Falling Behind Cynicism Curve

No matter how cynical I become, I consistently find my sense of reality trailing the march of reality. It is increasingly difficult to avoid falling behind the Cynicism Curve.

On this week’s Energy Realities Podcast, which I posted here earlier on Monday, Tammy Nemeth and Irina Slav, in their usual very perceptive way, raised the question of why we so often see the public revolting against these Green New Deal-style policies, yet the policies never seem to be scaled back or rescinded in any real way. This discussion starts about 3 minutes into the podcast.

When Irina threw the question to me, here is what I said about it:

Well, the obvious answer is they (the policymakers voting in seemingly odd ways) are being rewarded for doing so in one way or another, some form of fashion.

In the US Congress, it's the insider trading information. That's quite obvious, a big racket in the US Congress. And, you know, you get promised, board seats, very lucrative positions on corporate boards when you leave the Congress, if you do certain things and vote a certain way. And it's all about making money and setting themselves up for an easy retirement after they've served 3 or 4 terms.

It's why you see now - 20 years ago, in the US Congress, people held onto seats in the House of Representatives for as long as they could. They never wanted to leave. You wanted to get to at least ten terms and 20 years in Congress so that you would retire with full retirement benefits. Congressional retirement benefits today, Congressional retirement benefits are chicken feed compared to what these people can make with insider trading deals, lucrative real estate propositions that come their way for voting a certain way on certain issues. And of course, the, you know, being paid several hundred thousand dollars a year to sit on a corporate board and work 8 or 10 days a year.

And so it's not about that (retirement benefits) anymore. It's why we see every election cycle now, 30 or 40 incumbent members of Congress voluntarily giving up their seats, many of them leaving their seats before their term is up. You know, in order to go cashing in on the deals they've made, in exchange for votes and supporting certain positions on bills, everything is corrupt now.

The whole process is corrupt.

And that's why you see these people voting in ways that seem very odd to you. In terms of how they promised to govern when they ran for office, this, and very inconsistent with the supposed party philosophy in the party that they're members of.

The whole proposition - the value proposition of being a member of Congress has changed.

And I'm sure it's the same way at the EU, being a member of the European Commission or being a member of parliament in most European countries. The whole process has been corrupted to push these policies when these people know better.

You catch these members of Congress, particularly Republicans, in private times, and have a conversation with them about it, they say all the right things. They understand these policies are all terrible for the average person in the country, but they have all kinds of bad incentives to support these policies.

And, you know, it's it's mainly about personal enrichment and taking care of their own families as everything goes to hell around them.

[End]

There’s a lot more discussion around this, and I urge you to go watch/listen to it.

Here’s the key: The value proposition of being a member of congress shifted dramatically over the last quarter of a century.

25 years ago, there was a bipartisan common understanding about the importance of enforcing congressional ethics rules in a way that fairly effectively policed this kind of monetary corruption, which really amounts to bribery and nothing less.

That all changed with the elevation of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi as the Democrat party’s leaders in congress. Go read up just a little bit about Reid and you will discover that he came into the US Senate with a meager net worth of less than $100,000. He somehow left office about 30 years later with a net worth north of $100 million. About 5 minutes of further research will enable you to discover Reid somehow stumbled into becoming a partner in a long string of incredibly lucrative real estate deals in and around Las Vegas while he was in the Senate.

Another 5 minutes of research will enable you to discover that, before he became a senator, Reid spent a decade or more on the Nevada Gaming Commission, eventually becoming its chairman during the years when the mob ran Las Vegas.

Oh.

Spend a few minutes researching Nancy Pelosi and you will discover she is the daughter of famous mob-connected Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro. Another 5 minutes in and you will find Pelosi and her husband have become multi-hundred-millionaires the last quarter century thanks to making amazingly lucky stock trades, and that Pelosi has been a steadfast opponent of enacting any congressional ethics prohibitions against insider trading.

Oh.

Another obvious suspect in the current congress is GOP Rep. from Colorado Ken Buck, who has voted consistently with the Democrats on every major vote over the past two years. Buck announced last fall that he will not seek re-election this time. Everyone should keep an eye on which corporate boards Mr. Buck winds up serving on after he leaves office.

The whole system is corrupt, and not just congress, obviously.

Joe Biden last week illegally forgave the student debt of something around 150,000 Americans and proudly boasted he had done that in direct defiance of a lawful decision by the US Supreme Court. Because the Department of Justice is 100% corrupt, Biden can commit such an act with zero fear of any effort to enforce the Supreme Court’s will.

The entire US system of justice has been weaponized over the past 18 months in an effort by the Biden administration and corrupt prosecutors in New York and Georgia and Florida to jail the President’s most likely Republican opponent.

Given all this and so much more, it really is hard to maintain a sufficent level of cynicism to keep pace with this constantly accelerating Cynicism Curve.

But I’ll keep trying. After all, I don’t have anything better to do.

That is all.