One of the ugliest symptoms of the "Washington Plague" is the lost art of using
real names for real things -- calling things what they actually are. This is just another
misdirection ploy employed by sleazy politicans to keep taxpayers from understanding
the duplicitous realities of what they are actually doing. The current Democratic
Congress and the new administration under Barack Obama have elevated "spin"
to new heights (or depths, depending on your point of view).
Let's look at a few cases in point. A bill was recently introduced in the House of
Representatives which is officially known as the "Employee Free Choice Act." On
the surface, who could object to employees having freedom of choice? But if you
take the time to look at the guts of the bill, you will quickly see that it verges on
denying employees free choice by taking away their right to election by secret
ballot regarding whether to unionize. Instead, union organizers would only have
to get a majority of employees to sign a card stating that they wish to unionize
and then the union becomes reality. There are no enforceable provisions that
will prevent unions from coercing or intimidating employees into signing, and
no right of privacy for the employee to change his or her mind. An accurate
title for this bill would be "The Union License to Bypass Secret Ballot Act." or
"The Union Open Season Act." Of course the Democrats, most of whom took
huge campaign contributions from the unions, would never call the bill what it
is, because then voters would know they were just paying off their patrons and
showing favoritism to labor over management. Call it whatever you want. But it's
just another form of lying.
Another excellent example is President Barack Obama's sleight of hand regarding
taxes. During his campaign, he promised that all but the top 5% of wage earners
would pay less in taxes, rather than more. He began by issuing payments he called
"tax rebates" (to those making under $200,000 a year) in the amount of $800 per
family. Now, a rebate, as normal people understand it, is actually a partial
refund of some amount already paid. But Obama's "tax rebates" include identical
payments to those who paid no taxes nd those to those who actually paid
taxes. Payments to people who made no initial payment cannot, semantically,
logically or physically be "rebates." It would be more accurate to call them
"welfare checks" or "government giveaways." But Obama and his people
can't and won't do that because (a) it has negative political implications, and
(b) it reveals his clear intent to roll back welfare reform instituted by a Republican
congress under fromer (Democratic) President Clinton. The'tax rebate" fraud is
simply another duplicitous attempt to disguise something the majority of voters
would hate, if they knew what it actually involved.
The point is this: when politicians refuse to decribe what they're doing in terms
that most people would categorize as accurate and candid, it virtually always
follows that what they are doing would be politically damaging to them if recognized\
by the voting public. Part of cleaning up Washington includes describing laws and
administrative initiatives in the most basic and accurate ways possible. When you
see language that seems unnecessarily opaque or misleading, the lying, cheating
and stealing will never be far behind. How often is our president lying? Why won't
our representatives and senators tell us the truth? They all have "The Washington
Plague."