Protest Stopped the Predators. They Will Be Back.

[babylonsister]

http://billmoyers.com/story/protest-stopped-predators-will-back/

Protest Stopped the Predators. They Will Be Back.

The public outcry after the GOP tried to quash an ethics watchdog is the kind of citizen action we'll need to survive the next four years.

By Michael Winship and Bill Moyers | January 5, 2017

Once word of the vote to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics leaked out, phone calls, emails and social media recriminations from all points of the political spectrum began flooding the House of Representatives. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)


Mark Twain noted that man is the only animal that blushes — or needs to.

He also believed that “public office is private graft.”

Those two observations from our greatest and most sagacious humorist intersected with a bang on Capitol Hill Monday night, when the bright lights of the Republican House Conference met in secret behind closed doors at the end of the New Year’s holiday.

They tried to vote themselves an especially tasty treat: eviscerating the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). That’s the office created in 2008 in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal and the placement of three congressmen behind bars. The conference voted to absorb it into the House Ethics Committee. In other words, they wanted to weaken OCE and put it under the control of some of the very folks the office is charged with investigating for possible influence peddling and other assorted mischief.

If the conference had its way, OCE would wind up having all the clout of the token student representative on your local board of education, giving unscrupulous legislators freedom to rob the public blind without fear of exposure.

But a funny thing happened on the way to congressional visions of new secret bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. The public can become like sheep when the shepherd is a demagogue, but when the public is outraged over outright unfairness and chicanery, it can roar like a lion. Once word of the vote leaked out, phone calls, emails and social media recriminations from all points of the political spectrum began flooding the sacred halls of the House of Representatives, which was once called The People’s House before it became the predator’s lair.

snip//

Every battle won’t be won. Nonetheless, the public DID manage to keep the House GOP from surreptitiously murdering the Office of Congressional Ethics, and that’s proof we can make a difference if we keep the pressure on and hammer home our resistance and opposition when democracy and liberty are threatened.

The problem, neatly summarized as usual by Mark Twain, is that, “To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals.” This week, we got a vigorous, healthy and inspiring reminder that protest matters. Keep that in mind as the perfidies unfold this year under the one-party monopoly that will soon control our federal government.

[2naSalit]

1. K&R

[annabanana]

2. Then we had better be en garde on Tues..

Lots of simultaneous confirmation hearings, tRumps first press conference to suck all the air out of the tv machine.. and a HOST of other crap.

It's the gish gallop of congressional activity, pretty much under cover. Rachel cataloged it last week..

[mopinko]

3. o god.

"OCE would wind up having all the clout of the token student representative on your local board of education,"

i have been several flavors of token, including the first student trustee to the board of my community college. i think the post has since been abandoned for lack of interest.
it was fun, tho.

[Dustlawyer]

4. We better keep a close eye on them then because they will try to

sneak it through later when they think our guard is down,

I use the example of when it became widely publicized that members of Congress had been allowing themselves to do what is illegal for everyone else, insider trading. What better way to allow Wall Street to buy you off than stock tips that were more than tips, they were sure things. The backlash caused them to rescind this exception to the insider trading laws, but six months later they quietly snuck that exception back in. They know when and where to invest their money without risk even now! Wish we had investigative reporters that would dig up the dirt on McChinless, Eddie Munster and the rest making bank off of this.

We should make this an issue again!

[NNadir]

5. Hopefully, it will involve only two years. The Emperor is pretty naked, and as they say...

..."you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

I believe that Trump and the people supporting him are traitors, and will be up to their necks in deeper filth in the next two years, and following a change of the House and the Senate in two years, both Trump and Pence will do a Nixon-Agnew.

I was alive in 1972, a young man, and I remember thinking Nixon was invulnerable, and even if he weren't, we'd end up with Agnew.

Didn't happen.