Divorce is never pretty and my point here isn't to focus on the relationship between Tony Podesta and Heather Miller Podesta. Their relationship is their business. What is of public interest, however, is that the Podesta divorce proceedings reveal a lot about the Washington power culture. It is revolting that our government is structured in such a way that parasitical lobbyists can enrich themselves by building labyrinthine laws and regulations to dole out favors to politically-connected rent-seekers. Argh! Sorry for all the buzzwords.
Our country and our civilization are being strangled by over-regulation. I'm not against all regulation, but even the Library of Congress has no idea how many laws, regulations, and court decisions there are.
As government expands, extending its reach to every aspect of business, every sector of the economy, private citizens and corporations require sherpas to lead them through the mountains of regulations and tax provisions, to discover exemptions and special favors and other forms of relief or favoritism to improve the bottom line. And who better to act as sherpas than the relatives of the Democrats who impose the regulations and tax provisions in the first place, who better than the lively proprietors of a family business operating in the luxurious and morally uncomplicated world of the caste of limousine liberals who dominate politics, culture, news, and finance.Corporations give to Democratic politicians, avoiding the scrutiny of liberal attack dogs in the media and nonprofit sectors, and enjoying the ego boost that comes with being on the "right side of history." Then those corporations hire the Podestas to get them out of the Rube Goldberg traps the Democrats have enacted into law. John's innovation was to establish a corporate-funded think tank where the burdensome policies would be concocted, and whose staff would go on to man the regulatory agencies that put their wool-headed ideas into practice. And to whom do the corporations turn when they find themselves on the receiving end of all this uplift, all this do-goodery, all this progress, hope, and change? Why, to the man in the red Prada loafers, and to his flamboyantly patterned wife.
