There’s a basic rule that folks who seek power tend to forget and those in power flout outright: the principles we foist on others must apply also to ourselves.
Notoriously, Congress piles regulation over regulation upon the American people, but absolves itself from those very same laws. This became an issue, recently, when our moral exemplars on Capitol Hill began to speak loftily for a higher minimum wage and against modern internship programs.
“A new study,” Bill McMorris wrote last month, “found that 97 percent of lawmakers backing the minimum wage are relying on unpaid interns to help get the bill passed.” McMorris used the H‑word in his title, as have many similar reports before him: hypocrites.
The program requirements of the Democrats’ “ObamaCare” have proven to be more burdensome than Nancy Pelosi promised. So President Obama now declares, unilaterally, to postpone applying the employer mandate in the law. Consider, too, the many waivers granted to other groups for various rules and regulations rules. None of this was done to better implement a carefully thought-out policy, but not to aggrieve certain influential groups.
And here we get to the heart of today’s weakness on principles.
You see, it’s not individuals who matter to our leaders, it’s powerful groups … groups that fund or swing re-elections.
And that’s the principal reason government policy works at cross-purposes, to our general detriment. Instead of insisting on broad rules that apply to all, our leaders pit group against group, favoring one, then another, then later still another.
Madness for us; method for them.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Non-Reciprocity”
Eloquent discourse on the pathetic state of our government. Term limits is the only answer. Why don’t you run for office? Oh, that’s right, you’re too logical.
“confusion of the multitudes”, as warned against by James Madison. If we still had a republic, this sort of pandering would have costed multiple politicians “their” jobs.
The late ( and to me unlamented-except perhaps he should have died 30 or more years sooner) father or god father of the loony left and some of this madness, George Mc govern, after (one of his several) attempts after leaving the Senate to start and run a business (it went bankrupt) said (paraphrasing) –if he knew how burdensome some of the laws he help get through would be to businesses , he wouldn’t have voted for them.
That is the problem with Congress ( and state legislatures and other government agencies) — too many lawyers who have never run a business.
For this (mis)administration, the number that I saw of high level appointees who ever worked in the private sector was 8%.
I think enough said
“Instead of insisting on broad rules that apply to all, our leaders pit group against group, favoring one, then another, then later still another.”
We have only ourselves to blame. We let them. Not only do we put up with their malfeasance, we reelect them, over and over again. The fault is ours, not theirs.