In my anything but expert understanding to bring a case before a court there has to be some kind of injury. It’s not enough that Bob made you mad; there has to be something that actually hurt you physically or financially or in some demonstrable way.
Yes, this has had some hilarious results over the years as lawyers contorted legal theories into fractals to get an ‘injury’ so they could get their client’s grievance before a court. Judges have not always found it as amusing as I do and the public much less so at times, but it can be funny, nonetheless. Still, the requirement exists for a valid reason, to keep as many completely pointless cases out of the system as possible.
Sometimes it even works. Occasionally, it works a bit too well. Courts allow civil rights cases that have no obvious injury – sometimes not even a possibility of one – but then disallow cases where the aggrieved person is injured but lacks political power or is up against a more powerful interest. Yes, this is morally and legally wrong and one of the many things that need to be fixed in our judiciary.
Government hides behind the extraconstitutional fiction of ‘sovereign immunity’. Corporations hide behind their armies of overpaid and undertalented lawyers. Judges dismiss on grounds of ‘standing’, another convenient fiction created in caselaw so the judiciary doesn’t have to do as much of its job.
I might be a bit cynical.
Nevertheless, slowly but surely we plod along, yell and scream, fuss and fight and finally get laws enacted or changed to what they should be. This is part and parcel of the muddling through of American government. The point being that the good guys usually win in the end.
Right until some lobbyist comes along and undermines the existing rules or get lawmakers to enact laws that only their corporate clients can afford to abide. Then we’re right back where we started from or worse, some disaster happens in the meantime.
Here’s the thing: the system is supposed to be impartial and the people that make up that system as supposed to respect that impartiality. The attentive among you will have noticed that we don’t do that nearly as well as we should. Oh, previous generations weren’t miraculously immune to the temptation to stick a thumb on the scale but we eventually reach the point where We the People decide it’s time to rebalance the danged thing.
The youngest generations seem convinced that they are supposed to ‘fix’ the entire system. They can’t change their own oil, balance a checkbook or add without a calculator, but they just know how to miraculously fix the whole system so it’s rainbows and unicorns from here on out.
Yeah, no, that’s not how this works. Your job is to learn how to be good human beings first. Hint: dying your hair a fluorescent color and protesting mindlessly is not it. The American system has worked pretty danged well for nearly 250 years and managed to self correct with exasperatingly slow but effective self improvement more than once. It ain’t the problem – we are.
Instead of taking action to remedy the out of kilter scales, we had become complacently tolerant of them. That’s changing now as the party system begins its shift. People AREN’T amused with the state of the Union and there will be some changes made.
One of the changes we need to make is to get those thumbs off the scales. Corporations and wealthy people should not have an unfair advantage in the halls of Congress. I am not suggesting that one simple fix will do the whole job – it won’t and it shouldn’t. But we do need to make careful adjustments so that everyone, rich and poor, big and small, is represented fairly in OUR congress.
Lobbyists have long bridged the gap between politician’s power and their actual know-how. This isn’t inherently bad. No person can be expert in everything. Congressmen do need industry resources to inform – NOT GUIDE – their decisions.
Of course it goes hysterically wrong. Congressmen are as lazy as everyone else but they also have the worst job performance reviews devised by man. To do the job you have to have the job and to have the job you have to raise insane amounts of money to finance incredibly bad and overpriced job interviews called campaigns. Hilarity ensues.
At least it would be funny if it were a sit com. But as a political system, it stinks. Representative government is great. Political campaigns are not. If you think I have a solution for that, let me talk to you first about some lovely oceanfront property in Tennessee I’d love to sell you.
But hopeless, it is not, young Grasshopper! We don’t have to toss out the entire engine but we do need a few new filters. The first I’d like to suggest is lobbyist responsibility.
You wined and dined Senator Bob to get that new regulation that promptly, and we’re sure coincidentally, put your company’s competition out of business. Senator Bob gets to explain that to his now unemployed constituents, but he’s counting on your company to hire his ‘consulting service’ after he is run out of office. We will get to him later.
You, Mr. Lobbyist, ate not an innocent bystander in this corruption of the halls of Congress; you’re the jerks painting the floors with grease. Why, then, should you not face the ultimate wrath of the aggrieved: the lawsuits?
Oh, not alone – we see those deep pockets of that company you work for, too. But lobbying firms ain’t paupers and they are instrumental to the injuries Congress inflicts on small business and individuals. Why, exactly, can’t we the Taxpayers, reclaim at least part of the damages we end up paying after the mess finally comes to light from the lobbyists who created it?
Companies that lead in ‘regulation’ do so to their own benefit. So, if I’m wrong, they should have no issue with placing damages in escrow for a reasonable period, say a minimum of ten years, while the regulation’s effects play out and we find out how much we’re on the hook for. But not just the company – the lobbyists if they are independent should also be willing to pony up for these regulations they believe so strongly in.
If things improve, they get all the money back – heck, we might even consider offering a bonus. But if it drives down competition and quality and injures small businesses and/or individuals, we ditch the regulation and pay out the damages from the escrow. Seems fair to me.
It WILL have a massive chilling effect on regulation but only that being proposed by industries and companies in an effort to elbow out the competition unable to foot the bill for the new regulation. This is a feature, not a bug.
Congressmen want to look like they are doing something important so you vote for them again. Regulation requested by the industry is as close to a windfall as they are allowed to get. They look like they did something good and no one really knows how stupid it was until the effects have become impossible to miss, by which time the congressman has a cushy consulting job in the regulated industry.
As you can see, there’s a lot that needs adjusting here but the first and easiest is to make lobbyists party to suits and liable for damages created by their machinations. The courts will hate it because they’ll have to actually work for all that money they make but that is just a bonus.
Companies will hate it because they will have a horrible time finding lobbyists. Lobbyists will hate it because they will have to be much more careful about what they lobby for and a lot of them will just have to go find real jobs.
Dang, this just gets better and better, don’t it?
