We disagree on Brown – I don’t see any evidence that he’s gonna behave outside the Republican political script of the day or be anything other than a political wedge.

Today’s news that Obama is finally listening to Paul Volcker gives me more hope than Brown’s election.

It won’t be easy is an understatement. Also today, the Supreme Court just handed corporations the ability to freely spend money in political campaigns. That baffles me.

Obama’s entire campaign was a pack of beautiful lies, carefully crafted and delivered, and magnified and burnished by an uncritical media. The recent kerfuffle over broadcasting the healthcare debate on C-SPAN is a perfect bit of evidence.

Sadly, over the past generation, politics has become not so much about legislating as it is about continual campaigning, with legislators spending all their time grubbing for money and then paying off their benefactors. Special interests (such as public service unions in CA) are happy to spend the cash for special influence, and lazy legislators like the easy streams of cash. But this ends up being a raw deal for ‘the people’.

Our founding fathers never envisioned such a class of permanent Political class. One thing Texans are fiercely proud of is that their legislature is not full-time, which gives them much less time for mischief-making. If legislators had to make their living in the very economy they want to regulate, they would probably make very different decisions.

There are plenty of honest people who go to Congress as first-termers, looking to make a difference. Unfortunately, the crooks who run both parties have gamed the system to collect all power to themselves. But that doesn’t mean things can’t change…it just won’t be easy.

Mike

Brown won by vowing to be an obstacle – which he may effectively be. But that’s not offering any solution to the problem.

To have a party only interested in blocking an agenda instead of offer alternative solutions makes for an even sicker system. I don’t really care whose in power as long as policy makes sense and there’s a healthy opposition that helps create it. We continue to drift far away from that ideal.

Us people like the ‘power to us’ message. What we don’t like is when people who consider themselves ‘our betters’ tell us we should have to live under a set of rules they exempt themselves from.

That might not qualify as an idea to you, but it resonated with the voters of Massachusetts, and if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.

As for California, I’m thinking Daybreakers as a good metaphor…

Mike

It’s interesting to see a Senate seat go to someone who didn’t run on a single idea, other than stopping reform. One can pretty easily imagine a perpetual deadlock where nothing is advanced and compromise is viewed as weakness.

Don’t you think California’s political stagnation – the state’s inability to find common ground on any problem – to be a pretty clear example of where the entire country is headed?