Oops. Somebody Didn't See That Coming - By Josh Marshall

[erronis]

9. I really like your discussion of tipping points

I think it is so common that small changes to laws aren't recognized for their potential impact until someone, usually not a lawmaker, stands up and says "What will happen if this is enforced?"

I also think that this is the weasels way of making changes; small incremental wordings that won't be recognized as subterfuge until the court cases start appearing.

We've seen this recently at the Federal level with McCain and others admitting that they didn't "have time" to read the bill that authorized a cretin-level letter to be written from the Senate to another country.

At all levels of government most of our "representatives" are woefully outgunned by lobbyists and lawyers who naturally make their demands as obscure/opaque as possible. Except they let our "representatives" know that their kickbacks will be deposited on a yea/nay vote.

I, and others have proposed the idea that corporate bonuses be paid based on a long-term result basis. You know, if you were a CEO for XYZ for 10 years and they increased their profits by 16% then your bonus would be ties to this.

Now I'm thinking that all the congress-critters should get their base salary but everything else should be tied to how well the country did over the ten years since they voted on each bill. Complicated but I could program this in FORTRAN.

The flaw/fly in my ointment is that so much of the bribery and influence peddling is not done on the books. Can we get these people to report their special dispensations on their 1040's?