At their core,
The primary symptom of this selfishness is that career politicians in the two established parties are preoccupied with giving favors to special interests in return for donations, and spending needlessly on wasteful expenditures in return for votes. For the two established parties, this favor trading is business as usual. This corrupt system makes an officeholder beholden to his/her donors, and special interests,
The Weinergate sexting scandal aside, Anthony Wiener is the epitome of this kind of dishonest politician, and serves as the prime example of this kind of politics. According to disclosure forms for the 2008 campaign season, fifty percent of his disclosed donors were political action committees, and another forty one percent were large donors.
This can be seen by his votes on trade. Since the start of free trade agreements with NAFTA in 1992, America’s trade deficit rose from 39.2 billion dollars to 559.8 billion in 2011, or an increase of over 1428 percent. The increase in this deficit was caused to a significant extent (or this: among other things)* by the outsourcing of jobs, and the exploitation of unregulated environments and labor overseas.
{* Comments/question: be very careful with statements like this - they can be credibility killers: the causes of our trade deficit are complex and include increased spending for oil; oil alone subtracts hundreds of billions per year from our balance of trade, but this is changing as domestic oil production cuts into import levels - see, e.g., http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20130530-711531.html and http://research.nordeamarkets.com/en/2012/08/20/us-oil-boom-could-slash-us-oil-import-bill-and-strengthen-usd/; do you have data showing what factors contribute what portion of the trade deficit?}
Twice he voted in favor of free trade. On June 9th, 2005 Anthony Wiener cast a vote against withdrawing from the WTO, the primary international free trade agreement, and On November 8th, 2007, Anthony Wiener cast a vote that reduced trade barriers with Peru. This correlates with the interests of several large international trading companies that donated to his campaign, like IBE Trade Corp, a company that imports fertilizer made in Russia and Ukraine.*
{* Comments/question: be very careful with statements in this paragraph - are free trade agreements OK if they are (i) win-win or (ii) win for the U.S. and neutral or negative for the trade partner? What is acceptable? I suspect that Weiner is doing what most politicians routinely do, namely do self-service at the expense of public service. The toughest thing about this type of criticism is finding the data to support it. Doing that is tedious and time consuming. Public opinion now seems to oppose free trade agreements (http://www.citizen.org/documents/election-2012-polling-memo.pdf). I do not know where the majority of expert opinion stands. This paragraph implies that WTO membership is bad. Do you know the net cost/benefits of WTO membership - how good or bad is it according to current data? Maybe it was bad at one time but is now neutral or good. Do you know the ramifications of withdrawal from the WTO, e.g., what economic infrastructure, if any, is now in place that would be damaged or destroyed if we do withdraw from the WTO? The cost-benefit analyses here are blindingly complex and full of spin on many sides. I suspect that the bottom line is that free trade agreements are unacceptably unfair to the U.S., but that doesn't mean that better agreement terms can't be negotiated.}
Now that he is attempting a political comeback, and running for Mayor of New York, it is possible to see where his current proposals benefit long time donors to his campaigns. One of his proposals stands out as questionable more than the others. The first is to
The system to get construction projects approved in New York City is constipated, and needs some changes.
A better proposal would be to streamline the regulations, and work to decrease unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles. This kind of reform would help all kinds of development without putting one type of construction project over another.
“Follow the money,” has been a mantra of investigators since the 1970s. If one does follow the money, it is possible to see that a majority of Anthony Weiner’s top contributors are real estate developers and realtors groups like the National Realtors Association, and his proposal benefits their pocket books by reducing their wait times by putting them first.*
{* Questions: What is more lucrative, residential or commercial development? What does New York need in view of its current circumstances, more of everything?}
The solution to ethical problems in government is honesty.* This is because an honest person will vote in a way that benefits
{* comment: I suspect that the solution to ethical issues in government is realignment of incentives by rewarding service to the public interest before service to special interests - this is pure capitalism, but is is very effective; remember, the three initial essays focused on (1) ideology, which distorts reality, (2) special interest money, which also distorts reality and corrupts politics and (3) self-interest, also a reality distorter and politics corrupter; look at defense secretary Chuck Hagel's comment quoted in essay 2 on special interest money in politics: “There’s no shame anymore. We’ve blown past the ethical standards, we now play on the edge of legal standards.” - in other words, we are beyond ethics, which are extinct in politics for the most part - the last line of defense of the public interest is the literal limits that law imposes; the intense pressure on politicians to harvest cash from special interests makes ethics irrelevant}
{** comment: it isn't just a matter of lying; ideologues often really and sincerely believe that what they do truly serves their constituents and/or the broader public interest; from that point of view, there is no lying at all; and, when large amounts of money are involved, the cash can literally alter the both the politicians and the special interests donor's perception of reality}
This kind of reform starts at the ballot. To reform government American voters must vote out the established parties, and end business as usual.
