Conservatives, prudence, and the rest of us

George Will has written about "the central conservative virtue, prudence"; see
"What to make of George Will on Newt Gingrich".

I thought again about this prudence in reading "Why I'm Giving Up Cynicism for New Year's" by Bill McKibben, Yes! Magazine, 2012-01-06. McKibben wrote about the 234-194 Congressional vote "to force a quicker review of the [Keystone XL] pipeline":

"As important as the vote total in the House, however, was another number: within minutes of the vote, Oil Change International had calculated that the 234 Congressional representatives who voted aye had received $42 million in campaign contributions from the fossil-fuel industry; the 193 nays, $8 million."

This paragraph made me think about Will's "prudence" remark. Darn tootin' conservatives have "prudence"; they know better than to upset their paymasters.

Some of these same "prudent" conservatives are imprudent with facts and language. Maybe we should do our own fact and language change; let's call "campaign contributions" for what they are – bribes.

Now, dear reader, let me check your prudence. In the quote above "As important as the vote total…" what happened within minutes of the vote? Did those who voted "aye" receive within minutes "$42 million in campaign contributions from the fossil-fuel industry"?

If you thought the contributions were instantaneous, please read the quote again. "[W]ithin minutes of the vote, Oil Change International had calculated that…"

How easy it is to slant things to our own thinking!

The 1% earned their money?

Anybody who reads the news regularly knows that there is plenty of back-scratching in the executive suites and board rooms of large companies. Not only do they provide bribes, er, campaign contributions to OUR supposed representatives, but they reward each other handsomely with no justification other than some mumbo-jumbo about performance in the proxy statements.

There is little mention of all the people who are paid far, far, far less but made all this "performance" possible. It's a bit like d'Artagnan of Three Musketeers fame who kicked his servant Planchet for "poor performance" but the servant did almost all the work except the sword fighting.

For some examples of this over-compensations see "The Most Outrageous Acts of Corporate America", The Daily Ticker with Daniel Gross, 2011-10-20.

Quote of the day - campaign contributions

"What's the difference between a bribe and a campaign contribution?"
- Richard Coates, mostly jobless construction worker who demonstrated outside Bank of America in Boston, quoted in "Can 'Occupy Wall Street' really get money out of politics?", Mark Trumbell, Christian Science Monitor, 2011-10-14.