This is what passes for “thinking” at the leading conservative “think tank,” the Heritage Foundation.

Earlier this week [May 2013], the Heritage Foundation’s executive director sent a letter to Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, urging them to avoid introducing legislation and to, instead, focus attention on White House “scandals.”

…we urge you to avoid bringing any legislation to the House Floor that could expose or highlight major schisms within the conference. Legislation such as the internet sales tax or the FARRM Act, which contains nearly $800 billion in food stamp spending, would give the press a reason to shift their attention away from the failures of the Obama administration to write another “circular firing squad” article.

…Rather than scheduling such legislation for consideration, we urge you to keep the attention focused squarely on the Obama administration. As the public’s trust in their government continues to erode, it is incumbent upon those of us who support a smaller, less intrusive government to lead.”

There it is: the naked truth about the Republican Congressional “agenda,” brought to you straight from the “heart” of the Republican strategy machine: Don’t waste time on actual legislation. Don’t discuss issues. Pay no attention to your job description. Don’t do anything that might be construed as “governing.” Don’t talk about the merits of any issues. Instead: Create scandals. Hold hearings. Investigate. Investigate again. Point fingers. Distract the public from the issues that really matter to them. Destroy Obama. Wreck government. But for gawd’s sake, don’t deviate from the party line, don’t reveal any differences of opinions among yourselves, and don’t legislate. That could be dangerous.

You can read the full letter here.

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Political manipulation and cynicism hit a new low in December 2012, when, just 30 days after being re-elected, Jo Ann Emerson, the  ten-term Congressperson from Missouri’s 8^th district announced that she was resigning her seat in Congress to become president and chief executive of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. According to the New York Times, “the electric cooperative, which lobbies for electric utility companies, spent more than $1.7 million to support candidates, most of them Republicans, in the 2012 Congressional elections, according to federal elections data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.”

[The Times reports that the lobbying group she’s joining did not contribute to Emerson’s campaign. That’s at least some comfort to cynics like me, who assumed otherwise.] But she did manage to uphold the fine revolving-door tradition of lawmakers who cash in by going to work for a lobbying organization—with the added twist of not waiting until after one’s term in Congress is over.

One could write off Emerson’s move as a uniquely dickish tactic, motivated by greed and personal ambition– punctuated by disregard for ethics and a who-cares attitude about the costs it will engender for taxpayers–but, unfortunately, it’s not an anomaly. It’s just the most high-profile in a rash of similar, jerk-the-voters-around, post-election abdications. I’m not sure anyone has been keeping close historical tabs on this phenomenon, but it certainly seems like the post-November-2012-election period could be setting a record for the most resignations by newly elected legislators.

Similar shenanigans happened at the state level, as well. Democratic State Representative Bryan Quirk announced his resignation from the Iowa State Legislature on Nov. 28, 2012, less than a month after he was re-elected—by a landslide. Instead of serving in the legislature, Quirk, an electrician, will be general manager of the New Hampton, Iowa,  Municipal Light Plant. Apparently, his new employer asked him to quit the legislature. Quirk’s resignation will trigger a special election.

Nearby, in Illinois, 97th District State Representative Jim Watson (R-Jacksonville) resigned his seat just days after his re-election in November. Watson has been in the state legislature for more than 10 years. His new job title is executive director of the Illinois Petroleum Council. The group represents–a genteel term for “lobbies for”–oil refineries, marketers and others in the industry. GOP chairmen in his district will decide on his replacement.

But the grand prize goes to Georgia, where a slew of just-elected people jumped ship almost before the state’s election authority could hit “save” on the official election spreadsheet. Georgia’s predicament is reflected in a recent article entitled, “Doesn’t Anyone Want to Serve in the Office They Were Elected To?”  The author puts it this way:

In the weeks since the Nov. 6 general election determined the winners of 236 seats in the General Assembly, we have seen people resigning all over the state before they could even take the oath of office.

It’s not unusual to see someone resign from public office midway through a term; that happens quite often. In these instances, people are quitting before they have served one day in the office for which the voters picked them.

John Bulloch resigned after being reelected to his Senate seat in a southwest Georgia district, but he at least had a valid reason. He had some health issues related to his hospitalization for meningitis.

Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) stepped down from the Senate when he was offered a high-paying position with Georgia Public Broadcasting.

When Rogers resigned, a special election was called to fill his Senate seat. One of the candidates who qualified for that election was state Rep. Sean Jerguson (R-Holly Springs), who then had to resign from his House seat. That required another special election to replace Jerguson in the House.

The early resignations didn’t stop there. Robert Stokely, the Coweta County State Court solicitor, was elected to a House seat in the general election but resigned from that position six weeks later before he could be sworn into office.

In some of these instances, a state official will be appointing a replacement for the outgoing legislator. That strategy conveys an aura of incumbency on the successor making him or her harder to beat in the next election. An appointed successor also  conveniently avoids the need to run a campaign and subject himself to the scrutiny and approval [or disapproval] of actual voters.

In other cases, there will be a special election to fill out the unfinished term. That’s the scenario in Missouri, where replacing Emerson means holding an election with an estimated price tag of $1 million.

Part of what makes these post re-election resignations so galling is that they flout common-sense ethics. In addition, they’re obviously calculated to keep the seat safe for one’s own party, without all that messiness of making your successor actually run for the job. Equally stomach-turning is the resigning politicians’ total disregard for the economic consequences to taxpayers of their decisions.

Clearly, the old revolving-door gambit—in which legislators and agency officials become lobbyists, and lobbyists become legislators and regulators—lives on. Periodically, public opinion pushes federal and local governments to put in place rules that limit this behavior. One example was the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, which has been updated several times. But a recent study shows that about 57 percent of lobbyists who move through the revolving door from Capitol Hill into the private sector fail to adequately report their former government employment as mandated by the act.

And that’s just on the federal level. According to , the National Association of State Legislatures:

Thirty-five states have a ‘cooling-off period’ before a former legislator can come back to work at the legislature as a lobbyist. …Statutes range from Maryland, where the ban is until the conclusion of the next regular session, to seven states—Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, New York and Oklahoma—that ban former legislators for two years.

But fifteen states have no restrictions. In Minnesota, the ban only applies to House members, not those in the Senate. Ohio formerly had a one year ban, but the law was overturned by a federal district court in 2010.

Is the post-election free-for-all that we have just witnessed an indicator of a new trend of shamelessness and ethics-free behavior,? One can only hope that, in our lifetimes, our collective, moral pendulum will swing back toward higher expectations. I’m not holding my breath.

The post Get re-elected. Resign immediately. Go to work for a lobbying group. Repeat. appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I’m being recruited by the Heritage Foundation. They like me, they really like me! Or, perhaps, they like my zipcode and phone number, which apparently place me smack in the middle of conservative-voting territory and make me a prime target for their particular brand of baloney. They want my membership money, and they’re willing to send out a nine-page [!] mailing to try to get it.

But why should I be the only one to read their sales pitch? Now, you can see it too, because I’m sharing the highlights with you right here. It’s not going to work for me, and it’s not new, but it’s worth a look, just to remind ourselves of what progressives are up against in the battle against the non-fact-based, fear-driven gut of some American voters.

In rereading this mailing, I was struck by the use of language and imagery to portray the “Left” as an un-American, baby-ish [see: “temper tantrums,” screaming” and “wailing”], negative, Constitution-wrecking, autocratic, Big Brother, “European,”  “reckless,” unruly “horde.” See for yourself. Here are some excerpts, which I’ve culled so you don’t have to.

What the Heritage Foundation says about President Obama

“The havoc wreaked by President Obama and his Leftist allies has left wreckage that will take years to clean up. They took a bad situation created by reckless government spending and an unprecedented financial crisis…and made it much, much worse…adding $2.7 trillion to our national debt in just two years!

“They pursued their laundry list of costly liberal policies, the clear wishes of the American people notwithstanding, and charge ahead as if it meant nothing to them.

“They inflicted ‘ObamaCare’ on us, one of the worst, most bureaucratic and byzantine, and most destructive pieces of legislation in our history.

“And they continue to push a discredited redistributionist agenda to ‘share the wealth’ by expanding government’s power over all our lives.”

On Social Security and Medicare, Heritage Foundation says…

“…the best thing we can do…is to finally get serious about reforming the ‘entitlement’ programs that are driving our nation to bankruptcy while making us more dependent as a people.

“Our plan to fix this system would provide all retirees with premium-support payments from government to help them purchase a health care plan of their choice. We would also decrease payments for the wealthiest citizens, and cap total Medicare spending to prevent runaway costs, while protecting seniors from medical bankruptcy using catastrophic coverage.

“We call for repealing ObamaCare in its entirety…We urge providing a health insurance tax credit of $2,000 for individuals and $3,500 for families, with extra support for low-income families.

On government and taxes, Heritage Foundation says…

“Our plan rolls back non-defense spending to 2008 levels, moves some federal programs back to the states, privatizes others and ends some altogether. It also sells $260 billion in federal assets over 15 years. Here, we’re guided by the principle that government should only do what is authorized by the Constitution.

“Our plan would replace today’s complex tax system with a single rate for all, holding the government’s take at no more than 18.5 percent of the economy.

“One of our key goals here is to persuade the American public to stop thinking of Social Security and Medicare as open-ended ‘defined-benefit’ entitlements, and start thinking of them as insurance designed to provide real economic security for those who need it most. We know that this will be an uphill battle, as Americans have been conditioned to believe that since they ‘paid into’ the programs, they’re entitled to all those benefits. But they need to understand that the system can no longer deliver on these promises…”

Scare tactics, words of fear and other baloney

“You can practically hear the wails of the liberals and their defenders in the news media already,” it says here on page 5.

“It will take real courage to stand up to the demagoguery, the lies, and the fear-mongering thrown our way by the voices who want to see our nation go the way of Europe’s socialist welfare states.”

“We aim to…take on all those who say there’s no turning back from our current road to socialism.”

“[Liberals are] reduced to trotting out their old-style class warfare rhetoric to try and fire up their troops, while hordes of angry, bitter Leftists take to the streets to try and ‘occupy’ Wall Streed and demand more redistribution of wealth. Theirs is not an optimistic vision of the future. They see a tomorrow of bitter clashes over diminishing resources, of using the government to take from those who’ve earned it to give to those who demand, of constant screaming and protesting and temper tantrums. That’s not an American dream, that’s an un-American nightmare!”

Bottom line

This kind of language and persuasion is dangerously effective, and that’s why progressives need to get over our disappointments over President Obama’s lack of perfection and make sure that he is re-elected in November 2012.

The post The Heritage Foundation wants me to join up. Here’s their scary pitch. appeared first on Occasional Planet.