Writhing out of Norquist's embrace, Part IV

You have to respect a conservative Republican who tells his colleagues that the only way they're going to get a deficit reduction deal is to raise tax revenue, no matter what contortions he has to twist himself into to cover himself.

Tom Coburn has separated himself from current GOP orthodoxy, and specifically from a fundamentalist interpretation of Grover Norquist's no-new-taxes pledge, by degrees.  Now, even as he withdraws (temporarily, he implies) from the Gang of Six purporting to negotiate a tax reform/deficit reduction deal, he's completed the clarification. And incidentally, effectively told Norquist to go fuck himself.

Writhing out of Norquist's embrace, part III

Grover Norquist is insisting on his bond with the trio of conservative Senators that have begun negotiations on a comprehensive tax/budget reform deal. But Chambliss/Coburn/Crapo are looking for a "pound of flesh/not one drop of blood" loophole.

Shakespeare's merchant had a perfect legal right to claim a pound of flesh from Antonio, who had pledged it to him if he could not repay his debt on time. But Shylock, it was decreed in court,  had no more right than anyone else to shed blood.

In the past two days, Chambliss and Coburn have argued, in effect, that while they promised never to raise taxes, they did not promise to reduce the United States to insolvency. To reduce the deficit to a manageable level, "“We’ve got to close the revenue gap," as Chambliss put it on Monday. 

First, though, they've got to close the rhetoric gap, embodied in Norquist's no-new-taxes pledge. To recap: when reports broke that the conservative 3Cs were working with three Democratic counterpart on a bipartisan budget deal that would include some combination of spending cuts and revenue increases, Norquist sent an open letter reminding them of their pledge never to raise taxes. As I noted at the time,  CCC's carefully-worded response promised to lower marginal rates but most pointedly did not promise that offsetting those reductions by closing or reducing various tax breaks would not result in a net increase in revenue. The letter pitted the "special interests" who would lose tax breaks in an imagined future deal against  the 'taxpayers' whom they were pledged to protect. What it did not note is that most of us are both (see: Chambliss, Coburn, Crapo to Norquist: Kowtow or brush-off?)

Another corrupt public official gets off easy

Peter J. Cammarano III, elected mayor of Hoboken, NJ in 2009, was arrested in a bribery sting just three weeks into his term and pleaded guilty this April to taking a $25,000 bribe in exchange for a promise to help a purported developer (actually an informant) build in Hoboken.  Yesterday he was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison.

I have a phobia about prison. So many American prisons, or units within prisons, are cauldrons of rape, intimidation and sadism. I don't think a human society should incarcerate anyone under the conditions we impose - hard as it may be to create a humane environment composed entirely of convicted criminals.

That said, I've also long thought that corrupt public officials get off easy compared to white collar felons convicted of business fraud. Selling legislation or public contracts or regulatory forbearance harms the public good far more than looting or misrepresenting the finances of a for-profit company.  Americans may assume that lobbyists influence elected officials in malign ways. But soft, nebulous, indirect influence in which advocacy is bolstered by cash is still different in kind from direct bribery.   Our freedom and prosperity depend on the public's faith that elected officials and their appointees not sell legislation and contracts outright.

Elected officials who confess to or are convicted of doing just that get off far more lightly than convicted white collar criminals.  Duke Cunningham, a 7-term Republican congressman on the House Appropriations and Intelligence committees, pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes for his help awarding defense and intelligence contracts. He got 8 years.  Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who had practically the whole Republican Congress on the string and massively cheated his clients as well as bribing public officials on their behalf, got 8 years. Bob Ney, the wholly owned Abramoff subsidiary who accepted bribes to further the interests of several Indian tribes and casino ventures, got 30 months.