My elected voice

Below is a letter I sent to US Representative Yarmuth and Senator McConnell.

Like many Kentuckians and Americans, this past year has been a series of events that have evoked shock, horror, and outrage within me.

Not only as one of your constituents, but as a fellow American, I urge you to do everything possible to enact congressional hearings to uncover exactly how the current economic crises occurred, specifically so that proper regulation and policy can be enacted to prevent future economic catastrophes. If in the course of these investigations individuals or businesses are found to be fraudulent, I urge you to push for prosecution.

On a recent episode of The Bill Moyers Journal, the economist and former regulator William K Black made an excellent case for just such an investigation by arguing that, if this were a series plane crashes, the government would carry out an extensive investigation to get to the root of the problem. Why is that not being done here?

I hope the failure by America’s political elite to demand such an investigation is merely a lapse in judgment, but recent headlines make me wonder. The double standard of the Obama administration in relation to the financial sector and the automotive industry is deeply troubling. Why is GM’s CEO forced to resign while the financial warlocks who got us into this mess are being rewarded? Why are we punishing some failures and ignoring others?

The cynic in me believes this is just another example of the apparent truism that, in America at least, if you’re powerful enough the law can’t touch you. Between the aforementioned kid-glove treatment on the banking industry, and the complete lack of resolve to investigate Bush era abuses of power, I can’t see how any other conclusion can be drawn. That the Bush administration tortured and illegally wiretapped is no secret. Reports by the non-partisan Red Cross have made that clear enough. What’s worse, one of our allies—the United Kingdom—is planning to investigate whether their intelligence agencies were accomplices to American sanctioned torture. And yet, even with all this, the principal criminals in this outrage are being protected by the current administration, which is citing the same old “national security” excuses we had to endure for the past eight-years.

As my representative in Congress, I’m begging you to do everything in your power to help us once again become a nation ruled by law. We are beset by issues, both economic and political, domestic and foreign, but we’re never going to solve any of them if there isn’t a deep and rational inquiry into the nature and cause of our current woes. Our legal system has no use if it can’t touch the mighty. A government cannot be of the people if it isn’t accountable to the people, and I’m counting on you, as my elected voice, to do something about it.

If you agree with any of this, feel free to copy and send it to your own representatives. Their addresses can be looked up here.