NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER Power Trips BY ALFRED S. REGNERY A FTER TIP O'NEILL RETIRED from Congress in 1987, it was reported that painting crews found, written on the men's room wall adjacent to...
...As Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his dissent, the Campaign Reform Act "begins to look very much like an incumbency protection plan...
...And so it has...
...Not that sort of corruption, Johnson said...
...It is not hard to imagine what old Lord Acton would have said about that...
...And as our friend "Roane" points out, many members of Congress who supported the bill made it very clear that what they wanted was to preserve their power, even at the expense of our civil liberties...
...Johnson commented that he had warned Margaret Thatcher soon after she became prime minister about how corrupting power could be, to which Thatcher replied that she had never stolen anything and was sure she never would...
...As the Supreme Court's majority opinion mentioned, "money, like water, will always find an outlet...
...I will leave it to our readers to decide whether he was corrupt...
...spend and spend...
...Spencer Roane," the pen name of a prominent Washington lawyer well versed in the Constitution but who, because of his career, must remain anonymous, criticizes, herein, in no uncertain terms, the Supreme Court's most recent opinion on campaign finance reform...
...I spent some time with Paul Johnson while visiting London at Christmastime, and the conversation came around to the corrupting influence of power...
...Given the Republicans' newly acquired taste for big spending programs and big government—among others, a $400 billion expansion of Medicare entitlements and an education program that places the federal bureaucracy firmly into every schoolhouse in the land—the GOP is increasingly looking like the Democratic Party of Tip O'Neill and Lyndon Johnson, able to pass the legislation it wants and to use the government for all those wonderful things the electorate likes so well...
...and elect and elect (a formula Hopkins apparently thought up at the race track...
...Power corrupts, and absolute power is absolutely wonderful," it said...
...All a good way to get reelected, but not a bright prospect for the long-term good of the Republican Party...
...Tip O'Neill had about as much power as anybody in Washington during his tenure as Speaker of the House...
...Republicans have now controlled most of the levers of power for three years, and if things go, during the new year, as they look like they may, the GOP could control such power for a good many years to come...
...Power corrupts judgment more often than morals...
...Power corrupts judgment more often than morals...
...Our colleague Shawn Macomber takes a close look at Soros's idiosyncrasies, the origins of his money, and his motives for wanting what he calls regime change in Washington and what he will do to bring it about...
...Or, to put it another way, as an old political science professor friend used to tell me, politics is really the process of taking money away from those who don't vote for you and giving it to those who do...
...As the 2004 election year gets underway, as George W. Bush continues on his quest to collect $200 million for his reelection campaign, and as discretionary spending continues to grow (it climbed by 4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 2004 27 percent in the last two years), one is reminded of Harry Hopkins's admonition to tax and tax...
...It is easy to forget that what the court did was almost exactly what the Bush Justice Department wanted it to do, and upheld a law that President Bush had enthusiastically signed...
...NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER Power Trips BY ALFRED S. REGNERY A FTER TIP O'NEILL RETIRED from Congress in 1987, it was reported that painting crews found, written on the men's room wall adjacent to his office, a maybe-humorousmaybe-not derivation of Lord Acton's famous quip about power...
...Ironically, George Soros, one of the wealthiest men in America, is determined to use some of his billions to defeat George W. Bush, and is using a loophole in the new law to do so...
...As Roane points out, elections are about gaining and holding power—the kind of power Tip O'Neill spent a lifetime building, and the kind of power every member of Congress understands so well...
...The Bush-haters and assorted Democrats could probably immediately accuse them of corruption, which would be an exaggeration, but the potential, as Lord Acton knew, is certainly there...
Vol. 37 • February 2004 • No. 1
