Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader — who, along with Speaker Paul D. Ryan, had opposed the proposal — lobbed a pointed question at his fellow Republicans, according to two people present: Had they campaigned on repealing the Affordable Care Act, or tinkering with an ethics office?
.. House Republicans, led by Representative Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia, had sought on Monday to prevent the office from pursuing investigations that might result in criminal charges. Instead, they wanted to allow lawmakers on the more powerful House Ethics Committee to shut down inquiries. They even sought to block the small staff at the Office of Congressional Ethics, which would have been renamed and put under the oversight of House lawmakers, from speaking to the news media.
“It has damaged or destroyed a lot of political careers in this place, and it’s cost members of Congress millions of dollars to defend themselves against anonymous allegations,” Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, said Tuesday, still defending the move.
.. Mr. McCarthy told his fellow Republicans that they needed to reverse themselves quickly, or potentially face an even more embarrassing revolt on the House floor. By his estimation, he told them, the provision was going to be removed one way or another.
.. Perhaps most prominently, in 2011, Representative Melvin Watt, a North Carolina Democrat who later left Congress to join the Obama administration, tried to cut the agency’s budget by 40 percent, a proposal that failed on a 302-102 vote.
.. But Mr. Goodlatte’s critics said he had simply been caught trying to sneak through a favor to help protect his fellow lawmakers.
Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics vs. Couple in the Desert
The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics strikes again.
“The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster.” https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth…
I’m sure the newspapers, though, are totally fair, neutral observers who have no reason at all to have grudges against tech companies: https://www.baekdal.com/blog/what-killed-the-newspapers-goog…
I think a more appropriate example scenario would be something like this: You are driving through the desert with a truck full of food and water. You come upon an old couple whose car has broken down, hundreds of miles from the nearest town. They beg you for help, offering anything for some water. As a shrewd negotiator, you assess the current market situation and offer a gallon of water in exchange for the woman’s diamond earrings and the man’s gold ring. This is a win/win scenario! They get to stay alive a little longer, and you get a great deal on some jewelry. No coercion needed, and since both sides entered into the deal voluntarily who can complain! As you drive off, you smile to yourself at the thought of how wonderful it was that everyone acted in their own self interest and managed to improve their situation.
K Street poised for big business in GOP-run Washington
Not only could Washington break its habit of gridlock, but the action looks set to happen on some of the highest-grossing causes.
“These are all high-dollar items,” said Stu Van Scoyoc, CEO of Van Scoyoc Associates. “There’s a very target-rich environment for people who want to get things done.”
.. But while Trump railed against lobbyists on the campaign trail, his administration could be a boon for the business of Washington.
.. Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries will be the small group of lobbyists who made inroads with his campaign or transition team. They include David Tamasi of Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications, a finance chair for Trump Victory; American Continental Group’s David Urban, a senior adviser to campaign who delivered the key battleground state of Pennsylvania; former Speaker Newt Gingrich, a senior adviser at Dentons; Mercury’s Michael DuHaime, a former adviser to Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani; Squire Patton Boggs’ Jack Kingston, the former Georgia congressman who was a surrogate for Trump on TV, and Marc Lampkin of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, who has raised money for the transition.
“There will be scramble around town for the few people who have bona fide Trump relationships and connections,”
.. Trump’s main conduits to K Street include Scott Mason, a former Lowe’s lobbyist who became the campaign’s director of congressional relations; John Mashburn, the campaign policy adviser who used to be an aide to North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis; and Joshua Pitcock, who lobbied for Indiana under Gov. Mike Pence.
.. With a close Senate, Democrats with ties to likely minority leader Chuck Schumer will remain in demand.
.. “He ran a campaign with no substance, he didn’t have real plans,” a Republican lobbyist said. “That provides an opportunity for the Hill and downtown to help shape this a bit.”
.. It’s not yet clear what role lobbyists can play in the administration itself, and whether Trump will maintain Obama’s ban on lobbyists joining the administration. Either way, downtowners don’t expect much to come of Trump’s proposed ethics rules, including a five-year ban on lobbying for executive branch officials, lawmakers and their staffers, despite his heated “drain the swamp” rhetoric.
.. “Congress is most active when one party controls House, Senate and White House, and Washington is most relevant to industry when desire for reform overcomes inertial gridlock,” said Bruce Mehlman of Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas. “2017 is going to be a very busy and consequential year.”
America’s New Normal
Americans were ignorant of a reality that East Europeans had come to know intimately.
.. Thus, even today, we tend to see the world around us as natural. The roads we take to work and back home; the schools we attend and lessons we learn; the institutions that shape our lives and the lives of friends and families we may take for granted: All of this, for Americans, reflects the natural order of things.
.. There was a time, he writes, when people would have called the police upon seeing a dead body in the street; soon there are so many corpses that they pretend not to see them.
.. when the quarter’s inhabitants are trucked out, never to return, the others grow accustomed to the sight. What do they see? That nothing could be more natural.
.. History teaches us that what was unnatural yesterday becomes natural today.
.. Political language, George Orwell observed in his essay “Politics and the English Language,” is devised “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
.. Much has been said about the ways in which Trump’s rhetoric has shattered the norms of political discourse in our country. Yet, among his accomplishments, Trump has made Orwell, one of the 20th century’s most sober and lucid observers, appear naïve. It is no longer that language deceives, but that it no longer matters.
.. ethics is, in the end, little more than seeing the world clearly and finding clear words to convey what one sees. Such an ethics allows us to see that we most often prefer not to see, makes us hear what most often we prefer not to hear.