The Wraith of Dodd: NPR & the Senator

The Wraith of Dodd

(& 534 other 

Congressional

 invertebrates)

TO: Steve Inskeep and the guys & gals behind the folks

        in front of the NPR microphones

RE: Thursday, Nov. 21, 2008 interview with Sen. Christopher Dodd 

        on the $700 Billion Buddy Bail-Out Bill

Ohhhh, this is just great. 

Here we have Sen. Dodd declaring that there are 535 IMOCKs (Invertebrate Members of Congress, Kiddies) who “have a lot of talent.” But they can’t “dictate exactly how this all ought to happen.” Wowsers. WHAT A COP-OUT.

The riposte from [Name of Representative of the 4th Estate goes here] should be:

 “Sooo, just why are the citizens of this country, the taxpayers, paying you? And, full disclosure, me among them?”

“Why are they paying you a salary, expenses and perqs? Why are they paying for your health care, life insurance (“life insurance” without the “f”?)? Paying for office space, for staff members in Washington to meet with lobbyists, and staff “in the district” to meet with your merely biennially important “constituents”? Why are they paying you to staff up the dozens and dozens of committees you sit on? (By the way, are you just auditing the committees for no credit, or have you matriculated?)”

Listen up, dudes and dudesses: There is no more time to be polite (with all due respect, if any respect is due) to these 535 IMOCKs.

What the [DICKENS — or other more useful, low-letter-count emphatic from the Anglo vulgate — take your pick] do you, our 4th Estate representatives, think these 535 talented invertebrates are SUPPOSED to be doing? 

There is a good reason, IMHO, why journalists’ ratings and Congress’s ratings are lower even than those of the Unitary Liar-In-Chief — the ULIC. What do you think you are supposed to be doing for the 47% of your various budgets that represent “our” donations? And, yes, it's easier for me to go all righteous when I don't have to deal with these congressional malefactors every day, don't have to worry about getting sources all torqued out of shape. But in the years I WAS out in the trenches, I found that for every big-wig I really ticked off with a story, three or four NEW sources showed up. With better information. Invariably. They were happy that someone was asking the hard questions they wanted asked. They were put off by reporters coddling, bowing and scraping to those employees of ours "in power." (I find it particularly offensive that members of the White House press corps stand up when our employee-in-chief, the president, enters a room. In Britain, they rise when the Queen appears, but not when the PM shows up. In the US, we are constitutionally prohibited from having royal titles. We should also give up the "all rise" command in our courtrooms. Judges also work for the citizens; not t'other way round. But maybe that's just me.)

    I have to say that, in my experience, one does not have to have "human sources" when you're covering government. They're required to leave a paper trail, and you can pick it up anywhere along its continuum. Or you can cover the failure to leave tracks as required by law (the old "watchdog that didn't bark in the night" clue).

    As to needing "actuality," sure, the "paper trail" doesn't provide "good audio" — I'm imagining someone rustling a couple of copies of the Congressional Record in front of a microphone. But I'd rather hear Steve Inskeep narrating a good story any day, paraphrasing or quoting the interviewee, if necessary, than to listen to one of our congressional invertebrates "express frustration". I certainly much prefer, in spades, to have our ULIC — our Unitary Liar-In-Chief — quoted or paraphrased by reporters; I now have to hit the mute button or throw the "tape monitor" switch whenever a ULIC sound-bite approaches, lest I lose my lunch.

I think you-plural should be hammering the “talented 535” hour after hour. Throwing their legislation back at them line by line, word by word. They should NOT smile when they see you; they should tremble. And not in a good way.

They work for “We the people”--what a novel concept. (I thought the 4th Estate did, too. And please don’t proffer the “more flies with honey than vinegar” bromide; our 535 talented invertebrates were, I thought, more highly evolved than class insecta. And if they were flies, we wouldn’t need a 4th Estate. Mosquito-netting, fly-swatters and fly-paper would suffice to prevent or limit their malign effects. But I’ve tried those options, and they just don’t work on our 535 IMOCKs.)

 Congress long ago discovered that they didn’t have to do anything constructive with their tim, on our dime, and the 4th Estate would let them get away with it. Maybe it began long before this, but I think it started with the Environmental Protection Act, where 535 talented invertebrates reared up on their hind legs (and that’s hard work for an invertebrate) and proclaimed: “Let the air be clean! Let the water be pure!” (And, sotto voce, “And let the president, vice-president and maybe the Env. Pro. administration do all the money work. We don’t want to give up our three-days-a-week, 30-weeks-a-year schedule.”)

And, then, on the signing-th day, the Dodds rested.

What’s the “money work,” you ask? That’s where the money meets the road, where the mercury meets the mouth, the sulphuric acid eats the eyes. Where a decimal point makes a difference in dying and dollars; where one part per thousand means babies with broken brains and one part per million does not; where a level of one part per million costs industries millions to achieve, and where one part per thousand costs nothing.

The 535 talented invertebrates are a ROYAL COP-OUT. Hard work? They’ve “taken it off the table.” What's worse, they’ve learned how to con, snooker, fake-out, mislead, hoodwink, etc., the 4th Estate into thinking they’re doing something.

Ooops. My bad: Can't be a ROYAL cop-out, just a BIG cop-out. Forgot we’re not supposed to have royal titles here — heard there’s some rule, written in a dead language on some quaint piece of parchment in a museum somewhere — maybe the National Archives, or the Smithsonian, or the Library of Congress? I know I’ve heard it about it somewhere. D’you have any clue what I’m talkin’ about? Maybe you saw it on a class trip to Washington?

Sooo, Steve, et alii: When are you — all of us — going to wake up?

Or should we just, as Dodd put it, “…[C]onsider the alternative. Five hundred thirty-five members of Congress have a lot of talent, but [doing our job] is not one of them. And the idea that Congress would dictate exactly how [laws and government] ought to happen [or work] was not a great alternative, Steve.” 

Dodd hath spoken.

-----------

Here's the exchange that set me off. And, I'm afraid, while Steve really did try to go a bit farther, he STILL let Dodd get away with expressing "frustration" that the Paulsons and the banks TO WHOM CONGRESS CEDED ALL CONGRESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY were doing whatever the dickens they pleased. Pathetic. Just pathetic.

Well, Senator, given that there was a big debate in Congress that was basically about attaching conditions, making sure the money was well-spent, how did it happen that, as soon as the bill was passed, it turned out that the Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, had — it seems, from the outsider's point of view — almost total flexibility in how he wanted to spend it, and, once the banks get it, they seem to have total flexibility in how they want to use it. [A word on that "outsider's point of view" comment: Why is it that everyone in this country forgets that the citizens are the boss? Steve, you need to say, "It seems, from my managerial point of view, as your boss, and as a representative of ALL your bosses...  And if you'd read the legislation, there would be no "seems" about it. Not that I've read it either, but I'm just sayin'.]

Well, consider the alternative: 535 members of Congress have a lot of talent, but this is not one of them. And the idea that Congress would dictate exactly how this all ought to happen was not a great alternative, Steve. The idea was to get these resources to the Treasury, to the Federal Reserve, obviously to give them the latitude to move. But I want to use the opportunity of our conversation to express not only my frustration, but the frustration of my Senate colleagues here over the pace of this movement and the direction that some of these steps are taking. [my emphasis. 9th]

Well, should banks hear a warning that if there is not some improvement in the next few weeks, you might be, say, at the very beginning of the next Congress, writing in revisions to that law?

Absolutely, Steve, and thank you for the question. [When one of the 535 thanks you for a question, you've just lost your wallet. 9th]

You think that you could be changing this and making it more strict?

We'd have to. I mean, I'm not left with any options. They know what they need to be doing, and they're not acting responsibly, in my view. And, if they don't act responsibly, then I'm going to require them to act responsibly.

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