Where is the DOJ Antitrust Division during this Election?

Americans will head to election stations around the country today to exercise their franchise in this great and ongoing “experiment” called America. The races range from high-profile gubernatorial battles and senate races to lesser-known races for local orphan court judges and comptrollers.

Perhaps most notable is that all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are at stake and Democrats will try to take back a House that has been Republican-controlled for the past 12 years. Voters will check off their choice of candidate for many positions and go home to track election results on television or read about the races in tomorrow’s paper.

Among the most popular stories will be voting machine glitches, a favorite of the media ever since the 2000 presidential election, when allegedly uncounted votes threw the election into turmoil the likes of which modern day American has never seen. It is, of course, the great hope of all the media types that some terrible glitch will again reduce the elections to a veritable circus, with round-the-clock coverage, mud-slinging and legal battles. Barring that, the media will try to sensationalize the elections as much as they can and essentially try to reduce the political process into something more roughly akin to a sporting event than a deeply-respected tradition.

What won’t be mentioned, however, is that the American political system continues to represent the most egregious example of collusion since J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie pulled the strings of America’s largest companies. Since the Department of Justice is under the control of the elected officials, I suspect that the anti-trust litigation will be a long time in coming.

I will grant that Green Party candidates, Libertarians and other “independents” are getting on the ballots in local, state and federal elections in growing numbers, but the oligopoly that is U.S. politics won’t actually allow such candidates to win an election. Governing is reserved for members of the guild who have paid their dues, learned the rules of emphasizing differences that are slight or nonexistent and, in general, who swear allegiance to the guild and agree to uphold the standards of the status quo.

Before my position is discarded as the ravings of a radical lunatic, let me note that I make these observations as a largely uninterested party and view the whole process with a sense of detached bemusement, much as I view most of the world. While I’m at it, let me note that even funnier than politicians who take themselves seriously and pretend to be “for this” or “against that” are political staffers, PAC members, lobbyists and other political tools who look at everyone outside of the political arena as mere “civilians” who are clueless, irrelevant and generally of lesser breeding than themselves.

This is truly hilarious because these folks are even more deluded than the general electorate, which has had the wool pulled over its collective eyes for so long that they actually think that Democrats and Republicans are significantly different from one another. But I digress.

The point I’m trying so valiantly to make is that the only politicians who truly want to change anything are those without the financial means and political capital to do so. The poorly-funded Libertarian, derided-as-a-fruitcake Green Party candidate and various other independents who haven’t truly experienced the political machinations of this country’s political process and who don’t understand why nothing ever changes - These are the people who would actually make changes.

But what have the firmly-entrenched Republican and Democratic parties to gain from making changes? Doesn’t it behoove both parties’ members to keep a chokehold on the American political context – to not allow ideas and concept outside the narrow “middle ground” to ever see the light of day? The answer, of course, is that it does benefit the two major parties – tremendously, as it turns out. As such, both parties’ national committees spend campaign dollars aggressively, creating proverbial windmills to be slain, and then celebrate hollow victories that are dressed up to look like major coups in front of a witless national media who soak it up, all the while hoping for more action like the 2000 presidential election.

Read the political message boards and you’ll encounter what reads more like fans of two opposing football teams screaming at each other than intelligent political discourse. Such low-brow debate indicates that the two major parties are doing a fantastic job of stoking an “us versus them” mentality among the registered Republicans and Democrats out there. All the while, the powerless message board combatants spew unintelligible vitriol and doggedly support the “views” of their chosen party and fail to realize that they have much in common with their opposing combatants, but very little in common, both philosophically and financially, with the elected officials in “their own” party.

For students of politics, Bill Clinton’s masterful 1996 re-election campaign will demonstrate further the power of copycat politics and the negligible differences between the two major parties. Clinton felt comfortable with his base – the “dyed in the wool” Democrats, so to take the middle ground and some crossover votes he parroted every good idea Bob Dole had, and delivered the message with more aplomb. The effect, of course, was that the undecided voters saw two candidates with almost identical ideas and promises, but with one stating his case much more eloquently and with much greater self-assurance. The result, as we know, was a resounding win for Clinton and a case study for future political advisors.

With all this floating around in my head, and with my aforementioned typical sense of bemusement, I went to vote today and was forced to use a provisional ballot because the change of address that I put on file with the Maryland Motor Vehicles Administration (MVA) in February, 2006 apparently was not processed. Oddly, despite the obvious incompetence in this instance, the speeding tickets and vehicle inspection notice for my car, both related to items that produce revenue for the state of Maryland, were mailed earlier this year to the appropriate address…promptly.

At any rate, as I went through my ballot, filling in perfect ovals with my #2 pencil, I noticed a smattering of independent candidates. The ballot, however, was dominated by Republicans and Democrats and in the election for the U.S. House of Representatives for Maryland’s 7th Congressional District, only Elijah Cummings, a Democrat, was on the ballot.

Determined not to be pigeonholed by the ballot, I wrote in my brother’s name for U.S. Congress. Upon reading this (if any of them are or ever do so) Mr. Cummings’ staffers and political flunkies are rolling their eyes, snorting and bandying about comments about my trivializing of the esteemed U.S. electoral process. Despite this, I can assure you the reader that Mr. Cummings will win the 7th District seat because my brother didn’t run much of a campaign this year, deciding instead to spend a lot of time playing video games and watching football.

Tags: 2006 congressional elections, pacs

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