Ditto for politicians. Extracting money from their hot little hands is like prying the BlackBerry from Anthony Weiner’s. Just ain’t gonna happen.
Politics is money. Lots and lots of it. Why else would bums with no discernible skills but a burning lust for other people’s hard-earned bucks flock to public office?
Consider the average politician. Tragically, he’s born without the sense God gave amoebas — but with a whale-sized ego. How will he ever reconcile the two?
Then the whiz-kid hits kindergarten. You remember him: the crybaby everybody hated for tattling on us about everything, all the time.
He almost flunked first grade until he figured out how to cheat. That’s when his parents proudly realized he’d be president one day.
Of the US, of course, not just his class — though his sole ambition in junior high was winning the school election. Everyone knows class presidents don’t do anything but brag about being president — which is exactly why he coveted the position. And pestered us for weeks to vote for him as if it mattered.
Things don’t improve in college. He majors in something utterly useless — “Political Studies,” “International Affairs with Hot Tamales,” “Successful Stemwinders,” whatever — and then heads to law school.
Sorta like Oliver Wendell Holmes. When he announced his intentions of reading law, his father exclaimed, “What's the use of that, Wendell, a lawyer can't be a great man!”
Oh, for times and voters that savvy! No matter: Our budding politician wants to be rich and powerful, not great.
After graduation, an older, wise-as-a-serpent-and-twice-as-slimy hack makes him his “aide.” On our dime, the two sit around ignoring constituents’ calls in favor of the media’s and practicing their Jargon on visiting bureaucrats.
You tell me: Do these “talents” translate to anything in the real world? The clown probably couldn’t even learn to flip burgers should McD’s take pity on him and offer him honest work.
The only place for him is Congress. Lefties often accuse the Founding Fathers of cold rationality, but the national legislature proves they could be as warm and fuzzy as any commie: it’s the original make-work program for the otherwise unemployable.
And, unlike most government programs, it’s immensely effective: Bloomberg News recently analyzed data from the 2010 Census and pronounced Washington, D.C. the “wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area.”
Unfortunately, Congress is also sumptuous, with paneled walls, marble floors, leather chairs — government spares no expense when it’s ours. So lucky Mr. Pol “works” in a style to which citizens would be accustomed were they not paying taxes.
Meanwhile, lobbyists wine and dine him as dictators from banana republics kowtow so he’ll help them steal more foreign aid from us.
He’s unlikely to go home to mac and cheese in a railroad flat every night after all that. Hence, campaign contributions and fund-raising and 6-digit salaries with 7-, 8-, or even 9-digit net-worths. Money equals power, and power equals money; believe me, if the poor fools at OWS forgot this incredibly essential fact, Mr. Pol never does.
Maybe OWS should have tackled something less difficult than taking “corporate money” out of politics. Next time, try getting Hillary out of the pantsuits instead.
