Friday, May 08, 2009

Stand And Deliver

In the sixteenth century, highway robbers would step out from behind a tree, point a gun and demand of their victims, “Stand and deliver.”

Steve Hynd at Newshoggers comments on the relationship between the Democratic Party and organized labor, specifically regarding the former’s seeming inability to deliver on the labor reform bill pending before Congress right now. Read the post, which is mostly a quotation from another source. Steve’s comment, however is significant, as is the very title of the piece,

“If you’re not going to deliver now, when are you going to deliver?”

Think about the concept involved in that question; that labor feels an entitlement, or at least a reasonable expectation, to have something “delivered” to them. While I am pro-union, the sense of “my special interest is righteous, and the side that we control won, so when do I get mine?" is just a little bit offensive to me.

To say that because Democrats won, then a different special interest group should be controlling the agenda does not sit well with me. It isn't a question of which special interest is in control; the problem is that the system is so corrupt that special interests of any stripe can control it.

Update: Friday, 10:45am
Steve Hynd pointed out the error of my introductory remark in his comment. I was actually not going for the robbery thing, merely for the “delivery” part, so my choice of simile was a poor one. Oh well.

After a brief exchange of emails, Steve has rather softened my distrust of advocacy, pointing out that it is a vital aspect of democracy. So while I still dislike the idea of “delivering” to one’s supporters, there is an underlying aspect of “delivering” on one’s promises that I can certainly get behind.

The Democratic Party has been saying that it wanted to implement certain principles but was prevented from doing so by circumstances outside of its control. It is now in control of those circumstances, so why is it not implementing those principles?

On that question Steve Hynd and I are in complete harmony.

3 comments:

  1. bruce2:58 PM

    yes yes yes a thousand times yes

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  2. Here's the thing though - it's not a highwayman act if the noble in the coach has been telling the peons "support me and I'll see you right" forever and has now changed that tune to "let them eat cake".

    Regards, Steve @ Newshoggers

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  3. Hi Bill,

    It was great to discuss this with you by email. I think we both have an intrinsic distrust of "pay to play" politics and would like to see more regulation of how lobby groups infuence lawmaking as well as how lawmakers trawl for contributions by promising favors. But you're right - advocacy is an integral part of democracy, and naturally people will want to financially back those they think can deliver. There's a tension between those two that isn't easily resolved, I agree.

    Regards, Steve

    ReplyDelete