Hostage of the Idiom? - Today's Tom DeLay and the "New" GOP

What's to be done with an old exterminator when the parade has finally ended?

Unemployed Texas Exterminator, Tom DeLay (image source )

Well, to get things rolling with this bitter sweet posting, MeanMesa temporarily relinquishes command to our favorite dictionary.  

• idiom: a style or form of artistic expression that is characteristic of an individual, a period or movement, or a medium or instrument

One of the many "rancid threads" which delivered the country into the larcenous grip of the autocracy originated, predictably, in Texas.  The mechanism of this particular insult to American democracy was what may be over generously referred to as "redistricting."  

In this process, those in power (power resulting from whatever scheme) redraw the lines of what are called "districts" in a manner which re-organizes voters into favorable, new electoral blocks.  The new "district" boundaries are craftily 

• craftily: marked by subtlety and guile

derived from an intricate examination of previous election demographics.  Once in place, voters from opposing parties are concentrated in "sacrificed districts," while more mixed demographics are "shoe horned" into districts where the mix will be, at a minimum, "just barely" tipped to the advantage of those in power.  The result will be an increase in the number of House members from the party in power and a decrease in the number of House members elected by the "sacrificed districts."

The comedy is revealed when the new "district" boundaries are displayed on the actual land where they have been so cleverly imposed.  The new "boundary lines" run along abandoned sidewalks and between old trees, splitting trash cans and swing sets along the way.  Meanwhile, at least "meanwhile in the case of Ex-Exterminator, Tom DeLay in his medieval Texas," furious flocks of new, gum chewing Republican House members were dispatched to Washington to assist in the oligarchic plan to loot the Treasury.

This isn't funny.

However, this was precisely the ante coughed up by the Exterminator which so deeply endeared 

• endeared : to cause to become beloved or admired

him with the not only the autocrat but with the other cronies and crooks who were in power at the time.  In no time, the Exterminator had become House Majority Leader.  Normally, this would have been an unavoidable scandal given the precarious history of Majority Leader DeLay, but the disgrace was gracefully re-framed and rehabilitated by the comparisons of the moment.

The position directly above DeLay during his tenure as House Majority Leader was, of course, Speaker of the House, and for the Republicans during the autocracy, this job of being Speaker amounted primarily to being the "head crook" during the process of "emptying the Treasury."

The Republicans had already thoroughly "shown their colors" with House Speakers such a Newt Gingrich and Denny "Mr. Sausage" Hastert, so the addition of a stinky little fellow such as the Exterminator caused little public angst or disruption.

Once comfortably situated in this position, the Exterminator launched his self-enrichment program with full fervor.  He was sleeping the lobbyist/crook Jack Abramoff, screwing Indians out of their casinos, zipping off to St. Andrews for a high cost golf adventure and generally squeezing every dime he could find into his own pockets.

Tom "The Exterminator" DeLay gradually forsake his previous resume as a bug-killer to take a new title: "The Hammer."  He gleefully coerced, threatened and assaulted other House members -- always under the full protection of the autocrat and his cronies -- to channel ever more tax money into his "conservative," Texan political coffers.

The troubling "idiom?"

Constantly, during this time of raping, pillaging and plundering, the already heavily soiled Republicans were vomiting forth a relentless stream of "Constitutionalism," "Family Values," "Real Americans," and so on, "talking points" in an unending campaign to inflame every hill billy and bigot across the country from Kentucky to Arizona.  Under cover of the politically distracted frenzy of gastric nationalism which followed, the Republican "money bins" grew to the point of bursting.

The "neo-con game" of the moment was simple.  It amounted to a three part scheme:

• a. commit every possible crime as brazenly and rapidly as possible
• b. accuse the other side of committing the very same crimes, and,
• c. keep the hill billies and other bigots, although in descending poverty, inebriated with the idea that they were, in fact, flourishing.

Well, The Exterminator finally got nailed with a little money laundering.  It rings in resonance with the demise of the Late Al Capone.  Although dozens of murdered corpses littered the man's wake, the Justice Department's first -- and lasting -- success in Al Capone's prosecution derived from tax evasion.  The same may be true with the conviction of Mr. DeLay for money laundering.  Oh, how the mighty have fallen...

It'll do.

MeanMesa quotes the now historically revered and, finally, otherwise famous, Mullah Nassr Edin; Prison is prison.

A MeanMesa "Quickie" - Simplifying the Tax Laws

Perhaps one of the most common of all the parroted "talking points" floating around in both Tea Bagger riots -- but also, in more mature discussions of taxpayers who are actually concerned with our nation -- concerns the unworkable "complexity" of our taxation laws.

Now, MeanMesa italicizes the term "complexity" because its formal definition is so severely strained when the word is used in this way.  "Complexity" usually implies that the nature of something has very many, so to speak, delicately balanced "moving parts," each of which must function correctly for the whole "complex" thing to work.

For example, both an airliner's turbine engines and a quadruple heart valve replacement surgery are, inarguably, "things with great complexity."

However, when the term "complexity" is applied to the existing tax laws, the implied meaning tends to migrate a little.  Although many Americans assume that the thousands of pages of our tax laws are, somehow, the result of a concerted, coordinated effort at legislation, the facts show something actually quite removed from such a premise.

US tax law is a "helter skelter," jumbled monstrosity which has been thoughtlessly constructed by simply piling one "special favor" upon another until the resulting document is incomprehensible, chuck full of tax dodging opportunities for the recipients of the "special favors" and 6,000 feet thick -- even when printed on both sides of every sheet.

Further, it is rather unfair to simply dump the entire blame for this cash gobbling creature on the legislators current residing in the US House and Senate.  This process was well underway a century ago.  The major changes which have been enacted during all this time have had to do primarily with "adjusting" special favors in one way or another for the most current club of "special friends."

Given the fact that our current government isn't able to so much as "clean the carpets" without the predictable neo-con rampages and filibusters, the prospects of anything very good emerging from an effort to reform tax laws can barely catch its breath amid the inevitable "dust storms."

MeanMesa would like to propose a starting point which might serve as a foundation for the reform we need.  Of course, we can all assume that any suggestion whatsoever will immediately incite all parties to a screaming tantrum of hair pulling and episodes of overly dramatic, "end times"  apoplectic fainting spells.

In any event, here's the plan.

Pick a number, say something around twenty but absolutely no higher than thirty.  This will be the entire list of possible categories of incomes -- from any kind of business action.  The rule would be simple enough.  Every dollar that anyone -- whether Exxon or the local dog catcher -- receives from anyone will be classed into one of these twenty income categories.

There would be categories for wages, dividends, short sales, real estate profits, interest and good old commercial retailing.  Every possible "avenue of revenue" would be ruthlessly included somewhere amid the choices on the list.  The categorization of every nickel of every flow of revenue would be so complete that not a single check could be written or cash register receipt printed which could not fit into this "chart of taxation accounts."

The problem we face today is largely based on the fact that this is precisely what we are not doing.  The carefully synthesized, artificial "complexity" of the mess we are currently using contains every sort of possible -- or debatable -- ambiguity imaginable.  

It is more than an "unfortunate coincidence" that those who should be paying lots of taxes pay at a lower rate than those who should be paying very little.  Most of the opportunities these tax dodgers exploit -- with the help of their "wholly owned" Congressmen both now and in the past -- derive from just these same ambiguities.  When such opportunities are magnified through the cautious corruption of decades of law makers, we arrive at where we are now.

Legislators would remain quite free to debate and alter the tax regulations for any one of these categories of revenue, but public opinion would prohibit them from simply introducing mountains of contradictions and other confusions in hopes of maintaining the present set of "nation crushing" loop holes we see today.

Just thinking...

By the way, exactly these concerns will be the "battle ground" when new legislation is proposed to regulate the Wall Street gangsters.  Oooops.  Don't know who the "Wall Street gangsters" might be?

Just look for the fellows with an extra $5 trillion dollars in their pockets from their latest "looting" spree.  All of that new wealth of theirs used to be your money.

If we want another episode of that, we can, uh, do nothing.