Power Tends To...

SPUD NOTES: This is an article from Paul Jacobs who heads Common Sense.

Doug Bandow agrees with Lord Acton. Me too. The political commentator believes that the congressional Republicans are bent on proving the truth of Acton's famous axiom, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."Bandow writes, "The GOP began to sell out its principles shortly after seizing control of Congress in 1994, but the abuses continue to grow.

Today, as a few courageous House fiscal conservatives press for offsets against the virtually unlimited spending proposed in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Speaker and his coterie have acted like a woman scorned. Preaching unity, they have trashed any Republican suggesting that free-spending bail-outs are not the conservative way."

Bandow also says the Republicans are worse than the Democrats, having learned to lord it over the rest of us even more riotously during their own tenure in control. Now they're even making announcements about which investors should or should not invest in a DC baseball franchise.Are Republicans really so much more power-mad than the Democrats? Their record, when it comes to porkbarrel politics and dictating the fate of baseball franchises, ain't good, that's for sure.

But maybe it's just that every generation of career politicians finds ever-more ludicrous ways to run riot.Bandow is implicitly making a case for term limits. While ideology may matter on certain questions, it apparently does not matter on the question of which entrenched group of career politicians will spend us into oblivion. Both will, either will, given the chance. Birds of a feather flail and splurge together.

This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.