By CHRISTOPHER MANION
Washington in shocked, shocked! that businesses are willing to pay lawyers and lobbyists millions for influence and access to politicians and their staffs, regulators, even the media.
’Tis the season to ruffle feathers, apparently. But this is nothing new. For years, Washington lobbyists have been charging billions for such influence. Somehow, the fact that Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has been peddling his “insider knowledge” has the nation’s capital in a twit fit. But as the dependable Tim Carney points out, “that’s typical swamp behavior.”
Carney, who writes for the Washington Examiner, is the rare journalist who actually wears out a lot of shoe leather to dig for news — and few Swamp Dwellers appreciate what he reveals. He finds an instructive lesson in the news that Novartis, a major pharmaceutical provider, had hired Cohen. After a single meeting, they realized that Cohen would be “unable to provide the services that Novartis had anticipated related to U.S. healthcare policy matters.”
But they had already paid Cohen $1.2 million. For nothing.
“This story is a whole different species of Beltway shadiness,” writes Carney. “Cohen’s racket, it seems to me, isn’t selling policy to the highest bidder, it’s ripping off gullible companies who thought he could be a MAGA rainmaker.”
Why do countless special interests spend billions a year for such “services”? Carney explains: “Sometimes these businesses are seeking special favors. Sometimes they’re trying to avoid special mistreatment. Novartis, surely, wanted to ward off Trump’s promises to drive down drug prices.”
Washington has grown so powerful that a single rule, regulation, or piece of legislation can make or break an individual, a business, or sometimes an entire industry. Take the fictitious Acme Widget Company. It is successful, so it believes it needs no lobbyists. Then, one morning, it is shocked to find that its competitors, generous donors to members of a House subcommittee, have arranged a congressional hearing in which “experts” will prove that Acme’s products harm the environment. When Acme’s stock price drops ten percent a day later, management will get the message: Hire a lobbyist.
Such lobbying bonanzas are proudly bipartisan. When two Republican senators, House members, or staff members leave the Hill to start a lobbying firm, they will always find two Democrats to join them. “Gotta cover all the bases,” they explain. And they cover those bases not only with meetings and policy guidance, but with plenty of campaign donations.
And some of them are — or were — movement conservatives. How could this be?
Stan Evans explained this curiosity years ago. “Conservatives who come to Washington know it’s a sewer. Trouble is, most of them wind up treating it like a hot tub.”
And who’s left out in the cold? The public. If the average American simply must meet with his senator or representative, he has to take a week off from work, travel to Washington, hire a lobbyist, and get in line.
There must be a better way, and there is. We will cover it in a future report.
Apology Police Swarm D.C.
In the United Kingdom, criticizing Islamic terrorism is a crime. In California, advising a boy that perhaps he is not a girl after all will soon be a crime. In Canada, defending the Church’s specific and clear teaching on sodomy on a college campus will get you more police than students in the audience.
OK, we’re used to that. But our nation’s capital has taken another great leap forward in Thought Crime: today, criticizing Sen. John McCain — in private! — provokes not only shocked epithets, twisted handkerchiefs, and expressions of moral outrage, but demands for a public hanging.
As in, “hanging you out to dry.”
Criticize John McCain? Apparently someone did just that — in a White House meeting to which The Wanderer was, alas, not invited (we are preparing a formal protest). When word of the treacherous words emerged on the street — which means, among professional Trump bashers — the crescendo of demands resounded.
Note that this wave of faux outrage comes from what Dr. Thomas Sowell calls the “Anointed.” These “progressives” have swallowed Marx’s promise of superiority and power: They are the tip of the spear that pierces the future’s veil. They literally are the future! That they are routinely vulgar, profane, sordid, and pornographic merely proves that moral norms of the past do not apply to them. Hence, they can demand Donald Trump’s beheading, murder, and perpetual flogging without fearing the slightest pushback from deplorables who should know their place, after all.
So the future’s voice of perverted reason commands the commoners:
Someone must come forward and apologize for daring to diss John McCain!
Someone — but who? And apologize to whom? And for what?
Be done with such trivialities! Bow in reverence like the Fake Newsmongers, who trumpet that Joe Biden and Mitt Romney “blast” anyone daring to mock the Arizona senator, even if it means throwing history down the Memory Hole (could Joe and Mitt fear being thrown down the Memory Hole themselves? Can a constant palaver of moralisms save them?).
The national crisis gets more complicated. Sen. McCain is convalescing after surgery, so the unknown perpetrator must apologize not to him, but apparently to his daughter Meghan. In fact, Meghan has demanded it. Meghan has a career, of course, which (gently put) had had its up and downs, as well as its lefts and rights. And yes, as her father valiantly struggles with a. . . .
Here we must interrupt this report with a footnote from history, courtesy of The Wanderer’s oldest surviving member of the U.S. Senate Staff.
In 1979, New York Sen. Jacob Javits (R., N.Y.) was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease. In November 1980, his bid for reelection failed when he was defeated by Republican Al D’Amato (Javits had run on the ticket of New York’s Liberal Party). In the final weeks of his term following his defeat, Javits attended routine Senate business meetings, one of which took place in the formal office of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the Capitol, just off the Senate floor.
While he was waiting in the lobby to enter the committee room, a young female reporter approached him. Leaning toward him with her hand on the arm of his wheelchair, she asked him, “Senator, what’s it like to have a terminal disease?”
Sen. Javits was old school, a gentleman. He looked at her, smiled, and patted her hand.
“Honey, we’re all terminal.”
Back to Meghan McCain: Well, like Sen. Javits, her senator dad is terminal too, and her career needs all the help she can get, or it might be terminal. “The White House” must apologize to her.
Meanwhile, the world waits breathlessly. Kim Junior dithers at the DMZ, awaiting word. Putin calls for Russians to stay in their homes until Meghan gives the All Clear. Aspiring refugees heading to a new life across the Mediterranean stop rowing, boats rocking gently in the sea, glued to their cell phones. The national debt suddenly ceases to rise. The silence is so deafening that Al Sharpton must be on retreat.
What is Meghan to do? A consensus slowly emerges.
Meghan will volunteer to lead a “National Apology Coalition.” Their target? Anyone in Washington who has ever offended anyone else. Their demand? Apologize — and keep on apologizing. And the Offended? Their number is Legion and the offenses infinite.
After all, “we’re all terminal.” Personally, I’m all for it, because the resulting cacophony of feigned remorse of the Perpetual Apology Caucus would grind the nation’s capital to a halt, and give us a much-needed breather from blather for the summer.
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