The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Senator Cash’n Kerry

Posted on | March 30, 2012 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

A commenter on a previous thread pointed out Protein Wisdom quoting TPM:

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said the law has been thoroughly vetted.
“As a senior member of the Finance Committee,” he said, “I can tell you that we had one of the most rigorous and transparent legislative processes that I have witnessed in almost 3 decades here in the Congress. We worked with some of the brightest, most thoughtful and experienced constitutional lawyers in order to make sure that the law was constitutional.”

What does ‘vetted’ mean in Kerry-speak?

In July 2009, industry representatives met with key members of Congress and hashed out critical details of the new Obama bill. As the bill snaked its way through the House and Senate, where Kerry was actively pushing it, the Kerrys began buying stock in the drug maker Teva Pharmaceuticals as the prospects of its passage improved. In November alone they bought close to $750,000 in the company. When the Kerrys first began buying shares, the stock was trading at around $50. After health care reform passed, it surged to $62.

Now, there isn’t any point in attempting to hold Kerry to a standard in a court of law.
However, in the court of public opinion, I think that Kerry may be tantamount to a genteel form of cat burglar, pleasantly pilfering the public pocket.
The bad news about Kerry is that the country is afflicted with this pestilence until 2014.

Silence, peasant scum!

And even then, the States are incentivized to keep him a part of the permanent Ruling Class. Thus, if there is any interest in reform, it must attack directly the rewards system that makes voting against Senator Kerry a slice of the throat for Massachusetts. Even when a reformer like a Joe Miller wins a primary, the power of incumbency is such that a Lisa Murkowski can claw her way back: too many people are making too much money off of the status quo, especially the elected officials.

While Kerry may know how to manage a team of sycophants who can maximize the portfolio value of a piece of legislation, that is not the same thing as, you know, carrying out the oath of a Senator. While I’m not really huge on the idea of term limits, I will allow that Cash’n Kerry is among the stronger arguments in favor of them. Capitol Hill, like any compost heap, merits frequent turning.

Update: related, NSFW financial BS flowchart

Category: Democrats

Comments

4 Responses to “Senator Cash’n Kerry”

  1. Adjoran
    March 30th, 2012 @ 5:05 pm

    The biggest part of the problem goes back to the distortion of the balance of power by the 17th Amendment.  Senators were supposed to be chosen by their state legislatures to represent the states’ interests.  The people already had their house of representatives, aptly named the House of Representatives.

    The more “democracy” infiltrates the Republic, the more it resembles the proverbial two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.  “Success” in Washington comes to mean how much you could extract from the other states to bring home, because the one who buys the most votes is reelected.

    And yet, some people even want to get rid of the Electoral College and elect the President by popular vote, too.  I blame the public schools.

  2. smitty
    March 30th, 2012 @ 5:22 pm

    I concur. The 1913 trio of Amendments 16&17, plus the Federal Reserve Act, greased the slippery slope to our current crisis.

  3. AnonymousDrivel
    March 30th, 2012 @ 5:32 pm

    “In November alone they bought close to $750,000 in the company.”

    Pshaw. That’s barely enough to get a tolerable dinghy for his yacht. Quit harassing the man over pocket change. Besides, everyone in Congress is doing it. They’re better than us and law is for little people.

  4. Bob Belvedere
    March 30th, 2012 @ 11:58 pm

    They were merely manifestations of a Fun House Mirror way of thinking that had gripped a sizeable portion of the people in this country, especially the intellectuals.

    That those Amendments passed relatively early in the Progressive effort to destroy The Constitution speaks to the skills possessed by them.  Of course, any praise of their acumen must be tempered by the fact that they were free from the normal constraints that hindered the Classical Liberals and the conservatives – namely Morality.