Ethics Reformers Set Impossible Goals
[ Patrick Tuohey ]To their credit, Missouri Reps Kander and Flook are taking on efforts to reform ethics in the legislature. However, too much of the talk is pie-in-the-sky rhetoric and suggests either that they are not serious or that they are incredibly naive.
Take as an example this video from a Tony Messenger post on the Post-Dispatch's Political Fix:
Rep Flook has discovered that people mistrust politicians (!!) despite the fact that most public servants are honest and well-intentioned. Not only will this, or any legislation, fail to change people's disposition toward the legislature, but seeking an ethical government requires that people remain skeptical of those in power. (The good news is that Kander and Flook will be unsuccessful at fixing something that isn't a problem in the first place.)
Later in their press conference,
someone asks Flook how this effort will be any different from previous
measures that did not advance in the legislature. At about the 3:55
mark in this video from Jason Rosenbaum
(who desperately needs a camera stabilizer) Rep Flook alludes to
federal investigations that have resulted in some indictments of state
legislators. Yet the bill they have introduced would not have stopped
those criminal actions.
In another Rosenbaum video, Rep Kander again asserts the canard that fighting ethics abuses requires a never-ending series of tweaks, reforms and re-reforms (starting at about 1:35). In effect, Kander admits that the public will never trust politicians and that they are right not to do so. However, he argues that politicians can be trusted to perpetually change ethics laws to keep themselves ethical. Or something.
Rep Kander and Flook and their colleagues in the legislature need to realize some simple truths:
- There will never, ever be a satisfactory method for keeping legislators ethical;
- An informed public is more powerful than any commission, committee, or do-gooder;
- The easiest and best way to keep people honest is to remove all the ineffective ethics "reforms" that clog the system and make compliance so difficult; and
- Develop a system that maximizes transparency, and let the various special interests out there do the (often partisan) legwork.
12/15/2009 10:31:06 AM
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- Table of Contents
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- The Rise of the Patriot
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- Ned Ryun: The Fight for the Founders
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- The Coming Political Dissonance
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- Ike Skelton: Do Ask, Do Tell
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- Need a Bridge?
Free-spending Republicans like Kit Bond are worse than Democrats, because they understand the principles of limited government and intentionally ignore them.
