“THE INTOXICATION OF POWER AND PRIVILEGE”
by Joseph DeMaio, ©2013
(Oct. 1, 2013) — My bad… my bad. I apologize. You see, yesterday when I penned for posting here at The P&E this piece, I was apparently too kind in my descriptions of Sen. Harry Reid (D. NV). Permit me to explain.
When the post was submitted, it was before the House of Representatives – in a final effort to keep the government running despite the petulant efforts of Monsieur obama and Harry Reid to shut it down – had sent back to the Senate a bill (Continuing Resolution [“CR”] 228-201) that would have provided stopgap funding for government functions.
But the House version of CR 228-201 would have also (1) postponed obamacare’s individual mandate “tax” [sic] for one year and (2) overridden Monsieur obama’s “sweetheart exemption” from obamacare’s increased costs for members of Congress, their families and their staffers.
Recall that last August, the Emperor at 1600 imperially ignored the mandate of the law that colloquially bears his name and signed off on a waiver for members of Congress, their families and their staffers. That waiver translated to a subsidy of between $5,000 and $11,000 per year for every member of Congress. The outrage of the Emperor’s action is well described here.
Sen. David Vitter (R. LA.) had previously offered an amendment to one of the Senate bills being considered in that body which would have eliminated and overridden the Emperor’s exemption, placing all members of Congress, their families and their staffers back on the same “level” playing field as we, the proletariat. That amendment, of course, was squashed like a cockroach under Reid’s middle finger and never made it out of the Senate. The House reinserted it into CR 228-201 and sent it back to the Senate. No one is above the law, right?
It took Reid’s biker gang approximately 10 nanoseconds (some reports suggest it was only seven nanoseconds, but who’s counting…?) to kill the House bill. In effect, Reid and his “D” automatons thereby mutilated the corpse of the Vitter amendment, having first murdered it when that dastardly Republican Senator had the temerity to suggest that members of Congress, their families and their staffers should be treated the same as all the other commoners. What on earth were Vitter and Boehner thinking?
There is an eerie parallel here that, had I known of Reid’s mutilation of the Vitter amendment corpse when the prior post was submitted, I would have addressed it at that time. But since the regime has not yet hacked into The P&E website and sabotaged it, I will now address the parallel.
Most people remember British author George Orwell for his dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” first published in 1949. While there are many disturbing similarities between Airstrip One, Big Brother and the United States under the regime now in power, an even more disturbing analogy exists regarding another Orwell novel as a consequence of Reid’s defalcations last night.
Four years before publishing Nineteen Eighty-four, Orwell produced “Animal Farm,” wherein a group of pigs take over the “Manor Farm,” then incompetently run by a human, Farmer Jones, and renaming it – what else? – Animal Farm. As part of their revolution, the pigs establish the Seven Commandments of Animalism, the most critical of which is: “All animals are equal.”
Over time, however, succumbing to the intoxication of power and privilege, the chief pig, Napoleon, secretly alters (q.v. http://www.thepostemail.com/2012/05/13/why-the-elg-ellipsis/) that Animalism Commandment to read: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” That altered commandment then subsumes all of the other commandments.
There is no truth to the rumor that Harry Reid’s favorite book is “Animal Farm.” None at all. That honor likely goes to Das Kapital.
But his actions, along with the concurring votes of his pals in the Senate, in assuring that members of Congress, their families and their staffers remain “more equal” than we serfs could suggest that Animal Farm is, at minimum, required reading for members of his biker cabal. And, by the way, his biker chick equivalent in the House, Nancy Pelosi, is not far behind.
To reiterate the admonition to the electorate from the prior post: November 2014 is but 13 months away.