were actually murdered by the state, the CIA (and Mossad and German secret police) caught flying planeloads of dope out and weapons into South America, secret wars in dozens of countries, ABSCAM, Clinton selling satellite technology to China, Nixon caught paying burglars, Agnew caught bilking contractors, senator Packwood's 25 year sexcrime spree, Reaqan's slow-motion AIDS response, Hillary's $100,000 commodities market payoff for laws sold to Tyson Foods, routine bribery of gov't by corporations. It looks like we have more under-the-table gov't than we have above it. I could go on, but we haven't all day. The short story is that power corrupts and self-policing does not work.

These are only a fraction of the crimes they've been caught at, and they get caught very seldom, since they and their tame media are experts at concealing govcrime, failing to report most govcrime, using clever wordsmithy to minimize any govcrime that does surface, using clever legal technology to dodge accountability and using fiendish secrecy laws to prevent public access to records of their crimes until all the perpetrators are long dead of old age and high living.

So, seeing this, how do we begin a quest for quality in gov't, knowing that human nature is to take advantage where possible? One way is to administer secret ethics 'stings' upon public officials. Police have colossal success baiting. . . er. . . stinging carthieves, drug addicts, fences and sex criminals. Obviously this proven 'anti' crime technology should be used to clear. out govcrooks too. Also, we could 'profile' them on how moral they really are. Make betrayal of the public trust by an official punishable at three times the rate ordinary citizens would get for the same crime. Also, throw in a bunch of 'enhancements' like they do regular criminals when their crimes occur near churches, schools or near children, except here substitute any gov't building, nightclub, restaurant or corporate office. And we could outlaw accusation deflation. Ordinary criminals get extra crimes piled on until they 'make a deal' whereas govcriminals' crimes tend to diminish into petty accusations ending in the usual zero real punishment. For example, the cops filmed torturing Rodney King; only 4 of 20 or so cops got 'prosecuted', and only then after the trial was cleverly moved out of the poor area where it occurred and conviction was assured, into a rich district where jurors were easily taught to agree with the prosecutor's fantasy that their eyes were lying to them. Only after this outrageous farce caused a riot did the feds step in to violate their own double jeopardy law and convict them of a nonsense 'crime' of 'civil rights violation' and give them illegally short sentences.

Massive, flagrant, aggravating corruptions such as these can be cured by independant oversight and serious quality control by ordinary, non-rich, educated citizens selected at random for periods too short to allow corruption to spread here too. Wouldn't this make our gov't officials less responsive to the rich and to business and make them more responsive to the citizens? Half of us make less than $38,000/yr., yet only millionaires make the laws. For example, gov't insiders often buy stock in drug companies just before they vote in laws forcing citizens to buy senior's drug benefits. The stock rises abruptly and they sell at a fat profit. This and barely concealed bribery are perks that make our govcrats ever richer at our expense. If we post honest plebians to scrutinize the affairs of our excessively privileged officials, they will become more honest. Also it will drive crooked transactions farther underground where they can not so easily be masqueraded as legitimate by slick-lipped lawyers.

When police have used their privilege to kill too many people too often, they have sometimes had to suffer a citizen's review board. When this has occurred, the number of killings by police have dropped and the quality of police work has risen. A citizen's review board emplaced upon gov't can increase its quality too.